Wed 22nd Aug 2012 - Alverstone Nature Reserve.

This week the weather was good enough for us to go hay making at Skinner's Meadow, Alverstone. This is become an annual event for the Green Gym Team with us having "brought in the harvest" many time over the last few years! The meadow had been cut prior to this session so we set to work with rakes, gathering the hay into long orderly lines across the field, thereby enabling it to be fed into the baling machine. This clever device "eats" up the hay, rolls it into large cylinders then wraps the outside  with a biodegradable netting. The bales are then rolled down the field and stacked. The hay is used for animal bedding during the winter months with some going to a strawberry farm (to support the fruit from the ground). Considering the unusual weather we have had this year, we seemed to get a good harvest - the piled up bales looking very impressive at the bottom of the field. The sun shone throughout the session and the team did well to get the whole of the field prepared for the bailing machine.
Photographs were taken by Carrie......thank you!