Into the darkness...

Here we are in December, the darkest month of the year.  I wont lie, its not been easy for Woody and I.  The combination of work, family and the eternal guilt of not being able to walk the dogs every night and only passing a cursory glance over the ponies when we are rushed eats away at us.  Also...my occasional meltdowns when "someone" has run through the electric fence, or when the hay barrow gets stuck in the mud....in sideways rain does not help the situation.  Sometimes it just isn't fun.

A sad and sorry site, however the foreground is where we had
half an acre of gorse ripped out in October.

Muuuuuuuuud!!

There is a lot of mud....but we have fenced off the summer pasture, corralled the bigger horses and got in enough haylage to get us into the spring.  The ponies have free run of the rough meadow in the hope they keep working away trampling brambles and munching on gorse (they do get a handful of haylage every night as a treat though).

With he ground being so wet we are unable to do anything productive on the land, unlike last year, so to keep ourselves occupied we have been out with the local hunt on foot and with the horses....getting muddy!  Running the dogs round by torchlight in their new home made hiviz, reflective jumpers and making chutney....lots of chutney!

So we will keep ploughing on through the dark days, planning for brighter weather and new adventures in 2016.

P.s.  We've decided to opt out of the drunken New Year this year, last year was just too legendary to compete with!  Instead we are taking the horses to the beach, then up early for more horsey antics on the 1st, cannot wait!!

Stinking Willie!

Ragweed, Ragwort, Jacobaea vulgaris or Senecio jacobaea all names of the dreaded yellow perril, the nightmare invader of livestock pastures, road-sides and abandoned ground.

I found out about the rather amusing name of "Stinking Willie" after doing some research into it's history, commonly known by this name in Scotland because it spread in the path of William, Duke of Cumberland’s Culloden campaign in 1746.  Since the industrial revolution the dandelion type seeds have been more widely spread by trains and motorway corridors than conquering armies!  

For as long as I have had anything to do with horses or the countryside I have been aware of the dangers of this member of the daisy family and been reminded often.  It is highly poisonous to all, causing severe liver damage the accumulative effects leading to death.  

As a child I vividly remember one of the pony club vets lecturing us in the dangers of Ragwort and the importance of removing this yellow weed from pony paddocks.  We were shown a fairly graphic video of sick ponies, she went on to shock us with a story of having to shoot a sick pony from a distance as it was going berserk..... Now I'm not really sure if that was true but it certainly kept me busy most summers pulling the dammed stuff out of our fields for the last 20+ years!

Our little helpers in the Rag War.  Where we could I allowed some
plants to stay to feed the Cinbar Moth Caterpillars.

Our paddocks only had a few Rag plants initially, these were pulled and burned last summer and that was that.  The grazing ponies moved in and ate the rough grass and scuffed up the moss letting in light and water to the soil.  This started a chain reaction and kicked the dormant roots and seeds back to life, here began our war on Ragwort!  

After much thought and research we purchased 10lt of Roundup and started precise spot spraying as soon as the weather was warm and dry.  Although the Roundup was effective the weather turned and the lovely damp summer created perfect conditions for the ragwort to take hold.  By October there were brand new Ragwort plants that had sprouted to the size of large cabbages, with leafy bases nearly two foot high.

Nov 2015 - Ragwort growing out of control to the size of
huge cabbages. (my boots just seen at the bottom of the pic)

November 2015;  It appears that we are not alone with this embarrassing problem, Ragwort has taken hold all over the UK.  The same damp and mild growing conditions this year also mean we will all be having giant Sprouts with out roast dinners this winter!  Sky News - monster brussels! 

So for now, I will just keep pulling the damn stuff up and burning it!  Despite claims that this can encourage growth, I would rather get rid of what I can see now than risk the horses eating it.  (I have since swapped "riding" as a hobby to "electric fencing Macramé" and " paddock weeding"...who'd of thunk!?)

For further info on Ragwort please see;

Royal Horticultural Soc - Ragwort

British Horse Soc - The Dangers of Ragwort

Gated Community

I went hacking today, it was raining a bit (!) as we've had the tail end of several North Atlantic Hurricanes and storms pass over so its been a bit wet and windy. Hey ho, better make the best of it or it will be a very long winter!

I set myself a little home work project a while ago on "Monmouthshire Gates" so to entertain myself I thought I should do some research on what the locals have...

Typical narrow lane gateway with sheep netting

Our neighbors pretty rounded end gate.

An unusual pair of mesh gates into sheep fields.

Modern, horse and dog friendly galvanised
with mesh

Wooden driveway gate
(don't think it moves much)

A couple of old iron gates that are more
like hurdles; straight bar and diamond.

A well made and fairly attractive angle
iron gate. Not terribly horse friendly though.

Old (retired!) plain iron gate and post.

When we bought the land there was next to no fencing and most of the gates had turned to rust.  Those that were still being used as gates had been hung from trees as there were hardly any fence posts let alone gate posts due to the stony ground.  40-50 years ago when the farmer last fenced the land it was done by hand, the stones making it nearly impossible to put in posts so any nearby trees were used to pin wire or hinge gates to.  Most of the original land boundaries round our way are stone walls or hedges because of this.

 

The Gate in the Tree

Nowadays with modern machinery and a better understanding of the environment most farmers have managed to install wooden fencing rather than use the trees as fence posts, something we were keen to avoid from the start.  

The photo below shows the typical landscape in Monmouthshire where pastures are bordered by thick hedges.  Where possible landowners and farmers have maintained, restored or reinstated their hedges by planting native shrubs and trees, fencing them off while they establish.  Through early spring you often see hedge layers cutting and laying overgrown hawthorn and holly that have turned to trees, it looks quite harsh treatment but they usually survive and accept their new road-side shape.  We have our own overgrown hawthorn hedge that will need re-laying next spring.

Glorious Wales

Where there are hedges and walls there have to be openings and access routes.  We have two modern galvanised entrance gates that are in good order but there was also an array of rusty iron farm gates in a variety of styles and sizes.  We generally try to conserve, recylcle and improve what we have and I loved the curved tops to some of the "antique" gates but most were beyond saving.  

 

Luckily Woody is pretty handy with a welder and set about repairing some to their former glory.  Sadly we have had to scrap most of them but he did manage to save one; painted white to match the silver birch copse it hangs pride of place on a study set of solid new wooden posts. 

It got me thinking about its simple design; three uprights and six vertical, with a hand friendly curved edge, why do some gates have diagonal bracing and others don't; strength, safety, cost, design?

Woody bought a book on Gates; Gates & Stiles by Michael Roberts.  It beautifully illustrates the gate patterns and styles.  I love that each county or area has its own style of gate, all different from the preferred type of wood to the flourish of gate arms, closures, hinges even the number of bars can identify the area you are in...well unless you're in farmland with nothing but galvanised gates.

There are various names to describe the parts of a gate;

• Hunch/heel - the hinge end
• Shutting head - the upright closing end.
• Beam or Top bar
• Vertical bars within the gate - struts
• Horizontal bars - rails/bars
• Diagonal bars - Dagger/Stag bar

As I found on my research hack today traditional wooden Monmouthshire gates are few and far between but there are a couple of good examples at GlamorganWalks.com.  Woody had plans for making our own wooden gates but time and energy means we are quite happy buying bog standard gates for the moment!   Even hanging a set of lightweight galvanised gates had its problems (see; Land Week 4th-18th September) but Woody did a grand job setting the hefty gate posts in concrete and giving us an official entrance to the land.

Ta-dah! They may just be gates but they are our gates!

For the moment many of our internal gates are the electric fence kind!  They do a good job while we figure out where we want paddocks, they provide a quick and simple solution.

Alongside traditional gateways we have plans to introduce sliding rails into fence and hedge lines to create part time/occasional field access that will also act as jumps for schooling the horses.  I also have plans on adding tiger traps and reinstating the odd stone wall back into the boundaries so the neighbour and I can play cross country jumping!

A grip on functionality

October was a quiet month for eight little acres.  

Its been quiet because we are starting to get a grip on things, finally we are being able to use and enjoy the land in fully functioning areas.  This is mainly down to creating a horse free zone for the winter months and getting the front gates on making the perimeter secure and allowing us the luxury of swinging gates rather than fighting with gates held up with string. 

 

We have also dissected the two acre rectangle from the winter meadow grazing enabling us to have a horse free zone with small pony corral (shown in green), further fencing/hedge laying will go in over the winter to make smaller turnout paddocks.

Instead of grafting we have been busy with family commitments; looking after Woody's poorly father (after a successful stem cell/bone marrow transplant).  We are also in the process of buying a house closer to the land and we did manage a brief day out to London, a rare non-horsey day off to watch American Football at Wembley.  We have generally taken our foot of the gas with land tasks to refocus on life stuff.

Oh...er...oops...we also re-homed another horse, Frank (Donttellmother), who has just finished his racing career, he's come to us to have some fun hunting and possibly some riding club stuff next year, he is a poppet, but I still managed to fall off him him within 24hrs of picking him up...ooops!

Contrary Beasts

Horsey people are mad, don't worry we will all freely admit that.  Most people choose their pets based on their time, space and financial limitations, horsey people are addicts rarely paying much attention to such sensible factors!

 

Horses are unpredictable, accident prone, fussy eaters that unlike other livestock like cows have been tamed and domesticated to not fear humans often challenging their master-ship and instead becoming the boss over their human slaves.  

I am a mug.

My grey mare Miss Beast has had my full attention for all her dietary, medical, health and comfort requirements for the last eight...nine years.  I learnt my horse and "stable" management from reading every horse book I could get hold of as a child.  Graduating to pony club and then working with horses through my teens and twenties, including being the head girl for an Olympic event rider.

Horses have deceptively complicated digestive requirements.  They are grazing heard animals yet they cannot and will not eat just any greenery.  There are a surprising amount of poisonous plants growing in the idyllic meadows we would like to place horses in, for example;

• Oxford Ragwort  - fatal liver damage
• Foxglove/Rhododendrons - Heart failure
• Buttercups - UV sensitivity, burns, seizures
• Hemlock - respiratory paralysis
• Cuckoo-pint
• Yew - sudden death
• Oak - impaction colic from eating the acorns
• Sycamore/maples - Atypical myopathy/death
• Rosebay willow herb/Bracken - nerve damage

We have many varieties of plants at Eight Little Acres, thankfully few of the above.  However since we have grazed the meadow, allowing light, air and water to the soil, the Ragwort population as exploded!

The wrong kind of grass!

Not only can there be poisonous plants, the grass itself can be harmful.  Horses are designed to graze for aprox 20hours a day, "trickle feeders" requiring forage to be taken little and often.  Now if you are designed to eat for that length of time every day what do you think you should be eating... salad and oat crackers...or chocolate cake and doughnuts?  Well it depends on what your energy requirements are but generally you would lay off the sugar!

The grass equivalent to sugary junk food would be Rye Grass, ideal for high yield milk producing cows but not horses.  Too much sugar can interfere with horses insulin production leading to Diabetes type problems such as Laminitis or Cushings as well as gut problems like colic or ulcers.  

We know from the soil test taken earlier this year our patch has poor, acidic soil that would not be able to support this type of rich grazing so keeping cattle would not really be viable without major treatment the ground.  However it is perfect for grazing sheep and ponies, "good doers", not so good for animals that needed a little bit extra.

We currently have Miss Beast plus the two welsh hill ponies who's needs are all rather different.  The ponies arrived in March, undernourished both needed to gain weight with a balanced diet to promote health and growth so they were allowed to graze freely with small regular feeds of a low calorie balanced pony cube.

The bigger horse was fit and in good health requiring access to fresh grass after a winter of living on hard feed and hay still had one feed a day of energy mix with linseed for good skin and coat.

Six month later while the ponies thrived the competition horse began to show signs that all was not right; weight loss, depression and lethargy was enough to worry me enough to get blood tests done thinking that there had been some plant poisoning.

The results came back clear although the vet suspected stomach ulcers due to the acidity level in the grass.  There are treatments for this but I felt simply eliminating her intake of the acidic culprit, the poor value grass and swapping it with high nutritional haylage to help neutralize her stomach, letting it settle naturally would be better.  The results after only six weeks were fantastic both physically and mentally she was back to her old self and full of beans!

Going into winter all the ponies are in great condition, wormed and corrals have been set up to start a regime of winter feeding and haying to keep optimum nutrition levels for their individual requirements; I don't want the ponies getting too much haylage early on or they will balloon!  There is plenty of natural shelter allowing them all time to browse in the hedgerow as well as in the meadow along with supplemented forage and hard feed if needed.  Fencing a large part of the pony area off will also allow us to add the long awaited Calci-Lime to re-balance the soil nutrient and pH levels, this may take some time but will be worth it for long term horse grazing.

Winter? I think we're ready....!

Important things behind the scenes.....

The land project was a dream, a get-away.  "Land" was always something we had aspired to have.  Before "Land" there was long, wild, free, adventurous dog walks, exploring new places on foot.  Before "Land" there was an order of priority, horses in livery, dogs walked before breakfast, running clubs or gym visits in the evening.  Before "Land" there was a dream...

The reality is emotional, expensive, enormous, draining, hard work, with the responsibility to "do it right".... as I am writing this I see there must be parallels to having children!

We both work in stressful jobs where there is much expectation and responsibility.  We are both proud of what we do but ultimately it is not what drives us and the commute is a daily torture that we have both endured for the past two years.  We want to make the most of life, have fun, take risks, as it is so very short.

Woodys mum & dad as our wedding 6th July 2013

Everything stopped two years ago when Woody's mum died from Pancreatic Cancer, it was a horrible death, one you would not let your dog go through.  Shirley was a fanatic gardener, there was not much she didn't know about plants, and if she didn't know what it was she would plant it anyway to see what would happen, often with spectacular results.  Her garden was the show piece of the street.

Shirley's Roses

Our house comes with the job and although we make the odd attempt at a veg patch or flower boarder (I planted a rather fetching snake of daffs through the front lawn once in Shirley's honor) there is little motivation to improve our outside space.  Hence why the connection to some of our own greenery was so important.  Somewhere we could plant and conserve some of our and Shirley's favorite plants and keep the memories alive.

Woody, Shirley and David at the allotment; August bank holiday 2013

Perhaps if we had we known land ownership would take over we would have got an allotment!  What we have achieved so far on a limited budget with limited knowledge in an area where we have had to find our feet and make new friends is something to be proud of.  Shirley would have got stuck in with us I have no doubt of that


So here's to making dreams a reality, even if they arn't quite what you thought they would be, here's to adventures, here's to living a crazy life outdoors.

Land Week 14th - 18th September

Woody and I have been slowly chipping away at all our land projects making progress, developing and improving ideas and plans as we go (in between work, (a lot of...) pony shows, family duties and the occasional weekend in London!)

 

Every so often we have a splurge on money, kit, time, energy and brainstorming of future plans.  Some ideas lead to constructive ways forwards....other ideas hit us like a bad hangover leaving us wondering why we ever thought that would be a good idea!  As I often say we are learning as we go and we hope this will be our practice run before buying a bigger smallholding in the future.

It's been six months since our last concerted effort of "Land Week" where much was done to establish the fencing and tidy the tree line on the driveway.  With the trees now getting ready for winter and while the ground was still firm we organised for another push.  

This time jobs included; getting the enormous gate posts in, clear more gorse, raising the height of the tree canopy in the far corner (willow corner) up to the pond and address any weak areas of hedge that need fencing. 

The vital planning stage

Day one; experts arrive to carry out chainsaw work along the bottom boundary, tidying up hedging and taking down a lot of dangerous low beech limbs (Beech trees are renowned for "dropping" without warning...branches or whole trees!  Sadly I have a friend who lost a horse this way).  Once the low limbs were felled and cleared the digger could get in to remove the sheep dip that has been causing me sleepless nights since we put the horses on the land.

While the boys were armed with chainsaws and diggers, I just hauled the branches and debris into piles for sorting and burning.  Important for everyone's safety but also a morale builder seeing how much had been cleared.

Wood-dogs in his element! (mud!)

The Beech trees after their haircut, the dangerously low branches removed and the crowns raised gives space and lets in light so that the digger can get in to level the area, filling in the death trap that was the sheep dip.

The area leveled exposing the old concrete pad where an old pole barn stood. handy for storing this winters haylage.  The bare areas will need to be reseeded with grass seed, I am hoping the bluebells that were abundant in this shady area come back unharmed next April.

Before: in the distance Willow Corner

After: lifting the crowns means we can get machinery right up to the boundary to repair the fence/hedge.

For some time we have had the two 12ft main entrance gates tied to posts via their hinges with "farmers friend" (baler twine!).  Every now and then one "hinge" would wear out and snap, usually when we were in a rush, in the pouring rain or my favorite...in the dark!

A small tantrum was had and the installation of proper gate posts was moved to the top of the priority list.

A couple of months ago Woody had purchased 6 very large telegraph poles at auction for about £80 so we had all the kit, the problem was that the bed rock was only 6-12" down but a hole of about 3ft deep was required.  Hence we needed a serious digger.

A tonne of rock and a water main strike later the holes were dug and the posts were leveled into position.  Woody will back-fill with concrete later on.  

Then there was the small matter of repairing the water main, done fairly quickly at the time but it raised a few questions over where our supply was coming from as this was not where we thought it would be.

Another 50m trench had to be dug to the old stop-cock and a spiders web of dead pipe taken out.  New pipe had to be laid with spurs and the stop-cock moved to the driveway for easy access. This resulted in a rather late night session on the digger as it was the last day we had it on site. 

All the hard work, early starts and late finishes are paying off. Woody is a legend taking time off work to project manage and get stuck in with the big land jobs.  He goes out of his way to help with the horses and goes off to get haylage for the ponios...ok my truck wasn't best pleased about it but I was :)

A lot of gorse was removed by the digger this week so there is more open land/grazing available, we just need to get the Calci-Lime added to give it a boost.  Not everything was finished this week as problems crop up and take up valuable time but it is another push into the Autumn stint of work to give us some focus on what needs doing next.

• Gates on (nudge, nudge)
• Winter corrals fenced with a water supply - we want to focus the ponies on clearing a specific patch of gorse next.
• Log processing
• Weed control 
• Fill old cesspit/clear stable corral
• Plant blubs