FoPV Work Morning Roundup - Tuesday 22nd September 2026

5 days ago

3 min read

Hello Conservation Volunteers

It was meadow raking time in the wildflower meadow at Forge Dam for our volunteers this time.

The plan was quite simple. Ranger Matt mows the meadow a day before the volunteers turn up, who then rake up the cuttings and move them to the edge. Unfortunately, it didn't quite go to plan for Matt! The brakes on the ride on mower he acquired didn't work (not good on an incline, particularly near water!) and had to resort to hand strimming with a battery strimmer. That wasn't the end of the problems for Matt as he only had two batteries which ran out before he had completed strimming the (rather large) area, which meant he had to turn up early on the work morning to finish the job before we all turned up for raking!

By the time we arrived at the meadow Matt was looking rather sweaty and tired!

With a large group of volunteers on a lovely sunny morning it didn't take long to rake up the main volume of cuttings, put them into the ton bags, drag the bags to the edge, empty them. Once that was done it's everybody to the top and rake down the slope in a line collecting the leftover debris.

Under the cuttings we found various fungi including ink caps, but the most surprising find were some baby field mice, grey skin without fur. Fortunately, they were still alive, so we put some cuttings back on top of them and stepped away. Within a minute the mother returned and could be seen going backwards and forwards to another area. We placed more cuttings over this run and watched as the cuttings could be seen moving up and down as she went under them, back and forth. Hopefully, they all survived and were safe.

So, why do we rake up the cuttings and go through this? If the cuttings are left on top they rot down providing nutrients which are not beneficial to the wildflower seeds. As we've seen this year it must be working as the wildflower area was really full of colourful wildflowers - the best year yet.

A by-product of cutting the meadow was to collect the teasels for the Christmas Wreath making. Quite a good bunch ready for our wreath makers!

Having completed the raking there was still time for some other jobs. A small team went off down the goit to clear out the debris whilst another group went up to Festival Woodland to remove a patch of montbretia (on the same schedule (9) as Japanese Knotweed and Himalayan Balsam) which had been discovered by Gerry Firkins on the previous work morning whilst pulling up the large-leaved avens. The montbretia in the two small flowerbeds at the side of the store was also removed.

A big thank you to everybody who came along - it made light work of what can be an arduous task. Also, a thank you to Mandy the baker for the melting oat crunchies - just what's needed after a raking session!

The next work morning is on Thursday 8th October. An email will be sent out nearer the time with details.

Lyndon

A Selection of photos from the work morning

Just starting - collecting rakes from Ranger Matt