When I sowed the game cover, the thought occurred to me that I might not be able to identify the plants which grew. This first game cover project will hopefully serve to show me what will do on the Chayne and what won’t, so if I can’t even identify what (if anything) takes to the Continue reading

The game cover was drilled yesterday, and today the spreader came up with a ton of lime. The soil samples I took earlier in the year showed that the field’s pH is very low, so if my crop is going to stand a chance of performing well, some action was called for. I could probably Continue reading

The time has arrived for the game cover crop to be sown, and it has been quite fun mixing a custom crop for the Chayne. After a great deal of humming and ha-ing, I settled on an odd combination of this and that which will now be drilled into the field which has been ploughed Continue reading

It seems like an eternity since I got approval from the tenant to take a field and put it under game cover, and during that time I’ve been getting more and more excited about what is essentially just a bog-standard agricultural procedure. I’m excited because of the links between black grouse and arable farming, as Continue reading

Good to see that the Forestry Commission and others are keen to trumpet the recent increase in black grouse numbers, which, as well as the small matter of mild weather conditions, was apparently brought about by woodland expansion projects… (?) Yet again the great lie of black grouse conservation rears its head, just as it Continue reading

I was born and brought up on a lowland farm overlooking the Solway, so you’d think that I’d know something about agriculture. Sadly, that area of the world is a total mystery to me, and arable farming is a subject about which I am wholly ignorant. I spent my entire childhood shooting pigeons and rabbits, Continue reading

By definition, the author of a blog about black grouse and moorland management doesn’t get out much. When I went to Murrayfield on Saturday to watch Edinburgh play Toulouse in the Heineken Cup, I was overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of people I came across. You can easily get out of the habit of being Continue reading

To cut an extremely long story very short, I had front row seats for the recent wildfire near Dumfries, and was involved in fighting the flames for over twenty four hours. The event became a curious mixture of terror, amazement and exhaustion, and following it through from ignition to extinction was one of the most Continue reading

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After a surprisingly long period of warm, dry weather, the heather is now a different plant altogether. Damp and sluggish to burn last week, the undergrowth is now a crisp, volatile mattress on the hill. I’m starting to see that tactics for burning are totally different when the heather is dry, and we’ve spent the Continue reading