All Hands To The Deck!
Once a year, chaff is brought to the reserve from a local farm. This is the waste from the combine harvester and contains plenty of rape and wildflower seeds such as poppy which the finches at Foxglove enjoy feeding on. Five tonne sacks were collected and needed to be put into smaller bags to be used throughout the winter months. This is a mammoth task but thankfully a team of volunteers made light work of it.

Working in pairs, the grain was poured into new bags.

One by one, the tonne sacks were emptied.

Very quickly, an efficient system developed and this sped up the process.

Cable ties were used to seal the new sacks to keep the feed dry and fresh.

The chaff is used around the reserve to fill the large wooden hoppers. These were topped up in order to make room in the store for the new stock.

Thank you to Team Thursday who pulled together and completed the job before lunchtime. Our sincere thanks too to Ian and Mick for fetching the load this morning and congratulations to Brian for guessing the number of sacks correctly (93)!