How it all started, my first job.

It’s been very many moons since starting out early one morning to work ‘in the woods’ near

my home in Caversham, Reading.

Leaving the house at 6.30am, with a hoar frost on the ground, piling into the back an Austin van, joining three others who were much more able than 14 year old me.

My mum would pack a lunch for me and added a thermos flask of hot soup.

Matt, the foreman greeted me, introducing the rest of the crew, Wilf an older gentleman

with a very gruff appearance, Aleric a much younger, very well educated fellow, David, who was my age

and the son of the boss. he was also my friend.

We were only driving about 15 miles to a small village called Checkendon where the boss owned a small  woodland – around 20 acres of mixed hardwood planting.

We arrived at the five bar entrance gate, the area looked like an over grown field.  Then driving down a small track, that stopped at an old rectangular concrete building with just a door, no windows. Everyone piled out, and headed for the building, inside were a selection of ‘v’ shaped planting spades, a bunch of ranging poles and a large pile of plastic bags with various bare root tree species inside.

The plan this day was to complete a mixed hardwood woodland planting. The planting distances were 5ft row separations with 5 ft planting gaps.

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