Redford Cemetery Association

FALL WORKDAYS 2006

DATE: 4 NOVEMBER 2006 and 11 November 2006

TIME: 9:00 AM to ?????

LOCATION: Redford Cemetery

Our Fall 2006 Workdays were an astounding success! Many thanks to all who made it out on one or both days.

OUR PLAN:

The purpose of the November 4th workday was to do a general year-end tidying-up of the cemetery. We wanted to remove the scrubby plants that resprouted around the headstones in the old section, collect fallen branches, remove broken branches from the trees, and collect trash. We also hoped to work on blowing and collecting some of the leaves. The second workday, scheduled for November 11th, was to serve as a rain date for the first workday. We intended to finish whatever wasn’t completed on the first workday and will move on to fence cleanup.

Thanks to a good volunteer turnout and a lot of hard work, we achieved our goals for our fall 2006 workdays.

NOVEMBER 4TH

We assembled around 9:00am and worked until 4:00pm or so. We had five work groups this time, each handling a different task. The first group handled leaf blowing, spreading the leaves around so they were at a thickness that could be mulched. The second group planted a few shrubs and worked on formulating a grounds beautification plan for 2007, as we will soon be to a point where we can replant desirable species along our fences. The third group handled the removal of weedy shrubs from the old section of the cemetery, as many that had been cut and sprayed in 2005 had resprouted alongside the grave markers.

The other two work groups handled fence clearing. The old, dead ash tree on the north fence was felled, blocked up for firewood, and hauled off. Broken limbs from the willow on the north fence were removed and the process of taking the willow down began. And the northeast corner of the cemetery was substantially recovered from the curtain of undesirable trees and shrubs left by twenty years of non-maintenance! Most of the wood debris was accumulated in large piles for chipping the following weekend.

NOVEMBER 11TH

This was originally planned as our rain date for the 4th, and in a sense it was: it rained heavily the night before and for much of the workday, too! Everything was soaking wet, and the volunteers were no exception! I cannot thank our volunteers enough for coming out AND working in the rain - cutting and chipping trees is dirty enough when it is dry and sunny, but in the rain it is downright nasty. So, again, thank you.

We started work a little after 8:00am and finished around 3:00pm. We rented a wood chipper from Chet’s Rent-All and ran the machine more or less the whole time, a task that kept six guys busy! We also cut and stacked the wood that was too large to chip; it was given away as firewood by posting FREE FIREWOOD ads on craigslist and freecycle. The wood was gone within eighteen hours of posting the ad.