Skomer preparations for 2019 season

The last few weeks have been FULL ON!! This is why we have kind of disappeared for a little longer than planned.
Septic tank works in North Haven (including emptying it), discovery of the faulty septic tank up in the Farm (therefore more poo jobs), fixing the landing steps, drainage digging in NHV, hostel painting, boat trailer painting, electrics fixing, unloading of the materials that arrived on the Princess, compost loos emptying, new window installation in one of the volunteers' room and many more! (We even squeezed a bit of birding in there somewhere). Many of those have been achieved by the work party volunteers and weekly volunteers who by the way are ALL fantastic! We are so lucky to have met you! Thank you Ceri, Alison, Carole, Anne and Rob for finding time to come to Skomer even though you knew that weather in March changes all the time! Thank you for working really hard and putting up with us haha! And thank you to the weekly volunteers Tanya, Pat and Sue for being great as usual (Skomer very regular volunteers) and Jacob for your brill debut as a first time Skomer volunteer. You all did amazing!
Also a BIG thank you to Chris Ward and his always smiling knights-builders (Ed, Phil, ''Mr T'') in their shiny armours! Skomer gains so much from your expertise and professionalism! It's great to have you!
Dale Sailing worked day and almost night;-) to get our beautifully new tires up at the landing and to fix the jetty back on at Martins Haven, we got some sneaky pictures of you as well haha
and they even left a cool gift behind - finders keepers! :)
Our very much needed materials wouldn't have made it to Skomer without Steve's Sutcliffe help! Thank you for all the effort put into finding the items, ordering, labelling and packing them for us Steve! Some pieces have accidentally appeared on Skokholm but we were promised to get them back haaha. Their delivery was even bigger than ours so it's vry impressive to only have found a few items going to our sister island. Many thanks for all the help with that and with out first food order collected and delivered to us by Chris Taylor himself! Chris you're a saint!

We have managed to get an endless number of tasks done and we are very pleased with the results!

Ceri, Alison, Anne, Carole and Rob had this amazing trench dug in 2 days!

 

We found a massive boulder while digging the trench, which didn't stop us from achieving the ultimate goal

Ceri - the conqueror

Nicely fitted pipes by the multi skilled builders

Septic tank in North Haven was used for about 15 years and its time came to an end last year when it got completely full and some parts broke. We decided that the best way to fix the problem was to revert to the old septic tank, which was built during Mike Alexander's time as warden. Nathan and I took on the least favourite job and emptied the old septic tank and drove/wheel barrowed all the contents all the way to the Farm. It only took us 4 days! What a great workout! :)
Brilliant work party volunteers dug a massive trench in absolutely no time, which resulted in them carrying out thousands of other tasks on the island, for doing which we are very grateful!

Our main public footpaths are exceptionally well maintained, boat trailer looking smart new, researcher's rooms freshly painted thanks to the weekly volunteers team and Sarah-K who supervised the works. Our hostel looks and smells wonderful thanks to Sarah-J.

What often happens is that either everything is mega and works undeniably well or everything goes terribly wrong. And just as we thought that things couldn't get any worse about 2 weeks ago when we lost power at the Farm, we discovered that the septic tank there was not doing what it's supposed to be doing! Chris Ward and his team were there to help and we kind of managed to get it to function. It still requires some major works, which we are hoping to start sometime in August together with the roof replacement. Henry helped with the electrics and we have the power back up at the Farm.

Where once was window, now isn't there. We wanted some fun, we placed it elsewhere!

Alison baking;-)

Sarah-J and I spent some time inside the compost loos

Also myself and Nathan spent some time in the septic tank to keep the theme going

It's quite difficult to call some jobs from the past 5 weeks more important than others but we do have to prioritise and I am now finding difficult to choose the best pictures out of tens of them as well. Balance is important but I really want to show you All how MUCH has been done here in the past weeks. It really isn't easy! We welcome feedback if you think there are too many pictures but it can be fun to sometimes have more pictures than words. Here come more pictures;-)

Work party, weekly volunteers and all the 4 staff carrying materials up the stairs

We had a big delivery to the island, which was brough to us by Dale Sailing, many thanks for that. That was one of the best teamwork I have experienced and it makes our hearts sing when we can share the island with such fantastic people. We had lots of fun and we hope that it was joy for you to be here to work with us too!

Modern art - freshly fixed steps

It's incredible how much newly met people bring into your life, how laughter and shared experiences shape you in so many ways. It's absolutely breathtaking how you can see yourself through others and how even a short chat with someone can affect you in so many ways.
It is so very important to be open to others as this is exactly how we develop our own self; by talking, co-creating, brainstorming, creativity, sharing personal stories, through sad, stressful and happy moments. All those are extremely important in order to become a better version of yourself.
There is power and strength in teams.

KEEP ON SMILING EVERYONE :) and thanks for reading

Sylwia