Following some decent gusts of wind last night, I headed out to assess the damage in the woodcock strip this morning. As I expected, the big holes I cut into the wood during October have left the internal trees very vulnerable, and some of the weaker ones have blown out of the wood altogether. This Continue reading

As the new year approaches and a new list of projects starts to be made up, I decided today to make an early start on a length of hedge which will go in along the inside of the field where the game cover went in this year. Fortunately, the dyke is in relatively good nick, Continue reading

As part of my work for the Heather Trust, I went down to the Peak District yesterday to look at the damage caused by some extremely serious heather beetle outbreaks. Heather beetle is not something I’ve ever really had to deal with on my own ground, mainly due to a shortage of heather, but it Continue reading

I had never heard of Mark Avery until quite recently, when he appeared on an episode of Saving Species on radio 4 which was looking at the persecution of birds of prey and the link between vanishing hen harriers and grouse moors. Harriers always intrigue me because people are so interested in them – I Continue reading

Despite not having gone according to plan, the game cover still seems to have some tricks up its sleeve. The radishes bolted up without producing any radishes, flowered copiously, then concentrated on filling out great big seed pods. By the time the seed pods were finished growing, the plants were so tall and spindly that Continue reading

I don’t want to make a fuss in case I jinx this project. It’s by far the most ambitious thing I’ve ever tried and I am so certain that I’m not going to be able to pull it off that I want to pretend that I don’t really care and that it’s all the same Continue reading

More on this will come soon, but just wanted to mention my day yesterday at the Heather Trust’s AGM meeting at the Langholm Moor Demonstration Project. The rushes on the Chayne have just been cut with a standard chain flail as they are every year (and more on this too, to come), but as part Continue reading

Six months after the huge burn we had down on land overlooking the Solway, I returned today for a wander around with the dog. 1,200 acres of heather went up over the course of 24 hours at the end of March, and the experience was one of the most hair-raising, exhausting and fascinating things I’ve Continue reading

Having experimented with cutting peat last month, I’ve managed to dry some peats out to such an extent that they are now burnable. Perhaps they are still a little damper than they should be and produced a little steam when they went on the fire, but the smell of the smoke was so pleasant that Continue reading

Having let off some steam about my most hated tree species (below), it’s worth mentioning that I have a new favourite tree species. I planted a wide selection of native trees in an experimental plot last spring to see what does well on the Chayne. Without a doubt, aspen has shown itself to be a Continue reading