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?

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.

Are reptiles taking over the farm?

What with Hard-hattie making an impromptu appearance, I thought that would be it on the reptile front, but no. Zigzagging through the culm, trying to avoid the clumps of regenerating purple moor grass, I froze.
Sliding swiftly away from me was a thick, scaled, chevroned, slithering length of snake. Shivering with more fear than excitement, I blinked and it was gone.
It's so hard, without seeing the head, to know if it was a grass snake or an adder, but those chevrons were so marked, that I think it might have been an adder. And I was wearing sandals and shorts. Oh my.
(And no, I didn't hang around long enough to take a photo; I whistled my way to the edge of the culm and took my leave).

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.

Lookering

Not a word many people are familiar with, lookering is the art (or is it a science?) of keeping a look out for other people's livestock; checking for ailments, lack of water or grazing, and knowing when to alert the owner. If a farmer keeps their cattle on someone else's land and has agreed that the landowner will peer at the animals daily, they know their beasts are getting a regular once-over from someone with a bit of nous, so don't need to visit the site so often, particularly if it is some distance away from their own land.
So today a drive through some unknown local lanes to a course on conservation grazing run by the Devon Wildlife Trust. It wasn't the lookering I was specifically interested in, but the chance to find out something, in knowledgeable company, about caring for cattle. A gentle way in to test my interest and potential commitment to keeping a few of my own and to keep the culm in good order. When the cob barn is restored it could house a number of cattle over winter, and if that is just a year or so away, planning and thinking is needed.
After a morning of discussion and learning on topics as beautifully named as zoonoses, cudding, bulling and locomotion (nought to do with Kylie and everything to do with movement) we went to see some real Devon Ruby cattle. They were on a very steep pasture and came to their owner in response to a waving of hay. One was put into the cattle crush for a few minutes so we could take a look at handling techniques and get a close-up of the signs of good health.
Glorious animals, the most rich of chestnuts - permanently autumnal - with a thick furry coat which makes them very hardy. They are not a large breed but are still enormous to someone only familiar with sheep. I was most enamoured. I need to find out more.

The results are in...

...and we have more species than I can count. Well I could count them but fingers and toes would be needed from several participants and I am sitting here with just dogs for company and they won't keep still. The Devon Biodiversity Records Centre survey records have been compiled and there are more Latin names and geological terminology being bandied about than have passed before my eyes to date, although perhaps I was asleep at that point in geography lessons. The words are sonorous and serious and have a grandeur that moves you beyond the soil conditions and bring vividly to mind the layers leading to the earth's core and a sense of prehistory. Carboniferous, Namurian, Crackington Formation, Pleistocene. All of it under my feet.
Three sites across the farm were surveyed, with two of them including the Culm qualifying for consideration as County Wildlife Sites. The Culm and its surrounding wood host 80 species including twelve Ancient Woodland Indicator species: Hard-fern, Remote Sedge, Wood-sedge, Creeping Soft-grass, Bluebell, Holly, Yellow Pimpernel, Three-nerved Sandwort, Wood Sorrel, Primrose, Red Currant and Field-rose. With my natural interest in the edible, the discovery of the wild red currant was a thrill - I had no idea they occurred in woodland, and daftly
visualised the fruit bushes as garden centre specials, cultivated within an inch of their glossy plant lives. The chance of tasting a currant before the dormice get their nibblers round them is small. I might put up a notice asking them to leave me a sample.

Beasties of the culm

Today was culm survey day, and we also surveyed the wood and the four most interesting fields on the farm. Interesting from a species point of view rather than because they might contain a leprechaun, a pot of gold or the missing hammer. It has been a very wet day. Wellies up to the armpits would have been a boon. As it is, my knees are wet, having been exposed between cagoule hem and wellington boot top. The knees were not naked, but might as well have been for all the good my trousers did.
I say "we" but actually I just trailed the professional, asking daft questions and trying not to squash anything rarer than a rarebit. For today (but possibly not by next week) I know the difference between Meadowsweet and Common marsh-bedstraw, and that having a flock of ewes barge their way unasked into the woodland even for an hour or two means that the 24 orchids previously counted will dwindle for this season at least to about half a dozen, even though there is no permanent damage. It is possible that some of the areas will become County Wildlife Sites, but I don't think a visit from Bill Oddie is implied in this designation.
Next job of the day is to measure the pigs to see if they are ready for the butcher. You use a piece of twine to measure them from neck to tail and round the chest and then do some magic formula thingy. Wrapping string round a pig is not easy at any time. It is very difficult when the ground is liquid chocolate. I may report back. On the other hand I might just need a bath.

P.S. For those who liked my woodpecker post, you'll be pleased to know that three red-capped juveniles have been raised and are now fully fledged, pecking each other in their eagerness to dominate the peanuts. The cats are on notice.

The photo is of a Six-spot Burnet Moth.

The culm

I have mentioned culm a few times, and mountainear has asked me to explain what I mean by the term. I will try my best; just remember that I am no ecologist and had no idea what it was myself two years ago.

The Culm is an area of North and West Devon. It is characterised by "an undulating, open, remote rural landscape, sparsely wooded and dominated by livestock farming. Intricate steep valley systems form rolling ridges feeding into wider major river valleys. Steep rugged coastline, much of which falls within the North Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty."
So that's The Culm. Which is not the same as culm grassland. Culm grassland is found in The Culm area and is Purple Moor-grass and rush pasture that is home to many interesting and rare species of plant and animal life. You find Purple Moor-grass on poorly drained, usually acid soils with high rainfall, which explains its ubiquity in Ireland, and until recent years in Devon before much of it had been drained and ploughed. Because there is considerably less of it now than there used to be, Defra and Natural England are trying to encourage its maintenance, re-creation and restoration. Why do they want to maintain this shrinking landscape? There are a huge number of plant species in addition to the Purple-Moor grass in these patches of land, including wonderfully named plants such as Bog asphodel, Bugle, Devil's-bit scabious, Hemp-agrimony, Lesser water-parsnip, Ragged-robin, Southern Marsh and Heath Spotted Orchids, Sneezewort and Whorled caraway, to name a few. These plants support some of the loveliest and increasingly rarest of critters. Curlews and Reed Bunting love this type of landscape, Kestrels and Barn Owls hunt over culm where voles are to be found, Marbled White and Marsh Fritillary butterflies thrive here as does the Narrow-bordered Bee Hawk-moth.
To maintain the grassland for these diminishing species you need to have the grass grazed by cattle at the right time of year - summer and autumn, or in January careful swaling of the dry thatch that is formed by the Purple Moor-grass, to encourage new growth in spring.
On the farm there is a patch of culm grassland that is just over an acre, a large bow-tie (or as I prefer to think of it, dog-bone) shaped glade surrounded by woodland. It has been fenced so that access to it by sheep and cattle can be controlled, and in summer it is incredibly difficult to walk through. It is thigh-high and tussocky and you have to wade through it and be very careful where you place your foot to avoid twisted ankles and squashing the orchids. Deer hide in the long grass and I long to come across a fawn.
The Devon Wildlife Trust think this small patch is bursting with interesting species and want to do a full survey. I can't wait.
Here endeth the lesson.

Walking the dogs

Mightily peeved at nature since scooping the remains of the baby nuthatch off the grass this morning. Need a walk to get the brain back on forward motion. We head across the farm to the wood. There is a full size roe deer, bouncing through the long grass. The dogs pretend to pursue but turn back at my call, and we plunge into the thigh high purple moor grass in the patch of culm. I count 24 orchids, a fluttering of butterflies, Bird's Foot Trefoil that will soon show its flowers, in fact all kinds of everything. I feel the stress drain out of me, literally through my feet into the boggy patches of watermint. Perhaps it will make the plants grow even more lush.