Community Meadow Restoration
Days don’t get more satisfying than this. Working outside in the fresh air, doing something for the better good of the environment, and in partnership with Cotswold National Landscapes, Glorious Cotswold Grasslands and Thomas Keble School, today at Knapp Farm we were sowing yellow rattle to help establish a new wildflower meadow in conjunction with the Gloucestershire Wildlife Trust’s Golden Valley project.
After a busy, and I would say, rather stressful few weeks getting the field ready for seeding, we were delighted to welcome Anna, Harvey and their volunteers, Maureen, Chris and Debs. We weren’t entirely sure what to expect, but turns out, the task of sowing seeds is a lot more straight forward than we thought.
Gill in particular had been very worried about the state of the field - maybe there was too much grass still on show, maybe there wasn’t enough. We had no idea if what we had done was going to good enough. Thankfully, Anna and Harvey were hugely impressed, so far as saying it was one of the best prepared sites they had worked on. We were relieved!
The majority of the seeds came from a donor site in Chedworth, which apparently has similar characteristics to our field. However, Harvey, pictured below, was working on a separate area of the field, scattering seeds from a site in Bourton-on-the-Water, which is prone to a little more dampness.
I just loved the wonderful texture of the seeds. A combination of seed heads mixed in with the actual seeds produce this rich, magical material. Holding them in the palm of your hand is a great tonic.
I couldn’t resist taking a photo of our hippo sack of seeds…WITH OUR NAME ON!!!
Just love Debs! Smiles all around as she scattered the seeds…
…and the smiles continued with Anna Field, one of the lead coordinators. A woman with such great enthusiasm and commitment.
It was a rather regimented line up as the guys prepared to scatter the seeds. Walking in a straight line, at a certain distance apart, then return…
…and fill up your buckets in the process.
It only took an hour to seed 3/4 of the meadow. Anna and Harvey kindly left the remainder for the year 10 students from Thomas Keble to do. The connection to bring TK students up was instigated by Gill at Knapp Farm. Having already established a positive working relationship with Annie Parfitt, a teacher at TK, through a previous project, the Shared School Woodland, Annie was keen to get her SEN Employability students involved in this too.
While Anna talked the students through what they were doing and why they were doing it, Harvey filled up the buckets with more seed.
It’s hard to put into words the huge amount of happiness that the photo below gives me. It’s an absolute pleasure to be able to facilitate opportunities like this. To know that we are helping to educate children about how to help the environment is a real privilege.
And of course, the wonderful Chloe Turner, who must be such a busy lady in her role as a county and district councillor, still finds the time to come and sprinkle seeds.
Once all the seeds were down, I asked the students if they would help set out the poles for the electric fence. The neighbouring farmer has cows and we need his cows to help trample the seeds in. It’s simply a case of opening up the fence between our two fields and letting the beasts in! We did it last year as a first stage in the prep work for the seed sowing. Fingers crossed all our hard work pays off!