Thursday 20 November 2014

Walking the Line at Corehead

Yesterday we kicked off our winter maintenance works in Tweedhope. We have a few jobs we’d like to get done in there over the next few months and we started with the rather ambitious job of fence removal.

Before Tweedhope was a small planted woodland, it was grazed with sheep. The planted area is now divided up internally by old fence lines which no longer serve a purpose. Yesterday we began the rather ambitious task of removing these.

What was needed? A healthy bunch of volunteers, some tools, a good bit of fitness and a good sense of humour (this was more for the laughs at tea break and lunch break than anything else).

There are some volunteers in there somewhere.....

We started where the first fence line crosses the Annandale Way and worked up the slope towards Cocklaw Knowe. 


We divided the fence into sections and cut the barbed wire and sheep netting so as to take the tension out of the wire and stop it from pinging! 

Cutting the wire
We then removed the staples and rolled up the wire and brought it down to the track side where we could remove it by quad. 
Removing the wire
Volunteer Martin carrying down one of the many rolls - 3.5 quad trailer loads in total!
Afterwards we removed the posts and filled in the holes left. This was a good trick once pointed out to me by an old fencer. If you don’t fill them in, little voles can fall in to them and not get out. Not a good situation for the vole and not a good situation for the food chain for our growing raptor population!

The posts we removed

At the end of the day we achieved a LOT! Metres and metres of fence line removed which will really help to open up the landscape of this young woodland.


The thing is….. we’ve got plenty more to do. Interested in volunteering? Email: corehead@bordersforesttrust.org

Lynn

Site Officer

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