He recorded approx 300 Linnets, 100+ Yellowhammers, 35 Goldfinches, 60 Greenfinches, 140 Fieldfares (on the hedgerow berries), about 30 Song Thrushes, and SIX new bird species! These were Stonechat, Brambling, Grey Wagtail, Mistle Thrush, Golden Plover (a fly-over flock) and a young Cormorant checking out the ponds from the air. That takes the bird list to 67 species. Richard also added a new mammal - Grey Squirrel - although this was close to the owl box and might have moved in.

The day's events, which began at the Beaconsfield Hall in Shipton Under-Wychwood, were introduced by Trevor Cramphorn, Chairman of Cotswold Rivers Trust, before Ian Wilkinson and Sam Lane talked about the water management works that have been undertaken at Honeydale Farm. This was followed by presentations from waterways management specialist Vaughan Lewis, Dave Gasca, Hydrologist from the Evenlode Catchment Partnership and, Alistair Yeomans, Chartered Forester from the Sylva Foundation who spoke on the topic of Woodlands for Water. The day ended, after lunch and a Q&A session, with a site visit and tour of the works at Honeydale Farm.

We were delighted to welcome this group of vegetable growers who are interested in making soils more fertile and productive by using green manures. They came for a morning walk and talk, presented by Sam and Ian. We had a look at existing crops as well as what has been newly sown, and happily, the sun shone.

Sheep Grazing

Since the beginning of October, we’ve had sheep mob grazing on our spring-established herbal ley and spring-sown Sainfoin, at the rate of 100 sheep per acre, per week, back fencing each strip as we go. The idea is to graze down the fields so they’re not winter proud and leafy. The sheep certainly look like they are enjoying it and will be on the leys until early November. 

Sainfoin being grazed - note electric fence

Anyone who’s tried to repair a combine will know how difficult it is just to get access to anything. We were soon covered in prickly ears of barley and baking in the hot sun, listening to the taunting hum of fully-functioning combines busy at work on the neighbouring farms.

After several hours we had to admit defeat and called in the local engineer from Cotswold Combines. He visited the following morning, diagnosed a broken bearing in the unloading auger, and had it up and running within a couple of hours. The only trouble was the rain, which forced us to postpone harvesting the rest of the barley.

A week later we were able to finish the job, with a good yield of 1.8 tons per acre with 15% moisture content. We’ve sold the barley to a local farmer for feed and we shall be baling the barley straw, probably for bedding and feeding to sheep.

Our main reason for growing spring barley though, it that it’s traditionally been grown at Honeydale and though we’ve diversified with various other crops and mixtures, we wanted to retain a small acreage of the original crop to benchmark ‘before and after’ soil conditions.

On the subject of quick fixes,we’ve been experimenting with a method of soil improvement in the form of over winter green manure which we believe has been used little in the UK in recent times. We sowed our Summer Quick Fix, comprising mustard and legumes, in one of the fields and it’s grown well, smothering weeds and creating double the density of a trial brassica mix of radish and mustard. We’ve now purchased a crimper/roller with blades and will use it to flatten and cut some of the green manures before drilling with rye and vetch to protect the soil over winter..