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OCV has been chosen by the new Waitrose store on Botley Road as one of the three charities of the month, as part of the ‘Waitrose Community Matters’ scheme. Shoppers receive a green token at the tills, which they can place in a box of the good cause they’d most like to support. At the […]
OCV Fundraising Officer, Nathalie Marten is pleased to report that we have recently been successful in our application for a grant to Oxford University’s Community Fund. The grant will enable us to pay for up to 6 days of training in traditional countryside management skills (e.g. coppicing) in 2015/16. We thank Oxford University for their […]
OCV’s an old hand now at hedge laying. We’ve been doing it for many years. However, we’ve mainly worked on hedges which have been more on the ‘mature’ side so we’re used to making the best with what we have. The hedge laying task at North Hinksey on Sunday 8th February however was a rare treat. The trees the […]
Today’s Oxford Mail has an article about the reed bed restoration project at the Trap Grounds: http://www.oxfordmail.co.uk/news/11737368.Volunteers_restore_Trap_Grounds_for_wetland_species/ We helped build the bridge to provide access to the reed bed so invasive willows could be cut down and then with the clear up (lots of lugging timber and a few good bonfires). This is a regular […]
A good start to the New Year! OCV’s first task of 2015 at Crecy Hill in Tackley was featured in The Oxford Times with a striking photo capturing the atmospheric misty conditions!
Back in 2009, we designed an OCV Christmas card around the “12 Days of OCV Christmas”… it took a bit of organisation, herding volunteers, and tool counting. In the spirit of recycling old Christmas favourites I thought I’d share it with you again: If you’d like to check what each of the gifts for each […]
OCV held its Christmas party last Friday at the Restore Garden Cafe – it looks like a good time was had by all! Prizes* for the best caption and for “guess the number of beer cans and bottles” on the table [ * Where “prizes” actually means a sense of satisfaction at winning and […]
1. We stayed in David Max’s partially refurbished mansion David bought the place last year and is well on the way to transforming it into a swish country residence.. so we were indoor camping. 2. Andy cooked breakfast in the dining room next to a computer The kitchen was a bit of a building […]
Loppers are used on many tasks as they are handy for quickly cutting back brambles and small branches. When going through the safe handling of loppers in the tools talk before tasks, many OCV ‘old hands’ refer to the Lopper Rule of Thumb – here it is explained: Anything smaller than the circumference of […]
Now we’re comfortably into Autumn, we have a few coppicing tasks lined up. Coppicing tends to produce a lot of different lengths and sizes of wood – being from stout Yorkshire heritage, Chris Skepper would hate all this wood to go to waste, so he has listed his top ten ways of putting coppiced wood to […]
