Spawn

A day planting trees in the orchard, pruning older ones and cutting down overdeveloped willow - that is crowding out the orchids and purple moor grass in Moor Wood - as we steadily work on increasing the culm patch. The latter was incredibly hard work, the mud sucking at my wellies so that I needed all my strength to lift my feet as I dragged willow branches to the edges of the area we're clearing. At one point I sank up to the top of my wellies and had nothing to cling to to pull myself free. With a lot of toe wiggling, swearing and extraordinary wet sucking noises (made by the mud, not me) I freed myself.
In every ditch and puddle there are heaps of frog spawn. Do frogs get stuck in the mud?

Woodland nymph

There's been playing about in the woods the last few days. Time was getting short for coppicing so it rushed to the top of the list. It's too wet to take a vehicle down, so a barrow was piled with chainsaw, loppers, appropriate lubricants (chain oil not brandy), thick thornproof gloves, and the dogs were called and off we went.
On the way there were various distractions; snow-cracked prone willows had to be cut down to restore the pathways, and I oohed and aahed at the bubbling of the new tadpoles and the fresh flush of primroses.
This Green Woodcup (or Green Elfcup) caught my eye, as it always does. I am a stickler for picking up rogue bits of plastic and twine, so I always check out patches of unnatural colour. Only this is entirely natural, and a pleasure, not a pain.

The cows are getting it on

A young bull and his four girlfriends have come on a visit to give some of the fields the cattle grazing they need. As it gets dark you can hear him trying out his lungs to let the locals know that he has arrived.
He seems very calm and unruffled, taking his new surroundings and his companions as nothing less than his due.
Once the orchids and other wildflowers have gone to seed at the end of the summer, I will open the gate to the glade of purple moor grass in Moor Wood and they will curl their long tongues efficiently round the plants, avoiding the need for swaling this winter.

Swaling

There has been swaling. Because the culm hasn't been grazed by cattle this year and needs the thick thatching cleared to encourage fresh growth, a carefully controlled burn has played gently over about a quarter of the purple moor grass tufts in Moor Wood. The ground is very wet, and so romping flames are unlikely here, although on Dartmoor where the gorse is swaled to keep its spread under control, they have firemen on standby. Now, why didn't I think of that?

I'm officially wild....

The wood on the farm is now an official County Wildlife Site, "due to the presence of Culm grassland and wet woodland, both rare and declining habitats in Devon; although the areas are relatively small they are of sufficient quality and wildlife interest to meet the CWS criteria." So says Devon Biodiversity Records Centre.
I'm rather excited about this recognition plus having responsibility for managing the wood sympathetically, knowing that there are fabulous and rare species to be enjoyed within the farm itself, developing knowledge about the various species and the ooh aah factor. Especially the ooh aah factor. That happens when you count a dozen more orchids than in the previous season.
Four other sites across the farm that were also surveyed are "not currently of CWS standard, though with time and continued sympathetic management there is clearly the potential for them to improve further in quality and ecological value." So room for improvement then. I like a challenge.
If you want to hunt through the history of this process, click on the culm label at the bottom of this post.

Sharp sight and blurred vision

This morning, leaning into the wind, I called the llama to come and get his feed. Normally he waits for me by the gate but he was sheltering behind the high hedge and although he turned to look at me, wouldn't come. What with the howling weather, I was keeping my head down and my fleecy beanie had slipped partially over my eyes, and not being madly attentive to what was happening around me I was hoping to deliver a quick feed and achieve a swift getaway.
And then a scrawny and not particularly lithe dog fox lolloped across the field, heading away from the llama and the sheep and towards the pig paddock and the ducks. I skidded after him as a frightener, and although he kept away, his less than chubby state makes me think he'll be back.
Later, walking Fenn through the wood we disturbed a red deer stag with soft, velvety antlers, about a foot or so in length, about half their potential size. The stag bounced towards me and then veered off, easily reaching safety whilst Fenn panted by my side in excitement.
Coming out of the wood I noticed that one of the Torwen ewes was in the wrong field. She was quite happy, chomping on the rushes and new shoots of grass. If she had been one of the normal flock she would have been in a state of panic, separated from the others, running back and forth alongside the gate or pushing at the hedge to get back with the rest. But one of the Torwens, although otherwise healthy, is blind, and she seems happy enough although she spends some of her time away from the rest of the flock, usually eating close to the hedgelines out of the wind. As the ewe was so quiet and clearly not bothered it was obviously her. She must have dropped through the small gap in the hedge from the field above as she wandered along; the others wouldn't attempt this jump unless there was no grazing or hay in their field.
She was unhurt, and easily encouraged up to the gate and put back with the others. She might find her way back out tomorrow of course, but the sheep can't be moved elsewhere at the moment as the newly laid or coppiced hedges in their main fields need to be kept untouched by animal until the banks are earthed up and fences erected, all of which will happen in the next few weeks prior to lambing.
Careful watch will need to be taken with this ewe during lambing; she will be brought in early and checked regularly. If she fails to mother her lambs she will need to be culled. Otherwise, all that seems to be required is watching out for her particularly diligently to ensure she doesn't put herself in danger and that she gets plenty to eat.

In praise of damp

As there is nothing you can do about the weather you might as well revel in it and shrug off categorising it as good or bad. It just is.
The last three days have been very stormy; if I didn't know better I would think I was living in a crow's nest, what with all the creaking and moaning and shivering of timbers, shifting of slates and the whistling of the wind in the chimneys. The rain water is gushing down the lane, brown with clay, creating ephemeral waterfalls that dump their load behind the gathering of leaves and twigs blocking drains and ditches. The lunar landscape of the yard now resembles the Lake District as viewed from a passing satellite, and the field ditches are being swept clean by the deluge.
The sheep shelter behind the feeders and hedges and when the rain softens shake their fleece free of the weight of the water. The ducks churn their grassy daytime sward to sticky clay and quack at the wind. The geese splash in the impromptu stream that courses through the orchard.
The mill leat that runs the length of the north boundary of the farm has gone from trickle to flood, backing up where the wood sits alongside, carrying off the leaves that have collected below their parent trees. The ferns at this northern edge thrive on getting their feet wet, and they grow not just in the crevices at the foot of the trees but high up in the canopy alongside mosses and lichens, a whole ecosystem of green dampness. It is not too hard a leap to imagine Moor Wood as an underwater world, the surface above the tree tops, me and the dogs picking about on the water's bed admiring the whorled and fantastically patterned plant exotica; fungi for coral, moss for seaweed, frogs for fish.

Apologies for the poor quality picture - it was getting dark and raining for Devon.

Friday fungus

An hour's walk in Moor Wood with Fenn on a hunt for the mass of fly agarics that appeared last year was unsuccessful; perhaps they'll emerge later in the season. But there was no shortage of life among the mould and the damp.