Conservation Volunteers—August 8-12

The planting efforts at CUE Haven made another big jump ahead as a great group from Conservation Volunteers spent a week planting trees with us.  The team was led by Dawn Gasparro of CVNZ and included Timm, Angelika and Maria from Germany, Roxanne from Belgium, Jean-Baptiste from France and Oscar and Albert from Spain.

The team arrived on Monday morning and after a short introduction and orientation, they unpacked and got settled into the cottage.

Their first task was to help move some of the trees from the nursery up to the planting site.

They then went to work planting trees.  The weather was perfect for the whole week and the team managed to plant about 3,300 trees even though they were working on fairly steep terrain.

The team had the distinction of working on the highest hill at CUE Haven that we have planted so far.  You could say that they conquered the summit.

And took a well-deserved break.

There was one minor interruption.  On Tuesday morning the team woke up to find that one of the neighbour’s cows had decided to pay a visit so they spent some time “encouraging” him to go back where he belonged.  As usually happens in these cases, he went, but only when he was good and ready!

The following day, Tom did a check of the boundary fence to see where the cow had gotten through and found a cow-sized hole. He asked Jean-Baptiste to put down his spade and become a fencer for the day and together they patched the hole and fixed up some other weak parts of the fence as well.

Later that day the team celebrated Jean-Baptiste’s milestone birthday (a week in advance) with a birthday cake and Happy Birthday sung in English, French, German and Spanish!!

All week long we had a break from winter weather.  It got so warm we had to bring out the sun hats and sunscreen.

On Friday morning, the team packed up and cleaned the cottage and got in a final morning of tree planting.  Oscar, Albert and Jean-Baptiste were finishing their last week with Conservation Volunteers and Dawn gave them each a certificate of appreciation for their hard work on behalf of CVNZ.

As usual, the team from Conservation Volunteers was highly motivated and great to work with.  They moved us closer to our planting goal for the year and we sincerely appreciate all their hard work.

Thanks guys!  We hope you’ll come back and visit us soon!