Hazel, willow, beef and storytelling from Bedfordshire

Sniffing the heliotrope

Sniffing the heliotrope
For several years I’ve vaguely noticed this flower in a couple of road-side ditches in Gravenhurst and mentally labelled it as butterbur. The other day, seeing it flowering, I took a step into a ditch alongside Campton Road to take a closer look and a picture. Later, when looking at this image on-screen and thinking to find something out about the plant, [...]

Snow

Snow
Rather unexpectedly, it’s dark and white this morning; obviously we need to keep more of an eye on the forecast, as we hadn’t noticed it was on the way. Fairly typical southern English snow – wet and sloppy and the temperature is hovering above freezing. Actually now that the cattle are inside, we feel a bit like whatever happens [...]

Rain water harvested

Rain water harvested
It’s raining, cold and windy; usually I’d be feeling gloomy and wintry myself. However, I’ve finally got the rain water harvesting system hooked up from the barn roof and I’m feeling a bit smug. Many months ago we bought a second-hand water tank and placed it next to our barn. Slightly fewer months ago, I [...]

Weaning

Weaning
It’s still very dry although we did have a drop of rain over Thursday and Friday nights which produced some puddles; something of a novelty. The Environment Agency have started to put out drought warnings. All worrying, but we just carry on and assume that things will adjust. In 2010, we brought the herd indoors during the last [...]

The shape of trees

The shape of trees
I photographed this sycamore, Acer pseudoplatanus, last winter and have looked at the perfect sycamore shape on screen and on the  farm, regularly through the summer, and found myself pondering about how trees become tree-shaped and how or even why a sycamore is sycamore-shaped whereas an English oak, Quecus robur tends to be oak-shaped. I know there’s loads of variation within [...]

Welcome to the wurzels

Welcome to the wurzels
Until last weekend I’m not sure I believed in mangelwurzels. I’d heard of  The Wurzels and was aware of hearing people refer to roots as mangles; but now I know the truth. A mother and son team in the village who grow vegetables to an olympic standard and scale called recently to offer us mangelwurzles as cattle [...]

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