We have our massive Marshian stomp in a few days time.
The planning for this is such a delightful process. Part of it is to harvest some willow.
We have several uses for it. We need sticks for stompers so they can test the depth of the mud as they stomp.
We need poles to hang decorations at the gateways into the marsh, and we need willow swifts to point people in the right direction.
And here’s our harvest! All these will be put to good use and then planted. So we get a few days work out of them, and then leave them to grow into trees.
The next day we made a picnic area right in the heart of the marsh. We put out a dozen of our mini haystacks come picnic benches.
Stompers might like to stop a while and sit and admire the marsh while they’re there.
And the marsh has been really lovely to us.
You see, we’ve had a lot of rain. Our dam is really effective and has kept the marsh wet all through the drought. If we get too much rain, and the marsh gets even more flooded we might not be able to stomp. And amazingly our lovely living and breathing dam has moved itself to one side to let some water out. I could not believe my eyes. We can go and put it back next year.
Then another surprise! Look at this lovely Lapwing. We’ll have T-shirts next.
But until we do we have patches.
So if you’re coming to the marsh you can look out for the folks who’ve been caring for it for the last year. They’ll be Marshialls. And they’re all called Ian.
Ian Marsh.
Hopefully we’ll be easy to find.
These will be fluttering from the tops of the longest willow poles we could find.
Rural Reading 