Barton Fields, Saturday, 2 September 2023

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This week’s blogpost is by Kevin and the photos are by Eleanor D. 

The grass raking at Barton Fields has been an annual session that Abingdon Green Gym takes on at a request from David Guyoncourt and fellow Barton Fields Green Team volunteers. By cutting the grass every year, it allows more diverse plants and animals to prosper. Grass snakes are found here and they have introduced slow worms. 

At the beginning of the week, a tractor was used for the heavy work to cut the meadow and then the Green Team volunteers had raked the cut hay into smaller pitch fork size piles, leaving us to rake up all the hay and pile it up at the edges of the field.  The weather was kind to us as there hadn't been too much rain in the last couple of days, so the cut grass had dried out and made it a lot easier to move (no raker wants wet heavy lumps of grass to shift!). 

Our leader for the day, Adrian, well organised as ever, unloaded the rakes, pitch forks and drag sheets ready to move them to our base on the meadow. There were about a dozen Green Gym volunteers and 3 from the Green Team.  The first area to rake was about the size of 2 football pitches and a further 2 smaller fields.  Most of us having done this before, knew what was needed. So, armed with pitch forks and drag sheets and in teams of 2 or 3, we managed to finish the big field by refreshment break. Break over, we then set about the last 2 fields not knowing if we still had the strength to make a clean sweep! BUT right on finishing time, with the end in sight, the job was done! A hard-working session with everybody doing their bit! David was very pleased with it and thanked us for our fantastic effort, as he hadn't thought we would be able to finish it. 

Kevin
Adrian leading from the front!
Kevin with a forkful!
Drag sheet racing!
Olivia and Roger pile it on!
Heaps of Fun!

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