Moses Gate: Halloween

Sunday 30th November, Tree Planting

Professor Van Helsing sat in the semi-gloom of his mansion, quietly savouring a flagon from the cask of Amontillado he kept in his private cellar. While sharpening his one remaining stake he suddenly became aware of a strange noise coming from the kitchen wing, “Hmm,” he thought, “The servant’s locked away in his shuttered room, what can this be?” He rose and, cautiously, made his way to the location of the disturbance.
It was coming from behind the door to the larder.
Grasping the door’s handle, he readied himself, stake in hand, then pulled open the door to find.. nothing.
He realised with horror that the cupboard was bare and that he was going to have to go shopping.

Grabbing his Burberry coat and his pointy stick he exited the safety of his home and stepped out on to the dark, rain slicked streets of Murderside. He walked along Grimm Street, footsteps echoing as he passed beneath the flickering gas light. Coming to the last house on the left he turned down the Rue Morgue, a road well known for knife wielding primates and undead drag artists. The street was entirely dark, he suspected Council cutbacks and carried on stake in hand.

Suddenly three dark shapes, like women in black (although they may self-identify differently) detached themselves from the shadows and flew at him. Vampires! He had one stake and there were three of the creatures. He acted quickly. As two of the undead closed on him he deftly impaled them both with one stake, for the third he whipped out his pruning saw and de-limbed it shouting, “Timber.” As their dust drifted away, he muttered too himself, “While there’s a moon over Bourbon Street they will not gain victory.”

Returning home after his adventure and a nut cutlet, he realised he would need more stakes. He would have to use dark magic and invoke the Bolton Conservation Volunteers for help. He knew the dangers, knew the cost, knew what price they would ask. But it had to be done.

Taking down a long forgotten tome of Druidic lore he spoke the sacred words, “From the land beyond Bol-ton, from the world past hope and beer, I bid you BCV now appear.” He splashed the carpet with a small amount of ancient Super Seven ale and stood back. Slowly a mist rose from the age worn carpet, like stale smoke drifting musty and cold, the shapes began to take form, solidifying into the ghoulish group of hideous misfits that was BCV.
“I need you all to plant some trees that I can cut down later on and turn into stakes,” said Van Helsing.
“You have Jaffa Cakes?” asked one with spiders in her hair.
“No, not until you’re done. We need to go now, I don’t want to be late. And you can’t stay til morning, there’s no room.”

As they set off, travelling through the night to Mouldy Gate Park like a circus of horrors. As dawn broke the Professor laid out his plan.
“We’re not building a cabin in the woods, we’re planting bare rooted trees and sticking willow stems into the ground. I need enough stakes for an army of the damned to make war on the evil dead.”
“You have Jaffa Cakes?” asked a green haired freak.
“No,” said the patient Professor. “But, carry out my wishes and you’ll have more cakes than you can eat.”
“Jaffa Cakes?” asked three of the witches in unison.
Not wanting a witches strike on his hands, Van Helsing replied, “Maybe.”
With the repeated chant of “Jaffa Cake,” the zombieland rejects got to work.

Under the gaze of an old tree they worked. Swinging their spades like pendulums they pit planted trees with names that cannot be spoken, and T planting others in defiance of Mouldy Gate’s resident evil. Willow stems were impaled into the dank earth where their roots would sprout and push through the soil like undead rabbits in a pet sematary (blame Steven King for the spelling). Tree after tree after tree found its final destination, and Van Helsing watched on as the work progressed. Gradually the light began to fail, but just in time the work was done; the long day of the dead (tired) had came to an end; a new woodland had been created, and a new store of future stakes to fight the fanged menace.

The shuffling mob shuffled and groaned, mostly about their backs. One, slowly stepped forward and lifted a hand, not one of her own but it would do, “Jaffa cake?” she croaked.
The Professor stepped back slowly. “Errm… I’ve got Double Death By Chocolate Cake and a Victoria Sandwich…”
“JAFFA CAKE!!!!” the mob screamed and shambled forward.
“Time for the pub,” uttered Van Helsing and turned to run, but his Burberry coat snagged on a branch of the wicked old tree and the hoard fell on him in their hunger.

The following morning. The sun rose on a peaceful wood. The pale dawn light slanted through the misty air, sparkling on golden, dew covered leaves. Deer wandered between the newly planted saplings, they sniffed at the young trees but left them be, this crop was not for eating. Turning, they quietly walked away leaving not a mark on the earth to show that they were ever there. As they padded gently by they passed beneath a raven perched in the branches of a gnarled old tree…
..and Van Helsing’s empty coat swinging in the breeze.

And the raven said, “Nevermore.”

Respectfully dedicated to BCV’s Van Helsing

All characters in this post are ‘entirely’ imaginary and any similarity between them and any persons living or undead is entirely ‘co-incidental’. No zombies or vampires were injured and Van Helsing eventually got his coat back. Many thanks to Banana Enterprises and the Rock Hall Volunteers for their involvement and to BCV’s cast of thousands for dressing up for the occasion. As usual thanks to Rick, Tom, and Caroline for their continued and outstanding leadership. Extra thanks to Jane, Sheena, and Lynn for cakes. Other work included cutting up old tree branches and making a dead hedge.

Dunscar Woods: Trees A Crowd

16th October 2022 – Tree thinning, Dunscar Woods, Egerton

Dunscar Wood is a new woodland near Egerton, Bolton. The wood occupies 5.7 hectares of what was formerly green fields which were bought by the Woodland Trust in 1998 as part of their millennial Woodlands on Your Doorstep project. Old maps do show a small patch of woods in the area but not of any great size or significance.

The Dunscar Wood Management plan says that in 1999 wood was planted with a mix of sessile oak, ash, birch, cherry, rowan, aspen, holly, alder, hawthorn, blackthorn and goat willow. Mature sycamore is also present and is thought to be a remnant of previous field boundaries.

New woodlands such as this are often planted quite densely with new stock, with 2 to 3 metres between each tree. Although there is always some loss through animal grazing, disease such as ash die back, and climate and weather conditions, the trees take up more room as they grow and need to be thinned out. Which is what we were doing on this task.

The Woodland Trust is thinning trees, not just to reduce the numbers, but to improve the structure of the woodland as part of the management plan for the site. One of the problems of planting lots of trees at once is the lack of age structure, hence the mix of long lived trees such as oak and short life-spanned species such as birch. The Woodland Trust envisages that over the next 80 years the short lived species will die off and provide standing deadwood and fallen logs which will benefit a range of bird and invertebrate species improving biodiversity in an area of Bolton with limited tree cover and species mix. Natural regeneration should make the new woodland self sustaining; gaps in the canopy should encourage the growth of woodland understorey.

The day before the task many of the larger trees that had been marked for felling were taken down by chainsaw, leaving Sunday’s group the task of cutting up and making into habitat piles and log stacks. The day was also a good opertunity to train some of the younger members how to fell trees safely and correct tool use.

Thanks to the Woodland Trust for letting us work here, Tom, Caroline, and Rick for putting it together, and the 21 (or so) volunteers for coming out. More woodland task write ups can be found under the Woodland category.

Ousel’s Nest Quarry: Flower Power

Meadow Management, Sunday, 4th September 2022

Ousel’s Nest Quarry Local Nature Reserve, Turton, is a site we have been working at since 2014. The site, which is managed jointly by BCV and The Wildlife Trust, has hedges, trees, ponds and the largest wildflower meadows we have ever worked on, today we are working on one of those meadows.

Species-rich meadows and grasslands have declined by 7.5 million acres (3.03 million hectares) since the 1930’s, only 2% of the meadows that existed at that time exist today and of those 75% are small, fragmented areas. The decline began during World War 2 when 6 million acres were ploughed under to provide food for Britain’s beleaguered population, but after the war that destruction continued as the requirement for housing and industrial development grew. Today these developments still encroach on greenbelt land; only 1% of land in the UK now support species-rich grassland.

Meadows are the cornerstone of our green and pleasant land, an intrinsic part of the UK’s natural and cultural heritage. Meadows provide habitat for wildflowers, bees, butterflies, moths, and many other insects, also spiders, small mammals, birds, reptiles and bats. Meadows can also act as carbon sinks and flood defences.

Wildflower grasslands do have some protection, mostly if they have been designated as a Site of Special Scientific Interest or as a Local Nature Reserve, but many won’t have this level of protection or are not properly managed leaving them at risk of being lost.

While Bolton’s meadows don’t have the range of species as chalk grasslands there’s still plenty we can do to improve what we have. Today we were mowing the grass, now that the flowers have died off, and removing it to the edges of the site. Raking up the mown grass stops the build up of nutrient in the soil, wildflowers thrive in a low nutrient environment while grasses prefer more fertile soils. Mowing also helps to distribute seeds; at the moment the meadows have knapweed, scabious, at least one type of orchid, and yellow rattle to name a few, but we hope to improve this over time. Thanks to all involved and also to the Wildlife Trust collaborating with us on this project.

Other Posts about meadows can be found in the Meadows category.

Rivington: Old King Charcoal

Sunday 31st July 2022 – Charcoal Making

Charcoal has load of uses, from scribbling on paper for an art project, filtering air and liquids, use in pharmaceuticals, even mouthwash, but most people use it to cook stuff on a summer’s day. For 30,000 years charcoal has been used as fuel for cooking. 3000 years ago it was used for smelting metals and glass making; it powered the early years of the industrial revolution until being replaced by coke, which is made from coal but using the same processes as this used to make charcoal. The fuel for charcoal came from coppices, woodland that could be sustainably harvested repeatedly over decades of centuries, but as coal and coke became the preferred fuel charcoal making declined. As charcoal making declined coppice management declined, continuing until more recent times when the value of a coppice to wildlife and conservation was recognised.

Charcoal is made through the magic of smothered combustion. A kiln, there are many kinds, is stacked with wood and then set on fire. At a critical point the kiln is sealed to prevent oxygen getting into the combustion process, hence being smothered. The heat cause the release of volatile gases from the woody fuel maintaining the process. After a couple of dozen hours the wood converts to charcoal by volume to between 50-90% depending on the material, the process itself, and skill of the charcoal person, or collier as they were called in the olden days. The more dense the wood the higher the quality of charcoal.

As mentioned, today charcoal is mostly something people see in their barbecue grill, this has created an industry that has and often still uses wood from illegal logging operations in rainforests across the world putting the survival of endangered species such as the mountain gorilla at risk. The extract below is from Wikipedia’s entry on charcoal which you can find here .

“Recent assessments of charcoal imported to Europe have shown that many charcoal products are produced from tropical wood, often of undeclared origin. In an analysis of barbecue charcoal marketed in Germany, the World Wildlife Fund finds that most products contain tropical wood. As a notable exception, reference is made to barbecue charcoal imports from Namibia, where charcoal is typically produced from surplus biomass resulting from bush encroachment.”

So, if you’re buying charcoal make sure it’s from a sustainable source, and preferably produced locally so as to reduce its carbon footprint. Carting burnt wood thousands of miles just to burn your sausage is a bit extreme and not good for the planet.

However, the charcoal we made on today’s adventure in the woods came from coppicing and woodland management operations at Rivington Terraced Gardens. Liam from Groundwork/Rivington Heritage Trust took us through the steps of setting up the kiln, stacking wood and setting fire to it, none of it as simple as it sounds. Once the fire was well away the kiln was sealed and the magic happened. Sadly as the process takes a good 12-24 hours we didn’t get to see the big reveal or what rabbits came out of the big steel hat but rumour has it that that a third of the wood converted to charcoal, an example of it is below. Many thanks to Jane’s Dad for the piccy.

Thanks to Liam and his team for a brilliant afternoon, and the excellent barbecue, and to Jane for organising. Double sooty thumbs up to all concerned.

The Barlow: Whole Lotta Mud

Ornamental Pond Sunday 10th July 2022

The Barlow Institute was opened in 1909, in Edgworth, for the health and well being of the local community. It was dedicated to the memory of James and Alice Barlow by their children, one of whom was Sir Thomas Barlow, Professor of Clinical Medicine at University College London and the Royal Physician to Queen Victoria, Edward VII, and George V. In 2009 we held one of our residential weekends on the site and over 48 hours cleared blocked drains, cleaned out silted up ponds and installed new drainage near the river. Although the site had huge potential for wildlife we didn’t get to go back to do any further work. Since then The Barlow Institute has been re-branded as The Barlow and they have plans to develop and improve the site. The original 10 acre plot contained an open air swimming pool and a boating lake. In 2021 we returned began work on a new pond on the site of the old boating lake (which is doing really well now), worked on the hedges and dug silt out of the ornamental pond.

Today’s task, as we chose to accept it, was the impossible mission of digging out silt from the Ornamental Pond. The design of the pond makes it a perfect silt trap which is great for water quality further downstream but detracts from its function as a pond long term. As we like ponds to behave like ponds and provide habitat for all manner of beasties we’re having another do at digging it out, and again we chose one of the hottest days of the year to do it on.

The pond has a concrete liner which is a good 2 feet, or 600mm for those who don’t have feet, below the level of the out flow. This means that there was that much silt to dig out and as we don’t have a mechanical digger we had to use volunteer diggers to do the digging. With spades, shovels, buckets and barrows BCV and Barlow volunteers spent the day sweating it out over silt, resulting in more alliteration than you can shake a stick at. The job was tiring and back breaking but by the very welcome end of the day we had dug out half of what nature had deposited there over many years. But still plenty left.

Well done to the diggers, barrowers, bucket passers, mud dumpers and shovel scrapers for giving it all your muddin’.
And happy birthday James.

Don’t forget to check the Wild things page to see the new photos.

Firwood Fold: Balsam Apocalypse

Balsam bashing Sunday 26th June 2022

Balsam bashing. Words that send dread and fear through the souls of conservationists everywhere. The yearly exercise of ripping up Himalayan balsam, the persistent invasive that never goes away, can be soul destroying. But should be pack up our weed whackers and let the balsam win? No. Balsam may be here but it doesn’t mean it is here to stay.

Over the last few years we have been bashing the balsam at Firwood Fold and we are now seeing the results of all that work. Compared to last year the area covered by balsam has significantly reduced, so much so that we had to think of something else to do in the afternoon. So, what is the story of balsam. The plant with the pretty pink flowers was introduced to the UK in 1839 by the Victorians as a decorative garden plant. And like many of the Victorian’s favourite exotic plans soon went on the rampage across the countryside’s water ways. Balsam creates dense stands that out compete native species, in winter it dies off leaving riverbanks and the shores of water bodies exposed to erosion. It also interferes with fish spawning areas. There are some plant experts who dispute the negative aspects of balsam and think we should just live with it. Generally though, besides the Victorians. the only creatures that likes it are bees.

Last year we did this exercise in August when many of the plants were in flower, this year we got here a bit earlier and with the exception of a handful of pink blooms the balsam was in bare naked. So, we gave it a good thrashing and left no stalk unbashed. Hopefully next year there will be even less or none at all.

With Firwood being the home ground of Bolton Green Umbrella’s organisers Barb and Trevor Hackett it seems appropriate to mention that Green Umbrella has been awarded a Bolton at Home Stars of the Community award, this link for more info.