Cothill Fen, 21st July 2018

By Andrew -
We were a team of 11 for this sunny morning at Cothill Fen. We made our way from the meet point to site which is about a 10 minute walk in woodland.  After making base and having our intro talk from Judy Webb on what we were to be doing, most of the crew began by raking up and relocating cut material from the edge of the fen bordering parsonage moor, some started the task of moving logs from the south end of the fen up to the north east end to prepare for damming the ditch.  

While we raked and moved logs, local pond expert Rod D’Ayala arrived and started on the task of damming up the ditch that runs along the from north east to south east of the fen. This is to aid in filtering the water of contaminants from local farmland and redistributing cleaner water to dryer places in the fen that need to be made wetter. All this activity lasted until tea break – a welcome break where we were treated to cake!

After tea the next activity was to cut down growth on stumps from previously felled trees which fulfils a number of benefits – the main reason is to stop the stumps re-growing, it also allows easier strimming of the area later in the season.  The cut growth from the stumps was used to fill the ditch being dammed.

Ditch Damming was a big job and continued after our GG time was up although good progress was made. At 12:30pm we gathered our tools and made our way back to the meet point to disperse homeward for a well earned rest!
-Margaret















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