Day 72 - When Foxie met our youngest volunteer yet, donations arrived and the flooring in The Gatehouse was done (or when the first snowdrops flowered)
Day 72 - When Foxie met our youngest volunteer yet, donations arrived and the flooring in The Gatehouse was done (or when the first snowdrops flowered)
Such a busy day on site today - we had visitors coming to look at some of our campsites as prospective bookers for D of E group stays and we hope they'll be back for a booking later in the year. We then had a series of wonderful, planned visits to site to deliver us lots of wonderful things to fundraise with, to use on site and also a bag of fabulous treats to fuel our volunteers - some of our donors had travelled far to make their deliveries and we are very grateful for their kind donations and support. We've arranged a number of partnership meetings and discussions and we're excited to progress those over the coming weeks.
In terms of our volunteers on site today, we had limited numbers doing very important things for us. We had stain blocking paint applied (coat one of more) to some of the marks in The Barn from previous water damage to make it all look nice and bright again, coat two to follow tomorrow. We had lots of part finished jobs completed, with new kick plates and finger plates installed on a couple of doors in The Lodge and the kitchen cupboards adjusted. In The Barn, we had the excess foam from yesterday's hole filling removed, ready for the next step in the coming days. We had the last of the proud screws in the bunkbed frames sealed off and sanded back to finish off those jobs and make the surfaces smooth and we are awaiting a number of things from the wishlist which Foxie's Fairy Godparents have kindly purchased, to enable us to finish the restock of the building.
Our fantastic volunteers also installed pillows and protectors (from Mt. Bedlinen and Mt. Pillow of the Amazon Mountain Range) on all the beds in The Lodge, ready for its first guests arriving soon and they look comfy cosy already! The Singing Machine, which had had a rest for a week or so got a few turns too, to freshen up some of the older things on site ready for reuse. Our Volunteer Sandy also has great plans to repurpose some of the older pillows on site which would otherwise be being disposed of due to their lack of appropraite fluffiness (amongst other criteria which they don't meet).
We also had our youngest volunteer so far on site today, accompanying his mum who is helping us work through some of our activities equipment, prepare our safety logs and checks and set us up for our further discussions with our insurers about our led activity offering for the year, in conjunction with some of the team. We're making great progress and we hope to be able to confirm our offering very soon, along with the self-led activity options which our team and some of our volunteers are working hard on. As you can see from the photos, our youngest volunteer worked very hard checking helmets (heavily supervised, of course) and had a number of adventures rescuing some of the paw-puppet foxies from around the office before putting on his "work shirt" (for which, read "high vis") so that he could explore outside too, testing out some of our forest walks for us (again, under supervision). By the end of the day his career with the team had reached its pinnacle and he was keeping the office in line as our temporary site manager - we didnt let him loose with the emails but he's got "future ropes instructor" written all over him so we'll report back in about 15 years or so on that....
In The Gatehouse, Volunteer Iain, made further spectacular progress on the new flooring, for which we are very grateful, and it now looks showhome-worthy so we hope that our future volunteers will enjoy their time there - our next cohort of visitors arrive in their next week.
To help us with assessing our options for led activities, if you hold an independent accreditation in any of the activities previously offered on site, for example archery, climbing, ropes or watersports, and you might be prepared to assist us with delivery of our activities in the future if we need you to, then we'd love to hear from you to volunteers@foxlease.uk - contacting us doesn't mean that we'll definitely need to call on you as we don't quite know that yet, but it would really help us in our appraisal of our options.
In other admin/web development news, we've also got our Spring Raffle live through the Foxie's Shop website or through in person ticket sales (running until 20th April) and we've now got a new Events Page on the main website so that you can see and book our upcoming events and workshops in one place!
Lastly, the first snowdrops we've spotted on site are flowering nicely and we expect to see more soon!
More action tomorrow, and perhaps more flowers, Love Foxie x
