Yesterday we sent you the final programme for the Woodland Fair on 7th October. Today we have finalised the list of all participants and activities. As you can see there’s something for everyone. Do tell you friends and neighbours about it.

Here is the programme for our Woodland fair on Saturday 7th October. Fair opens at 10.00 and runs until 4.30 pm. We hope to see you there. Bring your wellies just in case.

Walks, walks, demos, art exhibition, woodland crafts, owls, horse logging, clog making, tree ID, forest foraging, face painting, storytelling and much more!  The event will take place in the village of Chapel Lawn – in the village hall, old school yard, river meadow, Brineddin Wood and the church.

We have nearly 50 stalls confirmed. The hall will be full of woodland-related arts and crafts, the meadow with tree and timber related demonstrations from horse logging to hedge-laying and the old school yard busy with a variety of stalls too. A short series of ‘in a nutshell’ talks will take place in the church on subjects such as pine martens and tree ring dating. Hot (local) food will be on sale during the day from baked potatoes to lamb burgers and cob oven pizzas to afternoon tea and home-made cakes.

Woodland Fair programme

Tickets: £4.00 in advance or £4.50 on the gate; 5-15 yrs: £2.00. Under 5’s go free.

More info: 01547 530347 / 07757 559409/ patrick@cosgr.plus.com

All 100 places for the talk on Caer Caradoc on the evening of 7th October have now been reserved. If you were thinking of attending but hadn’t booked, email in anyway just in case there are any cancellations.  If we build up a large reserve list we may be able to persuade Andy Wigley to do a repeat next year.

 

 

 

 

Here is the programme for The Chapel Lawn Woodland Fair on Saturday 7th October. With over 50 exhibitors, talks etc, it promises to be a superb day out with lots to do for children.

Our Society has now signed up as a member of  Friends of the Shropshire Hills AONB, and we encourage others to do the same, either as individuals or through organisations that they belong to. By becoming a friend you can ….

• support community projects conserving the natural beauty of the AONB
• become a Champion for the Shropshire Hills, raise awareness in your community or get support to generate your own local projects
• learn about the landscape and heritage through walks, talks and activities
• help with fund-raising events, recruitment and more
• find out more about the work of the AONB partnership and trust.

Members also receive ….

• an invitation to an annual Friends event
• regular news and event updates
• discount at Cotswold Outdoor

For more information: visit http://www.shropshirehillsaonb.co.uk

or email Shropshirehillsaonb@shropshire.gov.uk

 

 

 

Apologies – yesterday’s post stated that the start time of our AGM is 7.45 pm. In fact the AGM starts at 7.00 pm, but the guest speaker will give his talk at 7.45 pm. Just to remind you of the details, the AGM will be held in the Redlake Valley Village Hall, Chapel Lawn, SY7 0BW and the guest speaker is Richard Thomason, Senior Manager, Coppice Development at the Small Woods Association. This is a particularly relevant topic given the work we have been doing recently to protect our coppiced hazel stools from deer damage.

Please don’t miss our AGM in the Redlake Valley Village Hall, Chapel Lawn on Thursday 25th May. The guest speaker is Richard Thomason, Senior Manager, Coppice Development at the Small Woods Association. This is a particularly relevant topic given the work we have been dong recently to protect our coppiced hazel stools from deer damage.

The AGM begins at 7.00 pm and the talk at 7.45. Admission free to shareholders, £3.00 for others.

Click on this link to see full details: 2017 AGM poster

Do, please, forward details to others.

 

Here is advance notice of our Woodland Fair. Please bear in mind that numbers for the evening talk are limited to eighty, so we do advise early booking.

 

Apologies if you’ve been missing these news bulletins – I offer the usual excuse of having too much to do in retirement.  To make amends, here is a selection of the activities that have been taking place in the last few months up at the quillet, starting with the most recent, which is:

Our New Information Board

In recent months our Treasurer, Anthony Morgan, has been steadily working to create a handsome information board that tells passers-by about the wood, the quillet, and the wildlife.  As you can see, it is now firmly in place at the foot of the quillet steps.  Many thanks  to Shropshire Hills AONB for funding this and to Shropshire Wildlife Trust for advice on the content.

 

“In woods we forget things, at the wood edge we tell stories”. This is a project run by poet, Jean Atkin, which provided opportunities for three different groups from the community in south Shropshire to spend time in native woodlands, learn real, useful conservation skills, respond to place through poetry, and perform their own site-specific work. The project is funded by the Shropshire Hills AONB Conservation Fund and Shropshire Housing Group. The three groups were Bishop’s Castle Primary School, St Mary’s CE Primary School, Bucknell and the Working Together Group, a Ludlow-based registered charity that provides a focus for people with learning disabilities and their families. It was this last group that visited the Brineddin quillet with Jean Atkin, and Karen Limbrick. The group of three young people visited twice during September, the first time to draw inspiration from the wood to write their poems and to carry out protection of some coppiced hazel, the second time to “perform their poems to the wood.” Jean publishes the poems here. On Wednesday 9^th November at 6.00 pm, the three groups will met up for a celebration of the project at the Assembly Rooms in Ludlow. All are welcome.

Bicycle Wheel Coppicing.

With a healthy deer population (17 spotted in a field adjoining the woods early one morning!), we find ourselves between a rock and  a hard place as far as our hazel understory is concerned. If we don’t coppice, the hazel will die of old age, and many are in the process of doing exactly that. If we do coppice, the deer will nibble the new shoots and leaves, and they are doing exactly that. The solution? Well, isn’t it obvious? Bicycle wheels. Courtesy of Pearce Cycles in Ludlow we were permitted to raid the skip at the back of their workshop and bring home a selection of buckled wheels. Scrap metal to some; gold dust to us. A group of us then applied our imagination and used the wheels as frames in which to insert brash and sticks of varying lengths. In the slide-show below you can see Mk1, Mk2 and Mk 3 versions below, plus Mk 4 constructed from squares of steel mesh fencing. So far they’re proving to be about 75% deer proof. It seems that the deer are reluctant to force their way through anything really solid, but where we left a gap, or sticks later fell out, they have pushed their heads in to reach the tender leaves. It’s not a permanent solution, but it is certainly better than just piling brash on top of the cut stools as that disintegrates within a few months.

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The wheels can be cut away at a later date when the young hazel tree is established.

 

Bird Boxes

Following a successful visit to the woods by Bishops Castle Community College last Autumn to undertake some coppice work, students went on to make bird boxes . Two of these boxes were recently donated to us, with the promise of more to come from this year’s students. The college is planning to arrange an article about them for the Shropshire Star.

Bucknell School Pupils Achieve John Muir Award.

We reported last year how pupils from Bucknell School were working towards their John Muir Award.  All pupils achieved their awards and in February were presented with them on the same day that the Ofsted Inspectors were in. The school was given a clean bill of health, no doubt influenced by what the inspectors had learned about the awards.

 

Planning Ahead

Board members have now agreed a number of future activities.

At the top of the flight of steps a woodland glade will be created by felling a few rather weak and spindly oaks that are not thriving. This will let more light penetrate and it will be interesting to see what effect that will have on the ground  flora.  We are also keen to discover if the oaks will regenerate, but a few rowan and bird cherry trees will also be planted there that have been kindly donated by a local farmer.

An area has been identified that is suitable for what we hope will be more permanent deer protection.  Special reinforced plastic fencing will be bought to surround a space where hazel and weak oaks will be coppiced and encouraged to regrow, hopefully safe from the grazing deer.

Some of this work will be carried out by Shropshire Council’s Wild Team led by Simon Brown.

Dates for your diaries:

More work parties are planned for the following Sundays: 27 November 2016, 8 January 2017, 12 February and 12 March, shareholders, friends and family are more than welcome to join us.

Although the date has not been confirmed, the Society will be be holding another Woodland Fayre in 2017 – probably at the beginning of October. This is as the result of many requests for a follow-up of the high successful event held in 2012. Was it really that long ago?

With Valentine’s Day not far away, instead of a card, why not email this delightful cartoon of trees to ‘you know who’. Produced in 1932, it was, in fact, the first cartoon to be produced in full Technicolour. Click here, and then scroll down to click again.