It's Tree Time

Hedge planting: Sunday 10 November, 2pm, Jubilee Wood.

November heralds the planting season for trees. It’s the perfect time to plant them; when they’re dormant, they will establish more successfully than during their active growing phase in the summer.

If you go down to the Jubilee Wood today, you’ll see 100 apple trees that weren’t there last week, planted as part of the Growing Together project.

Now, the Woodland Trust has given Transition Town Whitehead 420 little saplings of half a dozen different species suitable for making up a hedge – hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel, silver birch, rowan and oak. We will use these to fill in a few of the gaps in the hedgerows of Jubilee Wood.

Hedges are vital elements in creating the rich and varied habitat we want to see in the Jubilee Wood. They provide food and shelter for many species of birds, like bullfinches and linnets, small mammals and butterflies.

Thick hedges with wide bases providing plenty of cover are best, with a mix of species that flower at different times to offer nectar over a longer period and support more insects.

The Jubilee hedgerows have been neglected for many years but now we have an opportunity to bring them back to vibrant life. This first – and extremely modest – intervention will start the ball rolling.

The next phase will be to find a few people who would be interested in learning the traditional art of hedge-laying. This valuable skill fosters the rejuvenation of existing hedgerows, improving their structure and bringing them under control. Carrickfergus Council will provide funding, under its Hedgerow Hopes scheme, for a few of us to undertake the necessary training.

But, for now, we need a team of volunteers to join us next Sunday afternoon, 10 November, at 2pm in the Jubilee Wood. The hedge we’ll be fixing is at the side of the path, between Commonwealth Avenue and the pond. Bring a spade if you can.

Who feeds Whitehead?

One of the few things that each of us really needs is food.

For some people, food is a marginal concern, merely fuel to stay alive. For others, it's an all consuming passion. Most of us are somewhere in between those two extremes. But wherever you lie on the spectrum of food interest, it's something you have to think about. We'd like to find out a bit more about how you feel about food, what you eat and where you buy it.

Transition Town Whitehead is planning some future projects on food, which may include activities to encourage more provision for growing food, such as allotments; cookery demonstrations and classes on basic cooking skills; setting up short supply systems to promote the easy availability of locally-produced food. 

We are also considering the possibility of applying for external funding. Before we do that, however, we need to find out if there is any level of support for such initiatives. We've compiled a simple survey - only 10 questions - designed to get some idea of what people in Whitehead think and to see who might be interested in helping with future food projects.

Please take a few minutes to contribute to this survey.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey , the world's leading questionnaire tool.

Free Energy-Saving Kit for Whitehead 

Thanks to Transition Town Whitehead, our Community Centre has become the latest building in town to have the benefits of solar hot water. 

Following our completion of the Big Energy Savings Challenge, we were awarded £7500 by Power NI, to be used for the benefit of our local community. We decided to fund this installation, along with new double-glazing and internal light sensors for the building - all designed to save energy and money for the Community Centre.

You may have noticed the new equipment, perfectly positioned for maximum effect on its south-facing roof, just above the main entrance. It’s a Kingspan system, designed specifically for the weather conditions we get in Northern Ireland.

Solar hot water systems work by using the sun’s radiation to heat fluid inside the vacuum tubes of the roof-mounted collector; the heated fluid gets transferred to a large insulated hot water tank. It can provide around half of the annual hot water requirements of the centre and, in the summer months, could produce all that it needs. 

There are already quite a few houses in Whitehead using these systems. They certainly represent the best application for active solar heating in our climate; in years to come they are likely to become as common in new homes as double-glazing is today.

And now for you, too

Meanwhile, Transition Town Whitehead has a supply of smaller energy-saving devices to give away to Whitehead residents. Again, thanks to Power NI, we have a range of equipment that will help you to insulate your home, save energy and reduce your heating bills. 

The following items are available now:

• Radiator Reflectors: by fixing these sheets to the wall behind your radiators, the heat is bounced back into your room rather than heating up the wall and the street outside.
• Door & Window Draught Excluders: these reduce the chilling effect of winter winds that leak in through loose fitting doors and windows, particularly useful for the many older properties around Whitehead.
• Chimney Pillows: if you’ve got a fireplace that is no longer in use, these inflatable urethane balloons can be used to block the chimney to stop warm air leaving the room and preventing draughts.
• Rundown Timer plugs: this plug will switch off an appliance after 30 minutes, perfect for irons, hair straighteners and the like, which sometimes get left on accidentally. 
• Standby Saver Multi-Sockets: this equipment allows you to switch off your TV, DVD and the other appliances that are nowadays connected with a single remote control device.
• Hot Water Tank Covers: insulating jackets to conserve the heat in your tank, saving energy and money.
• Low-energy lightbulbs: a selection of bayonet and two-prong (halogen-type) bulbs.

We’ve already distributed lots of this equipment but limited numbers of all these items are still available - free to Whitehead residents. If you want any of them, please contact us at transitionwhitehead@me.com to request your chosen item. 

Big Energy Savings Challenge Award

Six Transition Town Whitehead group members travelled to Armagh on Monday 25th June for the awards ceremony of the Big Energy Savings Challenge, hosted by Power NI, to announce the winner of the Challenge and give them £20,000.

There were six groups represented, all of whom had taken part in the Challenge over the past year by trying to reduce energy consumption in their respective communities.

We have made some excellent progress as a result of the Challenge. We used some of the initial grant to help over 200 households develop a better understanding of their energy usage and how they could reduce their bills. Over 600 people are now in contact with us and learning a bit more about energy conservation issues.

Our ‘Energy Audit’ was well received by all involved, with almost thirty households benefitting from a detailed examination of their energy use. As a result, several people have taken action to reduce their energy use and save money by installing new condensing boilers, lots of insulation and draught excluders and plenty of light bulbs. Energy monitors supplied free by Power NI have also helped householders to use their appliances to greater advantage and have saved money as a result. Two houses had completely new heating systems installed, driven by innovative new technologies, again through the support of Power NI.

The top prize in the competition was won by the small village of Annaclone but, although we missed out on the winners’ glory, we were congratulated on our efforts and came away with a creditable completion award of another £7,500 which will be used for further energy-saving initiatives in Whitehead.

Our plans include taking a stand at the Whitehead Festival Food and Folk day on 28^th July and we look forward to meeting more of you there. Please come and see us; we may be able to help you reduce your fuel bills and we may be able to provide some goodies to help you on the way. We also want your input, your membership and your ideas how we can be more effective and reach more people. Whether you are single, have a family or a business we may be able to help you on the path to reduce your energy bills.


David Penpraze
28 June 2012

Jubilee Wood Planting Photos

Around 1100 people turned out to plant the trees at Whitehead's Jubilee Wood a fortnight ago, including a few local politicians, including our local MP, Sammy Wilson. Many of them planted thirty or more saplings, so it seems reasonable to suppose that, between us, we managed to get over half of the whole woodland established in one day. Well done and thanks to everyone who came along.

With special thanks to Graham Ross, who provided all the photographs below, here are some of the participants.

There will be one further opportunity to contribute to the planting on Saturday 31st March. After that, Carrickfergus council has a couple of visits to explore the biodiversity of the area, with a Bug Hunt on 28th April and a guided birdwatching event on 6th May.

Some more information about our Jubilee Wood 

You may have seen the work taking place on the edge of the Bentra Golf course, where a path is being built along the Larne Road edge of the course. This will be the path that leads to the Jubilee Wood and the contractors have promised it will be ready for Saturday 25th February.

This is Northern Ireland’s only Jubilee Wood and it will cover a substantial area of ground. Basically, its boundaries are the edge of the Bentra golf course (where the hedge runs up alongside the third hole), the A2 Larne Road, the railway line and the path just opposite the new agricultural supplies store - about half a dozen big fields in total. 

Contractors have already started to get some of the new trees into the ground and children from quite a few local schools will have their own opportunities to plant some trees in the next fortnight but the mass planting takes place on Saturday 25th February. 

The path through the golf course will be the only way to get to the planting area on the day of the big event. The Woodland Trust is expecting as many as a thousand people here to help plant 20,000 trees. Visitors will be directed to park at the harbour car-park or elsewhere in town and there will be a shuttle bus running every 30 minutes from the railway station, with stops at the Recreation Ground, the harbour car-park and a few other points in between. The bus will take passengers up to a registration tent at the Bentra car-park, from where you’ll need to walk the last 500 metres or so to the new woodland. There will be no parking on the Larne Road nor, I suspect, on the Slaughterford Road.

The event starts at 1030 and carries on for most of the day. Some of our local churches are working together to provide refreshments at the start and the organisers have promised a variety of snacks for hard-working tree-planters, as well as a free barbecue lunch for the first 200 people to register with them. 

The vast majority of the saplings being planted will be our most characteristic native species - principally oak and ash trees, with some decorative species such as flowering cherries to add some colour. One special feature will be the planting of a ‘Commonwealth Avenue’ through the wood, where people from many Commonwealth countries will be joining us on the day to plant some commemorative trees.

There will be entertainment throughout the day, with roving musicians and story-tellers, face-painters, arts & crafts and archery available, among other pleasures. A travelling exhibition will bring The World of Owls to our doorstep. 

If you’ve got your own spade, bring it. If you’ve got wellies or good, strong boots, wear them - it’s almost certainly going to be pretty muddy. Wrap up warm if it’s cold.

But whatever you do, please make some time on Saturday 25th February to join us at Transition Town Whitehead and plant a few trees at Whitehead’s unique Jubilee Wood.

Royalty, Rose-hips and Remembrance

Planters...

Over fifty people turned up on the afternoon of Remembrance Sunday to plant 420 trees for a future wild harvest on Whitehead’s seafront. 

In our pack from the Woodland Trust, there was a single, carefully packaged and plainly very special tree; it was an oak sapling grown from seed collected on one of the Royal estates. As it happens, Brighter Whitehead and TTW had been represented a few days ago when the Princess Royal ceremonially planted the first tree of the Diamond Wood (although why it was planted in Carrickfergus and not Whitehead remains something of a mystery). 

So, Princess Anne told us a story about having planted some trees at Balmoral when she was a girl, and has now seen them harvested at the end of their useful lives. We all carefully avoided any discussion about the age of the trees.