School half term week always means a good turnout in the wood with the added benefit of some of the younger workers being out. We continued chipping the paths and now hope for more chippings to arrive soon, the coppicing work continued at the back of Stubbs Wood, it was more tidying and sorting out this week. The work at the pond was completed and the dipping platform is now safe to use again, John & Julie started cleaning out bird boxes as birds use them for shelter during the winter months, the large dead elm which will hopefully be removed this Saturday morning had a lot of side branches taken off to try to limit any damage when it falls. Finally the clearing of leaves off the main path continued, we are worried that the path may become muddy again if we just leave the leaves to rot.
With coffee today we had some lovely fruit cake and some really scrumptious Thornton's cakes, chocolate or caramel (I had to try both to see which I preferred!), brought by Chris & Ellie simply because they love cakes - who doesn't?
David said that the large dead elm in the "secret garden", which we had planned to cut down today, will be cut down on Saturday. He also sent round a memo about the 2018 group holiday in the Lake district.