Volunteering at the Earth Trust


Earth Trust is an environmental charity in Little Wittenham, South Oxfordshire with 1,200 acres of land including woods, farmland, meadows, wetlands and the Wittenham Clumps. The charity encourages everyone to  live more sustainably, and works in five areas:

  • food and farming
  • water and wetlands
  • future forests
  • Living history
  • Reducing our footprint

Earth Trust

Things to do

Put simply there is lots to do at the Earth Trust, for all ages. From walking up the Clumps or around Thrupp Lake to lessons, courses including Earth school for children to special events such as lambing weekends. Plus they do children’s birthday parties that have been highly recommended to me.

The day I visited there was a pond dipping activity going on that appeared to be very well attended. Looking at their calendar of upcoming events there is a great variety for different ages including a sensory buggy walk for babies and toddlers

Volunteering

There are many opportunities to volunteer with the Earth Trust from doing surveys to helping at their activities. I was there with a group from work to help with some conservation work. The chosen activity was clearing an area of weeds which will be developed into a vegetable patch and used to teach local school children.

There were plenty of weeds, and they were big. Unfortunately in the section I was working on, there were also some onions that needed to be saved for the final vegetable patch. This meant it was an on my knees job and being delicate, very different to some of the other people, particularly the person with the scythe! We cleared the whole area in 3 hours and started putting the fence posts around the vegetable patch.Clearing weeds at the Earth TrustI was pleased to discover that although the Earth Trust is in the country there is 4G reception, so I was able to do my first outdoor broadcasts on Periscope providing updates on our progress. You can watch one of my Scopes in this short compilation (it is the second one).

I will definitely return to the Earth Trust with my children as they love being outside so will enjoy exploring and joining in with activities.

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Kate is the founder of Oxfordshire Bloggers. She moved to Didcot in 2001 and now lives near Wallingford with her husband and two young children in a house that needs a total renovation. On her blog darktea ~ capture, process, simplify she uses lists and processes to solve problems and make life simpler.

2 Comments


  1. This looks like honest to goodness hard work but extremely rewarding! We recently attended an event the Earth Trust put on in our local nature reserve and I was really impressed at all the hard work the volunteers put in, and just how knowledgeable they were.
    I think areas of nature reserve like these are so important in Oxfordshire; well done you on volunteering
    xx

    Reply

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