Jane Lambourne on stage with bear. Picture thanks to Michelle Dunn

Jane’s been at Randall’s Farm today running a training course called “Storytelling in Environmental Education” for the Wildlife Trust. The course was designed for anyone already working in an area where storytelling could add to what they do. There were Forest School practitioners, Wildlife Trust staff as well as others who lead guided walks and run programmes for kids.

Sounds like it went well. Here are some comments made by participants:

• “Thank you – some very good practical mechanisms to build and tell stories”
• “Wonderful! Thank you”
• “I cannot believe how much was packed into the day and how much I learned”
• “I want to know more and will investigate other workshops/courses”

If you are interested in using stories to add a new dimension to what you do, or if you just fancy discovering storytelling in environmental education, please contact Jane – 01462 711815 info@wassledine.co.uk

Sorting willow for length

We’ve started cutting willow at last. At this early stage, as usual, it feels like an ordeal, but we’ve made some progress this week and the weather has been fairly kind – just an hour of rain so far.

Image by Frankzed via Flickr

For the second time in the last month, I saw a little egret, Egretta garzetta, on the farm this morning. It’s a big white bird and very much a relative of the grey heron which we see pretty regularly around the fields.

Although this one, we saw at a distance of several hundred metres, there’s no mistaking the species. I had heard that there’s been a great egret in Bedfordshire (at Brogborough Lake) this week, and I did initially wonder if this might be the big one. Actually, at that distance, size is very difficult to judge, so maybe… chances are that it was the little one and I’m happy with that.

Wikipedia suggests that the species was common in the northern UK until the mid-Sixteenth Century when it became extinct. Numbers declined rapidly in Europe until it became restricted to the south by the 1950s, after its plumage had become popular with hat manufacturers (along with those of the great-crested grebe).

The first English breeding pair in modern times took up residence on the Dorset coast in 1998 and the species is now spreading rapidly.

This individual spent some time dodging occasional dog walkers, flying between trees and we got to thinking about it surveying nest sites – pretty unlikely, but you never know.

Rain water flowing into a trough from the roof, via a tank - hurrah!

Finally we’re running on rain water and I’m feeling great about it.

It took ages to get around to sorting out the various stages involved in getting the roof of the barn connected to a massive tank and then to a trough inside. For the last few weeks the supply has been nothing more than a trickle which has been incredibly frustrating especially as all the recent heavy rain has filled the tank to the top – 6,000 litres of lovely, clean, free (sort of) water.

But now, finally, with a different, low-pressure valve, the water’s pouring out at all the right moments.

Together with a small solar panel on the barn roof which charges a battery and powers a string of low-energy lights, we are feeling good about saving a bit of money and making a small reduction in our consumption of resources.

Ready for a bird survey

Taking money, as we do, from the EU through the Countryside Stewardship Scheme, sometimes bothers me. Partly that’s due to a bit of guilt in taking public money for what could be seen as private gain and partly because it’s got to be better not to be so reliant on a grant that inevitably will end at some point. However, Stewardship has done great things for us or more accurately it has allowed us to do some really good things for the landscape of the bit of Bedfordshire that we look after. Without it I don’t think we would have had the courage to venture  into beef production in our small-scale, extensive and local way.

There’s no doubt that conversion of the farm to grass without the use of loads of nutrients, and the planting and management of hedgerows has done good things, not only for the way our valley looks, but also for the population of birds that live here. People we talk to locally are always very positive about the landscape and the new paths that have been created through the scheme.  Because several neighbours are involved in Stewardship too, their arable margins, managed hedges, beetle banks and the like have created a network of rather wonderful habitats that support a wide range of birds, and presumably invertebrates. Barn owls, buzzards, blue butterflies abound.

Last week we were visited by an undergraduate student from the University of Hertfordshire who was out to compare bird species found on farms that take part in and don’t take part in Stewardship of one type or another. Charlotte dropped in last Thursday for a cup of tea before heading out for an hour’s walk around our fields. It was good to hear such enthusiasm from someone embarking on a career – well, she said all the right things anyway!

It’s always good to receive positive words about what we’re doing, so thanks for your last email Charlotte. She was kind enough to pass on a bird list, which I’ve added below, just in case you’re interested. If you’re out around here at any point, we are always interested to hear about what you see in the way of birds and any other wildlife; so please get in touch.

Charlotte’s list (30/12/11)

Wood pigeon 16, Jackdaw 19, Crow 2, Blue tit 32, Green woodpecker 4 (two pairs), Blackbird 6, Fieldfare 27, Rook 2, Collard dove 3, Robin 5, Starling 3, Magpie 1, Great tit 3, Chaffinch 5, Kingfisher 1, Pheasant 1, Long tailed tit 17, Song thrush 2, Red kite 1, Wren 1, Dunnock 1

Sallow - destined for firewood

Starting to collect sticks together for some hurdle jobs and hedge stakes, I’ve been cutting sallow or goat willow, Salix caprea.

Now I know some of you will scoff at my use of willow for hedge stakes. Actually I know some of you will get quite cross about it. Everyone knows that willow will grow if used in a hedge, so it mustn’t be used.

We have a lot of sallow growing as a weed in amongst our hazel plantation, so I started cutting it out a few years ago. The poles produced were so nice – so strong and straight that it seemed a shame not to use them for something. It’s not as beautiful as hazel, not as hard and it does have a tendency to support a covering of algae, so handling it gives one something of a green tinge. But it’s strong and grows splendidly straight when coppiced. As I was embarking on laying a long length of hedge at the time, I thought I’d use it for stakes.

We’ve laid more than 200 metres of hawthorn hedge over the last four winters and used a high proportion of sallow for stakes. A few certainly produced leaves the following spring, but none survived the summer. It strikes me that a rootless willow stick, stuck in the middle of a vigorous hedge has very little chance of survival. And anyway, even if one or two did survive, that would add another native species to the hedge – no loss. In fact a gain; surely?

Which wasn’t what I was going to write at all. Some of the sallow I cut today before heavy rain and the needs of cattle called a halt to proceedings, will become stakes. However, much of it hadn’t been cut since its seed blew in, the autumn before the wood was planted in 1999 and had reached a base diameter of around 10 inches. These bits will end up as firewood at some point; for us rather than for sale. We all know willow spits on an open fire so we’ll use it in our wood burner. And suddenly I’m wondering if willow really does spit…   ..I feel a test coming on.

If you’d like to read more about our new or ancient woodlands, click here.

Adele finds some poo

We own a book by Eddie Straiton called ‘Cattle Ailments, recognition and treatment’ (The Crowood Press), which, when it arrived a few years ago, I glanced through quickly and have rarely felt inclined to pick up since. My reluctance is no reflection on the book’s  relevance. Rather, the graphic illustrations reveal my squeamish side and I have developed a kind of hypochondria-by-proxy; symptoms described therein seem to fit our cattle. Clearly crazy, so I avoid looking.

However, yesterday morning I noticed a heifer being slow to feed. Nothing more than that, but enough for me to make a mental note to take another look later. Mental notes being poor notes, it wasn’t until this morning that I remembered that we needed to look at No. 31 a little more closely than usual.

Again she was slower than the rest to feed and closer inspection revealed a slight tremble of her hind quarters and a discharge from her nose. So worse than yesterday. Her temperature was 41.2 degrees C, perhaps 1.5 degrees higher than normal, so we called the vet who would visit later. In the mean-time, over a sandwich, we (Jane) pulled Eddie Straiton’s tome off the shelf and after some time, she revealed the verdict - either foot and mouth disease or pneumonia. The former seemed remarkably unlikely and in truth, unthinkable, and as pneumonia isn’t something we’d hope for either, we welcomed Adele, our vet, without expressing an opinion.

But pneumonia was indeed the verdict, but there was no pleasure to be had from Jane’s accurate diagnosis. An antibiotic later we got to talking about causes. The barn is good and airy and the stock are mostly in good condition, but we do have one cow, Apple, that is scouring a little, and who has odd, hairless patches around her eyes. Another, Pepper, always looks undernourished, although we had put this down to a genetic predisposition linked to a very large and demanding calf. Both conditions however, could be parasite related or the result of a nutritional deficiency. First move therefore was to take faecal and skin samples, so we await the results.

Vets must have a very high tolerance to poo.

winter heliotrope in flower

For several years I’ve vaguely noticed this flower in a couple of road-side ditches in Gravenhurst and mentally labelled it as butterbur. The other day, seeing it flowering, I took a step into a ditch alongside Campton Road to take a closer look and a picture. Later, when looking at this image on-screen and thinking to find something out about the plant, I realised that although similar to butterbur, Petasites hybridus, this isn’t butterbur.

Butterbur flowers in March, so after discounting this as an example of the effects of climate change, right here at home, a quick glance in a field guide suggested that this was winter heliotrope, Petasites fragrans, a plant introduced to the British Isles from southern Europe, apparently in 1806. One web site I found, doesn’t like it much because it’s a tricky thing to get rid of once you’ve got it. So I suppose we should  be digging it up before it breaks loose to compete, on our river banks, with Himalayan balsam and Japanese knotweed. For me though, flowering in December is a clever enough trick to earn it a place in the garden.

Botanists amongst you may be tutting or raising eyebrows at my previous error, for winter heliotrope not only flowers three months before butterbur, but also produces leaves at the same time as its flowers, whilst butterbur never does anything so obvious. Doh!

According to the guide I consulted, the flower is vanilla-scented. Sounds good; of course I’ll have to try it. So if you drive past whilst I’m in the ditch, sniffing things, you’ll know why.

Feeding on a cold December morning

Rather unexpectedly, it’s dark and white this morning; obviously we need to keep more of an eye on the forecast, as we hadn’t noticed it was on the way. Fairly typical southern English snow – wet and sloppy and the temperature is hovering above freezing.

Actually now that the cattle are inside, we feel a bit like whatever happens we can cope – just need to keep at it. Having said that, snow on the ground for a while will be a nuisance as it makes picking up hazel and willow difficult and unpleasant.

But on a morning like this it is a great feeling to feed the cattle knowing they can spend most of the day under cover on a dry bed of straw. Roll on April though.

Rain water flowing into a trough from the roof, via a tank - hurrah!

It’s raining, cold and windy; usually I’d be feeling gloomy and wintry myself. However, I’ve finally got the rain water harvesting system hooked up from the barn roof and I’m feeling a bit smug.

Many months ago we bought a second-hand water tank and placed it next to our barn. Slightly fewer months ago, I thought about the issue again a nd realised that when the tank fills, its 6,000 litres would weigh 6 tonnes, so would need more than a couple of bits of wood for support.  So with friendly neighbourhood building teacher, Bernie’s help, I constructed a splendid plinth for it to sit on and which placed it at the right height to feed water into a trough in the barn. Nearly a year on, with more help from local plumber, Les Newton, all the connections are in place into and out. Finally, a little fiddling with a ball valve in a trough’s service box and it’s all ready. No rain for three weeks.  But now we’ve had a couple of hours last night and some today, water is flowing into the trough. What a result.

This is free water, or will be when we’ve covered all the capital outlay – several decades then (unless water becomes super expensive). Perhaps more importantly, every litre of water we collect from the barn roof is a litre that hasn’t been drawn from a reservoir or river; all we are doing is diverting it through a cow, adding some interesting nitrogenous compounds and getting into the soil again.

One has to make the most of opportunities to feel pleased with one’s self, so each time it rains I’m going to be thrilled, at least for a while.