Coppice Work Weekend – Western MA – May 8,9

From: Mark Krawczyk <mudshark2003@yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:11:21 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Coppice Work Weekend – Western MA – May 8,9

Hi All,

We’d like to extend an invitation to a coppice work weekend in western Massachusetts (Chester MA, west of Northampton) May 8 and 9. This event was conceived of during the Coppice Workshop that Dave Jacke and Mark Krawczyk taught last fall. We had a lovely turnout, a great time and decided that it’d be fun to get together and have a weekend that combined learning and work on getting the coppice project here off to a good start.
Mark will be joining us and helping us get us started on Saturday. He’ll do a short over-view lecture on Saturday morning and then we’ll work until lunch. After lunch, we’ll have another lecture on a coppice/craft related topic to be chosen by the attendees and then we’ll work for the rest of the afternoon.

After dinner Mark will present some slides from his recent trip back to Greece, England and Macedonia. He recently returned from Europe, having spent some time researching what others are doing with coppice. He and Dave are working on a coppice book together.

On Sunday we’ll be on our own to continue working on the projects we started. We’ll be planting nursery stock, moving soil amendments to planting sites, etc. This is not a huge project so I assume we’ll have fun and not get too tired.

So what’s the scoop about this weekend?

Cost:
We’re asking that every attendee pay $10-30 towards Mark’s fee.

Meals:
Bring breakfast foods for yourselves and/or to share.
Lunch will be provided although if you have something to add or special dietary needs feel free to contribute.
Dinners will be a potluck type of system like last time.

Dates/Times:
May 8 and 9 (Saturday and Sunday) with folks being welcome to come Friday night if they have a distance to travel and want to set up their camp site and be ready Saturday morning without a long drive.

What to bring:
Work clothes, your favorite bug repellant, any tools you like to use for planting, clearing some brambles, etc. Work gloves. Smiles. Good nature. Willingness to have fun. Potluck dinner contribution and snacks. Camping gear if you’re staying over during the weekend.

What not to bring:
Anything illegal except for black locust seedlings. Any pets. Children (unless you’ve called me about it)

What we will provide:
Some tools, good lunch foods, some snacks, tea, water, bathrooms, kitchen facility, learning opportunity, time for easy connection with others that share sustainability interests.

Who can come:
This is first going out to all the folks who either came to the Coppice Workshop last fall or had showed interest. Anyone wanting a fun time working with others. Anyone interested in coppice. You are all welcome to share this info with others who you think would be a good fit. Anyone can come although there will be a limit of spaces so don’t leave this to last minute if you’re interested.

What should you do if you’re interested:
Contact me immediately so I can gauge the level of interest in this weekend. Because it’s not a whole lot of work we need to do here and because it’s a fair amount of work to put on a weekend, I will cancel the weekend if I don’t have enough interest to make it worthwhile for Mark to invest his time coming down here.

Call me at 413-667-8820

Blessings,
Kathrin Woodlyn Bateman