February 18th – 19th saw our first volunteer working weekend of 2012. We had a fantastic group of people that gave up their spare time to come and help out around the farm.
There were a few familiar faces who have joined us for many working weekends and events previously but there were also a few new faces, I hope the rain doesn’t put them off coming back to the farm again in the future?
The weekend had a range of different jobs with the main job being tree planting. After a very quick and easy application form to fill out, Fordhall Farm was lucky enough to receive 420 trees from the Woodland Trust back in January. Due to it being the Queens Jubillee year the Woodland Trust is giving away packs of trees for schools and coummunties to plant to be seen for generations to come. However what I wasn’t aware about was the fact that the farms Community Garden Officer, Bex Syrett, had also applied for 420 trees. Surprisingly, but thankfully, are two applications were accepted and we received 840 trees back in January. We were sent a mixture of trees, I had applied for wildlife orientated trees and Bex had applied for edible trees. Amongst the selection were: Crabapple, Silver Birch, Oak, Hazel, Rowan, Blackthorn and Elder, all will hopefully grow successfully over the next few years and the edible trees will then start to produce fruits for us to harvest.
We managed to plant 600 trees over the weekend, all of which could not have been done without the fantastic help of all the volunteers that came, a huge thank you goes to everyone that took part this weekend!! Although we have 200+ trees still left to plant there is a home planned for all of them and we will hopefully get them all planted by this weekend, fingers crossed.
Other jobs we got done over the weekend were:
1) Repairing table tops for our function room
2) Varnishing table tops and floors
3) Putting signs around the farm and slow signs along the drive
4) Clearing an area for fencing
5) Fencing around a particular area where lots of trees have been planted, protecting them from the cattle seeing them as a tasty meal etc
The next working weekend will be June 9th -10th, hope you can join us then.
Beth Kennett
http://www.fordhallfarm.com
Just wanted to tell you that the leg of lamb and of pork that I received from you on
9th March I took back to Stuttgart, Germany in my hand luggage. I roasted the lamb
on Mother’s Day and it was absolutely tender and delicious. It couldn’t have been
better! The leg of pork will be an early Easter feast since I have to work over
Easter and will be roasting it this Saturday in a traditional English style for our
German friends!
Looking forward to our next trip home and further orders from you! Best wishes and
thanks. Colin