Maydencroft Week 1 Summary

 Journal entries: 

My first week at Maydencroft was spent entirely doing maintenance around Letchworth Garden City for the Letchworth Heritage foundation. This involved 4 main activities: Litterpicking, Leafblowing, Strimming and Hedgecutting. Many of the jobs involved maintaining alleyways or car parks around the town doing one of the previously mentioned activities. Here are some examples:

28-10-2025

Before

After

30-10-2025:

With this site I did both strimming and blowing, I tried as much as it was in my power to not let debris get into either of the properties beside the alleyway.

Before

After

For the whole week I was driving for an employee who had been at the company for many years but could not drive so I needed to practice getting the feel for an Isuzu Grafter before leaving the yard in the morning, which was daunting at first, considering I have only ever driven a Ford KA, I am getting to grips with it now though. Reversing and lack of visibility are my main points of concern. 

This week I also learnt how to use Leafblowers and Strimmers or at least the Stihl ones that Maydencroft has, I know what each button does and the general technique when using them, such as bumping with the strimmer and the idea of replacing the line (Though I have not done it yet). I also know how to refuel and operate the choke on both pieces of equipment such as when to cold or hot start, the fact that both use a petrol/ two stroke oil mixture and how to not flood the engine with fuel and pump enough in with the button.

I did make a few mistakes regarding how I operated the equipment sometimes however, such as bumping out cord too often or not spreading out leaf piles enough when blowing. I also didn't know where some things were meant to be placed in the truck, when jobs were finished etc. While they were all my mistakes, probably because this is the first time I had ever performed tasks like these, sometimes they were exacerbated by my colleague who would become impatient/ intolerant of some questions, not respond and get easily frustrated. I later found out he has learning and communicational difficulties and kept that in mind when trying to cooperate with him, considering his approach or response to certain situations may be unintentional or different than what it would be with other people. With that being said he would go out of his way to let me use new equipment if I had just been scooping or raking leaves or moving branches on site the entire time and give pointers in places, which I am very thankful for. I still made sure to ask questions too so I could continually improve.

To summarise, on my first week, I learned how to use the core equipment that grounds and estates uses, the team structure such as how there will be a team leader rsponsible for risk assessments and usually driving to sites, the structure of a day and how we go site to site while returning to the yard as little as possible, communication with teammates, how to not damage trees, signs or other features with equipment while maintaining grass or hedges and of course what day to day tasks look like.

Journal Entries

28-10-2025:

Today I mostly did litterpicking around Letchworth Garden City on a 3 man team. Two litterpicked while one used a leafblower. I was given some good advice regarding litterpicking: Always take more than one than one bag, so if your bag splits you can put your bag in another bag. Also one of my colleagues showed me how a stihl leafblower works and aspects such as the choke with what setting to have it on and when, the manual fuel pump bulb, sparkplug port, where to hold the blower when pulling the cord as to not get a shock, how to refuel etc.

29-10-2025:

Today it was mainly more litterpicking and my first attempt at using a leafblower, I could turn it on and fuel it just fine but my technique regarding sorting the leaves into a pile needs some work. Rather than spreading the pile out until I got to where I needed them for the van they were loaded into, I kept them together the whole time.

30-10-2025:

Today I was allowed to use a strimmer for the first time, it was a Stihl strimmer like the leafblowers so alot of the parts and functions such as the the throttle, choke, fuel pump bulb, cord and fuel cap were the same. I strimmed around trees in one orchard, around a car park fence and down two alleys in Letchworth Garden City, while practicing with Leafblowers to clear up. Overall, I would say strimming is fairly straightforward and easy. Avoid trees, avoid gravel near cars and you should be alright. I will say I still need to understand how bashing out more line works and adding new cord as I don't know how to do that yet.