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!