Waterbutts and Worms

With thanks to funding from the Kirklees Youth Offending Team, we have been able to spend some money on making our office grounds a bit more attractive, wildlife friendly and a bit more environmentally friendly too.

We have bought a wormery which will help us to compost our small amount of kitchen waste, as well as getting some top quality liquid fertiliser and compost which the plant group will happily use.

We have two new waterbutts which will be great for saving a bit of water, despite there generally being plenty of it in Marsden!

And we have also started to make a herb garden and will soon be making a small wildlife garden, using recyled materials which will hopefully attract a few more butterflies and bees. Some super work being done by the Youth Offending Team!

Stream Dipping at Eastergate

Every Thursday morning in August has seen us Stream Dipping at Eastergate. We have run drop-in sessions for people to come along and discover what is living in the water here. Despite the weather, which wasn't particularly summery for any of the sessions, plenty of people came along, most of them getting very wet!

There were a fair number of different creatures living in the stream, lots of nymphs of various species, water beetles and the odd greater water boatman among other things.

Everyone had a great time getting stuck in trying to find the creatures, and also had a brilliant time splashing about in the water.

And although the weather was a bit damp it didn't put people off their classic British picnics!

Wild Food and Health Walks

Today's Health Walk was Wild Food themed - Yum!! There were 13 of us out for the stroll on a rather nice Wednesday morning. We found plenty of different berries as well as a few different mushrooms. Blackberries and bilberries were found the most, and there were plenty of purple fingers and lips. There were also lots of other berries about and with help from an ID book, people were able to discover what they were and what to do with them.

The next health walk will be on Wednesday 22nd September - come along to our exhibition room for a walk themed on Trees.

John Muir Award

This past week, a small group of us from the Oldham Youth Offending Service have been working towards our John Muir Award - this is what we were doing for the week.

•On the first day when we arrived. We went for a very long walk and did some geocaching (aka treasure hunting) on our walk we stopped to do a couple of sound maps which involves drawing out everything you can hear as a picture

•Second Day - We went up to the hills to do some surveying and navigating to find our way round if we ever got lost in the cloud we were in. the weather wasn’t very good… at all… so we got a bit wet.. Sorry not a bit, a lot!

•On our third day we did some brutal, hard, intense, punishing, tiring work. Which we really enjoyed.. Until Kibby threw a bucket at me! We went out to the moors to plant some cotton grass and then later on we spread 3 tons of heather brash! We also got a bit stuck in the peat!

On our fourth day we went out to the woods and tried to learn some bush craft, while being eaten alive by midges, which was really annoying! We built a shelter and made fire without matches or a lighter.. And we boiled water in a paper cup, amazing isn't it? We caught fish as well, we made a trap out of a single plastic bottle which some how worked. We also did some map reading while waiting for the fish, we learnt how to leave no trace in the countryside, smashing right?

Bilberry picking

A small group of us went up to Binn Moor for an afternoon of bilberry picking. The bilberries were being collected so that we can sow the seeds and nurture our own bilberry plants which we will then plant out on the moors.

Not all of the berries made it in to the buckets and it was clear that they had been enjoyed by the blue mouths and lips at the end, and some very stained fingers.

The rain held off while we were out and everyone enjoyed climbing about on the slopes and hiding in the grass.

A Busy Day for Bees and Plants

Despite the overcast weather, the bees are out and about collecting masses of pollen, and the yard is full of plants, with more new stock coming in, as well as plenty of customers.

The bees are bringing in lots of different colours of pollen, some that are a dark blue, some greeny coloured and some bright yellow. This is likely to be pollen from blackberry and willowherb among the other flowers that are out at the moment.

Since the Spring Plant Fair in May, the plant group have raised over £500 at the Friday sales, and if the number of customers continues to increase as it seems to be, they will have made a small fortune by the end of the summer. Excellent news!

Seed Collecting in the Sun

On a warm and fairly sunny Saturday afternoon, the Kirklees Youth Offending Team were out picking cotton grass seeds after an unsuccessful pond dipping session. We were collecting the seeds in the hope that we can sow them at the office and nurture them until they are big enough

to be planted back out on the moors. Hopefully we'll have our own free supply of home-grown cotton grass!

Watch out for other seed collecting and seed sowing activities - check on the National Trust website to see when activities are taking place.

Splitting the bees

We have already had to split our hive to try to stop them swarming - I went out yesterday to get some photos and found that they had swarmed anyway. Needless to say that the camera got forgotten about in the panic that followed!

Luckily the bees hadn't swarmed far and were still in our yard on several plant pots and the table. After coaxing them into a cardboard box with a helping brush from the feather duster, the bees were successfully restored to their hive and so far, they have not swarmed again.

So we now have two hives of bees to look after, assuming the don't swarm again!

Canoeing and Dipping

On the first Tuesday in July we all went across to Hardcastle Crags in Hebden Bridge to join up with the Countryside Team there for a team day. We spent the morning testing out the two canoes for leaks on the two ponds, and taking samples from various spots in the ponds to find out what lives in them.

The afternoon was much more like hard work, extracting logs from the woods and stacking them up ready for the tractor to take them away.

A rather fun and different day, making a change from being out on the moors!

Grand Exhibition Opening

The official opening of the new exhibition room took place on Friday July 2nd, on a relatively sunny and warm morning. The forecast rain stayed away. A mix of councillors, National Trust staff and volunteers and others that had had input into the Heritage Trail and exhibition were invited, and it was a successful turnout. The Examiner also came to take a few photos, so watch out for it in the paper!

We were all taken on a virtual tour of part of the estate, with an audio tour and slide show to show part of the new Heritage Trail which was then followed with Go Potty! A good number of people got involved with decorating their plant pots and sowing their free seeds.

It was an enjoyable and different morning - a good way to finally officially open our exhibition room.