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After the success of our groups Xmas Reindeer sales, the monies raised were divided equally between Barnardos, and a fund to pay for an excursion for the youngsters in the Wellbeing Hub. Here's some photos of three of the boys, who have just completed their Discovery Awards, handing the cheque over at Barnardos shop in South Queensferry. We are doing some pallet crafts while we prepare for starting the Explorer Award with the group. The group raised nearly £550, so were able to present a cheque for £266 to Barnardos. Well done guys!

On a day that the temperature was -3degC the group was introduced to the ongoing project to establish a home for nature. We are grateful to Kinordy Estate allowing us to plant our boundary hedge full of future fuel for those we hope to inhabit it. We started by cleaning up from year 1 planting and saw the established trees, we also started deturfing for this years plants. If you walk through the estate please keep an eye for the groups hard work. There was also time for a hot chocolate and a biscuit and enjoy the weather.

Looking from Farm to garden and from Pigs to Pollinators was easy foir us as we used the facilities within the museum to discover more information about Wild Life and the importance of Pollinators to our Environment. We sniffed and smelled to find out answers, crawled through tunnels and above all had fun while we learned from each other and our surroundings. We had talked about how people worked in the past to produce food for us all and agreed that the work they did must have been hard and long. As with each of our Active Learning Adventures the day was gone all too quickly and soon it was time to jump aboard our Tractor for a journey through the fields towards the end of the day! We will be back however with the dawn of spring and new life within the farm. Thanks to everyone at the Musem of Rural Life, it really was an environment not to be missed!!!

With the engines of our Tractor whirring and the thick black tyres climbing the frost covered hill we made our way up to the working farm. We are constantly asking questions and learning as we make our way along this Active Learning Assault Course and with the help of the most amazing Support Staff we more often than not find the answers we are searching for. Perfect Piglets and Noisey Cows sat before us in their winter homes with the fields bare and cold. Chickens and the most beautiful Shire Horse joined in as we made our way towards the original farmhouse that lay silent with its only story to tell. We askeds questions of the Museum Staff who were only to happy to help with answers related to the animals and how they believe that this is one of the most emportant environments that we have as yet investigated. And so on we went....

Our Time Travelling Active Learning Adventures this week too us into the Past and Present as we investigated our Agricultural Heritage with the help of the wonderful staff at the Muesum of Rural Life in East Kilbride. We wanted to know how farming and agricultural practices have shaped our environment and how they would play their part as we move forward into the future. We talked of the need for more food resources and therefore more farmland, of the machines that people from years gone by have created and the parts they had to play in the evolution of this most important of industries. We were not to be dissapointed....

The groups have all been busy working on habitat management at Saltwells NNR, involving cutting back scrub in wet grasslands and in the woodlands. In the woodlands they pulled bramble and cut back ivy and small trees, this opened up the area to the sunlight which will attract the white letter hairstreak and the dingy skipper. Both species of butterfly are listed on the “habitat and species of principal importance” list, meaning they are endangered. We hope that planting new Elm trees through the species recovery programme will help to increase and conserve the numbers, Nothing went to waste after cutting back the scrub, the groups constructed a fantastic dead hedge! It will make a great wildlife corridor, which will be used for shelter during the winter months and protection from predators.

A new year to carry on my Conserver-level John Muir Award in and while I'm focusing on completing the Share element, I'm always looking out for new connections. Today, a walk in the Pentlands brought me to one of five arboreta that the Friends of Pentland Hills have planted to commemorate John Muir. Being winter there was not much to see on the trees but plenty to see elsewhere - my first sighting of Crossbills high in the conifers and my first sighting of a stoat spectacular in full winter ermine coat, standing out boldly against the greens and browns of the forest patch and boggy ground it was hopping through. So striking - and unusual to be able to see such a normally unseen creature so clearly. John Muir mentions this unseen-ness in his writing on 'The Forests of Oregon and their Inhabitants'... "Gliding about in their shady forest homes, keeping well out of sight, there is a multitude of sleek fur-clad animals living and enjoying their clean, beautiful lives. How beautiful and interesting they are is about as difficult for busy mortals to find out as if their homes were beyond sight in the sky. In writing we can do but little more than to give a few names, as they come to mind, -- beaver, squirrel, coon, fox, marten, fisher, otter, ermine, wildcat, -- only this instead of full descriptions of the bright-eyed furry throng, their snug home nests, their fears and fights and loves, how they get their food, rear their young, escape their enemies, and keep themselves warm and well and exquisitely clean through all the pitiless weather." I feel very lucky to have caught a glimpse. (Picture from www.akwildlife.org)

Megan from Provanhall invited us for a tour of the medieval gardens before setting us to work with a smelly task!! We talked as a group about the potential projects that we could get involved in deciding that wild flowers to help the bees, bird boxes to provide shelter for the birds and even potentially hedghog homes would be the way to go! We talked about the plants and herbs you would have expected to be use within the house many years ago. We smelled, sniffed, gawped and gazed at the dried herbs and various bottles that lay before us talking about their potential uses then and even now. With so much to do all that was left to say was a massive THANK YOU to Megan and all the staff at Provanhall, with a look into the past we were all certainly excited by what lay in store for us in thge future.