Winter Winching at Wooston
January is normally a quite month for most people. Post-Christmas, the short days and inclement weather tend to mean hunkering down until spring has truly sprung, which usually doesn’t happen until well into March, especially on Dartmoor! However, if you are a National Trust Volunteer Ranger working in Fingle Woods, Winter is the busiest time of year.“The volunteer rangers come out in all weathers,” remarks Fred Hutt, the National Trust Fingle Ranger, with a smile, “even in the torrential rain last week, they all showed up.” The commitment of these dedicated volunteers is greatly appreciated especially when the end of the Winter season in creeping ever closer. Work such as felling, fencing, winching, planting and maintenance work must be carried out when the woodland is essentially dormant throughout the Winter and that means that all the volunteers are working hard to make sure all the seasonal jobs are done before the woods slowly come back to life.I was lucky to join Fred and the National Trust Volunteer Rangers on a beautiful, cold and frosty morning on the 21st of January, when they were undertaking some essential Winter clearance work at Wooston Hillfort. The major clearance of the hillfort began just over three years ago to allow better visibility and access to the site as a place of historic interest, but the primary objective of the clearance was to protect the precious archaeological features. Trees growing on the earthworks are a major threat; if they are not windfirm they can blow over in high winds and when that happens, they can uproot the earthworks when they fall, essentially destroying the banks of the hillfort.
As the trees were slowly but carefully winched up the steep hill, I talked to each volunteer in turn to ask about their time volunteering but also to chat about what they do outside of volunteering. I realised that each team member had very different reasons for volunteering whether it was to gain new skills, change profession or just to get out the house. The National Trust Volunteer Rangers are a very diverse group, with a varied combination of age, gender, professions and personalities and the team that were winching was a good example of this. Despite these differences they worked like a well-oiled machine. Whilst Fred was operating the tractor, and keeping a careful eye on the operation, he told me that each group that works together soon finds out the best roles for each member of the team, that way they can be as safe and efficient as possible when carrying out a tasks; giving them a satisfied and content feeling of a job well done.Photos and text by Sarah Parry
