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A Mulching Success
Members Summer Work Week 2nd - 6th August 2022
Safety update update
moorings!
Agm stats Updated
Rory's Massive Birthday Picnic 2022
Budding nature team collates bioARTblitz! data
More videos from YouTube uploaded!
So much to catch up on folks - will we even scratch the surface of what's been going on at Sailors Creek? I can barely remember what happened yesterday....
It could have been so much worse..
A Mulching Success
To start us off here's a lush picture of some leaves from our rather revived and gorgeous mulberry sapling, planted by Milou Butler (14yo) in the very sheltered and often sweltering Longfield.
This sapling nearly didn't make it but came back from the brink with a rescue package of some deep mulching using cardboard, coffee chaff from our local roasters Olfactory Coffee, seaweed AND then blackthorn chippings as a weighty top dressing. That deep mulch was then really doused in water from the stream and we now have a significant amount of new growth, lots of shiny leaves and a couple of mulberries.
It was (another) pretty tough lesson for us; ensuring those great quality saplings are really bedded in and given the best chance to succeed from the get go is really important. And so our chosen strategy, controversially, to put a lot more care and attention into each planting and have very few dead saplings after year 1; and plant the trees with sufficient space from the start.
The other well versed way of establishing woodland of course is to plant en masse and intensively to then thin the stock further down the line. Always lots to consider, but tree care and love is what we aim to focus on during our work week (see below) on the land.
Maybe we'll dam the stream too. And eat blackberries. And make some herbaceous highways through the buddleia, and clear/dig for our fire pit area.
So, coming up really soon - WE NEED YOUR LOVELY HELP:
Members Summer Work Week 2nd - 6th August 2022
Each day at 9am and 12.45 we'll be meeting at the shed in Creekside field for a safety brief and a chat through our risk assessments for the site, plus our plan for the session.
The day will be split into a morning session 9-12.15 and an afternoon session 12.45-4 or thereabouts.
We will have lunch on site and we ask everyone bring their own supplies of food and water.
We have handwashing facilities... And a compost loo.
We ask everyone to wear long work trousers and good boots, bring work gloves if you have them, waterproofs, water, snacks and sun cream.
Land Care
Will likely include watering, mulching, tree love, herbaceous highways, bees, dams, firepits.
If you have any garden tools you like to work with please feel free to bring them along. Secateurs are always handy, as are your favourite brash removing weapons of choice. Loppers, Cornish shovels, scythes, sickles, mattocks, bush knives all welcome!
Creek Care
Will likely include clearing the mushroom barge, removal of large pieces of superstructure/doghouse from the beach, installing and mousing mooring chain, finer beach litter picks, squelching about in mud.
Everyone can absolutely choose where they want to work and it would be really helpful to get an indication of numbers by emailing us: sailorscreekinfo@gmail.com
Safety update update
Thank you for your support following the email we sent out earlier this month regarding safety at the creek. If anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to contact us, you can re-read the safety notice following the Regulation 28 Report here.
Everyone wants to know about..
moorings!
We are really looking forward to the day when we can welcome more boats and boat owners to Sailors Creek. We are continuing to establish a mooring system that will relieve the trees around the creek of their long held duties and will offer a safer mooring solution for future boat owners and sailors at the creek.
We have a waiting list that is filling up weekly and we welcome you to add your names if you haven't done so already - boats of all sizes are indeed welcome as are prospective liveaboard vessels.
We kindly ask the following:
If you would like to join our mooring waiting list please become a member of our CIC first.
You can do that here:
If you would like to be considered for a liveaboard mooring please understand this won't be available in the immediate future. We also have no electric or drinking water at Sailors Creek.
There is a zero discharge policy at Sailors Creek. Any vessel that will be moored at Sailors Creek will not be allowed to discharge black water into the creek. All liveaboards will be required to have a holding tank for pumping out at the pontoon in Falmouth.
We want to encourage a vibrant and well used creek for the mooring of boats of all shapes, ages and sizes. We will only consider new moorings for boats in good repair and which we consider to be in transit. A boat in transit has the capacity to move under her own steam to an anchorage, the pump out pontoon or another mooring for a month every year. We wholeheartedly encourage boat owners to go sailing and exploring!
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Agm stats Updated
We published these at our AGM for a bit of fun and have updated them just recently, I thought i'd fling them in here in case I haven't shared them already...
Thank you so much again for all your amazing help so far.
SAILORS CREEK CIC STATS
September 2021 to July 2022
Approx 1.5 acres of land for planting topped and cleared by Jake or by tractor (out of approx 4.5 acres)
Laid 160 tonnes of hardcore to establish a functional track
Up to 7 excellent boat owners with agreements to moor at the creek
more than 20 cubic metres or 3 tonnes in weight of rubbish cleared from the beach
Planted and mulched 131 fruit and nut bearing trees
Planted 106 plants and trees for green woodworking and coppicing
Inoculated most root balls with 22 edible mycorrhizal fungi species (Chaos fungorum Edible Forest Garden Mix)
Fed 3 pigs 32 bags of pignuts in 4 months
There were 2 bids for pig freedom
⅓ acre thoroughly rootled and cleared by happy pigs
600 spawned dowels drilled and located in 20 logs (Grey Oyster, Shiitake, Lions Mane, Reishi)
Approximately 1000 volunteer hours at the Creek since September
46 totally brilliant paid up members
Plus 51 supporters receiving updates
8 water sampling days for Westcountry Rivers Trust
200m of chain for establishing beach moorings
12 mussel pontoon tubes ready for multi purpose use
18 mooring chain pins installed
1 eco tree bee hive from justbeeecohives.com
Rory's Massive Birthday Picnic 2022
There have been some really lovely times at the creek this summer including Rory's Massive Birthday Picnic which was jam packed with clearing brambles from the willow, mulching and watering; a quick tour including a visit to the mushroom barge, the bees and a scramble along the top path through the buddleia and the elder; we ate a fantastic shared lunch which included Gaid's very popular Breton cake; we had a really good go at making some rope quoits, to varying degrees of success (!); and we picked some gorgeous flowers and grasses from the fields and the verges. It was a really fantastic day, big thanks to Rory for wanting to celebrate his birthday at the creek with us. The first of many maybe...
Budding nature team collates bioARTblitz! data
The most excellent Sally and Derek from Budding Nature have collated the species identification data from our BioARTBlitz! in a document you can find on our website here.
We had a ridiculous 24hours and thoroughly enjoyed the dusk and dawn chorus; setting moth traps and releasing moths; early morning rowing into the creek followed by meditation; drawing and sticking and cutting under the shelter; chatting and fixing Andrew's seagulls; walking through the fields with Sally, Derek and Noemi learning all about moths, micro moths, crab spiders, the 200 different types of bramble, spotting lots of different beautiful grasses and the caterpillars for the dingy flat-body moth that love hemlock water dropwort... And the really jolly ColourCube Trail. Thank you so much to everyone for coming and particular thanks to Andrew for putting about a billion hours in to get it all set up.
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