The Trust is currently benefiting from the generosity of three of its members. Firstly, we have been offered the use of a 1949-vintage grey Ferguson Tractor on our reserves by one of our members from Silverdale, Ray Waltham. To augment the use of Ray’s tractor, members Dawn and Rowan Sharples have donated a Wessex commercial farm mower. This can be used with the tractor for cutting grass, brash and invasive herbs.
We expect these two items of equipment to be a great boon in the future management of parts of our reserves. We think our volunteers in particular will welcome the considerable reduction in what are usually extremely back-breaking, tedious and time-consuming tasks around our reserves. For instance, the combination was recently in action cutting the grass of Gingerbread Well Meadow on our Teddy Heights reserve. Ray and Bob achieved in a couple of hours what would normally have taken our volunteers several weeks to do by hand.
