Blog - Page 90 of 109 - Farm Holiday Cottages - Fishing and Wildlife Holidays

I managed to catch the last two lambs this afternoon. Since I have had the rest of the Sheep penned in around the lake, in an electric fenced off area, the elusive Ewe with her Lambs have been getting quite near to them. But just not near enough for us to be able to cut off an exit. Every time that we have thought that we could catch them they were able to make their escape. The area around the lake that the Sheep are fenced in has been been grazed so tight to the ground, we have needed to feed them hay. This afternoon when I went to give the Sheep their hay, the Ewe and her lambs were by the fence, next to the rest of the Sheep. I had them three parts blocked in. The Ewe kept threatening to run past me, the only exit that she thought that she had. She did have another exit, if I had pushed her to far, she would have gone through a large mass of weeds, and made her escape. I was on my own, so for sure I would not be able to catch the three of them. If I could catch the two Lambs it would not be difficult to catch the Ewe at a later date. After about ten minutes of the Ewe just staring at me, she decided to turn in to the direction of the weeds. Thankfully instead of her going into to the weeds she walked towards the chain link fence behind her, her two Lambs keeping very close to her. There must be a hole under the chain link fence, for the Ewe was on the other side of the fence before I knew it. The Lambs seeing the Ewe on the other side of the fence, instead of following her through the hole charged into the fence, all that I needed to do was to grab hold of one of their back legs and they would be caught. I managed to catch hold of one, the other Lamb decided to try to make its escape by running past me, fortunately I managed to get my hand around his leg before it got past me. Now I needed help to get the two Lambs to the Stable where the other Lambs are kept, a good hundred yards away. After a lot of shouting help came and we managed to get the two Lambs back to the stable. The Ewe is running around the farm yard trying to find the Lambs. By tomorrow she will know where they are, so we should be able to catch her.

Where I have managed to keep the Ewes contained around the lake they have grazed the area so well that there is hardly a weed about. All that there are, are the stalks of the nettles, if they were cut back the Sheep would keep the area very neat and tidy. To make matters worse two of our holiday guests go to the lake to fish, and need to go into the area with the Sheep on their way to a fishing spot. Dolly and Minty being so friendly go up to our guest for attention, and to be stroked. Please don’t get rid of the Sheep why we are here pleaded the lady, they are so friendly she told me. When people come to holiday at Denbury they do expect to see farm animals. I will need to think again about selling all the Sheep.

Not showing the Bird feeder and Squirrel nest as mentioned on the forum is down to me being a bit lazy. In between the camera and the feeders there are a large amount of bramble, that grows into the view of the camera. I do try to knock it back, but unfortunately they are very large bushes and it is difficult to knock the middle down as it is so far in. The easy option would be to put weed killer on them, but the Badgers have made their runs in them. We will be cutting the hedges shortly and they will be cut back them. The squirrel haven’t been using the feeder very much, in the past month or so. Where I would normally need to fill the feeder every two days, it has stayed nearly full for weeks. This time of year the Squirrels will be getting ready for the Winter, eating and stashing away the Hazel and Sweet Chestnut, of which this year there are more on the trees than I have ever seen at Denbury. I will get my Lads to knock the bramble back over next few days.

As we walked down the valley this afternoon with Tass and Kye the Sky was full with Swallows flying, strengthening themselves for their migration. I have never noticed it before, like it was today. They must have been bred on the farm, so there must have been a lot of nests that we missed, when we where looking for nest for the webcams. How they don’t crash into each other when they are darting in between each other I really don’t know.

I was telling you what webcams we are hoping to be doing soon. One that I tried on the farm last year, was with the Bats that we have in the farm house loft. You have no doubt seen that we do have a lot of Bats on the farm. On the cameras around the lake and valley there are always many to be seen. When I go to feed the Badgers of a night there are also many flying about. This time of year from our lounge window we can see them coming and going from our roof space, but when I go into the loft to look for them I can never find any, although some years ago when ever I had to go into the loft, there were many flying about up there. There are also a lot of the Bat dropping up there. I set a camera up in the loft thinking that I would see them flying around, that was a complete waste of time. I don’t know what type of Bats that we have at Denbury, by the different sizes of the Bats that I have seen on the camera when on the lake, there must be more than one type here.

There is a lot of baking of fruit pies this time of year, on the farm. We do get quite an assortment of fruits here. Plumbs, Damsons, Gooseberries, a variety of Apples from the Orchard and Blackberries. I am surprised that there are so many Blackberries after we had a lot of flowers and no fruit during the summer. This year there is a lot more fruit than normal.

Alex asked about the Horses, for those who may of missed their names when I told you a while back, the big Dark Bay is Arnie a 17.3hh Dutch Warmblood, the Palomino is Breeze our 14.2hh three quarter Arab, Lady with her Foal Willow are Thoroughbreds, the Bay is Bliss a yearling, as is the smaller Dark Bay Misty, both of which are also Thoroughbreds.

Denbury Shangri La
Velvet Jazz and Bracken getting drunk
finding girl using cross cuntry jumps

Peter the Manager of the Lock of the Lowe’s sent me this link of photographs of Ospreys. As Peter I like the photo of the Osprey catching two fish at once. There are also a variety of other wildlife photographs.

http://www.miguellasa.com/gallery/1001578#33603804

I haven’t seen the Kingfisher for nearly a week now. I have left the camera on the branch, but of course I am not able to watch it all day. Let me know if any of you have seen it. If it is not about I will put the camera on the Bird feeders. I know that the Buzzards are about with their calling and I put the young one on the webcam last evening. It was on the fence in the Badger field. It didn’t stay there to long, but some of you may have seen it.

Funny Elsie should mention the Beavers. I am trying to get a place in Gloustershire, who introduced Beavers about three years ago, to let me do webcams from their site. I spoke to the people in the middle of last week. My suggestion are with the Directors at the moment, They have been thinking about doing it themselves, so we may be lucky. I had hoped to have done another Beaver webcam from a site in Scotland, unfortunately it looks doubtful, there is not a very good Broadband connection at the site. The connection is Satellite Broadband. We may be doing something else with them when they finish a new building.

I don’t know a lot about Beavers. I know that they are mainly nocturnal and their homes are called Lodges. We will need to use infra red lamps. We have a number of underwater cameras, If we are able to get the Beaver site, we may be able to put one in their Lodge.

We had expected to have had a visit from another organisation that are interested in us installing webcams for them. I mentioned them a while ago. I cant tell you who they are at the moment. It will be very good if we can work with them. They intend to come to Denbury in the first week in October.

We are quite confident that we will be doing a Barn Owl Nest next year. We have two alternative. Although I had hope that we may have encouraged them to Denbury. I have put up three Barn Owl Nest boxes and have left a few places to overgrow and die back to encourage voles, the Barn Owls main diet.

Derek Gow the specialist in Water Vole was going to send me some photos of his breeding site. This was over a month ago. I will speak to him next week. Chris Speering from the Hawk and Owl Trust is visiting us on the 10th of this month, he maybe able to suggest or find us other locations for webcams. Both Derek and Chris have websites. http://www.watervoles.com/ and http://chrissperring.com/HOTlocalgroup.htm

I did manage to see the Kingfisher this evening, so I will be putting the camera on the branch as usual.

We had a Lady come to the farm to look at Smuggler, who we are selling. We had him gelded last week, as most people don’t want Colts or Stallions as they believe that they can be a bit of a handful, especially if there are Fillies or Mares in the vicinity. I have always had entire Horses and have never seen them as a problem.

When I lived in London I had two Friesian Stallions, Jack and Sargent that we hired out to undertakers with our Horse Drawn Hearse for funerals. They were never a problem. They came to Denbury when we first moved here. They were wasted being out in the fields all day, when they had been trained for the Carriages Driving. It was not fair on the Horses not to be doing what they had been trained to do, and did enjoy. How do I know that, when they were working they were real show offs. We entered them into an International Horse Show at Windsor. If my memory serves me right it was the Royal International, it was the first and only one that we did with them. They were pulling a Horse Drawn delivery vehicle that I owned. We came second in the class, one of the Judges came up to us after the show and told us that the winner, was the winner only because of his previous form and that we should have one the class. It didn’t make me feel any better for not winning.

We have a bridle path that goes through the farm, some of the riders that come through the farm on their Horses are very inconsiderate, they gallop through as if they were riding on their own land, flattening the hay grass and digging the grass up and scattering livestock. If I catch them galloping, believe me they don’t come through again in a hurry. I didn’t do it on purpose, I really didn’t think when I started to let the Friesian Stallions have the run of the farm once the hay was cut. I never saw it, but by all accounts when any riders came through the farm, Jack and Sargent would join them. Being Stallions they would have been a bit frisky and would have found it a lot of fun. The rider didn’t, none came through farm when they were here, even now years later we don’t get many coming through.

Forget what I think of hunting, but the most inconsiderate Horse riders that I have experienced are from the hunts. We had to tell them that they were not welcome at Denbury. They charged around were ever they wanted to and what ever the condition of the ground, being that most of the hunting season was in the Autumn and Winter the ground is obviously wet and the riders would churned the ground up to acceptable levels. On one occasion they caused one of our Ostriches to die, it was spooked by the hunt riders and ran into a fence breaking its leg. We were compensated for the loss, but they were not that concerned as to the damage they had done.

I spoke to one of the Lock of the Lowe’s girls this afternoon, It seems that all of the Ospreys have now left the Lock and are on their migration. When I spoke to Peter the manager a couple of days ago, there was a male who was seemingly building a nest. He thought at first that it may have been another Male, on closer inspection with a telescope he found it to be resident Male. There was no suggestion that the nest was for this year, but it is not unheard of that one Male Osprey will have two nest going. Let see what happens when they return next year.

The Dove chicks do leave the nest when they are bigger. They tend to walk about on the ledges by the side and behind the nest. There where two, but one disappeared very shortly after they hatched. There are at least eight Dove nest going at the moment. I say eight but that count was without trying to look for them.

The Buzzard has been in the valley, but has not been landing as much as it has been. Part of the trouble is that the Ewe and its two Lambs that we have been unable to catch, have been in the valley eating the new grass that is coming up after we made the hay. We are trying to keep them out of the field, but the new grass is to tempting. We are going to try to catch them over the weekend, but what ever, the young Buzzard will get use to them.

Like Marie and Angela, I thought that the lake looked very beautiful last night, The best that I have seen it. A little eerie with the Bats flying about catching their dinner. There was a full moon last night that made it such a picture. All I hope, is that it was the Fishes eyes that we could see shining, and not any other creature that might want to eat the Fish. I believe that the Moon is full tonight. I will put the lake camera on again tonight, although the Moon will be later than last night, showing its self.

I did say that I would get the telescope working for this Moon Phase. I did try, only a few nights ago I set it all up, but when I tried to get it tracking the Moon it suddenly stopped. If it hadn’t been so heavy, big and bolted down I would have thrown it in the air. I the end I couldn’t work out what was up with it, I turned it off loosing all the setting that I had made. When I got back to the farm house I realised what had happened. The Telescope has a maximum of two or three turns clockwise, or east to west. Of course when it get to the end it stops. I sorted that problem out yesterday, meaning to reset the Telescope last night. To be honest by the time that I had finished, it was getting late, by the time I could align the telescope with the stars it would have been at least 9.30pm. Finishing would have taken another half an hour. I really did want to sit down with a glass of wine, so it got left. With the night drawing in I will be able to set it up earlier by the next Moon Phase. If I get a chance I will set it up earlier and use the Solar Telescope in the day.

The Badgers can be seen from 7.30pm. We will be feeding them between 8-8.30pm
Walking around the lake I saw another Moorhen who had just hatched a clutch of three eggs. I also saw the other Moorhen who had two chicks a couple of weeks back, she had one swimming with her. There may have been two as she was in the reeds. The Moorhens do seem to be the most successful at breeding on the lake.

One of you got a little concerned that Lady and Willow were not in their stable last night, when I quickly turned the camera over. This time of year they are out in the field as much a possible. When I turned the camera over I was hoping that had left the stable door open and that Branston was in it. A Lady wanted to see him. It turned out that for some reason she was unable to see the webcams.

Val brought back memories of when some years back I use to holiday in a small Houseboat at Oulton Broads. I don’t know what it is like now, when I was there it was a very nice. One memory I have kept with me all my life. Being that we were holidaying on the water I decided that I would take up fishing with my elder son. I spent a fortune on all the best equipment that money would buy, unfortunately the money I spent didn’t make me a very good fisherman, all that I ever managed to catch were elvers, who either swallowed the hooks so far down, they were impossible to remove or they managed to tangle themselves in the fishing line, that caused me to spend most of the time untangling them.

On one occasion whilst trying to fish from a rowing boat on the Broad, with my ex wife and elder children in the boat. I threw out a handful of maggots as ground bait, I could not believe what happened when I threw them, my wedding ring went with the maggots. I must admit that the wedding ring was very big and heavy, it really was like a ball and chain, and quite loose, it flew a fair distance from the boat.

The wedding ring was 22 carat gold and had cost a large amount of money to be made, by a jeweller Bill Pugh, Bill worked from home in the East End of London, where I lived. He did a lot of work for three very well known West Ham football players. Trouble was Bill did like his beer, he would start work at about 8.pm in a dingy dark back room on the first floor of his house. The curtains always drawn to obscure the view of the East London Cemetery that backed onto his house, working through the night, getting drunker and drunker when he produced his best work. He always offered to share his beer with you, but you knew that he didn’t mean it. If any one did accept his hospitality, you knew that his wife would have had trudge back to the Off Licence to get more of his nectar.

Back to the ring that had managed to finish up in the reeds, it was a good distance from the rowing boat. I wouldn’t be the best swimmer in the world, but decided to lower myself into the water to try to retrieve my ring, with my ex wife encouraging me so that I could continue wearing the ball and chain. I lowered myself fully clothed to just above my chest, but could not feel the bottom of the Broad. It took my breath away, so I decided that being that the Broads are tidal I would try to find the ring at low tide next day. I pushed a fishing rod into to ground below the water, to mark a rough area where I thought the ring may have landed.

The next morning we rowed back to the area, the water was a lot lower, but would still have been waist high on me. I decided that before I went into the water, I would try tapping the end of my fishing landing net handle on the ground under the water first. In under a minute I had tapped what felt like a metal object. I slid my hand down the pole, with most of my head under water my finger just slipped into the ring. It was quite unbelievable, more so as the water was tidal. Standing in an exaggerated pretend gesture of jubilation, I shouted as loud as I could, only to frighten a Swan who was nesting in the reeds, just out of site from us. It flew towards me most definitely in an attack mode, moving quickly to try to get out of the Swans way, I fell over the side of the boat into the Broad, nearly tipping the boat over with my ex wife and children sitting in it.

We need a longish spell of warm and dry weather. As I was unsure of the weather when I made the hay, I left a small paddock at the end of the valley uncut. It is only just over an acre, completely surrounded by woods except for the paths that lead in and out. Because the woods surround it, it doesn’t get a lot of sun, the grass is always later than the rest of the farm. There is still a good bit of seed on it, even at this time of year it will make very good hay. I would normally not have bothered to try to make hay from it this late, because of being unsure with the weather, but the price hay is fetching at the moment, it would be daft not to make hay from it. We sold fifty bales of the hay that we made a week or so back, that paid for nearly the whole cost of all the hay that we made. The advert we placed to sell it, introduced people who needed hay in small bales. As long as the weather stays good it will be sold as soon as it is made.

The paddock is one of my favorite spots on the farm. Unless the owner of the farm next door is trespassing whilst out shooting, it is an extremely quite spot. I will tell you about him soon. The only thing that you can hear is the Birds singing and occasionally the Steam Trains whistles when the wind is blowing from the direction of the steam railway, that is about a mile away. There is a very old large Ash tree in the middle of the paddock, that probably makes it as attractive to me as it does. Since I have lived at Denbury the tree has lost a couple of large limbs in the wind. It is a shame, although you wouldn’t notice it if you saw the tree for the first time as it is, I can see that it has lost a fair amount of shape. I remember the first limb that it lost whilst I was here. To get to the paddock that the tree is in, you walk through the field where the valley camera is located. In the very far left hand side the path narrows, that then leads into the paddock. Not until you nearly reach the paddock can you see the Ash tree.

On one particular morning after an extremely windy night I just noticed a wall of green in front of me as I entered the paddock, so much that it looked as if the whole tree had been blown over. My heart dropped into my stomach. It took me a good ten minutes to make my way through a wall of leaves to find that a very large limb that faced towards the front of the tree, had been blown off. I wasn’t that much relieved, I was still pretty devastated that so much damage had been done to the tree on my watch at Denbury, especially as it looked as if the tree had never had such major damage in its many decades or even hundreds of years of its life. As the limb broke of from the front of the tree as you faced it from the path, we soon got use to it. Unfortunately a couple of years later another very large limb on the left hand side of the tree was blown off in a storm.

Another nice part of the paddock is that the stream runs through it by the side of the wood, There is a very small flat area by the side of the stream that is obviously used by animals to drink at. I call it the beach, it is a great place for children to play, paddle and catch the odd tiddler. Now that I have written about it, it is not one of my favorite places, it is my favorite.

Every time that I see the Swallow chicks in their nest it looks as if they are dying. Their mouths are open as if gasping for air. It can only be that they are so hot in the top of the roof. The last nest was the same and I don’t really like showing them on the webcam. The Dove chick is growing very quickly, it surely has got to be in the top ten for being the ugliest Bird chick. There were two but one disappeared very shortly after they hatched.

My luck seems to be holding out with the Sheep. I had forgot that it was a bank holiday today, for I had hoped to have moved them into a barn or stable to make sure that they don’t go free range again, before I send them off to market. I will send them to market this week. I am still undecided if I should to keep the Portland. The intention was to keep the friendly Texels, but after they escaped they lost their chance.

As we drive down our driveway on our way into the farm, the whole of the main Horse field comes into view. Just by habit we look to make sure that the Horses are all OK. Woody being grey stood out more than the rest when she was out, it is very strange her not being there now. We are looking to get another broodmare now that Woody has gone. It would be good to get one that is in Foal, but being realistic I should think that we will get a mare not in Foal that we will send to stud early next year. But you never know what may come on offer. The Bloodstock sales are coming up so I will see what is on sale there. Some of the sales can be seen on webcams. I will let you know when the next one is on.

When we went to feed the Horses this evening the Barn door was open. After Branston was opening the catch we tied the catch so that he could not open it. We don’t make mistake and it is never forgotten. This evening he was in the barn eating the Horse feed. Before we jumped to conclusions of who had left the gate untied I checked the hay-tie that it was tied with. It was wet where Branston had had it in his mouth. We thought that we had beaten Branston by tying the door, I don’t know how he untied it but he obviously had. There are three knots in the tie now.

That was a bit of luck. I went to see if the Sheep were still in the new fenced off area. Two of those that we had not got back, were back with the other Sheep. The other one was as close as the others, but on the wrong side of the electric fence. I wasn’t that concerned that it would go off again, it would stay with the others, even separated by the fence. One of my Lads were coming in the afternoon, and there was three more ready to make an opening in the fence, to then push it around the lake to the opening. Four helpers to one Sheep I admit is a bit excessive, but no way was I taking a chance. In the end it turned out not to be necessary, for as soon as I went to move the Ewe on, she took a running jump and cleared the fence with ease. To make sure that they didn’t decide to jump the other way to make an escape we put another wire a bit higher. As long as you keep the battery topped up, one sting is usually enough to keep them contained within the electric fenced area.

We went for a walk down the valley this afternoon with Tass and Kye. Before the hay grass was cut it wasn’t a very comfortable walk. The grass was taller than the Dogs, with the wet they would come back soaking wet all over, so we haven’t walked the valley as often as we would normally do through the summer. One of the Buzzards flew low and for the whole length of the field by the wood on the right hand side of the valley, squawking all of the time. as we were walking, I am sure it was a protest that we had the cheek to be in its territory. They do catch a lot of Rabbits, with the noise they make the Rabbits must be a bit thick not to run for cover, when they here the Buzzard. Tass kept by our side for most of the walk. With the weather being as warm as it was this afternoon, she was in no mood to be running around the fields with Kye.

As we walked the valley I am always looking for the tracks that the wildlife leave. After the wet summer there are a lot more tracks to be seen than we would normally see through the Summer. There are two places in particular that lead into the wood on the left hand side of the valley, that we have seen tracks for the whole time that we have lived at Denbury. The wood on the left hand side is unfortunately very steep it is a a bit over seven acres. Because of it being so steep it is very rarely visited, other than by the wildlife. It is the area that we regularly see hear the Deer on our walks, without seeing them. When we looked at the two places that we normally see the tracks Badgers, Deer, Fox and a couple of unknown tracks were clearly visible. It does make seeing the wildlife on the cameras that little more interesting, when you know what routes that they have taken.

Farm Holiday Cottages – Fishing and Wildlife Holidays

I managed to catch the last two lambs this afternoon…

Not showing the Bird feeder and Squirrel nest as mentioned…

Denbury Shangri La Velvet Jazz and Bracken getting drunk finding…

Peter the Manager of the Lock of the Lowe s…

We had a Lady come to the farm to look…

I spoke to one of the Lock of the Lowe…

font color red The Badgers can be seen from 7…

We need a longish spell of warm and dry weather…

Every time that I see the Swallow chicks in their…

That was a bit of luck I went to see…