This first year of my project to preserve and create black grouse habitat has almost come to a close (although this blog is much younger), and as the moor starts to shrink back into inscrutible silence again, I notice that one of my most important plants of 2010 is dying away as well. I first Continue reading

    Having lived my entire life under the shadow of the largest hill in south east Galloway, it recently occurred to me with some surprise that I have never climbed it. Looking to rectify the situation as quickly as possible, I set off up the thick heathery slopes yesterday afternoon. It was obvious that Continue reading

The blackcock has moved house into the windbreak above the farm buildings… The same windbreak that I have been busily felling. The shepherd has heard him calling at last light from the surviving hemlock trees, and it now seems silly to carry on knocking down the little wood that he calls home. While he continues Continue reading

The Chayne is a wet hillside. No one has made any attempt to drain the land for the past seventy years, and now even the inbye fields are filling up with wet patches, moss and rushes. The hayfield runs with water all winter, and three or four good quality fields have become totally choked with Continue reading

I have been forced to learn a great deal about trees throughout this project. Not that that has been a hardship. I now find them absolutely fascinating, and most of my spare cash is spent sampling trees from a variety of wholesalers up and down the country. The iconic tree for black grouse is silver Continue reading

Every little boy dreams of swinging a wrecking ball through a school or gymnasium. Well, at least I did. There is something innately appealing to men of all ages about really wrecking something, or,  in scots vernacular “getting in amongst” it. Rockstars throw televisions out of hotel windows, pensioners put cats in bins and I Continue reading

It has now been three and a half months since I sowed my “wild” oats, and I can now happily report that tremendous progress has been made. At the time, the oat project was designed to work out if arable crops can be grown on freshly drained peat, but as the summer has gone on, Continue reading

Having recently moved house to an area near the far end of the Chayne, I set out this morning with stick in hand and camera on back to explore the surrounding scenery. To the south of the farm, a high crag overlooks our entire property, and never having climbed it before, I set off onto Continue reading

Almost seven months after fencing off the heather laboratory, the heather is starting to show incredible improvements. When the fence was built, it was designed to sit at an angle across a stand of overgrazed ling to show what a difference livestock were making to the moor. Only in the last fortnight has any real Continue reading

Battling away with a strip of twenty five year old sitka spruces as I have been for the past seven months, I was relieved at the weekend to start work on a new project. Around seventy years ago, a small inbye paddock above the farm buildings was planted with a scattering of sitka spruces, hemlocks Continue reading