Crop and estate management
The rotation of the last five years rolls on to give us a baseline prior to significant management changes. This has meant autumn cultivations and drilling of the wheat and oilseed rape. These began at the tail end of August and gathered a pace in order to establish 100 hectares of winter wheat and 50 hectares of oilseed rape (the remaining arable area is set-side). This was all complete by 4 October, well before the washout that hit some later in the month.
Two of the wheat fields contain our first experiment - small unsown patches which are there to see if they attract skylark to nest and if they do, how productive are the birds. We will also look at the crop production issues of such unsown patches - will charlock bushes or cleaver tangles impede harvesting and will we suffer weed 'hotspots' in years to come?
Birds and biodiversity
The programme of winter bird surveys is now in place with 'volunteers' from Lodge staff being asked to make, together with us, the team of five necessary to gain simultaneous coverage of all fields. Regular seed sampling continues to take place to monitor food availability but most other biodiversity audits are coming to an end.
Apparently it is a good time to search for mosses and the offer from the local specialists has been taken up of a one day 'foray', or is it 'moss meander'?