Bog Myrtle & Peat

The pigs are away to the woods, and it’s a relief to see them stretched out and foddering after a long summer. These are the sows which gave us two dozen piglets in the spring; they’ve earned a break and some recuperation before the boar returns and the cycle begins again. English people call this “pannage”;… Continue reading

I sleep with the window open so I can hear the swallows. But in the last few days, there has been less to hear at dawn and in the final moments of the dusk. Most of our swallows have gone now, and only a few broods remain around the yard and in the rafters of… Continue reading

Thinking of bracken (as I often do), it’s been interesting to revisit some of the new woods which I began planting almost a decade ago. One of these was on a three acre outcrop of stone and bracken, bounded by a tall dyke. Lunkeys in this dyke allowed the sheep to come and go as they… Continue reading

The hill is a storm of birds. Churning clouds of pipits and larks are on the move through the heather; they’re heading who knows where, but surely away from here. Come abruptly round a contour and flush seventy small shapes into the wind; a few of them complain, but most bend themselves to the task… Continue reading

As a postscript, it’s worth mentioning the discovery of yet another brood of wild-born pheasants in the garden below the kitchen window this week. It’s hard to express how unprecedented and extraordinary this progress is. It takes a good year to see any sign of pheasants breeding successfully in Galloway, but this brood almost puts… Continue reading

The first of September, and down to the river where the ducks are ripe for the taking. I’ve marked this dawn for nineteen consecutive years; a quiet nod to the coming winter; the whistle of wings in a blue, starlit sky. The water wound around my feet, and when the flight came I fluffed my… Continue reading

Picture a broad expanse of moorland in the Southern Uplands. There’s turning grass and the shadows of clouds across the open hill. And there’s a single tree in the middle distance; it stands like a range marker and gives scale to the blue, burling horizon. These isolated trees are often pines; homespun grannies with their… Continue reading

It’s been interesting to check on the barn owls as the summer begins to wind down. I have four owl boxes on the hill and around the farmyard, and I’ve been giving them all a wide berth since the spring to avoid disturbing any of the occupants. But despite plenty of evidence that owls have… Continue reading

We took our hay in June, and the bales went into the rafters. It was a bumper crop, but it was hardly enough to fill the feed gap which yawns from November to April. In previous years, we’ve sprayed the freshly cut field with Nitrogen fertiliser. This eggs the grass on to grow again and… Continue reading

We shot the hill again, and in coming away from the higher ground, the gap of two weeks was clear to see. Now the asphodel is dry and red as a fox; the cowberries are thick and stem-bendingly red. High up in a distant bowl of ground, we found a hundred swallows hunting in the… Continue reading