Bugs in the bushes

Part of the Countryside Skills course is to be able to identify the different plants and animals living in our local habitats. We found beetles, spiders, slugs, centipedes, millipedes, butterflies, caterpillars and more while bug hunting in the garden - all very exciting!

There are many beautiful wildflowers out at the moment.  We identified cowslips, red campion, white dead nettle, buttercups and cow parsley among others.

We pressed the flowers and then tested our memories (and got the ID guides out again) a few weeks later when they had dried out.

The results have been preserved by laminating and will feature in the students’ portfolios.

Chickens and beans!

This week we have been learning how to keep the Earth Trust chickens happy and healthy. We topped up their water and fed them – our hens are friendly and like to eat from our hands. They even like a cuddle now and then!

They lay us lots of tasty eggs which we collect and carry carefully to the kitchen for the Earth Trust staff to eat. Sometimes we get to make them into cakes too!

We've also had a check on the peas and beans we sowed back in February. The broad beans were ready for planting out in the vegetable patch. 

Each student dug a hole with a trowel, carefully removed the plant from the pot and placed it in its new home.

 

It is especially important to water our beans with the dry weather we’ve had recently. We will water them every week at the beginning of our session.

We are looking forward to eating our broad beans later in the year!

Planting trees thanks to the Woodland Trust

This year, we have been very fortunate to receive free trees from the Woodland Trust for Countryside Skills students to plant in Little Wittenham Wood.

We have been planting along the woodland ride, in the areas that were coppiced over the winter.

The purpose of the coppicing is to open up the ride to allow more light in, making it a more pleasant place to walk, but also allowing more woodland plants to grow in the open spaces.  This 'edge habitat' is preferred by many plant, animal and invertebrate species due to the increased light and warmth, close cover and higher quantity of feeding material.

We really enjoyed our sunny days out in the woods.  It was great to think that one day, some of the trees we planted will have grown as big as this mighty oak in the background!

If you are from a school or community interested in planting trees, check out the Woodland Trust's free trees scheme and apply!

Weaving willow hurdles for the wild play area

The hurdles at the end of the wild play area in the Earth Trust Centre garden had reached the ends of their working lives, and have been recycled into firewood for our Big Bale Boiler, which heats the office and Centre buildings.

Our Countryside Skills groups have all been working together to weave a new hurdle fence, and it looks brilliant!

We cut our own stakes from ash trees growing in the wrong place in the Broad Arboretum (they’re rather too good at self-seeding for our liking!), and harvested the willow from the sculptures at Neptune Wood in the autumn.

Many hands make light work! In just one session, students from Brookfields School went from ground level (shown in the picture above) to the sunny half fence below.

We had help from Wallingford School too.

The finished fence:

Hopefully you think the new fence looks as smart as we do. It should at least help to prevent excited Earth School visitors from running onto the farm track during the lunchtime play!

Planting season is upon us!

It’s that time of year – the days are getting longer, the sun is starting to shine, and the air is feeling warmer – it’s time to start planting!

We have a small vegetable patch in the Earth Trust Centre garden which is tended by the Countryside Skills students. We grow a variety of produce to eat at the end of year party!

This year, Brookfields School have started us off with some broad beans, peas, and tomatoes. The beans are in our mini greenhouse, and the tomatoes are on Engagement Co-ordinator Mariel’s south-facing windowsill in the office!

We have also started weeding the vegetable beds to prepare them for planting later in the spring.  Here are Aaron, Kalan and Samuel doing a great job of pulling up the weeds!

Wallingford School lent a hand in the afternoon, bringing over wheelbarrows of mulch to stop the weeds from growing back through. By the end of the day, we had a beautiful looking veg patch ready for spring!

Keep your eyes peeled for progress blog posts as we plant out the vegetables and watch them grow!

A new wood store

We often light fires at Countryside Skills, to stay warm in the winter while we work, to make elderflower cordial over in the summer, or to make blackberry juice in the autumn. We therefore need a good supply of dry firewood. Our Year 11 students from Langtree School have been chopping firewood for us, but ran out of space to store it – they have become very efficient with axes!

A couple of the students offered to build us a new firewood store – and they have!

Oscar and Jack started by clearing and levelling the ground next to the wall, and pruning the overhanging tree to maximise the space available.

They used a pallet for the base, and timber we had leftover from previous projects.  They did all of the planning and measuring out themselves, and demonstrated their proficiency with saws, drills, spirit levels and team work!

In two sessions, they had it finished, complete with a beautiful felt roof! Maybe we’ll make some popcorn on the fire next week to celebrate... Great work boys!

Planting trees with the Sylva Foundation

Part of the Countryside Skills course requires the students to show that they are able to plant a tree in the correct sequence and know how to look after it (i.e. by providing a guard to protect it from nibbling rabbits and strong winds).

This year, we have been very fortunate to be able to work with Gabriel and Jen down the road at the Sylva Foundation, and have planted up a few plots of their Future Forest. We have planted sweet chestnut trees in plots that we will take future Countryside Skills students to coppice in a few years time. The site is very easy to access so it's perfect for some of our less mobile students.

Every single one of our 50 Countryside Skills students planted trees. Well done everyone!