At this time of year, when hawthorns are spectacularly covered in white blossom and maples discreetly hide their flowers in the foliage, chestnut trees are slow to awaken after winter. They have just started to sprout in the land plot we reforested last month, after the removal of the eucalyptus. They face the rivalry of the oaks that survived the felling, since the tops of these already show a varied range of green as their leaves mature. But those first chestnut leaves confirm that they are taking root and that the work paid off.
Our activities did not finish with this plantation. Now we are working on another of our plots in Espenuca hill. It used to have some eucalyptus that broke the harmony of the forest. The eucalyptus have been cut down and now we must remove a lot of foliage that was left after the felling, making room for replanting, arranging the branches in rows to prevent soil erosion, lifting the native trees that were taken down, staking them, drying the eucalyptus stumps so that they do not produce new shoots. If you feel like lending us a hand in the beautiful ―but hard― task of regenerating the forest, please contact us (in section Contact you can find all the necessary information).
Alongside the field work, other less visible jobs are being done. We go on negotiating the acquisition of new plots, preparing the next charity market campaign and drafting the stewardship week program, among other tasks that keep us away from the forest. One of these was to go with other land stewardship entities to visit for the second time the person responsible for the Nature Conservation Office, with the aim of getting them to officially drive land stewardship in Galicia and to urge them to cooperate through this formula with the entities committed to nature preservation.
At the forest, at the office or in front of the computer, we go on working.
