Draw a Line....

The black spruce (Picea mariana) around the 'Secret Garden"

We are determined to put the upsetting fox episode behind us now so here is an easy-on-the-eye post which contains no foxes or even fox tracks. The whole scene has been blanketed in picturesque white snow (all be it only a few inches) so that we can all think of Christmas card scenes and, (apologetically) using that management-speak baloney expression "we can draw a line under it and move on".

Rudbeckia stems.

Sorry if the snow scenes are a bit monochrome, gloomy and sunless, but I whizzed round early in the morning, sure that the sun would not come out to brighten things up before all this lot started melting and dripping off the trees and fencing. The forecast is, anyway, for a thaw and a return to wind and rain for tomorrow (We hope, also that the forecast weather for "the wedding" is accurate).

No digging in the veg plot today!

The best aspect by far of the snow is that you can see that we have definitely no fox tracks anywhere on the property. With the dogs also confirming no interesting scent when we are out patroling we are hoping the 'line' in my title is well drawn and written in permanent ink, though realistically we know we have not done for all the foxes in the townland.

No sitting around enjoying the view today, either...

Just one amusing story on the subject of guns if you will allow me. My complete (but short) gun history up till two nights ago. Don't worry. It involves only one pull of the trigger and no deaths. Or injury even. When we posted our fox problem on Facebook, several friends stepped up with helpful and sympathetic suggestions involving, obviously, shooting the fox and such lines as "how are you with a rifle? - a shot in the air might be enough".

Quite cute - the lamb's tiny hoof print (left) next to Mum's

Well, if people knew my gun history, they would not be letting me anywhere near a shot-gun licence, far less a rifle. Way back, probably 30-35 years ago I was involved in a farm by way of courting the main man's Sister in Law and he (Big Tim) agreed to take me out 'lamping' in a Land Rover with a bunch of other lads. We'd drive around his land looking for bunnies, then stop the Land Rover, shine a big lamp on them and take pot shots at them from standing up in the back of the Land Rover. Youthful high spirits but also controlling the rabbits which were at pest levels and decimating the growing corn down by some woods.

Dawn from the top of the allotment, looking east.

We pulled up then, by a hedge where there are a gazillion bunnies mooching about near a hedge and Big Tim hands me a .410 (small shot gun, a "four-ten"). The rabbits are so close that one is almost under the Land Rover's front bumper so I take careful aim and squeeze the trigger as instructed. I have no idea where the shot went but the target rabbit remains standing looking at me, a bit put out at the noise I'm making. I hear Tim's voice say "D'yer want me to git out and 'it 'im with a spade?" and then there are gales of laughter and everyone else trying not to fall out of the Land Rover, creased up laughing.

Tim took the gun back off me and 'sacked' me as a gunman. I was relegated to gate-man. I had to just get all the field gates for the LR. I think I can also remember being a bit uneasy about killing a rabbit and relieved at having missed and being sacked, but that might just be me putting a favourable gloss on it all. That episode was the last time I fired a gun and the last time I even saw one fired. I went back to being an animal lover and wildlife nut for 35 years till 2 days ago.

Improved shelter.

Meanwhile, back on January 13th and we need to start getting the lamb ready for proper out-door living, but we have snow here and wind and rain forecast. Mentor Anne who, with Simon, has built and lived in a proper house made of straw bales, might be proud of us - we decided to improve the makeshift shelter with straw bale walls and a floor of shaken out straw (rather than, admittedly dry, soil). My little trailer will take ten bales so we were off to the local hay/straw merchant; 2 for the pig ark, one for the existing sheep-bedroom (former feed store), one for the new shelter floor and 6 to play 'Lego' with. We may need more, but the shelter is already a lovely, warm dry place for a lamb and the Mum and Aunt to take shelter from the snow, wind and rain and, potentially, for an Aunt to become a Mum in when we get to 25th March?

Snow Geese.

And so I have probably done enough now to bury Brer Fox. The chap himself has been removed by Charlotte of the Mini Horses who does some kind of fancy dog-training using the scent of the dead animal to train her dogs in the ways of what to chase and what not to. She came to collect him last night and we had to nip round with a torch and find him where I'd laid him out to take his picture yesterday but, of course, 3 inches of snow was now blanketing the scene. Amusingly we could easily find him as he made a cartoon style, perfect fox-shaped mound in the flat grass; he even had pointy 'ears', 'eyes' and a 'mouth'; somehow the eyes and mouth must have been that bit wetter than the glossy fur, so the snow was melting on these features as it landed giving little darker pits in the snow and the flakes had built up on the pointy ears creating an exact copy in white. Snow-Fox has now gone too, then, with Brer Fox. RIP, the pair of you.

Idiots in 4 by 4's

A real treat today - Haggis and I get to accompany Dad on the Challock Forest 6-mile walk he leads for the Friends of Kings Wood. Before we depart, all three dogs get a quick walk to the Rec to make sure Meggie does her stuff, and then we sneak off while she's sleeping that one off.

There are 12 walkers in the end and Dad takes them round what used to be the 6 mile waymarked trail (dismantled by the Forestry Commission about 10 years ago) but with an added loop down into the bit called "Cutler's Valley" to see the newest pond created by (well, paid for by) the Friends. Created, of course by proper land scape contractors.

That's the 4th pond. Also on the visit we go to look at one near the "Reptile Valley" which has apparently been damaged by some muppets in a Land Rover. These ponds are created on fairly dry chalk and thin soil by digging the bowl with a big excavator, and then puddling in 15 lorry loads of local clay to make a 2 foot thick smear over the chalk. The ponds then fill naturally and we allow them to colonise with plants by the slow process of natural succession.

This one had been a great success, being blessed with a better catchment than the others, and we'd helped that along on a Friends "volunteer day" by cutting gulleys from the nearby forest tracks, which happened to converged there from the local hillsides. It was alive with dragon flies and other water insects, newts and was used frequently by the fallow deer to drink.

Till that is, some bloomin' idiot with a Land Rover decided it would be fun to drive through. Now Dad's as big a "Landie" fan as the next man - grew up with posters on the bedroom wall, was always going to own one and eventually did, used to go "green laning" (responsibly), joined the All-Wheel-Drive-Club, suscribed to LR Owner magazine, eventually sold the beast in an attack of pragmatism (noise, thirst, slowness etc).

So we sympathise with the muppets' desire to get out into the country and get it muddy. Not for us the "Sloane tractor" shininess, where the nearest to off road you got was mounting the kerb. But these tarts have driven it into our pond and then effectively sliced down through the 2 feet of clay spinning the wheels to get out

http://www.friendsofkingswood.org/Gallery/tabid/253/Default.aspx

Either they have, or the tractor they engaged to pull them out has. The pond has now leaked away all it's water and sits there, a dry bowl with cracked African "river bed" floor. The Friends are left looking at the cost of restoring the pond, bringing in more clay, re-engaging the excavator to puddle it in.

Thanks lads. I hope the damage was worth the laugh.

Muppets
Deefski

Thomas

Mum and Dad have finally finished the Village of the Year judging tonight, finishing on fine form with the very impressive efforts of one village (no names, no pack drill) in wrestling back their local chunk of ancient forest from industrial-scale fly-tipping, herberts on quad bikes, 4-wheel-drive nuts and trials riders.

Dad is slightly ashamed to admit that he may now be a holier-than-thou judge, but was once that mildly irresponsible Land Rover nut, member of the All-Wheel-Drive-Club (AWDC) and keen "Green-Laner". OK he was never that brave, and never had all the knobbly tyres and winch equipment that the serious boys have (Just good old Dunlop Town and Countries), so he used to stick to the easy, dry-ish stuff, but he did like a chunk of off-roading, so got tarred with the same brush as the "ripping through the sphagnum bogs" brigade.

They are walked round the village by the main-lady (Vanessa) and her goldie "Thomas", and shown the chalk grassland, the restored paths, the new coppicing, the 4WD-proof gates, the signage, the orchid meadows, the areas that used to be piled with 100 tonnes of tyres, builders rubble, burned out cars etc, the 400-year-old rights of way, the kissing gates and new fencing, the bridle ways re-built by the Royal Engineers, the planters full of drough-resistant plants and on and on and on.

There's still time though, for a walk for us, up round the allotment where Dad has to give the newly planted yam-slips a second settle-in watering. There are a bit of fun. Really a tropical plant, you can just about get away with them in Kent if you get them as cuttings (slips) in June, keep them warm, and then plant them out and keep watering through the hot waether. They are related to the bind-weed (Convulvulus) and that's exactly what they look like at present - little spirals of bindweed seedlings just emerging, only with stems a bit thicker than the UK weed version.

Deefski