We’ve Started Planting!
The day we got to start planting felt like it would never come, but our first batch of trees arrived on Sands Farm! We picked up 100 Oak saplings on Friday, which were part of a few thousand that Bristol Tree Forum rescued from a wood chipper. COVID-19 has been a rough time for everyone, and with so many reforestation projects cancelled or put on indefinite hold, it was amazing to rescue some of these saplings and find them a good home.
This bag of twigs doesn't look like much, but these 50-150cm sticks will eventually grow into a huge majestic trees that look a little something like this.
Two of the nearby trustees and three volunteers joined came out to Dyrham on Saturday, shovels and strimmers in hand, and we broke ground on our first land-owner project! It was hard work, because with these things growing so big we didn't want to just shove them all right next to each other in a field. With so many deer and with some of the fields being home to giant cows, we wanted to give these little chaps their best chance possible. We got strategic, and hacked them into giant bushes.
Our old borrowed strimmers failed us, but we got old school with scythes and slackers, getting 30 done in the first day instead of the full 100. Next day things sped up a little, but Phil (who's camped out on the farm for now) got a bunch more done solo, and the team is back to finish the job tomorrow and Wednesday.
Our quest for our own piece of land is ongoing, with the our conservation advisor heading to check out this plot surrounded by timber plantations in south Wales.
We hope this one is more appropriate for our needs than the last one. At this point we won't be planting that plot of land this year, but we've got 6680 trees lined up with our land owner projects and we're still hunting for more opportunities this winter, so we're not too sad about that.
A Chartered Forester I spoke with the other day said "Reforestation takes a long time. Planting a tree is step 42". 🤣
It feels good to be on step 42 here at Sands Farm, but there's a lot of steps to go for any land we get. Buy now, get grants and planning permission sorted throughout the whole year, plant through winter 2021!
Thanks again to everyone who came out to plant with us. If you'd like to pick up a spade and do something to help the planet, sign up to hear about new events.
Also please consider donating to our charity so we can buy our own chunk of land. We love planting with other land owners, who all have diverse ranges of reasons for wanting more trees on some of their land, but we want to make huge new woodlands for generations to enjoy. For that, we need a fair bit of help.