We are heavily constrained at South Field at the moment because Natural England and the Forestry Commission take a dim view of planting native trees when there’s a golden plover on the nearby grouse moor that might want to eat our grass. So we are confined to small-scale planting and general land improvement.
The barn is solid, weather-proof and useful for storing all our gear – and for sheltering volunteers. A barn owl moved in after we put a special box in for it. We dug two new ponds this year (one with a small island for nesting birds); we’ll fringe these with willow, alder and aspen in time. We’ve continued to plant on the steep scarp above the burn, and along the burn edge (plovers allegedly not interested in that bit).
Our good friends in the Drystone Walling Association (Northumbria branch) have again done wonders in rebuilding our tumbled down walls, maintaining the integrity of the boundaries and investing in the landscape. South Field is both cold and windy – it’s going to take a long time to get a new set of habitats up and running but, as the old Chinese proverb says, if the best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second-best time is now.