Members at HQ boxed up charcoal ready for sale and ran the charcoal retorts, check the Heartwood HQ section in the members area of the website if you would like to run a burn.
David Gravett - Membership Coordinator
What's In this Woodfueler
Training
First Aiders are a critical part of the sessions that we run, we have two opportunities for members to attend Emergency First Aid at Work + Forestry training on the following dates. Training session usually run from 9.30 until 16.30, full details will be emailed out to those attending. The EFAW+F qualification lasts for three years.
- Thursday 25th August
- Saturday 17th September
Please email to register your interest in attending by emailing
Robin Barber - Training Co-ordinator
Heartwood HQ
Are you itching to get back into the woods?
Heartwood HQ in Newbold Coleorton is a great place to do just that, and everyone is welcome.
In May David Barker headed up the group, packing up 32 boxes of charcoal from the retorts before filling and relighting them. The group processed the wood ready for charcoaling and stacked ready to season and did some general maintenance around the site. 40 boxes were taken from site ready for selling.
So far, we have sold 235 boxes which is great income for the group.
If you want to volunteer to light the retorts for us and are already familiar with the process, then please let us know:
June
- Saturday 18th
- Saturday 25th – HQ Day too
July
- Saturday 2nd
- Saturday 9th
Please email
Coming Up:
There are specific craft days, but you can just attend HQ on one of the days and spend time there, you may want to have a go at making charcoal, you may just want to see what it’s like, take a look at the website for details of days.
Please review it too for other planned activities which include greenwood crafts and chainsaw skills in July.
Remember we always have the fire going and for a small donation lunch is usually provided.
Chris Adams - Heartwood HQ Chair
Nether Hall Wood
On the 31st May we were pleased to welcome around 8 youngsters from the Hartshorne Scout Group to the woodland. This was the second in a series of three filming days where the Woodland Trust sent along their videographer to record the progress of community engagement in the woodland. We spend around two hours at the site, setting the children a couple of tasks. First they used “What Three Words” to find the nest boxes they had made earlier in the year which were put up by our team. They then used some basic tree identification sheet to find leaf types and shapes of all of the species we have at the woodland.
We are hoping that some of the video footage will be available to us (and the scouts) once the project concludes in the autumn after the final filming session.
A number of exciting activities have also been taking place at the wood. We had a visit from Steve Roe of the Derbyshire bat group. He placed a bat detector in the woodland for just under a week where it captured a huge 14,000 files of data. From an early look there appears to be at least three bat species on the site, but we will get confirmation when Steve gets chance to assess the data.
A squirrel survey has been carried out by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (a national organisation). The survey used camera traps to get a view of the squirrel population and appropriate areas for future baiting. The project is part of a squirrel control initiative where contraceptives will be used to control numbers. There are lots of questions and issues to overcome before any bait is deployed, but its great that our woodland is part of such an important national scheme.
Nether Hall wood is also being used by Stirling University as part of their "RestREco" project, restreco.com. This is looking nationally at the complexity and diversity of woodlands, both new and ancient. Nether Hall will be part of a trial within the National Forest where various approaches to thinning will be undertaken with scientific measures in place to understand the outcome. Heartwood has been asked to carry out the controlled thinning in a number of local woodlands to ensure the approach and methodology is as constant as possible. More information will follow on this, but if you would like to be involved or are simply interested in the project please let me know and we’ll keep you informed.
Anyone who would like to be more involved please
Kevin Banton - Nether Hall Wood Chair