I started to write a monthly column just a year ago for "Community News" but the publishers, Heathfield and Waldron Community Association, said in the last issue that they had to make some "difficult and emotive decisions" to discontinue it. So what is that magazine's loss is now our parish magazine's gain - at least I hope so!
The reserve is at Selwyn's Wood, Cross-in-Hand, and amounts to about 28 acres (11.3 hectares) and I love it!
Several volunteers work there on Thursday each week, and on one Sunday a month. Not only do we care for the woodland and its trees, but we maintain the rides, footpaths, streams, bridges, a tiny marsh, and a small heath. It is a "working" wood, is open to the public, and I and my fellow workers - the "green team" - follow a management plan laid down by the owners, Sussex Wildlife Trust. However, I am sure that regular users of the wood must wonder why we work in such a haphazard manner, moving as we do from one thing to another. That's partly because the weather can frequently upset our plan , and sometimes because one of our more skilled volunteers is not available on a certain day.
Take today for instance. David, our chainsaw expert, did not appear for work when we had planned to fell a biggish sycamore. Now a sycamore is a bit of a weed, as gardeners know well (although I know that entomologists like to study the bugs they harbour). However, it had been damaged by squirrels and stunted and broken by several bigger trees in the "high forest".
So without Chainsaw Dave we had to get our coats off the use an old-fashioned bow saw. We managed to put it down at the right place, trimmed up the branches and left the trunk to be cut up neatly by Dave when he comes next time. There is always a sadness in felling a tree, and it is not something we undertake lightly. Incidentally, the Trust, like all good woodland/estate owners will not allow chainsaws to be used unless the user is fully qualified. There are too many accidents and such a saw in the hands of a novice is lethal.
Anyway, they are much too noisy for me...
John Hall © 2001