Tag: willow

WE WISH YOU ALL A VERY HAPPY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR.

There are five new photographs on the Photo page starting from the sixth one down. the first three are from Maddi, I will put on some more of Maddi’s tomorrow.

Hello Mr Farmer,
My friend Carrie in Canada sent me these photo’s, I hope you all enjoy them. Maddi.
Baby Moose 12 Hours Old – Born in the middle of downtown Flatrock
In my whole life in Flatrock, I have never seen a new born baby moose. This one was not even a half a mile from my house. The mother picked a small quiet neighbor in Flatrock and had her baby in the front yard just off Deer Marsh Road ,at 5:30 am. Debbie and I (Jim) were out bike riding when we came upon the pair. The lady across the street from this house told us she saw it being born. We saw them at 5:30 PM. So the little one was 12 hours old. What an awesome place we live in, to see such a site. Jimmie & Debbie Auchinleck.

Dartmoor Ponies taken 2 years ago when we were on holiday. Elsie.

The Osprey picture is from Elaine.

As you have probably seen Lady is now on her own. We parted Lady and Willow this morning. Up to now it has gone very well, much better than we had expected. They are calling for each other, but that has got a lot less over the hours. Of course Willow is pining for Lady. Parting the Mares and Foal is one of the most disliked things that I have to do. Unfortunately it has to be done. The alternative is to leave the Mares and Foals together until the Mare decides that it is time for the Foal to stop suckling, that would put the Foal at risk of being kicked by the Mare, if the Foal persist in trying to suckle. The last three months of the gestation period of the unborn Foal is very important, If the Mare was allowed to keep feeding her current Foal, it would cause the unborn Foal not to get the nourishment that it needs. Willow has been with Lady eight months, by far the longest that we have kept a Mare and Foal together.

Willow is stabled in between Emmi and Gypsy, in those stables they have bars so that the Horses can see each other. Willow went to the side Emmi is stabled, to my surprise ignoring Gypsy completely. After about an hour we let Emmi out of her stable to walk about, Willow really did get stressed, so that we had to quickly put Emmi back. After four to five days we will turn Willow, Emmi and Gypsy out into the main Horse field. Within a couple of weeks we should be able put Willow and Gypsy together in the barn in the area we have made for them.

Once we got Willow into a stable we had to put Lady into hers. We also brought Arnie in to keep Lady company. Lady has only called out once or twice in the last couple of hours for Willow, that was only after Willow had called out to her. Lady should only need to be stabled for two to three days, after which we should be able to let her out of the stable. All the time that she is stabled, Arnie will be kept with her.

We wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year

There are five new photographs on the Photo page starting from the sixth one down. the first three are from Maddi, I will put on some more of Maddi’s tomorrow.

Hello Mr Farmer,
My friend Carrie in Canada sent me these photo’s, I hope you all enjoy them. Maddi.
Baby Moose 12 Hours Old – Born in the middle of downtown Flatrock
In my whole life in Flatrock, I have never seen a new born baby moose. This one was not even a half a mile from my house. The mother picked a small quiet neighbor in Flatrock and had her baby in the front yard just off Deer Marsh Road ,at 5:30 am. Debbie and I (Jim) were out bike riding when we came upon the pair. The lady across the street from this house told us she saw it being born. We saw them at 5:30 PM. So the little one was 12 hours old. What an awesome place we live in, to see such a site. Jimmie & Debbie Auchinleck.

Dartmoor Ponies taken 2 years ago when we were on holiday. Elsie.

The Osprey picture is from Elaine.

As you have probably seen Lady is now on her own. We parted Lady and Willow this morning. Up to now it has gone very well, much better than we had expected. They are calling for each other, but that has got a lot less over the hours. Of course Willow is pining for Lady. Parting the Mares and Foal is one of the most disliked things that I have to do. Unfortunately it has to be done. The alternative is to leave the Mares and Foals together until the Mare decides that it is time for the Foal to stop suckling, that would put the Foal at risk of being kicked by the Mare, if the Foal persist in trying to suckle. The last three months of the gestation period of the unborn Foal is very important, If the Mare was allowed to keep feeding her current Foal, it would cause the unborn Foal to get the nourishment that it needs. Willow has been with Lady eight months, by far the longest that we have kept a Mare and Foal together.

Willow is stabled in between Emmi and Gypsy, in those stables they have bars so that the Horses can see each other. Willow went to the side Emmi is stabled, to my surprise ignoring Gypsy completely. After about an hour we let Emmi out of her stable to walk about, Willow really did get stressed, so that we had to quickly put Emmi back. After four to five days we will turn Willow, Emmi and Gypsy out into the main Horse field. Within a couple of weeks we should be able put Willow and Gypsy together in the barn in the area we have made for them.

Once we got Willow into a stable we had to put Lady into hers. We also brought Arnie in to keep Lady company. Lady has only called out once or twice in the last couple of hours for Willow, that was only after Willow had called out to her. Lady should only need to be stabled for two to three days, after which we should be able to let her out of the stable. All the time that she is stabled Arnie will be kept with her.

We have company this evening, so it will be a quick update tonight.

No Elsie, the Sheep did not go to market today, I had a lot to do this morning and by the time I had finished it was to late. They will be going next week.

Pat, I will definitely let you all see Bliss and Misty before they go off to France. We are not looking forward to be saying goodbye to them. They are enjoying their work being broken. We give them two days off a week, when we turn them out on those days they wait by the gate in expectation. It is not a promise, but we will try to let you see them being ridden before they go. if we can we will do it on a Sunday, maybe next. I will let you know well before.

After I finished my work this morning I phoned a wholesale nursery about the trees we are going to plant. When we plant trees we mainly use whips, they are very cheep, three foot wild cherry are priced at about 54p. Although very low in price they tend to do a lot better than pot grown. We will be buying some larger trees to put in areas as where we planted the Willow yesterday. We probably look at buying some Maple, Ash and we are also able to get some Elm whips, to replace some of the Elm that have died. The only large tree that we are going to get is a Weeping Willow to go by the lake.

Dutch Elm disease must have peaked over twenty years ago. The disease decimated all of the mature Elm Trees in the UK. It is a fungal disease of the Elm Tree, and is spread from tree to tree by a Beetle that gets under the bark of the tree, causing the tree to shed its dead bark, eventually the tree will die. The disease originated in Asia, not as the name suggests as being from the Netherlands. Spreading into Europe and America, where it has devastated native populations of Elms, which had not had the opportunity to have any resistance to the disease.

When we came to Denbury, we did not realise that we had Elm in our Hedgerows, we had believed that the disease had wiped out all of the Elm, but in fact if hedgerows are cut back regularly the Elm survives in the Hedgerows. Thinking that, and even being told by County Council Farming Adviser’s that the Hedgerows should be left to grow, only cutting back every few years or so to encourage wildlife, that is what we practiced. Unfortunately what we didn’t know was that is that a few years of growth of the Elm makes it more susceptible to the disease, and most of our Hedgerows have now not got any live Elm in them. A good example is the view from the main Badger camera where I get over the gate to feed the Badgers. Most of the Hedge that is more like trees now, either side of the post where the IR lamps are position, are dead Elm.

Around the Pond in front of the Farm House, are a lot of Willow Tree whips, that have seeded from a Willow Tree that started to grow out of know where in our front garden. I must admit that the tree is a nuisance as it stops the light getting to part of the garden, and every year its fluffy seed cones get every where, including our kitchen. This Winter it will have to go. Seven years ago it was a whip itself, it is now a very large tree, nearly as tall as the Farm House.

With the growth rate in mind, I thought that it would be a good idea to dig up a few of the Willow whips in the pond area and transplant them into the hedge, where I get over the fence to feed the Badgers. In a few years time they would have grown, so that we would be able to cut down the dead Elm. My Lads spent an hour or two transplanting the whips today. I must admit that I have made a mistake in transplanting the Willow. They would very soon spread to places on the Farm that I would not want them. Come Monday we will be digging them out and replacing them with whips of other pretty quick growing species of trees. Maybe a few Cherry.

Another job my Lads managed to start today was to cut up a large Ash Tree at the end of the valley. It is obscured by the clump of trees in the middle of the valley. It was brought down when we had the bad flood in June. It just shows what a force of water came through Denbury that night. The logs from the tree when cut up will last us for most of the winter for our fire. We are only just now finishing off the work that was needed after the damage that the flood caused.