Barton Fields, 12th September 2020

By Andrew -
Today's session was a joint effort between the Green Gym and the Abingdon Naturalists' Society Green Team. It involved raking the cut grass at Barton Fields wildflower meadow and piling it in to loose haystacks. 

The show was run buy David Guyoncourt, who along with his volunteers maintain the area between the river and Barton lane. David had brought along ample rakes and with Eleanor bringing more rakes and pitchforks there were plenty for everyone. This task has been a regular event every year - helping clear the grass and allow wild flowers to come through again next year. 

So we all knew what to do and it didn't take long before we were making good headway, as the grass was dry and light making the raking and pitchforking easy, as in the past we have done it when it had been wet making it heavy to move. The haystacks soon started to grow. These will be left for the wildlife to inhabit especially the grass snakes who will lay their eggs in it and let the heat generated to incubate them. 

By the time we spread ourselves out on the cleared area to have our refreshment break at 11.00am the job was near enough finished and we had the option to go or stay and tidy up the odd bits which were still being cut. 
-Kevin












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