Task Reports

Tuesday 17th September to Friday 20th September. 

This was the first time we had held a mid-week residential, dictated by the availability of the accommodation. It's shame it didn't suit everyone who was interested as we had a glorious few days in Buckden. 

Each wall has it's particular challenges, but this one seemed fairly daunting when we decided the best course of action was to re-lay the line slightly in order to cope with the adjacent tree. We had to unearth the foundation stones and relocate them. It's a while since we have needed to do this when we have been gapping up. At lunch time on Wednesday when we still hadn't started building upwards it was slightly worrying, but in the end the hard graft but definitely worth the effort and it turned out to be just the right amount of work for us for a leisurely finish on Friday lunchtime. 

Making a start today on a project of renewal at the Nature Reserve.

We kicked off our Postcode Local Fund year by clearing felled timber from around the ponds, manually re-cutting the grass paths and removing litter accumulated around one seating area.  This was a good opportunity to take a look at the site and consider what the priorities for management will be over the next 12 months.

Our final visit for this year.

This year’s third and final visit to control bracken.  Volunteers, scythed, slashed and sickled their way through areas that had regenerated since last year.  The heather and bilberry are establishing well where the bracken has been consistently cut back.

Getting the inside of the shed ready for action, as the harvest gets into full swing.

A visit to the orchard to carry out a wide variety of seasonal tasks including mowing paths, scything under hedgerows, weeding around trees and spreading excess straw from the new straw bale apple shed under trees about to shed their apples.  The cordon trees were pruned.  Work on the apple shed continued, with shelving being constructed ready for this year’s harvest.

More bracken cutting - please wear long trousers and sleeves.

On this second of three annual visits to the moor we cleared a substantial quantity of bracken.  The moor is looking more diverse each year in the areas in which we've been working.

We will be helping with more clearance of rubbish from the river banks.

On a wet August day a small group of volunteers trawled the banks of the Bradford Beck for rubbish.  Working with the Aire Rivers Trust, BEES cleared the section under the Shipley station arches, filling dozens of rubbish sacks with all kinds of debris.  One group worked above the river banks whilst others spent the day pulling detritus from the foreshore.

Our partners in the Aire Rivers Trust were delighted with the progress made.  We hope to have the opportunity to work with them in the future.

We will be returning to the area of Middlebrook beck where we did litter clearance earlier in the year to continue with Himalayan Balsam clearance.

A return visit to this section of Middlebrook Beck.  This time to tackle the Himalayan Balsam as well as removing more rubbish, including a bike, from the river.  We were joined by a camera woman from the BBC, doing a report on the rivers for a feature on the local news.

Our first visit of the year bracken cutting on Baildon Moor using traditionals tools, scythes,sickles etc to preserve and increase plant diversity.

We were joined today on the moor by staff skilled in the use of traditional tools such as scythes and sickles.  They were very much appreciated for their hard work and we made good progress.

As well as ongoing orchard maintenance we will be preparing the site for summer playscheme visits and harvesting the rest of the soft fruit.

We concentrated today on vegetation clearance, weeding under the fruit trees and readying the site for use by summer play-scheme groups in August.

Continuing dry stone walling - an opportunity for creative use of on-site materials as well as clearance and weeding and maybe planting.

Despite heavy rain all day we cleared vegetation and made a start on another entrance way further down to enable people to walk through the woodland garden.  The volunteers were treated by the residents to homemade soup which was much appreciated.