Field Mushooms - St George's Mushroom

Hey!! We've got mushrooms in the meadows... one of the best there is: St Georges Mushroom. I spotted them this morning walking the dogs. I saw some areas of darker grass against the background and went to investigate. I found four beautiful "fairy rings" about a meter across.

I'll pick a few to eat, but also I'll move a few to likely areas for them to spore successfully, such as the giant heap of straw and horse manure at one end of the field.

The meadows are looking really beautiful now. I had thought when I first moved here that I'd inherited a "grass desert" from the previous owner, but in fact this just isn't so. As I watch what is growing as Spring moves on, I am finding more diversity all the time.

The meadow contains, apart from the actual grass, buttercups, cuckoo flower (or milkmaids as we called them when I was a kid) and a lot of red clover. Also, the blackthorn hedges have self seeded like mad. As I walk through the grass by the hedgerow, I'm wading through a sea of sicx inch high blackthorn. If humans vacted this site for more than a couple of years, or it didn't get grazed, the hedgerow would take over the field..... just another example of the fact that we live in a country design by nature for the forest.

Buzzard Wars

I was walking through the fields a couple of mornings ago when I saw two of the buzzards overhead. Nothing unusual in that. I see as many as six sometimes all soaring and circling together.

.

However, this time there were only two and they were flying oddly. At first I thought they were struggling to find thermals and gain height. It was cool and misty with no visible sun, so thermals would have been hard to find.

.

Then I realised that in fact, one of the buzzards was attacking the other and trying to drive it off.

.

It was utterly fascinating to watch. It's amazing just how much it resembles a dogfight between to old World War I bi-planes; each trying to gain the advantage over the other. Each was trying to get to the rear of it's opponent and attack from the back, but off course each was trying to stop the other doing the same. A fantasy ballet in the air......

March; out like a lamb.

Glorious day: warm spring sunshine and just a hint of cool in the breeze. Absolutely no question of staying indoors. We were both out in the garden all day.

.

We cleared up another of the areas left to rack and ruin by the previous occupants; all overgrown with thistles and nettles with, what at first appeared to be, some polythene sheeting amoung the weeds.

.

It turned out to have been, long ago, an old polytunnel. Everything was collapsed to ground level and overgrown with turf. It was a complete bugger to dig out.

.

Still, by the end of the day you could see where we had been. The bulk of the plastic is out anf burned. The usual assortment of stones, brinks and strange random bits of metal were dug out and sorted. We finally managed to get the lawnmower over the area. We'll treat is as law for while until the weeds are under control and then take it from there.

.

The E-Bay shredder works a treat. Super machine. All the old tree prunigns are now on the compost heap.

Mistletoe

Funny stuff mistletoe. Except for hanging over Christmas stockings, I'd never seen it at all until I moved to Gloucestershire, and now I see it everywhere.

Some trees it doesn't seem to touch, and others there seems to be more mistletoe than tree, and that's not just species. I'd always thought (from what I'd read) that mistletoe grew on oaks, or sometimes apples. Well round here, it certainly likes apples, but I've not seen it yet on oaks. I have seen it on hawthorn, poplars and ash, but not oak or willow.

.

Just before Christmas a couple of ne'er do wells rolled up here in a battered white van an announced that they were "Clearing the mistletoe out of the hedgerows" and did I want then to clear out mine?

.

They must have thought I'd come up with the morning's mushrooms......

.

It is interesting to look at.... it's got me quite fascinated.... but I'm not aware of any actual use for it (unless you count druidic fertility rites......).

.

The Plants for the Future Database tells me that all its parts are slightly poisoness, and they rate it 1 out of 5 for usefulness.

.

Ah well...... at least it looks pretty.

Spring Today.

Winter is beginning to release it's grip. After the blisteringly cold periods between November and February, it warmed just a bit for a few days.... enough to fool me.... and then popped back around the corner last week to bite at my fingers and nip my nose when I took the dogs up the hill.

But today is lovely. It started with a bite to the air and frost silvering the hilltop, then the sun melted away the chill and suddenly the air smelled of clean soil and sunshine.

The buzzards are back. I know it doesn't sound very romantic, but I became rather attached to them last Autumn, and an area that supports six top predators can't be entirely unhealthy. Certainly I found plenty of pigeon feathers in the hedgerows last summer. Over winter they vanished. I must check up on what they do/where they go in winter.

.

Listening to "Farming Today" over the last few days, they've been reporting on the RSPB's annual farmland bird count. They use 20 signature species as a proxy for general diversity. The which the skylark is one of these. As I walked by the pond, a pair suddenly flushed out from the marshgrass. I must try to track how many pairs we have. Again, today is the first time I've seen them this year, although to be fair, it's been so bloody cold that I seldom got past the lower fields over the last few months.

.

The list makes interesting reading. This is taken from the DEFRA report "Wild bird population indicators for the English regions: 1994 – 2006" I'm going to try to contribute to this for future years. My main problem is that the two lists includes a number of "LBBs" (little brown birds) and I'm not sure that my identification skills are up to dealing with those.

Farmland List

Corn Bunting, Goldfinch, Greenfinch, Grey Partridge, Jackdaw, Kestrel, Lapwing, Linnet, Reed Bunting, Rook, Skylark, Starling, Stock Dove,Tree Sparrow, Turtle Dove, Whitethroat, Woodpigeon, Yellowhammer, Yellow Wagtail, Marsh Tit, Nightingale, Nuthatch, Redstart, Robin, Song Thrush, Sparrowhawk, Spotted Flycatcher, Tawny Owl, Tree Pipit, Treecreeper, Willow Tit, Willow Warbler, Wood Warbler, Wren

Woodland List

Blackbird, Blackcap, Blue Tit, Bullfinch, Chaffinch, Chiffchaff, Coal Tit, Dunnock, Garden Warbler, Goldcrest, Great Spotted Woodpecker, Great Tit, Green Woodpecker, Hawfinch, Jay, Lesser Spotted Woodpecker, Whitethroat, Lesser Redpoll, Lesser Whitethroat, Long-tailed Tit, Marsh Tit, Nightingale, Nuthatch, Redstart, Robin, Song Thrush, Sparrowhawk, Spotted Flycatcher, Tawny Owl, Tree Pipit, Treecreeper, Willow Tit, Willow Warbler, Wood Warbler, Wren

Still, some of them we certainly have at Vine Tree Farm. Since the land is farmland edging onto woodland, I'll track both lists.

.

I'll keep up a running report on this. So far I can definitely say that we have:

.

Farmland List

.

Skylarks (at least one pair), rooks and wood pigeons.

Woodland List

Blackbird, blue tit, chaffinch, some variety of woodpecker, robin, dunnock.

.

When I've brushed up my identification skills I should add more. In the meantime, I'll read the report.

First Post - Permaculture

A lot has happened in the last few months. We finally managed to move to the farm last August and then had a brief couple of months of glorious sunshine before Winter moved in.

And of course Sodd's Law says that in the year when you've no central heating and the lighting is dodgy, that's when you get the coldest Winter for a generation.

Ye Gods but it was cold. I almost gave up cooking because it was so bitter in the kitchen that if I stayed in there long enough to cook, my fingers were so cold that it hurt.

But now Spring is, if not here, at least poking its head around the corner.

And last week I watched a TV program I considered truly revolutionary; "A Farm for the Future", by Rebecca Hoskin (famous for persuading her home town to do away with plastic bags)part of the BBC's Natural world series. Why they tucked away an important program like this in some out of the way spot on BBC2 is beyond me. They should have put it Prime Time BBC1 and shouted from the rooftops that everyone should watch it.

I see from the "Points of view" postings that there's plenty out there besides myself who think this way, and there were a number of requests to release it as a DVD.

So what was it about? Click on this for the Mail On-Line accompanying article, "Now my farm will teach the world to live without oil"

The starting point for Rebecca's argument is that experts in the field are all agreed that the "peak oil" point (i.e. "the point when the maximum rate of global oil extraction is reached, after which the rate of production enters terminal decline.") is all but upon us, if we have not even reached it already. From that point, oil production will fall by around 2-3% per year.

And our entire agricultural system is completely dependent on oil. What will we eat when we can't rely on oil?

I'll not go into vast detail here. She explains it much better than I, and you would be better to read the article link above. But the answer put forward is a method of farming very different to what we now use: Permaculture

And this is where I become suddenly excited. Because is where I can genuinely contribute and do something truly useful.

Our farm is not large, a little over 60 acres. But it is ideal for this form of farming, some will call it gardening.

Permaculture is a form of agriculture in which rather than relying on traditional methods of ploughing, planting and harvesting fields, the land becomes permanently planted with useful plants, in layers from ground cover to tree tops and including shrub layers and the under-soil beneficial fungi.

Land used in this way is vastly more fertile and productive than when used in the traditional way.

And moving away from monocultures means that such plantings are robust against disease and pest. The rise of a new wheat virus could currently wipe out major portions of the world's/humanity's food supply, because only limited numbers of varieties of wheat are grown. But no one pest or disease could destroy a developed permaculture system of many species. Some plants might fail, but others would survive. The eggs are in several baskets.

And so, my beautiful Gloucestershire farm is going to "go permaculture".

I've a lot of reading to do, and some courses to attend. I've been walking the fields and hill marking out in my mind where are the ditches and the ancient trees? Where are the marshy areas? Where might the marshes be developed into ponds and how can the water be most usefully be used for the environment? How can I extend the fruit orchards? Where should I plant trees to firm up land slippage?

I'm working on it.