I’ve added a few new videos to the YouTube Channel!!!
Some tours of the animals and I’m planning a weekly ish….. vlog about the happenings on the smallholding!!
Here is Episode one!!
Category: Wildlife
Day tripping!!
We originally made a pledge to go out and learn something new about our local area or visit somewhere each month…. well we missed a few, time got away from us, jobs came up, regular chores took over…. and oh yes we had a beautiful new baby!!
So we have made up for it recently with a few trips!! All disguised as plant or poultry sales!!!
A day trip to Aberaeron for the plant and craft show!!! Maybe I’ll be a stall holder next year!!
We came away with some lovely plants!! An acer, some heathers, and a few more bee friendly plants!!
An afternoon out to the smallholders boot sale and poultry sale just past Llandysul!! Where I tried to persuade James we need bunnies and ducks as pets for the boys!!! Starting him small!!! Maybe then I’ll move onto pestering for horses of our own!!!
Finally I took the boys to the Welsh Wildlife centre in Cilgerran to explore a little, have a picnic and Oo yes another plant sale!! So as I had gone solo…. no we have another fab collection of wildlife and bee friendly plants to add to the beds and banks!!
Three marvellous outings, lots of new plants meaning lots more work for us prior to getting them in!! And a few more ideas for what I want to get done around the place….
Willow maze anyone?!
Apologies for the radio silence…..
We have been crazy busy round here…. At school we are getting an inspection… I’ve been boxing up loads of things at our house and we’ve hired a van and moved it to the farm… Little bear has started to walk…. Yay but oh help!!!
I promise there is a podcast soon!!!!
But here are some photos in the meantime!!
Can you see it?!
Can you?
Ok
I’ll zoom it in….
Harvest mouse?! Or ordinary critter?!
What do you all think??
Plant life in the field and woodland
We had a wander through the fields and woods to see what plant life had appeared the other weekend!!
So….. We have bluebells, sorrell, red campion, more celandines, and……. Any helpers?!
Back through the woods… The woodland part three
Once we had managed to make it down to the stream we had to climb all the way back up!!! However we found that the old coppice paths still were visible through the woodland and they, other than the occasional blockage allowed for us to clamber back up somewhat more easily!!! Well definitely more easily than I had slid down the slope!! So we have discovered another to do job for our list and that is reinstate all the old coppice paths, which will mean chainsawing a few fallen trees, reinstating some areas of eroded path, by hammering in poles to hold back the earth etc!!!
On our way back we found balls of moss hanging in the trees…..
Some interesting lichens…
Bog plants towards the base of the slopes….
A lot of fallen branches, moss and some bluebell shots, which is good as the sheep in the big field have now moved out for a while so they won’t be munching away at them!!! Like last year!!
Some strange hairy mosses….
And areas where the dead could come out and allow for some natural regeneration!
Then we discovered the scarlet elf cups!!!! I have never seen these before and had only been introduced to them a week previous when a friend of mine had photographed them and put them on twitter!! But yes here they are in the flesh!!
Then we discovered or rediscovered the badger sett, which looks like it’s got residents in comparison to the last time!! Plus we have some scrape marks in the field!!
More elf cups and some general stills of the woodland ….
Ooo looks a fire pit on the other side of the river bank!!!! Slightly jealous feeling now!!! We have to get the paths to the stream reinstated!!!
Then we found a bottle and bucket dump!!!! Lots of old bottles to be cleared up!! This adds to the old cooker and some old metal work we found the first time we walked through the woods last year!!
So….. LOTS of woodland work to be done!!!
But we should see some good results…. Reinstating the old paths, restarting the old coppice cycle, adding more woodland on the steeper field slopes, creating more wildlife habitats with piles of dead wood, nesting boxes for owls, bats and other birdlife, clearing up the rubbish left a generation ago, building a forest school….. And that’s only on the woodland segment we own behind the fields, we have yet to start on the woodland behind the second rough pasture and down to the mill at the bottom of the hill!!! We have probably only covered half of our nine acres of woodland thus far!!! Though some of the other parts get a bit steep, removing wood for our burners may only happen if we learn to abseil!!! And abseil whilst holding onto whole trees!!
Down to the stream…. The woodland part two
So…. We decided to clamber (ok for me slide down on my arse) down to the stream which is our boundary with the neighbours across the valley.
Down and down we went….. Things got more mossy, damper, warmer, more ferns appeared on the ground….
Then the woodland opened up for the stream….
Our beautiful stream!!!! Clumps of snowdrops…. Pebbles and rocks…. And just beautiful, if a bit boggy round the edges!!!
The woodland part one!
James and I decided that the other weekend was a good time to start surveying the woodland. So we togged up and off we went with paper, books and camera in hand!!!
We went into the woodland from the furthest corner of big field….
And we worked our way down through the woodland a way noting hazel, and oak trees and an occasional ash. We need to sort out our boundary line in the woodland as the old banked hedged section has fallen into disrepair and there is evidence that sheep have been going back and forth between us and our neighbour.
We have some strangely knarled trees…
The second one looks like there is an old face in the nook!
And we have a lot of holes in the bank!!
Bunnies?
We have a glade area almost here which might service brilliantly as a forest school area for the the fire circle etc!!
There were some lovely fungi and some celandines and other ground flora starting to poke through too.
We mapped out this section of woodland carefully and then decided to slither and slide our way down to the stream which is our bottom boundary.
Forest school
I have been really lucky recently and have been allowed to attend a forest schools leader training course!!! So much fun and it’s going to be amazing for my class to access and beyond in school!!! I am going to set up a forest schools area on the farm, as we have an established area at school, so my establishment module with its management plans etc is mainly going to be set at the farm!! But anyway the course…..
We had theory…..
We had games…..
But then we had lit fires…..
Lit Kelly kettles….
Shelter tarps rigged into shelters which withstood the wind and the rain and the hail!!!
We learnt knot tying… Square lashing, frapping, clove hitches, two round turns and half hitches etc…..
We made pictures about the structure of the woodland…..
And started to name and label bits of trees and woodland flora we found!!!!
As I said so much fun… But it’s going to be a LOT of work over the next few months….. But I am still REALLY excited and can’t wait to start using our school forest schools area and also weirdly excited to be looking at my own woodland and developing management plans and the site!!!! Even though it seems to mean mapping the whole nine acres!!!! I may be in the woods a while for that one!! I hope the ordinance survey shows up how steep some of it is in large enough forms too…. Abseiling forest school anyone?!?
Dens
Laying the rest of the hedge at the end of half term we found…..
A fox den?!
Mmmmmmm might be time to crack out the trail cam again!! Though maybe we have disturbed this entrance hole enough for now!
Tyddyn Bryn 