Release the Lawnmowers!

We are still struggling with the mammoth fencing task, the problem is where we are putting a stock proof fence where there once stood lovely old stone walls.  One day we hope to restore the walls but some are so far gone that the only evidence that they were ever there is a grass covered hump with quite a few scattered and buried stones.  As you can imagine this makes putting in wooden posts rather tricky and very frustrating!

Woody and Ian made great progress yesterday despite the awful wet and windy weather. While I continued ripping out the old barbed wire and putting up electric fencing, it was time we released the lawnmowers!

The 9 month old welsh filly enjoying the rough grazing.

As you can see most of the land still has the remenance of last years grass.  Now dead and sitting as a "crop" of standing hay it is fairly useless, not very nutritious and creating a mat that the new growth is having to fight to get through creating weak roots.  However this dead grass is perfect for the ponies to graze on as it is not too rich for them.  

The grey mare using the gorse as shelter.

I fenced an area that would offer some shelter from the still unpredictable spring weather and give a selection of grazing both rough and part of the paddock we had flailed before Christmas.  Grazing this area hard now would allow the spring growth a boost in the next few months and produce stronger more dense grass for the future.  It would also be interesting to see if the ponies would brows on the gorse too.

At the moment the ponies are still rather wild and we will limit their time out by catching them in at night so that we can ensure they have daily human contact and don't turn feral!  Once they are settled and the perimeter fencing has been completed we will introduce the other two horses and we will then have a real go at blitzing the old grass to improve the new stuff.  At that point we may introduce sheep to further improve the ground by treading it down, fertilizing and eating anything the horses don't.

We don't want to promote a mono-culture but want to strip back the old grass/gorse naturally so we can better see what we have.  We still want that wild flower meadow so we may end up barring horses from certain areas as they are not the most careful of animals and tend to poach the land.  There are also allot of Bluebells in the headland so we are being careful not to squash their early growth and are looking forward to their show in April!