I Think It Might Be Autumn

The weather weird-ing continues, one stormy night followed by a day of rain and showers and the daily temperature has dropped by around 12C.  The usual couple of months where the temperature slowly ramps up in spring and then descends in autumn haven’t happened this year which is a great pity as it is those months when most of the outside work gets done.  Never mind, there is always next year

The harvest this year is much less than usual at my place; the cold spring along with the wet early part of summer which then over a couple of days turned to an extremely hot summer with no rain meant not many pollinators made it to my place and the plants themselves struggled to grow.  However in august things started growing so I had some fresh vegetables.

The nectarines were rather small but tasty.  The ones in the basket above are the white fleshed type.  The yellow fleshed ones, which are generally sweeter, only had 2 fruits that made it through to somewhere near ripening and they were both eaten by the hornets before they were ready to harvest.

The peaches though did reasonably well. 

Most of these were knocked off by the wind but I don’t leave the peaches on the tree until soft, again because of the hornets, wasps and ants.  As soon as they start to go yellow, I go through the tree and give each one a gentle twist and take off those that basically come away in my hand.  They are still hard but I found this way of ripening them somewhere on the Internet and it works better than any other method I’ve used.  The peaches are laid out on a cotton cloth and covered loosely with another one.  I check them every couple of days and remove any that are starting to go off but on the whole they soften ready for eating.

This year it was the early flowering almond that got the best of the weather.  Usually it doesn’t produce much as normally it gets the worse weather.  I don’t have anywhere near as many almonds as last year but that will make these even more tasty. 

The wild hazel trees have struggled too.  Most of the hazelnuts above I think are empty – they don’t fall out of their cases – but I will open them just the same until I convince myself that my theory works.

I lifted the shallots a few weeks ago and they hadn’t produced many large bulbs.  I’ve used a few but the majority will be going back in the ground for next year.

With the changing of the climate I think that saving your own seed is going to become more important to ensure that the plants you grow can flourish in your particular environment.  Lets just hope we can stop the EU legislators from banning us from saving and using our own seed so we have to fill the coffers of the mega companies.

The bees are still here too!

The swarm has probably quadrupled in size over the summer so I’m hopeful there will be enough of them to survive the winter; there needs to be a big enough group to generate enough heat to keep them warm and alive through winter.  However, I don’t think they have enough honey so I’ve not taken any for myself and have started feeding them some heavy syrup.  I will keep feeding them this syrup for a couple of weeks as I think they still have time to convert it to honey.  If however the weather looks like it is going to degrade further I’ll have to stop and change to fondant. 

Today though they were out and working and were bringing in a lot of pollen. 

Yesterday when I checked them, I also fitted the mouseguard as part of the winter preparation.  Again the bees were very patient with me despite me faffing about and intermittently closing off the entrance while I tried to get the height of the guard right.  Note to self, fit the mouseguard before filling with bees next time!

They adapted to the mouseguard really quickly and it will serve a double purpose.  Not only should it stop any mice from entering and building a nest to overwinter in the warmth of the hive but it also makes the entrance more defendable.  That point was brought home while I was doing my hive check. 

I’d just opened up the hive when I noticed a hornet taking rather a lot of interest in the bees that were on the crown boards I’d taken off.  Thankfully it was the European hornet and not the Asiatic.  I gave it a bit of a dousing with the water spray and it moved off.  About a thirty seconds later I realised it had returned.  I’d not seen it come back but a couple of the guard bees had wrestled it to the ground and were battling to kill it.  My boot came down rather heavily as I didn’t want there to be any chance of it going back to its nest and telling the others.

Stardate 8th - 17th May 2009

I’ve been trying to leave some areas around the farm to naturalise a bit and was pleased to find a trio of orchids flowering beside the pond.



I was then overjoyed to find this bee orchid that flowered under the cherry tree that had been blown over in the January 2009 storm.



I then went down to where I’ve been protecting some orchids that were growing in a ditch by the road and was really pleased that so many more had flowered this year. From 5 the first year, I counted 25 this year. I think I managed to get 6 in this shot:-


The commune cut the verges and went round most of the orchids but I did find the following that had been cut.

Volunteer apricot

Stardate 22nd April & 18th June

At the edge of my patio, right in front of my front door there is one of the concrete electricity posts, (although for how long I don’t know as EDF are removing it sometime), and between it and the concrete patio has grown a bush that I’ve tried unsuccessfully to remove over the last 2 years. It has only produced some rather boring leaves, no flowers, no autumn colour, totally boring. I can’t get at it to dig out and by the time it is in leaf, so is everything around it so spraying is out of the question.

I’d resolved this year to deal with it and it must have sensed its imminent demise because this spring it gave me some beautiful scented blossoms; which after a few weeks turned into these.


A couple of months later and I had:-


They tasted divine, I had most of them fresh but I also have a few in alcohol and a lovely large apricot flan in the freezer for when summer is only a past thought.
My next task will be to try and save it when they come to take away the concrete post!

Mouse Damage

Stardate 22nd April


I had my early courgettes and squashes germinating on the kitchen windowsill. Obviously someone thought it was a self-serve buffet. Mice in the kitchen are a no-no so it was time to get the trap out.

5 mice later and there is no further sign of any mice. It’s sad to have to use a killer trap but 4 cats and a humane trap weren’t catching any of the mice.

Lychees And Dates

Stardate 22nd April

And what was I eating over Christmas?


It was lychees and dates.

The Woodland - Phase 2

It was a lovely Sunday afternoon and having just signed up again for the chasse meal – gosh the year has passed fast – I thought I had better do some work. I know way back I decided to try and take time out on Sundays but at this time of the year there is just so much to do.


I’d already sorted out the trees required for the first two rows and combined with the ploughed ground it only took a couple of hours to plant the two rows. It was a very pleasant way to spend the afternoon out in the fresh air and sunshine.

While moving some of the hazel trees I noticed that along with the wonderful catkins there were also the female flowers; so tiny that you could easily miss them, it's the little red blob on the left of the stem.

Returning to the chasse dinner I've just read this version from Living the Dream, just to give another viewpoint - I love the bambi and babe idea.

Update For First Week in February

This week has thankfully been a bit less traumatic, I’m still waiting for the results of the autopsy on Theo (autopsy is used for animals here in France) but Leah visited on Thursday and has given me some general pointers. So the alpacas will be out in their field as soon as possible and a couple of them need a tooth trim. The hay is not bad but not good either. I cut it a bit late because of the wet weather last year and that means it’s not as rich as early cut hay. No one round here got any early cut hay, but hopefully this year will be better and I’m aiming for a cut in May.

There have been chicken things too this week. Sadly sick-chick finally succumbed to whatever was here problem. She was the one who had the three maggot attacks last year. She seemed happy enough but never really recovered. Over the last few days of her life I noticed her tail was down quite a bit and an extra dose of wormer didn’t do the trick this time.

Egg-wise, I was really chuffed when the hens started laying after the shortest day but they stopped after the storm. I was a bit miffed at this as I was just getting back into the swing of having plenty of fresh eggs. Then on Thursday I noticed that the young hen was missing when I was feeding them and I wondered if a fox had been round. I carried on working round the house and then just in the time it took to turn round I noticed another of the hens had gone missing and not a fox in sight.

I then spotted her under a log stack that sent me looking for the other hen. I eventually spotted her under the branches of the felled tree round the back of the house. Once they were both out and about again I checked the two spots and was rewarded by 2 eggs under the logs and 13 under the branches. They’ve only been laying outside for a week so I quickly gathered the egg and took them inside to test them in a bowl of water. All of them sat at the bottom of the bowl, so eggs are back on the menu here.

On Wednesday I noticed a group of cranes flying over, four weeks earlier than last year. Well I think they are earlier, it might just be that I’m outside earlier than last year and so able to see them. Still it’s another harbinger of spring along with the first of my crocuses flowering. They are a little late but since I only put them in the ground Oct/Nov I think they’ve done really well. I’m now waiting for the snowdrops but they might take until next year to flower.

A Quiet Wednesday

It didn’t rain today but after the 17mm we had yesterday the ground was far to wet to work today. The sky also remained overcast all day so it became a day of bits and pieces mainly indoors.

While letting out the chickens this morning I glanced over to my saffron bed and here it is…my very first home-grown saffron. It looks like I’ll double the quantity tomorrow too! While it might be one of the most expensive items by weight around at the moment, I don’t think I’ll be making my fortune just yet.


Later on in the day I was on my way back to the chickens to give them some grain and found this little chap in the grass.



He was only 15cm, 6 inches long at the most, about the same size as the hedgehog I saw last year. I’m wondering now if the hedgehogs are a smaller variety here than in the UK or if I’ve seen juvenile ones each time. Once he’d noticed me photographing him, he headed off across the flowerbeds towards the pile of weeds for burning. As you can see, Patches was curious but she kept her distance so I suspect she’s had a prickled nose before now.


While I love my bonfires, I never just set light to a heap of stuff I’ve left around. I always start a new heap to burn so I don’t inadvertently roast one of these delightful slug catchers. I headed him off and placed him under the bay tree behind the house, whether he will hibernate in the leaves there or head back to the burning pile, I’ll find out when I have the next bonfire. In the meantime I must dig out my hedgehog book and see if there are any ideas for making somewhere for him to hibernate that doesn’t require me doing any construction work as I just don’t have time at the moment.

The rest of the day was spent doing the little things like putting bolts on doors and trying to re-fit the curtain pole on my bedroom. The walls here are a mixture of rubble, breezeblock, terracotta block and bad plaster and one of the rawlplugs holding up the curtain pole had pulled out of the wall taking a rather large piece of plaster with it. So while the filler was setting I even managed a trip to the tip to empty my trailer of all the rubbish in it. All in all a quiet but satisfying day.

Back From The Twilight Zone

As quickly as my lethargy descended it has evaporated, life has started again. So what’s happening, well not much over the last month but the last three days have been busy.

Friday was day one of the recovered me and I set about finishing some to the things I’d started over the last few weeks but been unable to do. So the lawn has finally been mown and with the grass collector on as well for the first time this year. It's been on my to do list for ages and with the leaves now falling I wanted to add the mix of leaves and grass to the compost bin. At the beginning of the week I could only manage a couple of rows before having to give up, Friday there was no stopping me.

After the lawn I decided to get the rotivator out and make a start on the area Sue and I had cleared. After that I thought I should stop and make sure I didn't overdo it.

Yesterday was also a full day although I spent most of it sitting down and reading a book. Ann had her 'car boot in the garden' sale to raise fund for the cats she looks after. I help by manning the stalls and helping with the putting away – it’s a nice way to spend the day, meeting other people and reading when there are breaks.

So round to today when I was looking forward to a lie in but was rudely awaken by the sound of the hunting dogs close by the house. A lot of the dogs are not well controlled and I fear for the cats, chickens and alpacas so it was dressing gown on and outside to see exactly where they were and which direction they were going.

Earlier in the week I took a walk down the garden towards the pond and around the ‘wood’ field, leading to the picture at the top of the post. In the basket are the last tomatoes of this year. I then found a couple of mushrooms lurking in the field below the small alpaca paddock. I was hoping a light shower of rain the other evening would have persuaded some more to appear but sadly not. I also found some rosehips and after my double cold I am going to prepare some rosehip syrup to see me through the winter, although I think I will have to go on some walks with Ann to find a sufficient supply of the hips.

After doing nothing all summer, my mangetout peas have finally bloomed and I’ve just started picking some as the first ground frosts are occurring. In a similar vein my cape gooseberries bloomed too. The fruit is still green and I’m not convinced they will ripen but I’m really hoping some will.

Back to today, I decided to add a little alpaca manure to the ground I’d been rotivating. The soil itself is reasonably fertile but when I lifted the potatoes, which I’d planted on a shallow bed of the droppings the worms had loved the addition and the soil texture had improved. Digging out the old manure heap I discovered it was full of mycelium and beneath the couch grass that had covered the heap I found these.

I’m hoping that I will be able to get a good crop of mushrooms next year now that I know they will grow here and where to look.

Finally for tonight, a picture of Sick Chick. She’s still looking OK but I will be checking her again tomorrow or Tuesday. Her tail is still up and she’s moving round happily with the others and her diarrhoea has stopped as well. I still think she will have at least another maggot attack before the hole is fully healed but I am far more hopeful about her long-term prospects. She’s the chicken in the foreground.

The Joys of Living Here

Take 2, let's hope Blogger doesn't screw it up again!

Despite the trials and tribulations of living here – no customer service, intermittent water, double guessing the weather etc. being here more than compensates.

Turning the hay yesterday I was treated to an aerial flying display by a flock of swallows as they swooped across the field all around the tractor to feast on the insects I disturbed. Their aerobatics were amazing; I kept expecting a collision as the dived, turned and generally put on an incredible flying display.

Cutting the swathe and then turning it for the first time disturbed a whole new lot of insects. Most numerous were the grasshoppers; they were all sizes and colours, brown, green, stripy and ranging from about half a centimetre in length to a whopping 5 or 6 centimetre one that’s body was at least as thick as my index finger.

There were also the locusts; bright green and looking like white fairies as they flew away. There were a lot of those and I almost stopped looking at them but then one of them dropped back to earth right next to the tractor and I realised that not all of what I though were locust were actually locusts; they were praying mantises.

I’d seen one 15-cm/6-inch brown one at the end of last summer but nothing since then. G had spotted a small green one when distributing the fencing posts and I had spotted another one when ploughing, but the long grass down by the pond was full of them. All that I saw were green and ranged in size from a couple of centimetres to 6 or 7 centimeters.

Having turned the hay I took a walk around the pond, the moor hens ducked away under the brambles and I could hear the coypu humming in its den. The butterflies, blue, brown, white, yellow, red admirals and peacocks all enjoying the swathe of thistles I’d left, flitted around far to fast and too far away for me to capture on the camera. I did have a go at photographing one of the many yellow and brown spiders I’ve seen this year – a bit out of focus as my little camera doesn’t do close-ups at all well. I’d seen quite a few of these running off as I cut the grass and they get quite large, the abdomen being over a centimetre long and around 3 cm overall including the legs, but walking round I found them on their webs. The first thing I noticed was the white zigzag on the web, I’ve not yet had the time to find out what they are but my guess is that as well as using the web, they might drop onto insects using the zigzag silk as a sort of bungee.

The pond has also been a focal point for hundreds of dragonflies and damselflies. There have been the azure blue and red damselflies black, brown, green and yellow striped, red and dark blue dragonflies. This, again out of focus (I’m still working out how to justify a new camera just for blog pictures), is one of the red dragonflies, a common darter I think.

Final 2 pictures are the view from down by the pond. The first is the marsh area that leads onto the hayfield that curves out of site below the sunflower field in the distance.

This is looking the other way down my ‘hidden’ valley.

It’s really not hard to put up with some trials and tribulations when this is the reward.

Elderflower Time

Time with A is slipping by really fast, catching up with all he’s been doing over the last year and discussing the options he’s hoping to take next year but we’ve still been getting on with a few things. A couple of the wall units for the kitchen are now built but I didn’t have suitable screws and plugs to put them up. So today was a trip to get them that we combined with a quick visit to the place selling the baler. The baler is there and it looks fine, a bit of paint worn off as you would expect with used farm equipment but the rest looks fine needing nothing more really than making sure all relevant pieces are oiled and greased. It is being delivered tomorrow along with the ‘turning over’ thing. He also thinks he will have a suitable cutter next week too so hay making here I come.

Today was dry and sunny so an ideal day to pick the elderflowers for elderflower cordial. I made some last year using a recipe from Self Sufficientish and it was really nice. It uses Citric Acid, which you now need to ask for at chemists in the UK since drug addicts now apparently use it. I think it’s the same here too; so I eventually plucked up courage last year and went into a chemist over in the Lot and eventually came out with 90 grams of the stuff. When I need some more I’ll feel a lot more confident going into my local chemist and asking now.

The bush, there is only one in my hedgerow, is flowering prolifically this year so I decided to pick with A’s help (he’s a lot taller than me – well all my children are and have been since their early teens), a few more flower heads and give Hedgewizard’s recipe for elderflower champagne a go. There are still plenty of flower heads left plus some still to flower so there should also be lots of elderberries too this year.

Working on the PAC

It’s PAC time here in France (the Politique agricole commune, otherwise known in the UK as the Common Agricultural Policy) the deadline for returning the forms is Thursday and mine are still to be filed. Today was designated PAC day and having spent the morning trying to decipher the forms I gave up and decided a trip to the agriculture department was the only option. So around an hour later I’m at the department in Agen and this is the sight that greets me.

I knew about the holiday on the 1^st of May, I knew about the holiday on the 8^th of May, what I didn’t know about was the holiday today! I did get an inkling before I got to the building; the car park by the river was just about empty but that wasn’t too strange as it’s usually full of students cars and I thought that they might still be on holiday, but when I climbed the steps up to the road outside the offices and there wasn’t a single car shoehorned into every available parking space I knew I was onto a loser. So a return trip is planned for tomorrow.

The PAC took up most of the day apart from the usual animal things. Mr Tibbs is making himself at home although he is still a little nervous.

I’d just finished the alpacas and was wondering which bit of the garden to do next when a really strong gust of wind hit the house and continued. The sky darkened over the nearby town and it was just possible to hear the thunder as it started to roll in. Gardening was off the list for the rest of the evening.

I just had time to grab a quick, out of focus, picture of these. My little camera isn’t really good at close ups and in fact the normal setting is better than the close up setting.

This little group of orchids is growing on the edge of the ditch that runs along the side of the road to my farm. I’d seen one flower spike last year so went looking for the leaves earlier this year to mark the spot and hopefully save it from the commune grass cutter that cuts all the verges and clears the ditches. This year, due to the weather, very little verge cutting has been done and as a result of this I’ve found 10 flower spikes this year. Six are on the road side of the ditch and will be mown so I’m contemplating using the bulb planter to remove them and replant them onto my side of the ditch near these where they wont be mown down.

The final picture tonight is my pudding; the first 3 strawberries from the pots on the patio. I’ve only 6 plants and they were in a poor shape having been neglected last year. They really appreciated being re-potted a few weeks ago and immediately flowered. I won’t have a glut of strawberries but they should tide me over until the alpine strawberries are ready. That won’t be long as they are a mass of flowers at the moment.

I had these sliced and sprinkled with a little lavender sugar and a dollop of crème fraiche – heaven.

Chop, Chop

A back post today as I was just too tired last night. The day was spent grass cutting; not the pasture field as I gave it another day to try and dry out. By the end of the day it was a little dryer but still squelchy in places. I gave the bits of grass a good tug and they are very firmly rooted now so it should be able to be cut and I’ll just hope the tractor tyres don’t rut the field. When I went for my walk across the field in the evening I was accompanied again, this time by Patches and Hazel. Hazel is quite nervous and calls out if she gets separated from me and then races to catch up and stay near me but Patches just walks along. They always appreciate me stopping and letting them catch up and really enjoy exploring through the long grass.

Not doing the pasture field didn’t mean no grass cutting, there was plenty more to do, this is my ‘lawn’. The grass, there is some in there somewhere, (this is near the bird feeder so has a much higher proportion of other growths, elsewhere it’s moss), was just too long and lush for the mower so it was time for the trusty scythe which made short work of the area.

While that area was drying I scythed down the edge of the new vegetable patch where no mower can reach and then mowed the garden extension with the ride-on mower. After that it was back up to the lawn. I’ve tried mowing that with the ride-on but with all the close planted trees and the orchids I’m leaving to grow it was far to difficult so that was done with the walk-behind mower.

The dividing line between the lawn and the garden extension is a rough area of ground that has daffodils and narcissi in it. I was hoping to leave the leaves growing a bit longer to feed the bulbs for next year but there were far too many weeds there so that area was scythed too. Walking along using the scythe is quite relaxing and I find it less strain than using a strimmer. The other advantage is that you don’t need to wear eye or ear protection, both of which I find really uncomfortable in the heat. This is one of the weeds, a type of vetch – no book to hand to identify it at the moment. I have already seen a few ladybirds and hoverflies this year so I hope the weather stays fair so they can eat this lot.

I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year getting a good edge on the scythe but it still doesn’t cut how I would like along the whole length of the blade. Finally today I realised why and it’s all down to simple geometry. The sharpening stone I use is about 10 inches long. I keep the angle of the stone against the blade very low to get a fine edge. The blade has a lip round the back to give rigidity and as you can see the depth of the blade diminishes from one side to the other.. Because the stone is long I was lifting it to clear the ridge, the closer the ridge to the front of the blade, the more I had to lift the stone and the greater the angle I was grinding the edge. The greater the angle of the edge, the blunter the edge. The solution was to use a half stone which I can use in front of the ridge. It will take a while but I should eventually get the fore part of the blade as razor sharp as the rear.

No News is Good News

So what have I been doing the last few days? Well after my Dordogne trip on Wednesday, I’d come home to find a note on the doorstep from my friends S & C who were down for a week with C’s brother M. As I’d been out they had invited me round for after dinner drinks, or in my case, after locking up the chickens drinks to catch up on news. It was a lovely end to a very enjoyable day.

Thursday I was out gallivanting again, this time to the Lot where another friend, SD, was holidaying and had invited me for lunch. I’d met SD on an alpaca judges training day back in the UK before I’d come out here. We had a wonderful time talking about alpacas, home schooling and generally putting the world to rights. So good that we had no idea of the time until the church bells started ringing out for 7 pm and I had to set off back in order to feed the alpacas. Before leaving though, SD let me have some of the saxifrages and sempervivums she had in her garden for me to propagate. I have a vague idea of planting a living roof sometime in the future and am going to start growing some plugs.

Friday was the day my car went to the garage to get the ABS sensor fixed. The sensor had decided to start working again on the way back from C & S’s and didn’t come on once on the trip over to SD, but I wasn’t going to risk having it fail again as you can guarantee it would fail at the most critical moment. I’d arranged for C, S & M to come over and see how the work was progressing in the kitchen and when they telephoned to confirm a time I was able to forewarn them that their help was going to be required.

As I said in the earlier post, all the screws were out between the sink and the corner unit. I spent quite a while Friday morning trying to get the corner unit out. First I found yet another screw holding the two units together but after removing that, the two were definitely independent. I tried sliding it out, nothing happened. I got a torch and looked under the unit; a waste pipe had been plumbed in round one of the legs of the corner unit and there was no way I could lift it out – a job for C & M.

To cut a long story a bit shorter, C & M couldn’t lift it either, the pipe had been put in so tightly the leg wouldn’t pass through the gap and had to be dismantled. Even so, where the electric point for the cooker and the tap for the dishwasher had been put, stopped the unit from being pulled out. Eventually they took a hammer to the side of the unit and got it off, I’d glued it but not with loads of glue, just a bit to act more like loctite.

The shelf was then put in, with required cut-out to miss the plumbing and electrics and the unit side re-assembled.

Did I panic during this; well I was a bit worried until S told me that M was a kitchen fitter by trade!

So I am now on the next bit, not progressing as fast as I thought I would. I’ve not got pre-formed work surfaces but a sort of compressed chipboard onto which I will put the tiles I’m going to use as the work surface. M suggested that 2 coats of gloss paint would be an excellent idea to protect the chipboard around the sink unit from absorbing any spilt water and then disintegrating.

After I’ve done that, I’ll do my best to squidge silicon sealant into every gap possible and then I’ll get on with cutting the worktops for the other units. It might be taking a bit of time, but I’m getting there, so many, many thanks to C, M & S, hopefully by the time you are back again I’ll have a complete kitchen to show you.

Cherry Blossom Time

The forecast rain didn’t materialise today and instead we had a lovely sunny spring day. I got another tank full and a half of spraying done but have now used up all the herbicide. Rather than get another bottle and have it lying around only part used I’ve decided to leave the final strip of land and rely on weeding that by hand. It’s about 100 meters by a meter to a meter and a half but I think it will be doable. I then finished off the day by making a start on weeding the first of the herb beds.

The next trees in the succession of blossom in the garden have come into their own, the sweet cherries. This is the sweet cherry on the front lawn; there is another one in the chicken enclosure at the rear of the house. The sour cherries bloomed a couple of weeks ago and are now looking decidedly green, as the leaves are all appearing.

Next up will I think be the apple blossom, it’s already showing large buds just waiting to open. After that I think it will be the quince, not the ornamental but the tree quince. I’m really looking forward to that as the quince flower is really pretty and the poor tree had such a hard time of it last year sitting in a pot on my patio.

I mentioned in the last post that I’d been making starters for a meal and completely forgot I’d taken a photograph. I’d decided on savoury tartlets using home grown or home made where I could. So we had spinach and goat cheese, red onions caramelised with a little honey and a sort of quiche Lorraine made from my home salted pork and of course lovely eggs courtesy of my Lacey Ladies.

Tomorrow I should be back working on Regis’s orchard but rain is again forecast, this time with 80% probability rather than the 20% of today, so we shall see

A Walk Around the Farm

I took advantage of a break in the showers to don my wellies and coat and take a wander around a couple of my fields. As I set off to look at the trees I’ve planted, I first go past the pond. I’d already spooked the heron as soon as I left the house, they have amazing eyesight, but the coypu hadn’t really noticed me. As I approached he moved out from the overhang at one side of the pond and swam to the middle. He then started humming. Yes coypu hum, it’s a much lower and more reverberation hum than the alpacas. The first time I heard it, they were in their underwater tunnel and I thought it was snoring. Using the trunk of one of the poplars at the edge of toe pond as a screen I was able to approach right up to the waters edge and poke just the camera round the tree without frightening it.

I then set off up the field, which as you can see is still unmown from last autumn. It’s had one and a half years uncultivated and it’s interesting seeing what has started to re-colonise it.

First up are dense mats of yet more couch grass and myriads of thistles. Considering how all the fields here are well and truly sprayed with weedkiller each year, and my fields are at least half a kilometre from any roads, I’m not expecting to have a flower meadow overnight. But here are some of the things I found.

There are lots of teasels, all of them the unhooked variety as far as I could tell last year. These are mainly round the pond, I would think that’s because the area round the pond hasn’t been cultivated to the edge – there is a possibility of collapse with the coypu tunnels – giving time for the biennial to develop.

Here Cid is helping to point out what look like a member of the hypericum family.

There are also large patches of this pretty plant, I think it’s Crosswort.

Bordering the ditch between my field and my neighbours wood is this white Comfrey, either the tuberous or the bulbous, I’ve not dug any up to see which it is.

Further up the field still and there is a large patch of Burdock. I’m wondering how easy it is to make homemade Dandelion and Burdock as I have more than enough dandelions as well.

This view is of the top of the field where I have a wonderfully large nettle patch. Up here it is nicely out of the way so it will stay to provide not only nettle soup for me but also a food source for the tortoiseshell, peacock and red admiral butterflies.

The mint here confirms the water retaining properties of the clay based soil round here. In fact, even though there is a reasonable slope on this field, there were places where I was in danger of sliding down the slope, even though it hadn’t rained for about a day.

From the wood field I cut across to the wheat field. As you can see, I was not alone. Cid is nearly always with me on these walks but this was the first time Hazel had come along. She has the most pitiful meow going and she would drop behind when something caught her attention only to start calling and then race up to be right behind me.

Right at the furthest point of the wheat field, I found this growing by the ditch. I’d seen it on a previous walk and had gone back to see if it had grown enough to let me identify it. The slugs have had a bit of a go at it but I no longer think it’s an orchid, which is what I thought a couple of weeks ago when it was just emerging. I now think it looks a bit like a lily but how a lily got to be here – this is about the furthest point you can get from mine and all the surrounding houses.

A walk back across the wheat field was quite instructive. The soil changes frequently across the field, some places loamy, some much more clayey and some very sandy. The change in soil is highlighted by marked differences in the height of the wheat. In places it is a good 6 inches tall while in others it is barely 2 inches, but throughout, the seeds of last years sunflowers are germination like mad.

We all then crossed to the paddock field where the grass is coming along nicely. In places there are concentrations of the less desirable weeds, thistles and rape but generally it is looking quite good. I would like the soil to dry out well so that I can take the topper through there to deal with the less desirable weeds and encourage the grass to branch a bit more.

On the way back up the drive I spotted more of the barbed wire I found partly buried in the grass and the ditch. It’s now out and I haven’t spotted any more. I really dislike the stuff but the rose pruning gloves I’ve got did a really good job on protecting my hand from the spikes.