By my reckoning, there must be a pot of gold somewhere in Pomfret’s Wood :-)
Aftermath grazing
Alongside Pomfret’s Wood, on the drive in to The Lund, are a couple of fields currently left as grass for hay. One day, some day, the woodland may spill out across these fields though for the foreseeable future they will me managed for hay….
With this year’s hay cut and baled, we’ve invited a few visitors in for aftermath grazing. These ladies will graze the grass short, breaking up the matted vegetation and mosses. Having the grass short over winter and into the spring will also allow more light to reach the earth in spring and aid seed germination… or so the theory goes :-)
Seed sown - again
After rotavating the strips through the meadow, we’ve now sown the seed …. Mainly Yellow Rattle, with a mix of a few other wildflowers (thanks once again to Alwyn - Forest of Flowers Huby. Now we wait for spring ;-)
Rainbow and Rotavator…
The meadow flower seed didn’t take too well last year - the grass is just too well established. So - I spent yesterday scaling the grass with my long grass mower , followed by ripping up strips across our grassland with a beast of a rotavator (hired from our local hardware shop in Easingwold - the kind of place that has at least one of everything tucked away somewhere…)
We’ll sow the yellow rattle seed we collected a few weeks ago into the exposed earth, with the aim their seed will spread throughout meadow in the years to come …
Hay baled!
Hay baled - hurrah! (thanks Panda!)
As mentioned previously we now need to work out how to knock back the grass a bit to expose some of the soil for the yellow rattle seed we’re going to sow. The grass is so well established that our harrowing last year just didn’t knock the grass back enough…
Rowing up ready for baling
One thing mentioned in every meadow-making forum is the importance of cutting and removing the year’s growth. So to see our neighbour Panda rowing up ready for baling is rather exciting.
I’m still trying to decide on what next. I think we need another attempt at sowing more yellow rattle seed - there won’t be enough seed from this year’s rattle to give much hope for next year. Somehow we need to expose some earth to sow the seed into. Some suggest ‘scalping’ the grass by mowing the remaining grass as close and short as possible - even if just in patches. Or - maybe hire a small rotavator and turn over some strips…
The Last evEning of summer
Summer left with and epic sunset this year :-)
While the sun shines…
Our neighbour Panda has once again come to our rescue and cut the grass in the meadow. The meadow in Pomfret’s Wood is small - and Panda has a tractor and mower just the right size…. The right tool for the job :-)
The grass isn’t good enough quality for hay, and it sounds like everyone has enough this year anyhow - so I reckon we’ll move the cut grass into a hedge back and let it compost down.
Reds and purples
Wonderful colours…. I’m hoping this year I’ll find the time to make some more Pomfret’s Pontack Sauce with the elderberries :-)
Butterflies and bugs
It’s that time of year :-)
Yellow Rattle seed…
The small hay meadow within Pomfret’s wood will be cut next week (hopefully - fingers crossed for the weather!) so we’ve been out collecting seed from the yellow rattle. Most of the seeds have already dropped, but we’re keen to make sure as much as possible remains in the meadow rather than being taken away with the hay.
Painting Courses in the meadow
This week Jonathan Shearer made the journey down from the North of Scotland to run a three day course here at Lund Studios - Exploring Paint Outdoors. It’s wonderful to see courses spilling out into the meadow….
Searching for Prey
Searching for dinner in the meadow…
The beautiful owl was stealing the show on a recent course here at the Lund - silently gliding past the studio windows searching for prey…
Summer Storms
Several hours of dramatic thunderstorms have swept across the North of England this afternoon - the thunder and lightening accompanied by torrential rain. The grassland lies flattened.
After watching the landscape change so gradually over the last months it’s incredible to see it transformed in a matter of minutes. Will be interesting to see if it manages to stand tall again or if it will begin to rot where it lies.
Learning about butterflies..
I’ve never been great at identifying butterflies. So many people seem to know so much - effortlessly naming them as the flutter by. Not me. But I’m starting to learn - thanks to Google. So I can can fairly confidently say this is a meadow brown :-) Hundreds in the grassland at the moment …
Coming into bloom
In the field alongside Pomfret’s wood Debbie’s mother, Diane, has created a large expanse of wildflower meadow around a new shallow pond. The warm sun and gentle rain of the last few weeks have worked their magic
Taking some time to look...
8th June 2021:
Over the last month we’ve simply been taking some time to watch things grow… very pleased to see some yellow rattle coming through.
Just when we needed rain...
3rd May 2021:
The first thing the trees needed in spring was some decent rain, to give them a chance of developing their roots after being planted. So, as we headed into the third week of a beautiful sunny during April we were getting rather concerned.
I picked up some buckets and started watering them by hand. Even though it seemed a little futile, I couldn’t bear to think of the trees I had spent so long planting out not making it through their first spring.
On the fourth day neighbour Panda popped over and handed me a lifeline… He reckoned he could hitch up his 1000l water bowser onto a trailer, then hitch it behind his offroad trike. We reckoned best only half fill it - but it worked! I still needed to bucket the water to the trees, but it meant I could go from 100 trees a day to more like 300. I ended up watering all 1400 trees within the week.
Since then we’ve had some rain. Not enough, but it’s a start… and whether its due my watering on the rain, the trees are perking up once more. Especially the Rowan!
Signs of Life...
11th April 2021:
Over the past weeks we’ve developed a low level obsession of peering down the green tubes. Knowing what a hard time these little fellas have had over the past months, it’s amazing to see signs of life :-)
The Final Tree
On the 23rd February we planted the final tree. Somehow it seemed fitting to be a grey, wet, muddy day :-)
Enormously satisfying to look out across the field and see the transformation. OK - so it looks like a field full of green plastic tubes - however, the knowledge that each tube has such potential growing up inside is rather special.
Walking out with the boys is becoming a little boring for them, as I’m stopping every couple of meters to peer down a tube a exclaim ‘I can see a leaf'! Maybe I’ll tire of this, though I doubt it will be any time soon…
Before too long the grass will start to grow, along with (hopefully) the meadow-flowers we seeded a few months ago. We’ll be walking the field and working out what to try and ‘manage’ and where to leave to let nature take it’s course. All the time watching the weather and hoping there is no repeat of the spring drought of last year…
