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Starting from number six there are five new photographs on…

Starting from number six there are five new photographs on the Photo Page.

There are quite a lot of photographs to go on the Photo Page. I thought that I had better put these Christmas one from Jannette (Cheshire) on now as it is nearly forgotton.

We woke yesterday morning to 8 to 10 inches of snow and it was cold. Even colder last night, and I do believe the Emu and Rhea must be feeling it as the Emu were very slow coming for their feed this morning. We are giving all of the animals extra feed as with the ground being covered with snow there is no grazing. For the first time tonight three emu laid their eggs in the shelters. Some of them are taking cover in the shelters at night and some do not, The Rhea are don’t take cover at all.

Eight of our Sheep are in the barn with the other ten in the Woods. I don’t suppose we will see them until the snow goes. The Chickens have the Barns to go in during the day when they are let out from their houses in the morning. The Geese don’t seem to mind the snow or cold and they wander around in and out of the barn all day. Dennis doesn’t seem to like the cold and hangs around the Farm House porch. When one of the Buff Orpingtons who lives with Dennis ventured out of his house his feet touched the snow he jumped on a snow free piece of wood and stayed on it until bed time. I don’t think any of us like the snow other than the Horses who buck and jump about in delight.

Asbo is another who is not keen on the snow, but he has done his job very well. Most of the 100 eggs that you have seen hatching previous to the current hatch in progress are Asbo progeny, with well over 90% fertility. The current hatch was from eggs collected when we were having our yard concreted and the Chickens were kept housed for longish periods. These eggs have not been so fertile. We did not expect to get as many Chicks as we have.

The Badger are coming to feed a bit more now that the ground is very hard with frost and they are unable to dig for worms. We don’t seem to be seeing as many rats at the feeding are, with a bit of luck this cold spell we get rid of a few. We hope that it doesn’t reduce the Vole population to much as we heard one of the released Barn Owls last night and Voles are their main diet.

Elaine I haven’t had a chance to look around for Animal foot prints in the snow. I have looked around the Pond next to the Lake to see if the Otter is about. There were no Otter foot prints yesterday or today. There are Deer prints that I can see in the Valley tonight. I must have just missed the Deer. I will try to get down the Valley tomorrow to see what has been about. Trouble is the snow makes the going slow and the days seem to go so quickly that we find it hard to find any extra time.

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Starting from number six there are five new photographs on…

Starting from number six there are five new photographs on the Photo Page.

We are still very short of photographs.

Chickens silkies? Betty Canada

Beautiful clouds. Betty Canada

Unusual cloud pattern from my back window. Betty Canada

Our local river. Betty Canada

Bleeding Heart. Betty Canada

The continuous rain that we are getting is starting to concern me about the Canada Geese nesting on the Lake at Denbury next Spring. The intention was to put in another wildlife pond in the bottom half of the Horse Field. Natural springs in the bottom of the Field make it very wet. As much as we have tried to drain the area with drainage pipes, that we had buried in to the ground nearly 10 years ago, it is still lies very wet. So the natural springs make it an ideal spot for another Pond. We arranged for a local building contractor to start to dig the new Pond on the 14th of September. They never turned up to do the job on that and after nearly a month of empty promises and crap of when they would start, and why they could not do on the dates promised, and not even answering our phone calls in the end we had to find another contractor. Trouble was a week before they were due to start this prolonged spell of rain started. You can not move heavy machinery on wet ground, especially when digging a pond dig. The machinery will make the Fields extremely muddy scar the ground for years.

Our only hope of digging the Pond is if we get a long spell of frost over the Winter. We wont be able to do any digging in the Spring as the grass we be starting to grow for the Horses to graze on. Without the new Pond there will be little chance of the Geese retuning to Denbury to nest as they will fight with the Swans. we had intended to move the Swans onto the new Pond for the few months that the Geese were on the Lake. We may have even had the Geese land on the new Pond as that would also have been a good nesting area as we had intended to have an Island in it.

As the Black Swans nest in the Winter the Lake would have had interest all through the year. Although we have noticed that the Lake has come to life since the Black Swans arrived. The amount of Wildfowl using the Lake since they come has increased. Although there has always been Coots and Moorhens on the Lake we rarely saw them. Now when we feed the Swans they hang about for feed. We get the odd pair of Mallards nesting in the Spring and Summer, and although many land as soon as we went to the Lake they flew off. In the Winter we never saw Mallards, this year there are 5 pairs that look as if they might stay, with more flying in for short periods during the day. I may be wrong and the Geese will come back if we have only got the Lake for them to land on. It is possible as the Black Swans unlike other species of Swan will live and nest in groups.

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Starting from number osix there are ONLY THREE new photographs…

Starting from number osix there are ONLY THREE new photographs on the Photo Page.

There are ONLY FIVE more photographs left for tomorrows Photo Page.

Gannets perched on Bempton Cliffs,near Flamborough Head, North Yorkshire. Lindsay.

Male and female Gadwall.Lindsay.

As its name suggests it flicks the pebbles on the beach,hence the name Turnstone.They are remarkably tame.Lindsay.

The drive to collect the Kune Kune was about 50 miles. We must have pasted within minute from where Julia and Chris live. If we had her address we may have popped in for a cup of tea. I don’t think they would have enjoyed that visit much, with the way I was ranting.

The Pigs are kept in a large Garden, not what we had expected. Two Gilts one having a litter of Piglets from which our male was coming from and the Female that we were having.

After doing the Ministry paperwork we went to get our Female. She was not what I had imagined, she was a lot bigger than I had thought that she was going to be. She would have been the size of a domestic Pig, larger than the Wild Boar that we had once kept. The size really didn’t matter that much, it was the temperament of the animal that we were interested in, and she was very kind and interested in people.

It was easy to get her to walk to our trailer, but once there it was obvious that we were going to be a problem to load her on to it unless she was prepared to get on to the trailer herself as she was far to heavy to pick up. For sure she wasn’t going to load herself. If I had of known that she was going to be as big as she was I would have taken our Horse Trailer that the Pig could have walked on to by her self. The back is very close to the ground and it has a ramp, so loading her would have been easy.

The trailer we had taken was a box trailer that is about 18″ from the ground. With the bribe of an apple the Pig got her front feet on the trailer, but was down again before we had a chance to lift her back end on. The next attempt was to lift the trailer so that the back was on the ground. Again with a bribe of the apple she managed to get half way on. The idea was then to push the front of the trailer down whilst giving the pig a push. That didn’t work for she slipped off as we pushed the trailer down. The final attempt was up a ramp with her favorite food, a coleslaw sandwich. She ate the sandwich but wouldn’t get on the trailer. So home we came minus a Pig.

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There are five new photographs on the Photo page starting…

There are five new photographs on the Photo page, starting from number one.

Sorry Sue, forgot to put your word about the Greyhound. They are on now.

Hello Mr. Farmer, Here are three photos from my holiday in Cornwall in 2006. Sun setting over West Penwith. As you can see, it was quite stunning, looking almost like a fireball! Not very clear, but is in fact an owl carrying some prey – possibly a vole of mouse. Karen in Stoke asked if I went into the little church on the beach – here are some photos. 18th & 19th century graffiti? Beautiful ceiling. Looks as though some one’s been hitting the mead!! Julia.

I decided to go for a walk this morning while it was fine and I took my camera with me. The first photo is of my local church which is just 5 minutes walk from my home and the second one is of the river which is in heavy flood at the moment as you can see. The river is just across the road from the church and when it flooded last summer it actually went into the churchyard. Hope you find them interesting. Sue.

I don’t show the Doves nesting as much as maybe I should. In one place or another on the Farm you can guarantee there is a Dove nest with Chicks in. I put the webcam on that is in one of the stable blocks this afternoon, just as the Dove was moving about on the nest, revealing a newly hatched Chick.

With the Horses being stabled because of the fields being very wet, Ewy has been on her own for a week. She is normally in the Horse field, but for the past couple of days we have not seen her at all until a caught her on the webcam this afternoon. I should think that she spends a lot of her time in the woods. She knows where the Horses are as she sometimes would follow them in at feed time. When I get a bit of time I may try to catch her and put her with the rest of the Sheep in the barn.

Now that the Horses are stabled I cant see them getting turned out in to the field until the Spring. The ground is very waterlogged, not so much with heavy rain, but it is continuous drizzle, that is not giving the ground time to dry. It is also very mild. I cant remember this time of year being as mild as it is now. The way up to the Badgers feeding area are very slippery. I finished up on the ground twice tonight. The steps that my Lads dug into the very steep climb helps me a bit from slipping going to that feeding area. I don’t know if the steps will last in this weather.

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There are parts of the farm that we rarely visit…

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.

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For the past two days we have been walking the…

For the past two days we have been walking the Fillies around the farm, trying to get them prepared for the Auction later in the month. It is going to be difficult getting them prepared in time. If they are not, they will not make as much money as maybe they should. It is not only having them walking on a lead rope that is important, they need to have their muscles toned and their coats glistening. The only way to get them in that condition, is to work them out by walking and light trotting. Getting the Fillies coats looking tip top is to daily groom their coat, this will also help tone their muscles. There has been an Auction in Ireland for the past three days, that was shown on a webcam, but I only realised late this afternoon, with only a few lots, out of over 600 left to go. By the time I had let you know on the forum the sale would have been finished. At this Auction one yearling Colt made 2.4 million Euro. The next yearling sale on webcam is on the 9th of October for 3 days. With other sales to follow a few days later. See what you think. www.tattersalls.com

The squirrel feeder on webcam one has been knocked over. It happened on Sunday night. As it is on a wooden fence post, that was sunk into the ground to at least two and a half feet, I was a bit surprised to have found it laying on the ground when I went to refill the feeders. All the peanuts had been eaten. Looking at where the feeders are there were Badger foot prints. I think that probably a Badger knocked the post over whilst trying to get to the peanuts, Again the amount that the post was sunk into the ground, the Badger must have been very determined to get the peanuts.

Yes Karen, the Sheep were out of their fenced area this morning. Somehow the heavy gates that make up part of the fencing, were down. How they got knocked over I cant imagine, as the are heavy and were tied to keep them in place. The Sheep had not strayed far and we quickly got them back behind the fence once we had got it upright.

There have been a number of power cuts at the Lock of the Lowe’s over the past couple of days, it has stopped the webcams. Power cuts cause the computers to stop. When the power is on after the cut, the computer needs to be restarted from the site before the webcam can be got going. When I logged on this morning after the webcams had been restarted, there were a pair of Grebe on the Lock.

A number of you have commented about the rain that you have seen at Denbury over the past few days. The valley camera does tend to make even light drizzle look like heavy rain, although we have had a bit of that as well. The weather forecasts for our area at Denbury would have only been forty percent correct over the past couple of days.

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font color red The Badgers can be seen from 7…

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.

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The three Red Deer that we saw a lot of…

The three Red Deer that we saw a lot of last Winter, showed themselves this evening, one of them had a Calf. It is the first time that I have seen them for a while. I regularly hear them in the woods when we walk the valley. We heard them this afternoon when we went for a walk with Tass and Kye. With the grass now short we will see more wildlife on the valley webcam. Just after I had got the Deer on the webcam a Fox trotted into view. On our walk we also saw the Buzzards hunting.

The camera we have down the valley is a different type than most of the others that we use. It is a full pan tilt and zoom, but one than you can put larger lenses on, and IR lamps so that that turns with the camera. It is a lot slower and tends to bounce about a bit when you move it. We have a very large 300mm lens on the camera, when it is zoomed in every movement is exaggerated.

It is the first time that have walked the valley since we made the hay. The tractors tyres have made some large ruts and cut the ground up because of it being so wet. The ground is still very wet, this continuous bad weather is not helping it to dry, although the grass is growing very quickly.

Kye is getting quite big now, she is only a couple of inches smaller than Tass, it wont be long before she catches up and probably be even bigger than Tass. Tass is one of the biggest German Shepperd’s that I have seen, so Kye is going to be a big dog. Trouble is that she is on the go 24/7 and she expects Tass to keep up with her. Tass does try and mostly likes playing with Kye. This afternoon on our walk Kye didn’t stop nagging Tass to play with her, running around her, biting at her feet to try to make her run faster. What ever distance we walked, I reckon Kye must have doubled it. We haven’t heard lately, about any of the other pups from the same litter as Kye, if any of the owners see this let us know on the forum.

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The sun has brought the Swallow fledglings out flying about…

The sun has brought the Swallow fledglings out flying about a break neck speed, darting, weaving in and out of the barns. They are strengthening themselves for their migration to Africa to follow their food source of flying insects, their main food. Depending on the weather than can stay in this country as late as October, as the flying insects start to get less over farmland and water they will go into barns where there is livestock and feed on the insect that bother the cattle. It amazes me how such a small bird has the strength to fly as far as they do. I should think that once they cross the channel most of their flight is over land, where they can easily stop off. How Geese manage to go as far as they do on a single flight on their to migration to Iceland and Greenland on their way further north beggars belief. WWT tracked Geese on last years migration with fitted transmitters and Satellite Tracking. A few didn’t make it to their final destination. It must be a hard journey.

I spoke to the contractor this evening who is going to make our hay or haylage. He has been out mowing today and found that he was churning the ground up as he was mowing the grass. He was telling me that a lot of farmers have had to use the silage that they made just before the rain for the coming winter, as they have had to keep their cattle in as the ground is so wet. Any one who had made hay in the good spell just before the rain, are selling it for nearly twice the price that that would normally get for it.

After me telling that I had not seen any Deer for a while, one of our viewers, Elaine has sent me a capture shot of a two Deer on the 23rd of July at 22.47pm very close to where the Badgers feed. It looks like the three that have been around the farm for most of the year. We can normally see the Deer on the valley camera, but with the grass being so long I haven’t had the camera on for a while as I did not believe that if we would see them very well, if at all. I will look on my monitor tonight. If I see any I will put them on the Dog web cam.

Jade has been very poorly all day. She hasn’t been able to keep any of her feed down , and is finding it difficult to move about. We will get the Veterinary to look at her in the morning, to see if we can give her any medication.

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By the look of it a Swallow has started to…

By the look of it a Swallow has started to nest already on the nest at the top of the roof. I could be wrong, but it does look very much like it. There is no reason why they should not be. We will have to keep an eye on it. For anyone who has not seen the nest cameras scroll down on the Dog thumbnail, it is below the
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What a change to wake up to a sunny day. The weather report looked pretty grim for our area last night. With the amount of rain that we have been getting we decided to stable the Horses last night, to give them a break from constant rain in the night. As it happens I don’t think that it was as bad here as they forecast. Mind you what different about the forecasters getting it wrong. They reckon that we are in for a good week. Lets hope they are right. We are in desperate need to make some fodder for the Horses being it hay or haylage.

Before we can even think about making anything the ground has got to start drying. If a tractor went on the ground with it being so wet, it would just churn the ground up, any fodder that we made would have dried mud in it. That will go for everyone who tries to make it. Being in a valley, that is very fertile we tend to be able to make our fodder early in the year. We never have to put fertilizer on the land to make our hay for the Horses. The valley this year is going to cause us problems as the land will stay damp longer. The seeds on the grass will mostly had dropped by now, so the quality of any hay or haylage we make will not be as good as normal. The other problem we are liable to encounter is that as soon as the weather is suitable for mowing the grass, every other farm will want to do the same. Not having our own farm machinery to make our own hay and haylage we rely on contractor to make it for us, as soon as the weather breaks every one who uses contractors will need them. The weather we need to dry the land is hot and windy.

We took the Dogs for a walk up the valley this afternoon to see just how wet the ground is. It didn’t help when we had a heavy shower. I know that I am moaning again, but just how do they manage to get it wrong so often. The forecast for my area today was no rain. It take some believing that they can get it wrong so often. Without the shower the ground was very wet. The heavy rain and flood has caused a lot of the grass to have fallen over so that nearest to the root it is starting to get soggy. I’m not sure if to cut it and try to dry the grass by turning or leave it a few days before mowing, hoping that the sun will dry the bottom. I cant afford to get it wrong.

There are a number of Badger Setts on and around Denbury. When we first moved here I found eight. One has stopped being used, and another has little activity. A couple of hundred yards from the sett we show on the webcams, is a Sett in the our wood, with the ground being so wet we can see that there has been a lot of activity getting to it. It is always a good time after heavy rain to see what Wildlife has visited the Valley. There has been a lot of Deer activity going on. There was an entry on the forum a week or so from someone who had seen three Deer on the Badger webcam. I haven’t seen any for nearly two months