Orchard scythe, autumn walk

The regular monthly orchard work party with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust at Fromebridge in the morning. The tasks this month were scything and pruning the trees.

I elected to do scything which made a change from the brush cutter (I left my PPE in the car by mistake). There were many patches of scrub and bramble all across the orchard a few years ago, but they are all cut back now and the grassland is thriving.

However, we have to keep on top of the management by cutting back new shoots before the winter grazing starts.

There were three of us scything and we managed to move pretty quickly through the mid part of the orchard and cleared away the arisings into the habitat piles. Afterwards we went to help Mike who was slashing bramble at the bottom by the canal in preparation for a future fence line to protect the riparian vegetation.

After the work party finished, I stayed on to attend a walk given by Pete around the reserve to a wider group of GWT volunteers. There’s always something new to learn on these talks, and we walked back on the other side of the Frome which I hadn’t walked along before. It was good to see the reserve from another angle.

Also interesting to see the many water vole burrows along the section of bank that was fenced off from cattle. The vegetation has now grown back to a suitable habitat for them to return.