Days 117 to 127 - Foxie's Bumper Update (or when Foxie made hay)

This one's a bumper update after a big gap and, as always, our Site Team of Volunteers have been very busy getting things ready for guests. The site itself feels more and more like Spring has sprung each day with buds, blossoms and flowers appearing with each day that passes. We've also had the first ice cream treat day for the team when it was sunny and that was most enjoyable!

Since our last blog update we've had more big firsts at Foxlease Park, with our first fundraising coffee morning in The Barn and the first residential in that building too.

The electrical upgrade to The Barn was completed in the week prior to the first overnight and Carol the cooker was ready for guests....possibly a little too keen though as we unwrapped her on the outside but not the inside and so her first official cooking was of her own instruction manual...thankfully, swiftly resolved and she went on to serve our guests well with their weekend catering. We did also discover that the wooden spoon handles are too short for some of the pots so we've now added new one to the list.

Our community mosaic continues to grow steadily with each group of guests and we'll be organising some specific event dates to keep that growing. The Foxie's Shop on site has seen good service so far and it's now residing in the freshly cleaned main hall of The Coach House for the next few weeks.

Paul has spent many hours out on the tractor cutting the grass. He's managed to cut almost everywhere the tractor will fit (and some places it won't...) and he's on to second cuts which are helping to show the fields some love and level them out a bit too. He and Emma had a minor stint in tractor repair one day last week too when some bits needed replacing.

The Amazon Mountain range grew again, was partially used, and it has now been rearranged as we've had a big weekend of sorting things out on site whilst volunteer numbers were a bit lower. We're starting to source things to help progress the camp site huts and we're making steady progress on that, with lots still to do but some additional huts are definitely approaching 'camper-ready'. We've got the next two boiler replacements planned in as our coffee morning and kind donations have funded those two and the repairs completed to two others entirely (just amazing!). We're now working hard towards funding the other boilers needed to get the rest of the sites ready for their future bookings.

We've had floors stripped back and sealed with supplies from Mt. Cleaning and we're nearly there with all 3 residential buildings being fully sealed and protected which will stand us in good stead for the next few months.

We've developed our check-in's and check-out systems a bit more and we're grateful to our first sets of guests for their patience.

We've got our provisional list of activities sorted and if you hold nationally recognised instructor qualification and might be prepared to volunteer to run a session or two for us on the outdoor activities side (archery, paddlesports or ropes) then please get in touch with us.

We've replaced more of the tricky locks on site to make accessing some of the annoying ones easier! We've scrubbed up lots more of the self-led activity equipment and we started on cleaning the indoor bouldering wall today.  We're compiling our boxes and sorting the guidance notes.

We've also been talking to our lovely groundworks contractors about upgrading the campfire circle and we hope to have more on that soon. We've got plans to replace the seating there which is in need of a bit of love and we'll be sharing a fundraiser for that soon too.

Archer the industrial Karcher pressure washer arrived unexpectedly the morning of our coffee morning - he was ordered in November and we'd heard nothing so we can only assume he's being on a grand tour and isn't in to postcards - whether he grew during his travels, we'll never know!

Also on the new arrivals list this week was Alice the cooker, named after the literary character and chosen by one of our lovely funders as Foxlease Park is a magical wonderland (the Mad Hatter arrives in April...) - we love that idea!

The fire door in the Lodge and the ceiling tiles have been repaired as they suffered from their first heavy use after a time out of action and we've been giving The Coach House a bit more love before it's final checks in the next 2 weeks. We've boxed in the exposed pipework, filled holes and generally smartened it up, with the hallway being painted after its replastering, the gaps in the rails filled in and old holes being repaired. We don't love the carpet but we'll be living with it having had a good clean for a while until we can fund some new to be fitted.

We had NFNPA's volunteers on site again with Flourish in Nature for more clearance and a bit of a bonfire day to shift the Rhodedendron and then SSE on site to cut back around the power lines for us.

We also sold all the snails for our upcoming snail racing evening at The Crown Stirrup - there's still time to book a table to place a bet if you haven't yet!

Lots of other things too we think, we'll try and leave a shorter gap next time, Love Foxie x