Happy (belated) New Year, we survived the festive season and are ready for a new year of sowing, growing and weeding.
December brought us two new volunteers, one from Denmark and one from Spain.
We are digging up trees, grading them, heeling them in and getting them ready for supply. Beds for the new sowing season and maybe some vegetable plots are being prepared and the willows are being prepared for planting.
Nicole, Germany:
“At the first weekend of the month I have been invited to go to a canoeing boat trip on the Lagan with the other EVS-volunteers. It was great fun and fortunately nobody has fallen into the water.
For three months I have lived in the volunteer-house with Dulce. Now we are four people because some new EVS-volunteers, Sophie from Denmark and Javier from Spain arrived. With these new people, we went together to Antrim to see the city and the famous Lough Neagh. There we did a little walk beside the lake. Another day we went to Belfast to go to the Christmas market. Whenever we went there we took the opportunity to show the new people around Belfast to see the Botanic Gardens and Queen’s University. In Belfast we also found a very good sports center where we went climbing.
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| Nici and Javier climbing in Belfast. |
To celebrate Pre-Christmas, people from different countries came together for the international Christmas dinner where everyone brought some traditional food.
In the tree nursery there have been a lot of tasks to do before the christmas holidays. It has been my task to dig up the rest of the rowan, alder and silver birch. After that I was involved in getting the trees ready for heeling in. In other words I measured the trees, bundled them and counted the total amount.
Moreover, I have cut different types of willow trees in order to cut them into willow pegs. These little pegs have been stuck into beds where one had to be careful not to confuse the top and the bottom of each peg.
An unusual task in this month has been the hunting of rabbits. There are some rabbits living in the tree nursery and they are destroying a lot of trees and plants. For this reason Pascal got all people and one dog together to catch them. We went all with some wooden sticks through the area hitting bushes to get the rabbits out of there. Although we did our best, it has been impossible to catch them.”
Javier, Spain:
“I´m Javier from Spain, one of the new volunteers in the Tree Nursery, my first month working here has been exciting. My workmates support me and teach me about the work here. We have a lot of things to do in winter, the weather doesn’t help us but we are preparing new beds for sowing new trees, heeling-in trees, digging trenches (a lot of trenches), plant willows and preparing the young trees for selling.
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| Tree Nursey |
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| Delamont Coutnry Park |
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| Delamont Country Park |
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| Delamont Country Park |
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| Delamont Country Park |
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| Tree Nursery |
Anyway I have enough free time, and I have visited, Belfast, Dublin, Portrush, Antrim, Giant’s Causeway and of course Bangor the beautiful city where I live. Also I’ve worked in Killyleagh, in Delamont Country Park helping in the construction of a park with different trees.”
Our second new arrival is Sophie from Denmark. Instead of submitting little reports, Sophie has her own blog documenting her adventures in Northern Ireland.
Sophie writes her blog in danish but thanks to the power of Google translate you can read her blog in English (or any other language for that matter).
On the right you will find a tab with Translate written above, click it, select the language you want Google to translate it to… and…. voila!
In January we are saying Goodbye to Dulce, after a year of volunteering her time with us will have come to an end. We will miss her and wish her all the best.