There are parts of the farm that we rarely visit, partly because we can see the places from a distance. This afternoon we went to the field that the hay that we sold earlier in the year is stacked. We gave the purchaser of the hay, two months to collect it. Two months because after that we would expect a fair amount of rain, making the ground soft. Any tractors would soon cut the ground up. I don’t want my fields cut up by tractor tyres. The two months have well gone and the hay has not been taken. To make matters worse I had lost the purchasers phone number. I found the phone number in the middle of last week and told them that I wanted gone. I would have expected to have been started to be gone by today. It hasn’t. If the rain does come and the hay has not been moved, I will stop any tractors from entering the field. They will have to roll the bales to the gate, if they want the hay.
On the way to the field, that is at the end of our lane, we pass the lake and a pond, surrounded by a rough area that we have left to encourage wildlife. The area is out of sight from the lake webcam, in the opposite direction to the Sheep. The rough area is mostly over grown, boggy with a couple of small streams. The far corner of the area although not very far away cannot be seen from the drive, when it is over grown. As we passed the gateway that leads into the area, Kye ran into the area to investigate. We followed her in as we knew that she would jump in to the pond for a swim. It is deeper than the lake, with very few place for Kye to be able to get back on the bank from. She does tend to panic, if she cannot feel the bottom. After Kyes swim, we decided to look around the area, it is where in the past we have found regular signs of Otters. And did we get a shock, and it wasn’t wildlife that we came across, just a four foot high wall of river bedding, mud and stones that had been dumped by the flood earlier in the year. So much had come down the stream in the flood, it was diverting the main stream that passes through the farm, making the boggy area, a small pond. Some thing will need to be done with it, as when the rain comes it will be a mess.
Seeing that area made me look at a place in the main Horse field where the stream dog legs. There the flood has washed away a very large area. A fence that is there to stop the Horses from getting into the stream is still there, but hanging in the air, where the ground underneath has been washed away. Again the flood has deposited a lot of river bedding that is partially blocking the stream at that point.
I haven’t seen the injured Badger Cub tonight. I didn’t look at the webcams for very long last night, so I may well have missed it yesterday.