It’s only a few weeks until our annual members gathering and there’s still time to get your tickets if you get in quick!
We’re heading east to the Moray coast, somewhere we’ve not been for a gathering before. Staying at The Loft, a farm venue & glamping site near Kinloss we’ll have a range of speakers, visits and workshops over the weekend. Now that our program is finalised we thought we’d share what’s in store…
Buildings Tour
The gathering begins with a buildings tour on Friday. We’ve got 4 sites lined up showcasing interesting timber buildings, from saunas to sawmills. You can join us for the whole tour or turn up part way through if you like.
On Friday after a tasty dinner, Alan Watson Featherstone, founder of Trees for Life and local resident will be welcoming us to the area with an opening talk, giving context to the forestry and reforesting work that’s thriving in Moray. We’ll continue with our usual soapbox session, where folk can bring ideas to the RS collective or suggest workshop discussions for Sunday. We’ll finish early to allow time for catch-ups!
After a hearty breakfast, Saturday begins with a talk from Steve Mickelwright on the launch of the new community rewilding guide by Scottish Rewilding Alliance, a practical handbook for how to help Scotland become the world’s first ‘Rewilding Nation’.
We’ll then head out for the day on project visits. This year we’ve got no less than 7 trips on offer, from productive forestry sites to community woodlands. Here’s the line-up – we’ll send out registration forms to ticket holders to choose which you want to go on very soon:
Continuous cover forestry is always an interesting discussion topic at gatherings and we’ve got Ted Hughes to lead us on a mini CCF practical thinning game at Darnaway forest looking at two different stands and discussing management options.
Findhorn Hinterland & dunes is a local dune restoration project where we’ll look at the excellent examples of rare lichen-rich sand/shingle and dune heath habitats within the dense gorse are sand and shingle areas.
Wester Hardmuir is a 70 acre mixed woodland with a lot going on, run by Laikenbuie Ecology Trust. The site is managed for many purposes with young amenity and commercial woodland, a retreat centre and a focus throughout on wildlife and restoring the land.
Flying the flag for agroforestry are Lynn and Sandra at Lynbreck Croft, a diverse 150 acre croft producing high quality food for the local area. The visit will focus particularly on the integration of trees within their farm systems.
For those that want to be a bit more hands-on in the woods, Kirsty Wallace will be leading a foraging and local ecology walk to see what autumnal goodies are out there, as well as a look around her self-built cruck frame timber and straw bale home.
In nearby Rafford is the diverse Marcassie Farm project, and Karen from Naturally Useful will lead a tour of the farm and her willow business, looking a willow growing, eco buildings and their recent wellbeing project. The visit is complete with a Tibetan sound bath in the woods!
And last but not leas is Forres Friends, a community woodland in Forres. We’ll visit the small tree nursery, look at grassland management, using ponies as grazers, and briefly view the riparian ash/alder wood. Then we’ll go to the community veg garden, now in its fourth year, with a polytunnel and newly planted orchard including nearby walnut, chestnut and cob trees.
Back from the visits and we’ll have a series of project discusion groups around the venue that you can join or dip into over a cuppa, to find out more and get involved with the various projects Reforesting Scotland have on the go. There will be groups for hutting, coppicing, tree planting grants, the Journal, mountain birch project, the Hut of Wellbeing & courses / training.
Early evening brings us back to two more talks at The Loft. The first is on Reforesting.Restructuring.Reimagining where Ted Hughes will give us a silviculturist’s perspective on Scotland’s woods and forests.
Next is Owen Bushell who last year undertook a study tour across Europe looking into shingle making. He’ll share his findings as a “rural optimist” and how they can help us to rebuild resilient craft based economies in Scotland, with his current project restoring a water-powered bucket mill in Aberdeenshire.
After a well earned dinner we’ll finish the evening with a ceilidh and raffle and plenty of time for a dram and catch up.
On Sunday we’ll hear from the board of directors on the year and what we’ve got planned for the future, as well as our AGM (we’ll keep that part brief, we promise!).
Afterwards we’ll head out for different workshops and discussion groups. As is traditional for gatherings, these may crop up over the weekend and there will be a mix of practical and discussion; indoor and outdoor. So far we’ve got lined up a few short films that will lead to discussion, a tree seed collection walk in local on-site woods, making a mini willow traditional hurdle, Trysting Trees – a workhop to explore our relationship with native trees, and a Hut building 101 where budding builders can bounce ideas off each other.
As the weekend draws to a close we like to gather once again for a feedback session, where we recall the visits and workshops to hear from those you missed. The gathering will close after lunch.