photos

Here are some of the latest photos,

taken this week in the Wood!

Snail Wood wins a Green Apple award!

Some months ago we made a submission to the “Green Apple Awards” scheme, which recognises projects of all types, from all organisations, that make a positive contribution to the nation’s green agenda.


Last week we heard that the Snail Wood project was a winner and that we have been invited to the House of Commons to receive the nice glass trophy (predictably shaped as an apple) from a “well-known celebrity”.


Well done and thank you to absolutely everyone who has been involved! Watch out for more details when we collect it.

spring planting and clearing sessions

We have had a couple of sessions in the Wood recently, one on a Saturday in February and most recently at lunchtime during work hours, to prepare for the planting by children of Fordham Primary School.

Both occasions held to the tradition that "the sun always shines on Snailwood", with nice, not too cold, weather. At the first we did lots of reed clearing and piling up of potential mulching material. Then this week at lunchtime 7 or so of us spent an hour planting several new willow trees that were too tall for the children to plant. Plus checking for dead trees to reuse the guards and stakes, and marking out where the 30 trees will be planted by the school, 15 in each of two spots.

All in all some good progress! Will hopefully post some new pictures soon.

James Calvert's BBQ in action!

Dear Snail Wood lovers,

An April Sunday morning dawned, the sun was shining, there was a little light work to be done in the woodland but nothing too strenuous, some strimming, some tree maintenance..the usual woodland activities.

Perfect day for a BBQ and why the hell not, we hoicked out the charcoal that came with this generous donation and began using it. It's maiden Snail Wood feast consisted of marinated pork..Chinese style with toasted pitta breads and a side salad.....deeeeelish.

Why not join us for a BBQ in our virgin woodland one Snail Wood Open Sunday...just bring your own food, we'll supply the BBQ!

Keep a look out for a date on the blog soon!

Snail Wood Christmas Fayre

Admittedly 6 months after the affair, but I wanted to mention that it took place in the run up to christmas and was a huge success. With the sales from donated items such as books, cakes, arts & crafts and produced items like the SnailWood calendar we made a moderate amount of money. This combined with the monster raffle, produced a total of over £600. Much thanks goes to Les Allen for sourcing the majority of the raffle prizes from Quotient Bioresearches suppliers. These included things like DVD players!, Ipod's!, Vouchers, microwaves! amongst many other donated smaller, usual prizes of alcohol & chocolates. Simon Biddle also deserves a thanks as chief salesman of the raffle tickets. If he was charged with selling frreezers to eskimo's he would probably be successful.

Visit by Year 4 of Fordham Primary School to Snailwood

Tuesday [March 3rd] dawned reasonably clear, but better than that, not snowing. Having had to reorganise due to the weather it was preying on our minds slightly.
Thirtyish excited children and various helpers spilled out of the bus, wellies in hand and descended on Reception.
Following a fantastically delivered global warming story from Cathrin and an introduction from me, we snaked our way to the woods to dirty our wellies, oh and plant some trees.
The planting demo, ably provided by Mandy, was listened to intently; the only disappointment showing when the children were told they couldn’t wield the mallets.
In pairs, the children planted over thirty trees, spotting minibeasts and birds as they worked, the mallet wielding adults providing help when requested.
Our time outside finished with a spell of running around and searching for more wildlife, a class photo and a yell of “Thanks.”
Being careful not to drop too much mud on the carpets, we headed back through Reception to the Conference Room to finish off. A drink and snack break-for the children, obviously, was followed by our final presentation, delivered by Rachel at exactly the right level for the children, literally, as she sat on the floor.
The children left with a certificate to commemorate their morning with us, beautifully designed and printed by Claire, sure in the knowledge that they had helped to create a natural habitat for the local wildlife and done their bit to combat global warming.
The children were incredibly well behaved and had loads to contribute to the presentations, it was a great morning.
Lots of positive comments heard as the class left, including “We don’t want to leave, that was great.”
And from and adult helper “That was great, it went smoothly, was really enjoyable and the kids will remember loads from it.”
Job well done. Thanks to Cathrin Seibert, Mandy Richards, Rachel Hawkins, Claire Newham and Claire Kingsley (for mallet wielding)

Submitted by Katrina Arnold

No updates for 6 months!

Hello,

I'm Gavin Beamon and have been the chairman of Snailwood for approximately 7 months. It has been remiss of me not to keep up the blog spot and keep people informed of what is going on. It would seem that not much has happened but you'd be wrong. Since July there have been several events and working parties. The sausage sizzle is an annual event and was held in the summer with improving success. Several work parties have taken place under the new banner of Snail Wood Sunday to improve and maintain the woodland path and the woodland itself. We have also had an enormously successful fundraising period, thanks to genourous donations, in the form of a great big bbq's donated by the generous James Calvert of Kentford, and Quotient BioResearch staff members efforts in the annual Christmas fayre. More details of these individual events will follow in due course.

Thanks and I'll write much sooner!

Gavin (White Hawk....it's what it means!) Beamon

No Updates for a Year!

Wow - how time flies! I can't believe it's been a year without any posts, so, what have we been doing with ourselves?

Well, we've had an amazing year in the wood: we've planted hundreds of trees, we've been looking at access to the wood and paths within it (nothing's been decided on this front yet), we've been working with Fordham school on various stages of the Seed to Tree program and we've been raising lots of money to help us manage the wood. We've also had our AGM and elected Gavin as our new chairman.

The biggest thanks for this post absolutely have to go out to the kind people at eForest who gave us about 100 trees with the guards and stakes - thank you so much! Please take a look at their website - you'll be able to find out how much carbon you produce, how to reduce this and also how to offset some or all of it.

I've updated the Gallery section with some fantastic photos taken by Emma Sadler in December and May and some less fantastic ones that I took at the last couple of planting sessions.

Anyway, that's all for now - comings soon: Snail Wood goodies from our Cafe Press store!

Tom

Busy, Busy, Busy (Part 2)

What a great couple of weeks we've had lately. Snail Wood feels properly up and running now as we've planted about 340 trees in the last few weeks.

The majority of these were planted on a lovely Saturday and we had a brilliant turn out of volunteers, mostly HFL staff and their families but with lots of help from the Regan family too.

On a personal note I have to admit to it being a horrible experience, but that's because I'd hurt my back a few days before and so had to sit (or stand) out on doing any physical work . Instead I generally made a nuisance of myself and wandered around taking lots of pictures (a selection of which are on the Gallery page). So, the planting session which I had been looking forward to a massive amount wasn't much fun for myself but was a great success for the Steering Group and Ellen in particular who's put a great deal of work into organising the trees, guards etc and had been fretting over the numbers up to the last minute.

However, we'd left a few trees over for those people who couldn't get to the planting on the Saturday and these were planted during Tuesday lunchtime. Which means I have managed to plant some trees in the wood, and it is a very satisfying process. I'd meant to write something on one of my tree tokens and plant it with the tree but I forgot. We've still got a few trees left as we ran out of deer guards so I'll try to do it when we plant those trees.

The hard work isn't over yet though as there's quite a bit of mulching still to do. Which I've been told is very hard work and not as much fun as the planting. Hmm, is that a slight pain in my back?