Mowing at the Viewpoint

In the last blog post I mentioned that we had started this year's grassland maintenance at Filnore Woods. At the work party last Wednesday April 23rd we continued this work up at the viewpoint to try and keep on top of it.

As you can see the grass is starting to grow quite vigorously as the weather warms up.

There were only four of us this time and Alan R, Jim and Eric are trying out some new scythe blades we have just bought. They are making good progress while I'm lagging behind with an old blade that's showing its age.

It wasn't long before we'd cut down a considerable amount of grass ...

... then had a break before raking up the arisings, though they look a bit grumpy. Maybe I'm working them too hard!

After we'd finished raking up the grass the viewpoint was looking much tidier but of course the grass doesn't stop growing so we will be back before too long.

This is looking in the other direction along the viewpoint and the grass here is just as bad. There were only four of us this time and we did well to cut as much as we did. We'll probably have a go at this bit next time.

                                                                            

Elsewhere in the woods we have lots of bluebells this year. They have followed on from the primroses which were also plentiful.

Five Men and Erika Went to Mow

On Sunday 13th April we started our grassland maintenance activity for this year. Six volunteers were present so we got the scythes out and made a start on the welcome area grass just inside the entrance near the tool store.

The grass here is getting quite long and tussocky and needs a good trim.

Looking to the right of the entrance along the path towards post 2 you can see that the grass to the right hand side of the path is also growing longer and could do with being trimmed, but ...

... with these bluebells, along with primroses and cowslips, growing in it, we will have to wait a while before doing that.

Eric, Erika, Peter and Aidan scythed away the grass...

... Chris found some material beside the stream bed that needed to be cleared, and I dumped the cut grass and took some photos.

After a good mornings work we had cut most of the grass in the welcome area and look forward to doing it again soon!