Rural Life

Autumn harvests and who gets what?

First off, an apology - I was unable to do this blog yesterday as the Typepad system was down for renovation (always worrying), but today it is back, so here goes!

We have had rain - not the torrential amounts seen down south, but enough to encourage some things to really put on a spurt - the red cabbages have huge leaves, the size of dinner plates, so I am hoping that we will soon see a heart developing.  Of course, I ask why I only bought 3 plants, but previous attempts have been disappointing at best.  The cauliflowers are also looking quite fine, so I hope for a few decent heads in the spring.  The agony of trying to grow a decent cauliflower is why they should be expensive in the shops!

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The chillies I set off from seed in the late spring are now covered in ripening fruits and I have already frozen 30 or so, which should deal with our need for spicy curry and chilli con carne for a year.  This time I grew two varieties, cayenne - the long thin ones, possibly from French Guyana, but a good solid favourite, and Jalopeno thanks to a free packet of seeds from Kitchen Garden magazine and probably about 5 years ago (they no longer provide seeds to European subscribers, so I no longer subscribe).  These have been a bit of a revelation, at least in the kitchen.  They take longer to ripen but the fruits are reliably hot and a bit juicier and plumper than the cayennes.  I may have to try to save seed for next year!

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The rain has also brought on the autumn flowers nicely and it was a real treat to see how the cyclamen in the One Acre Wood are starting to spread.  It seems to take four or five years for a cyclamen corm to go from a seed that produces a small leaf or two, to one that can support one or more flowers, and this patch have been tantalising in that I seem to have waited well over four years for these ones to flower, but now they have!  A real joy!

Autumn is also the time of nuts.  October 1st is generally the official start of the walnut harvest, as ancient wisdom says that those that fall before that aren't good.  This year that doesn't really work as the weather hasn't been "right", but the nuts are now coming off the good tree as well as all the others.  We really need to be on war footing with that tree as it is the one with the tastiest and plumpest nuts and other "people" also like nuts. 

When I went to check the trail camera yesterday, it was on its side - I thought perhaps a gust of wind had taken it, or a cat had been sitting on the log.  So, I righted it and then checked the photos and footage.  A first look at a daytime photo before the camera went over showed that there were visitors.

The five videos below show the marauding hoard and give an inkling as to what it is like to be investigated by a boar!

 

 

 

 

 

Something else has been getting the sweet chestnuts before me too, but that is a whole other story and not one I can comment on as the camera is too far away!

How long the boar will be in the zone, I don't know.  I suspect that will be determined by the hunt and when they decide to clear out all wildlife, but for the moment, we continue to enjoy the spectacle.

 

A question of who can harvest what!

It was an odd week, with The Funeral on Monday and falling temperatures and even, over the last couple of days, a weird phenomenon where water falls from the sky to make the ground moist rather than me lumping watering cans around!

Today I have lifted more of the potato crop and set it to try in a covered but open barn space.  We have also sown a bit of the grain we feed to the chickens as the price is going up and we need to scrimp and save a bit.  I picked a courgette today and there seem to be 5 more aubergines developing on the plants, but production is slowing down noticeably now.  With cooler weather and now we are past the vernal equinox, it is not entirely surprising that the summer crops are starting to flag.

So here are the potatoes in their drying rack - those on the left were dug up last week and have had the small and blemished ones removed for immediate consumption, while those on the right are what I dug up today without any triage.  Then there is the bed where the grain was sown.  The brassicas are looking a lot larger than when they went in - fortunately!!  The chard is doing well, and you can almost make out bean pods!

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We had to cover the seed bed with wire net to prevent it being used too much as a cat toilet, but it is bound to be used as a rolling around zone assuming the rain doesn't continue!

In the garden area we mainly defend things against cat bottoms and let nature take its course with any other visitors.  We have a pear tree in the garden that has been loaded with fruit this year, and we know when it is ripe as it falls off.  We do a triage before the chickens are released and John has a couple of barrels of burping brown goo which will be distilled early next year.  We had hoped to add some of the pears from the trees by the Meadow, but there never seemed to be any on the ground, while the ones on the tree remain fairly hard.  Well, the trail camera gave up its secrets during the week as the batteries needed boosted, so I took the opportunity to clear the SD card.  The camera has been pointing at the pear tree to see what is going on.

Badgers like pears.

It's probably not entirely unsurprising that boar rather like pears too!

The pine martin is actually trying to pick the pears off the tree though.

There's lots of deer and badger action, a hare and more from the pine martin but you'll have to wait until next week for that!

 

A time of reflection and change

This time last week, it was so hot, I was sticking to my desk as I typed.  Today my office is a more liveable 22ºC and rather than being concerned about how to keep cool, we are starting to trap heat again, while ensuring that chillies and fruit aren't damaged by near frost conditions in the early morning.  Once again weird weather is here!

I've frozen some 30 chillies now to see us through to August next year, but I am sure there will be more as the plants are reasonably well placed so they won't get frosted tonight and then things start to warm up again.  We won't see 30ºC again this year, but I'm not sorry, it was wearing. 

I've picked about 8 pounds of quince - well, 8 good sized fruits each weighing about a pound, and I will spend tomorrow morning chopping and boiling them while watching the broadcast from London.  There are still loads on the tree too, but my batch tomorrow will be for making quince jelly and perhaps shredding one for quince liqueur.

Obviously when you get hot temperatures, particularly at the wrong time of year, they tend to end with a bang.  As the maize was finally harvested in the field where I go to say goodbye to the day, we could also stand there after dark and watch the distant light show - once again, just a couple of millimetres of rain for us, but somewhere got soaked!

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Conditions were right, and there were few insects around as well, so it was time for the meadow to have its annual mow.  We don't take any of the material off the field, so it is there as a mulch, any seeds can fall and be eaten or can germinate, and the ground is clear for things to resprout and grow.  If we didn't do an annual clear, the meadow would soon be overtaken by brambles and old man's beard, which would grow taller and taller, killing any low growing plants and providing meagre shelter while blocking access to the ponds.  We know this, as there are still blocks left like that, which we are slowly turning to something better for biodiversity. 

One effect of this is that the trail camera is marooned on its log in the middle of the meadow.  So today I decided to move it.  Actually the batteries need a boost, so I moved the log to its new position so that things can get used to it, while we boost the batteries and I clear the SD card.  As far as I can tell there are a lot of videos of night as the deer have been setting it off just outside the range of the infrared lights, but the big screen may show more and prove me wrong.  There are lots of videos of some bloke on a mower driving around too.  Anyway, I hope next week there will be some films, but this week you will have to cope with just photos of a deer, a boar and the pine martin.

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So much for change, but what about reflection?  We don't have UK television, just radio and the BBC website, plus other news sources, not necessarily British.  Last weekend our French friends were asking how we felt about the death of the Queen, to which our standard response was "sad, but not unexpected, and time to celebrate a life well lived".  We have been able to separate ourselves from the media message in the UK, so cannot hope to comprehend what the sentiment and feeling is like over there.  We watch with a certain incredulity as the queue to view the Lying in State takes on a life of its own.  We will watch events unfold tomorrow, taking a day out to participate, mainly vicariously, as history is written.

When I was younger, if I had feelings about the monarchy at all, it was of a glittery entity that didn't really affect me or have any relevance for my life.  My parents both met the Queen a couple of times, while my father met her father and mother on several occasions and worked with the Duke of Edinburgh occasionally on questions of Design.  I did the Duke of Edinburgh Bronze Award, was a Scout but had issues with the Scout's Promise, and more recently have worked with and have huge respect for The Prince's Trust. 

Reflecting now on the end of the Post-War Era, as it has been described, for me the value of the Royal Family and Queen or King as the Head of State is as a non-political, non-elected moral core and standard for the country.  That point of reference for what is British, who represents us irrespective of the vagaries of popular votes and ever more self-serving and mediocre politicians is an important one.  France doesn't put Presidents on coins or stamps, rather Mariane, an idealised woman and spirit of all that is best in France.  The USA does a similar thing, but with an Eagle and dead Presidents, who may not be as above reproach as history is rewritten from a 21st century perspective.  

With the passing of the Queen and the New Carolingian era that is about to start, the moral compass will be reset.  I expect there will be a slimmed down monarchy, but fascination with the Royal Family will not fade (indeed it is one of their purposes - filling pages of glossy magazines and fuelling book sales).  My hope is that King Charles will maintain his emphasis on the importance of conserving environmental and built heritage and saving the planet, and that the leadership he has shown in that field over the past 40 years will continue during his reign.  Planet Earth needs a few big hitters in her team at the moment!

 

 

Weather obsessions and other summer thoughts

The acquisition of a couple of beach style chairs gives us an opportunity to sit and gaze through the gap in the hedge/overgrowth/trees towards the far hill and its path, and let our minds wander.  Sitting in the shade and gazing into the distance is one way, after all, of passing time on these endless hot, sunny days.  Records are falling for heat, lack of rain, lack of water, size of cracks in the ground and buildings, crops being early and crops being poor.  While the early cereal crops exceeded expectations in quality and sometimes quantity too, the later ones will be poor, and where the farmer has followed the rules and played the game, exceptionally poor.  Any hint of rain is fallen up as a good sign, such as this week, with clouds to the west giving us a vivid sunset, hopes only to be dashed the following morning with just 0.3mm of rain in the gauge - not enough to even change the soil colour on our "lawn".  Perhaps one different signal is that while the first cyclamen flowers are coming up, they are a good three weeks later than last year!

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Even in this heat, the show must go on, particularly in the more touristy towns and villages.  This weekend, Chinon held its mediaeval fair (probably fayre, but I object to that), with some celebration of Joan of Arc, who manifested her first miracle in the chateau at Chinon.  I wouldn't have wanted to be Didier in all this finery yesterday!

Over in the Country, two of the cats momentarily decided that 31ºC was not too hot to cuddle up on one of the garden chairs, while watching me eeking out the stored rainwater on the aubergines.  I found another, probably more helpful, garden buddy, when I went walking to beat the bounds, in the form of a rather magnificent slow worm.  He (or she) was about a foot long and definitively basking in the late afternoon sun!

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The trail camera is installed at a secret location, to monitor what is making a mess of someone's garden.  In order to prepare it for a professional job, we recharged the batteries and I cleared the SD card, which hadn't been done since April.  My word there was a lot of material on there - nearly 400 videos and 400 photos.  Now while some included my fat bottom walking away after doing my WiFi checks (instantly deleted), some included John passing with various mowing machines (bizarrely I kept a couple of those), and many seem to have been triggered by a gust of wind or a fly landing on the lens, there was an awful lot that wasn't.   When I do my remote WiFi checks, I use my phone to review potentially interesting things and download them, but if the sun is in the wrong place, I don't have reading glasses with me, or there are a lot of files since my previous visit, I don't get the full richness of what has been happening.

Today I therefore offer up some links to videos that are interesting or a bit special in some way - I hope you enjoy them.

First off - there seem to be more jays around this year than previously, no idea why.  Here is a video.

I found more videos of the young wild boar, actually quite a few, but this one is rather sweet and gives a good close up of young Stripy.

Perhaps rashly, I accused the boar of attacking and knocking over the log the camera was attached to.  Reviewing one of these two videos of the pine martin, I need more evidence before deciding on the culprit.

 

I know they are small, but they have no respect!

Probably the star of the trail camera recently has been our family of deer, and in particular the one we think of as "our" faun.  Every few days, with his mother, they would spend a couple of days lurking near the camera, before moving on to find fresh grazing; then coming back.  The first video is a solo venture, the second includes Mum, while I'm not sure how many deer there are in the final one - best watched full screen and to the end!

 

 

Next weekend "they" promise rain, in which case I will sort out more gems from the deer family and the boar family and perhaps a badger or two as well.  Have a good week!

 

Change and new beginings

I'm not sure how much I am in favour of change - but I am sure it will happen whether I like it or not.  This year is one of farewells - some French friends moving south, some moving village, and British friends, tired of the challenges of Brexit, selling their second homes and settling full time (or an approximation of full time) in the UK.  They all say they will come back and visit, how many do, and how often remains to be seen. 

While the removals take place, there is the frisson of having a trailer that can be used for trips to the dump.  We also pick over the spoils of what won't be taken away, what is no longer needed or is too expensive to take "home" (there really is no Brexit benefit).  A local cat charity now has more pillows, towels and duvets than they could dream of.  Someone else has a 'new to them' sofa.  We have a bunch of things to put on sales sites to share around, and the awful process of triaging much loved libraries of second hand books to see what can be slipped into book swap kiosks, what might sell for a few centimes, what could be given to hospital libraries, and what, with the best will in the world, is best sent for pulping (Thomas Mann in the original is high on that list!).  How many copies of the RHS Encyclopaedia of Gardening does one need - purely rhetorical!

But that excitement declines very rapidly, as we try to find a bit of cupboard space for 6 tins of chickpeas, and regret the company, the laughter, the trips and events that will no longer animate the summer months.  We would prefer to keep the people to all the books, sofas, DVDs and chickpeas.

The moving stuff around this week has meant that we have also been out and about a bit.  Did you know that as well as building a tower in Paris, Eiffel also built a railway bridge in Chinon (OK it is a long way in the distance)?  You can also see that the river is chronically low.

We also visited the village church at Gée, just 15 kilometres away - it has been very well restored, presumably a nice legacy from someone.  The village also has a very good restaurant that does a very fine 15€ lunch!

I don't know if I should blame the cats for this, but I had a chance to take a very close look at one of my favourite moths - the tiger moth.  With their wings at rest, they are handsome and sober, but when they are in flight or when you look at the underside, they are the most marvellous and vibrant orange.

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It is still stinking hot and dry as a bone here - water restrictions are incredibly tight.  You can only water food plants, anything else has to take its chance unless you use grey water from doing something else.  Even watering food plants is frowned on between 8am and 8pm, and should ideally only be done with grey water or rain water that you have stored.  We are down to our last 800 litres of stored water, and while there was a promise of rain and thunder for Thursday on the weather sites yesterday, it has now been downgraded to a 20% chance of mild drizzle.  The sweetcorn hasn't worked and has been sacrificed for aubergines, butternuts and borlotti beans, while the chillies are doing well on the water that the chickens don't drink in a day.

The fact that there are cool shady corners and a bit of water/bog at the bottom of the Wildflower Meadow means that the trail camera has been working hard.  I did accuse John of knocking it over with a mower when he cleared the paths, but looking at footage from the camera, I then had to apologise.  The camera is on the move to a distant site where someone wants to know what is causing trouble, so I will be spending a lot of time clearing the SD card, but these videos were downloaded by phone and show that new beginings are possible.  I am pretty sure the faun was born in the meadow, and I may even have footage of the labour/birth when I go through the hundreds of files.  Anyway, enjoy these and see who you think pushed over the camera on its log!

Looking at that more closely, I think the young buck has a problem with one foot/leg.

This is the only time I have seen one here, and it is also surprising to see it in daylight.

He didn't really go far for a couple of weeks, and stayed with Mum in the zone in that time.

He (or she) really is rather cute!

Well, I know who my money's on!

Have a good week!

 

Scorchio!

As of 30 minutes ago, it's official, here in Maine et Loire we are on red alert for high temperatures.  I won't disagree as in my office on the north side of the house, it is 29ºC and heading to 30ºC.  One thing that means is that I will not be doing battle with YouTube to load up more video, you will have to make do with stills.  If you don't believe me, see the outdoor thermometer, hanging in the shade in the garden at 2pm (so two and a half hours ago).

It has been hot, averaging 28ºC or higher for over a week now, although last weekend there was a bit of a breeze.  Even so, we have seen the ravages of relatively mild heat stroke and I can only exhort people to be careful. 

As an example of what the heat is doing, here are two photos of one of my butternut squashes - the first is in sunlight, the second this morning while still shaded.  The squash has a natural defence mechanism to allow the leaves to flop when really hot and then repump up when it cools down, however the yellow scorch marks are not part of the plan.  A couple of squash plants have set fruit, but they may well reject them if this continues.  The courgettes  have given up for the moment too - I had to buy a couple at the market yesterday!!!

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We grow potatoes under weed suppressant mat.  It keeps the awful perennial weeds at bay, saves the need for earthing up and bizarrely provides habitat for a number of useful critters - slow worms, snakes, toads.  This year the potatoes are planted in soil that is as near to clay without being able to use it on a potter's wheel as you can get.  It's really heavy and horrible when wet.  Currently the top layer resembles pusilane - the pumice-like rocks you can get as decorative mulch or for use in a septic tank filter bed, but about 4cm below the surface, there is still a hint of moisture in there.  There are also potatoes - look what we got from just one plant, noting that it has hardly rained and I do not water the spuds!  Dinner in the making.

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I have rarely had a conversation with a farmer when they didn't complain about the weather in some way.  There is chuntering going on now about drought and poor yields.  They are working day and night to get the cereal crops in, collect in straw and hay, turn the stubble so it is less likely to catch fire (although that process can also start a fire if a plough hits a flint), and get water and feed to grazing cows and goats.  This year I can understand their angst, as I watch a crop of fodder maize near us develop - it is very early, but the cobs are meagre and the leaves are now curling with the heat and lack of water.  Maize is a very greedy crop.  Sunflowers, once they germinate, need less water.  Again they are a bit early this year, and fields have gaps where germination was poor, but there is still little better than a field of sunflowers against a blue sky, even when slightly past their best.

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The local wildlife has to cope with all this too.  The southern part of the Meadow includes a small bog and three small, spring-fed ponds which means that the deer, boar, badgers and others have somewhere to go and drink.  I strongly suspect that a family of boar are actually living in the bog at the moment - they would be foolish not to - but it is off limits to us at this time of year due to scrub overgrowth.  The doe and her faun are knocking around the area, while the faun develops - they seem to come past the trail camera every couple of days.  She enjoys eating the lower leaves off the good pear tree, but fortunately not the pears (we have other plans for them...).  The faun is getting braver and larger.

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And with that, it really is too hot to sit by a computer any longer!  I'm off to watch the end of the Tour stage at Carcassone.

 

Mediaeval madness and new critters

I am now officially Covid free, so have been able to enjoy fun and games at the Fête Medievale in our village, celebrating the 600th (well actually 601st, but last year wasn't doable) anniversary of the battle of Vieil Baugé, turning point of the Hundred Years War, and the first major defeat of the English.  The French were helped by boggy ground and Scottish mercenaries.  There is a small military encampment, there is a jousting tournament, there are sword fights, there were demonstrations of horsemanship, fireworks, a 10 pig roast banquet, a fair, and trebuchets.  They were firing trebuchets and my word that is fun - a video next week perhaps!

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A friend of ours who makes clogs as a hobby (well, it is in his family history, and he enjoys it, and it is harmless enough) was demonstrating his craft and had a load of his wares for sale.

It is very hot and dry at the moment, so I was surprised to find Mr Tiggiewinkle wandering the garden after midnight last night, until I realised there was a bowl of water out for the cats, which could well have attracted him.  The cheese rinds we threw for the chickens may also have been appealing if the chickens didn't eat them all - some chance!

On the trail camera, there is a lot of deer action still, including this nice still of the doe and her fawn.  There was also a new face on the camera - I need to check if it is a pole cat or a pine martin.  Whichever it is, lovely to see, and I'm so glad we don't have chickens round there!

 

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That's all for today, but I may update during the week.

 

Caught by the plague!

Last Sunday, when I was drafting my last blog, I thought I didn't feel quite right.  On Monday, I knew I didn't feel at all right, but a Covid test was negative, so I assumed a summer cold.  Tuesday morning I did another test, as I was supposed to be taking someone to an appointment - VERY positive!  Fortunately someone else could step into the gap, but I was not a happy bunny and didn't enjoy my brush with SARS-Covid-19 or whatever it is calling itself currently.

I thought I should perhaps share that positive test, but decided against it as too many of us have seen them now.

So the week was shaped by feeling a bit pants, wanting to sleep all the time, feeling cold (and actually the weather wasn't as warm as it might have been), and looking for elements of joy.  Well the garden is always good for that!  How about many shades of pink on one rose bush?  This shrub has been neglected and maltreated for over 22 years, but hardly ever stops flowering, it is a marvel.  And no, I don't know the variety.

Other handsome flowers out at the moment are this multicoloured daisy type thing, wild chicory flowers a deeper blue than I remember seeing before and each flower stuffed with a questing bee, and flowers on a cactus we bought years ago and abuse roundly.

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The vegetable plots are starting to feed us properly now.  On Saturday we enjoyed our first aubergine and more courgettes, while yesterday we had potatoes and more courgettes, flavoured with herbs from the garden.  The butternuts are starting run rampant which has to be a good sign, and I am hopeful that next weekend we will have haricot beans from the garden.  Planning for winter, we planted leeks where the potatoes were, and I have sown swiss chard (Bright Lights) seeds for next winter.  We have also spent time watering.

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Last weekend I moved the trail camera to the edge by a field of corn that I thought would be harvested soon (still there yesterday morning), as I wondered what would come off the field and into the meadow when it was done - perhaps hares?  The place I chose seems to be popular with wildlife and they appear to be used to the camera now, so there was a lot of deer action, a passing fox, a rather ugly young pheasant, and did I mention the deer?  Yesterday, when I was downloading video, a small faun was watching me from the shelter of the fruit trees.

Anyway, here are a selection of short reels for you to enjoy.

 

 

 

I think you can see a doe feeding a faun in the background of this one.

 

Anyway, apologies for the delay in posting - blame the Covid, I do!

I hope normal service will be resumed next week.

Weird weather and a garden update

Last Saturday, the temperature in our garden in the shade reached 44ºC - unbearable was one way to describe it!  By 11:15am, when I would normally be turning up at the market in Baugé, people had mostly left and some stall holders were preparing to pack up and go home.  It was suffocatingly hot.  Overnight, it started to cool down, but (perhaps fortunately for us) we didn't get the big storms other areas suffered.  Stories of golf and tennis ball size hail stones are becoming ordinary, although the damage they inflict on crops, buildings and cars remain traumatic for those impacted.  We got our big(-ish) storm on Thursday evening.  Enough thunder to worry one of the cats (a scaredy cat), lots of lovely rain and a weird coloured sky and sunset.  You can see how much rain we got at home, but at The Shack, where we really needed water, just 5mm!

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To keep flowers out of the reach of the beaks of the Garden Vandals and away from kitty bottoms, we grow a lot of our ornamental flowers in pots.  For some things it works really well, other things suffer a bit.  The giant Poundshop lily I bought last year (before Brexit restrictions) is doing well again, with the first flower now out.  The agapanthus, probably my favourite flower of all, even more than orchids, have also been doing well, as they seem to love abuse!  We have three pots of agapanthus, this is the middle flowering one.

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The vegetable plots are starting to pull away now.  I've started to lift odd potatoes - here is the booty from one, but I didn't dig it up, just robbed what I could find easily.  The handful of mangetout pea seeds have produced several handfuls of mangetout pods already.  The first aubergine has set and should be edible in a week or two.  We have now had 5 courgettes, which is the same as we had all season last year, and the French beans will come on stream next week I think.  The borlotti beans I sowed three weeks ago are now about a foot high, and there are about a dozen parsnips coming up which I sowed as an experiment.  There are also plums and pears developing, as well as walnuts, so things are looking good, as long as we can avoid the killer hail.

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While we no longer have an apricot tree, it is apparently a good year for the fruit, so yesterday I bought a tray of 5 kilos and made 22 pots of jam, or sunshine in a jar as some refer to it!

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The trail camera was very quiet this week after all the visitors last week, with only one image captured and no video, so today I moved it on to a new position which may or may not be interesting.  After that, it is going visiting at a friend's house, but I'll give it a couple of weeks on the new site first.

Anyway, that's the lot for today, more in July!

 

Traveller's tales and wildlife videos

Apologies for not posting last weekend, but I was away in the Broads, visiting the Broads Life Festival at Beccles Quay.  When I would normally write this blog, I was actually attending the final performance of the commissioned piece, Booming Voices, by Eastern Angles theatre company in a large marquee by the quayside.  What an excellent and friendly festival it was.  There was enough to do and to look at to keep me occupied on the Saturday and the weather was magnificent.  The Wherry Maud and her pop-up museum were there too - a lovely day.

The photos below are: the results of a dyke dipping day, nicely displayed in a three layered viewing tank and with lots of lovely water thingies; the Chet Boat - a reconstruction of a mediaeval boat discovered on the River Chet, and the original (now in York) dates from about 1350 or so, the reconstruction made by the International Boatbuilding Training College at Lowestoft; and a general view of the Festival site.

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Well that all went nicely wrong and it is too hot and sticky to fix it - so the Chet Boat photo is a totally different size, but is not that much more important than the other two!

From the Broads I went over to another favourite place - Shropshire, and more specifically the Marches Mosses.  There is a new bird hide at Sinkers Fields near Morris Bridge on the Llangollen canal - I'd been prepared for it to be well appointed, but hadn't expected it to be so beautiful.  The Mammoth Tower also has its tusks attached now, which it didn't have when I last visited in November 21.

Both structures are paid for by National Lottery Heritage Fund and LIFE.

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All that travelling meant that today was my first chance to see what had been going on by the trail camera - I will ,move it again soon, but it is doing jolly well where it is.  The 7 videos that I link to are just a flavour of the activity that has been going on.  The badgers seem to have drifted off at the moment, but the hare and/or rabbit is a new and regular visitor, while the piglets are just so darn cute!  There is water nearby which may be why there is so much activity at this point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The parent boar really are rather scary and there are a couple of photos that are the stuff of nightmares!

This could be a hare or a rabbit - difficult to say without a good look at its tail and anything around to get a feel for its size.

These could be pheasant or partridge young - normally I would say pheasants on the basis we hear a lot of them around, but John and a cat put up a flock of a dozen or so partridge during the week, so I'm hedging my bets.

 

That's it until next week!