Episode 12: Sloes In The Lettuce Wood

Chris Skinner (00:08):

Hello, I'm Farmer and nature lover, Chris Skinner at High Ash Farm. It's the end of a long but beautiful late autumn day. It's just after four o'clock in the afternoon. The sun's just setting on the western horizon. And as I drove up to this little area of woodland called Notre Dame Wood, planted by the children and Notre Dame School in Norwich in 1990 and it's up there 20 or 30 feet at the moment. There's a flock of sheep, Cotswold sheep at the top of the hill and in amongst the sheep were the best part of a thousand starlings, just feasting right at the end of the day before they fly off and form one of their world famous murmurations. And then on a field next to them still at the top of the hill, the rooks, crows and jackdoors were all gathering to well over a thousand. The whole top of the field was jet black. But I've come in here and it's just beginning to get dark. So I've dug myself a small, shallow grave. Don't laugh. 

(01:27)

You have to be slightly demented to capture the sounds of nature and you find yourself doing all sorts of odd things. So I'm now going to scramble into the very densest part of the woodland underneath a giant Scots Pine there. And just trying to be as quiet as I can because in about 15 or 20 minutes time, the pheasants will come in here to roost and I hope to capture one of those sounds. So here I come. It's pretty dark already, although it's light outside the woodland and here it is. I've made myself a kind of a wigwam over a shallow grave, which is about a foot deep. There's a bank in this woodland, it's quite steep down here. And I've covered up a sheet with some nettles as well. And I've got two coats under my arm, which I'm now going to put under the wigwam so I have something dry to lay on and just move this stinging nettle out the way. And that stick there, I want to be as quiet as possible because the pheasants will walk into the wood and they'll choose a particular tree to fly up into. And the cock pheasants hopefully will make that lovely sound that they make. And I'll explain, hopefully, fingers crossed what we're hearing in about 15, 20 minutes time. So just going to switch the microphone off for a few minutes and then when we start to have some activity, I'll turn it back on and we'll be able to listen to roasting. Sorry, roosting. Pheasants, right. See you soon. 

Chris Skinner (03:52):

Drat and double drat! I've only just got into my grave and not covered myself up properly yet. And magpie has just come in to the tree right above my head. Ever watchful magpie’s. Something's not quite right in the wood beneath them and just screaming out an alarm call, which is going to put the pheasants off I think. Oh dear. Hopefully it'll go away soon. 

It is just after 16:30 almost pitch black in this small area of woodland. And I'm laying here in my grave and pheasants are all around me. Some already gone up into the trees to roost and there's still three or four hen pheasants, which don't call when they go up into the trees to roost, but they kind of have a squeaking noise, what they would call pillow talk really when they're up in the trees. I've always thought of pheasants as completely stupid because why would you advertise where you're going to sleep by flying up in a tree and shouting about it as loudly as you can? And I think it's me that is bereft of a little bit of thought because the cock pheasants go up to roost, head of the pheasants, head of the hen pheasants, 

(06:30)
And then they call, and the hens usually go up into the same tree. So you can have 8, 10, even a dozen pheasants, many of which in the trees above me. Now I can just see the faint silhouettes of them through the conifer trees, but it works like magic pheasants go up into the trees to escape their predators, 

Foxes, badgers, a stoat would probably have a go at one and any other ground dwelling creatures would think of a peasant as a very tasty morsel. But if you disturb them at night and walking through the wood, perhaps doing a bit of poaching with a torch in one hand, a gun in the other, then pheasants come into their own and they explode out of the tree. They're roosting in, fly in every other direction. You can imagine making a huge noise. So you have bedlam, so any potential predator is lost, it's not going to have a meal. So they're really quite safe. Jackdoor just coming into roost above me, lovely sound. So there's still a few odd pheasants I can see, the silhouettes on the woodland floor just walking around head on one side, then the other. They have no idea I'm here. I'm just peeping over the top of the little grave that I've dug. I'm covered up with a dark green blanket, so completely camouflaged. And this time of year reminds me of something that happened to me when I was eight years old, 65 years ago. I was invited by one of the farm workers to go fishing. 

(08:50)
It was knocking off time on the farm, so it was getting to half past four. Farm workers back then worked a really long day, often starting at six in the morning, sometimes if you were the head stockman milking the cows, it would be earlier than that. And the farm worker was called Charlie Graver. And he lived next door to the Red Lion public house in Stoke. And each day he'd cycle to the farm on a sort of sit up and beg hold bicycle. He had a basket on the front and he'd bring a bottle of tea, perhaps something for lunch. And in the top of the basket always was his dog. He was a Norfolk Terrier called Skippy. And Charlie said to me one afternoon ‘Would you like to go fishing boy?’. And he knew that I was dead keen on sitting by the River Tas and fish all day if possible at weekends. And so it was an offer that I couldn't refuse. But I don't know to this day whether my parents knew about what happened or not because we set off from the farmyard in the dark. Skippy was with us and…. Oh, Tawny Owl…. just calling out….. Just heard it in the background.…

(10:25)

Anyway, Skippy was with us and we set off quite a walk to the northern boundary of the farm where it joins a large shooting estate called Crown Point Estate. And we were right on the boundary and it was properly dark then. And Charlie had brought his fishing rod with him, which I thought was a bit odd. I wasn't aware that there was any large stretches of water there. Nevertheless, at eight years old, you don't ask too many questions, especially from Charlie. His name on the farm was one tooth Charlie because all he had was one incisor tooth left. And the other thing that made him memorable is that he smelt. 

(11:09)
That's a polite word. In fact, he absolutely stunk because apart from personal hygiene, he had something called chewing tobacco. And occasionally he'd take a small slice of this compacted tobacco and chew it for a while and then spit it out. So you were always rather cautious of him. Although he was diminutive little chap, he was only about five feet tall. I can remember him like yesterday. Anyway, we got to the northern boundary of the farm and walked down in what is now Boudicca’s Way. And it's a footpath with a large hedge and old trees each side of it. And when we got there, he started to assemble the fishing rod, which was a cane rod in about four sections. And it was quite tall. So when he got it all together, it was the best part of 12 feet long, but it didn't have a reel. 

(12:12)
And I was just trying to puzzle out what he was going to do. And we walked down the what is now the footpath, and then he stopped. And on the end of the fishing rod was a rabbit snare just neatly arranged in a little circle on the end of the rod, just about big enough to put your fist through, clenched fist. And he was looking up into the hawthorn bushes, favourite place for pheasants to roost just as they're above me this evening. And he'd spotted one and he just stood there, Skippy sitting down, not making a noise, unlike my present, demented terrier, Rat. But he put the fishing rod up in the tree very slowly, very carefully. You could just about see through the canopy, the tiny little snare. It got glasses on, I dunno if they helped or not. But after just a few seconds he didn't move. He gave the fishing rod a sudden yank. And down through the tree came a cock pheasant onto the ground. Skippy was on it in a second, I'll never forget it. And the second later, it was a dead pheasant, hardly made a noise. 

(13:47)
And that was my expedition into the art of fishing, but not for fish, for pheasants. And it affected me because perhaps it was in the dark. And it's kind of one of those pages in my childhood that I can turn back to and remember the smells, the sights, the sounds, and it's kind of etched into my memory, but it had an effect on me, which in a funny way lasted right through to the present day and affects now what I do on High Ash Farm and that's what happens here today, it's respecting wildlife. So he didn't kill the pheasant for sport or for fun. He didn't shoot one or wound one, I suppose you'd call it poaching, but nevertheless it taught me a lot. But he took it home and that was a real prize for him to have pheasant, which he presumably cooked in his one up one down little cottage. So there we are, a memory from my childhood 65 years ago and that Tawny is still calling in the background. 

Matthew Gudgin:

It's a glorious morning on High Ash Farm and lovely to be back with another of Chris Skinner's Countryside Podcasts. We are zooming through the weeks now and I hope you're enjoying these broadcasts and what lovely blue sky, Chris, here we are more than halfway through November. The weather's gorgeous. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes, we're getting towards the end of November in fact. And it's absolutely glorious time of year and a time of year I absolutely love because there's so much to see. We're standing near little road that runs right through the centre of High Ash Farm, car just going past. But the colours of these leaves against the blue sky, that low sun. December the 21st is the shortest day, the sun will be at its lowest, but we're getting up there now. And although it's early morning, the sun's coming through almost at right angles to the trees. And this is a delight. 

(16:27)
High Ash Farm is really well timbered. There are about 10 areas of permanent mature woodland and we have three new areas of woodland at the farm and this is one of them. So welcome Matthew to High Ash Farm. Welcome to The Lettuce Wood. What strange name? It's called the lettuce wood because when my parents came to the farm in 1942, there was a field of lettuces here and the previous farmer had left them. And so they all got ploughed in eventually. And so it is just known as the lettuce field. And it has been through my childhood. 

Matthew Gudgin:

They weren't iceberg then? 

Chris Skinner: 

No, no, they're left till into the winter months. But it's solid clay under here and it's now a new woodland because this area is such a small field for the modern agricultural machinery. A few years back before it was planted in 2006, it was really awkward to get the combine in here. It's exactly a hectare. So it's two and a half acres in old money, if you like. 

Matthew Gudgin:

So it's this woodland which is developing quite quickly now then, isn't it? If you only planted it in 06 in 2006, so what's that? 15, 16 years old now. But now it looks, I mean it's maturing nicely. 

Chris Skinner:

It's absolutely wonderful. And it was helped by the year, it was planted in spring 2007. We got quite a lot of rain. And all around the edge of the wood, we've planted what's called a soft edge. So you've got hawthorne, blackthorn and several shrubby plants. Hazel all the way around, here’s hazel right behind you with the catkins just beginning to come out. Look up there, there's green and they'll be shedding pollen in about a month's time, believe it or not. So a soft area around the outside. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Are those hips there? 

Chris Skinner:

They're hips, yes. Yeah, this is dog Rose, Rosa canina. And it's as fierce as fierce can be. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Look at that, goodness, it's like razor wire. The thorns are just astonishing.

Chris Skinner: 

And because it produces the hips, it doesn't want them to be eaten. The fresh shoots growing up is a great delicacy for the deer who live here at the farm, things like roe deer. We call them woodland fairies here at the farm. They seem to, although they're quite large animals, they just disappear into the undergrowth. And this is really dense already. So we've got an understory of Hawthorne grown right through. 

Matthew Gudgin:

The trees are about 15, 20 feet high. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes, already. And so we're still looking the soft area around the edge of the wood, which kind of introduces you to the woodland. And you can see some sloes still in there. The fruit of the blackthorn. Your eyes are just lit up. I can see sloe gin, can you see them in there? 

Matthew Gudgin:

Yes. I can see the little blooms on them. 

Chris Skinner:

That's right. Yes. So they're now ripening and they're very acidic at this time of the year still, once they shrivel up a bit like that, they've got the pip in. They're not actually called berries, they're called droops, which is a funny name. There's the seed of the blackthorn there, just rubbing out all the liquid off the side. God, it's a lovely smell. Almost smells like sloe gin itself, doesn't it? 

Matthew Gudgin:

Going to crack open a bottle. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes, I think so. That's for later in the year. 

Matthew Gudgin:

The sun isn't over the yardarm yet. 

Chris Skinner:

So you've got Blackthorn, this one's Hawthorne, and you can still see some of the berries. And we walk in a little bit more because it's really heavy clay.  

On last week's podcast, Matthew, we talked about sand formation. And this week just underneath this woodland, we've got some really heavy, heavy clay, lots of fungi coming. And that's the interesting thing in new woodland, I suppose wetland features are the very fastest to establish. But secondly would be new areas of scrubbing woodland. So birds perched in the trees just after they were planted and they pooped on the ground. And so we got lots of brambles in there. Look at that, you could not get in there. It's just so dense. And so you got the beginnings of a habitat, which is here all the year round. There's a yew in the back there. So there's a bit of a coniferous element in there. I added 50 yew and 50 holly out of my own pocket, although it was funded from Defra, department of Environment, food and Rural Affairs. 

(20:57)
They actually funded it under stewardship. But I wanted to have some sort of evergreen component so that in the winter months somewhere the birds had somewhere to shelter. But the understory and the density of the brambles in there is absolutely incredible. So, there's a little track right through the middle of the woodland and it's absolutely delightful. So now walking into the sunshine and it's like another world. We've got the sun coming down and these are young oaks here in the background that's just about 20 feet tall. 

Matthew Gudgin:

The leaves are completely dead on those now, aren’t they? 

Chris Skinner:

Yes, they are. That lovely golden colour that's Field Maple with all the seeds hanging on. It looks like little helicopter seeds. And once you get those harsh easterly winds, it blows them off. And they can land anywhere on the woodland floor here in amongst the leaf litter and they'll start the next generation of trees as well. And this one's a real favourite of mine. Really crunchy leaves. Listen to that. Still on the tree. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Old parchment. 

Chris Skinner:

Almost, yes. And that's Hornbeam. So a young hornbeam tree. There's one there about 15 feet tall and then just in there just spotted it. One's with the horizontal lines on the trunk, just back there, about six feet going right up to the top. That's wild cherry. And that's and absolute delight. You can come here in late March and it's covered in pure white blossom, which is great for bees as well. So you've got a whole variety, but oh, and there's some holly as well. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Yes. Just developing nicely, right? 

Chris Skinner:

Just developing. It's spinning what, 15, 16 years. And it's hardly three feet tall. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Quite slow establishing Holly then? 

Chris Skinner:

They are, yes, but great for creatures. Just look in the top there. There's a lady bird look. Yes. So prickly leaved, that's the proper british native Holly. You can get all sorts of ornamental ones, but these are all british native trees. So we just walk to the other side of the track. It's not all good news. There's a nice seat there. So if you're walking through, there's, I've put three little seats in the edge of the woodland and just walk in a bit. 

(23:20)

Matthew Gudgin:

Oh, lots of teasel as well. 

Chris Skinner:

Yes. Nearly fell in a hole. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Oh my god. I nearly fell in the same one. Holly?

Chris Skinner:

Another holly. That one's like four feet tall and very bushy. And I did say it's not all good news. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Another ladybird as well. Yes, it's amazing. 

Chris Skinner:

Absolutely lovely, isn't it? In we go. Right. So these are planted ash trees. 

Matthew Gudgin (23:50):

I think I know where you're going with this.

Chris Skinner (23:51):

Yes, I know, it's so, so sad. Just have a look. This is a young sapling look and it's completely, absolutely dead snapping and just absolutely crippled them. But having said that, the stocking rate was so high with the oak trees, the field maple and the horn beam, that there's more than enough. But it's just nice to have that general mixture of woodland. And when we planted these, we had no idea that that was going to happen. And this is typical of ash dieback, chalara. Some people call it chalara. 

Matthew Gudgin:

There are some shoots coming through?

Chris Skinner (24:31):

Yes, it's tried. What's happened is it came up, it was planted as a whip and it got to about five feet tall. And then in about 2010, the ash dieback really came in and it killed all the new growth. And the tree - and this is typical of ash dieback, has sent out even more sort of shoots from the original leader. So although a great deal of these up hear look, snapped, snapped, snap, they're all dead. The big one here. And yes, look at that completely dead. And this big one here is also dead, but it's got sent out to then it's just trying to compensate for the disease. 

Matthew Gudgin (25:16):

It’s the desperation of a drowning man. Really. 

Chris Skinner (25:18):

Absolutely. Yes. Yeah, very sad. So this is real suitable habitat for ash trees and all the British natives that's dogwood over there with those lovely deep yellow leaves on Hawthorne, right beside us with the berries on. Some of them are self seeded if they don't have a tree guard on the bottom. And I'm just going to walk over here a little bit and there's a clear bit between the trees, so I'm just going to dig a little hole for you. 

Matthew Gudgin (25:49):

Oh, I wondered why you brought the shovel with you. 

Chris Skinner (25:51):

That's a spade. Isn't it funny how I seem to do all the digging round here? Hey, here we go. And take that out like that. We'll soon get down. The ground is quite wet and we'll soon get down cos I'm a fast digger and you can see it’s..

Matthew Gudgin (26:12):

Oh, I can see some water down there..

Chris Skinner (26:14):

Yeah, we've reached the water table already 

Matthew Gudgin (26:18):

18 inches down. 

Chris Skinner (26:19):

Yeah, getting down there. A little bit of water coming out now. And you did say we were looking at some of the soil. It's stuck like glue to the spade. We're getting down then in a moment or two. So I get through the top layer of clay. We should get some bright yellow clay down here. 

Matthew Gudgin (26:41):

So there's a sand level here as well. 

Chris Skinner (26:43):

No, it's not all the heat. Can you see the bottom of the hole? Yes. Yellow.

Matthew Gudgin (26:48):

Not gold is it?

The Norfolk Klondike? 

Chris Skinner:

Nearly there we're 18 inches down now And last spade full coming out right. Good. 

Last week we looked at the sand at Winterton on the beach. Sand is formed by kind of physical action of flints and shingle rubbing against each other till you get smaller and smaller fragments. Clay is rather different. It's a chemical reaction of the rain on rocks. And eventually, I'm quite out of puff after that digging. 

Matthew Gudgin:

Poor Chris, you ought to have staff to do this for you. 

Chris Skinner:

I should do. Or local presenters that would be even better. 

Matthew Gudgin:

I’m not insured. Not insured. 

Chris Skinner:

Ha!  So when rain comes through the atmosphere, there's carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And when it rains on the ground, particularly on rocks, anything hard it gradually dissolves. It's weak, carbonic acid, acid rain, we call that. It's a bit of a problem sometimes, but it does react with clay. And you get these tiny soil particles. So I'm going to give you some and just rub it between your fingers. 

Matthew Gudgin (28:12):

Mud pies here. Oh yeah, it's very well it is like plastercene.

Chris Skinner (28:19):

Yes, it's very, very fine. It's one of the smallest particle sizes of soil you can get. It smears in your fingers, whereas the sand I gave you some last week rub between your fingers, it was very coarse and almost like sandpaper. This is much finer. So it is highly fertile. It's great for wheat, for grass production as well. And this field was wheat for about 15 years and it used to, on that hectare, it would grow about 10 tonnes of wheat a year till we put the woodland in on it. Now underneath that, the top layer of clay, which is about a foot deep, is sort of chocolate brown in colour. And then at the bottom where there's no oxygen at all, you've got that yellow clay. And if you look at it carefully, it's full of chalk. 

Matthew Gudgin (29:11):

Well those little white stones, yes. 

Chris Skinner (29:13):

Yeah. Look, that's chalk there. 

Matthew Gudgin (29:16):

A bigger piece there

Chris Skinner (29:17):

Yeah, perfect. And you could write on a blackboard with that. If I take a piece out like that and rub it between my fingers and crush it, there it is pure chalk. And that's the fabric that many of the old barns around Norfolk, particularly south of Norfolk were built on clay block barns. So it's quite important, but there's no oxygen down there, so it was ploughed at the same depth. So you've got a sort of top soil of 12 inches. Then there's a very hard pan layer where the old tractor wheels would sort of skid on if you'd ploughed at the wrong time of year. It would form what's called a pan, a very thin hard layer. And that's impeded drainage, which is why we've got the grass on the bottom of the slopes over there. The grass roots go down. These woodland roots here will penetrate through that. 

(30:09)

That oak tree beside us is just, you couldn't have a healthier, better looking oak tree if you wanted. They love the clay, they love this soil type. It doesn't dry out too much in the summer and it's real. It's one of my favourite spots of the farm. You can walk in here in the summer, there's all sorts of bird life in here. The barn owls hunt through in amongst the trees there. It's still quite open and it's beautiful. Just look at that oak over there behind you. That's what 25 feet up 

Matthew Gudgin:

And the sun is just getting the top there and it's, it's glowing. 

Chris Skinner: 

It's been growing more than a foot a year, that one. So it's doing really well. It loves the soil, so it loves this. So I'm going to fill this hole back in. Otherwise if I bring you here again the year and we forget, I've dug it because there's orchids already coming in. They're common spotted orchid. It's a delight to come in here and actually look at the different times of the year. And you can walk right through the middle of this on one of the permissive walks here at High Ash Farm. So do come particularly on the sunny day and enjoy the Norfolk countryside at its most colourful. 

Chris Skinner:

Thank you Chris for showing me the lettuce wood. You're very welcome. Come on, let us get back in the car. 

Matthew Gudgin:

This is our salad days. 

Well, we're still with you on High Ash Farm on this edition of the Countryside Podcast with farmer Chris Skinner. And as always, we're absolutely bowled over with all the number of correspondence, emails and letters and cards. It's wonderful to hear from everyone. And I do mention again that even if your name isn't heard, then we have looked at your letter, haven't we? Chris? 

Chris Skinner:

Yes. Lots of letters and cards of appreciation and from all over the country and some of them from all over the world as well. I cannot believe the interest in what we’re doing, talking about the natural history of the farm and some of the farming history here as well. And we've started all the podcasts off right at the beginning of right back to the Stone Age and then the Romans who invaded this country and settled with the Roman capital of Eastern Britain just on the west side of Ash Farm. And of course Saxons here as well. And then some of the early farming history right up to my memory of horses working the fields here. And it's been a delight for me and it's taken me back decades just thinking how things used to be and how much hard work was here. And everybody's responding to that in a very positive way. And thank you very much all of you. 

Matthew Gudgin (33:14):

Here's an email from Bridget Gardner. A few years ago, Chris, you mentioned the aquifer beneath the farm was at a very low level. Has the increased rainfall this year affected those water levels?

Chris Skinner (33:24):

It will take several years to get down to the aquifer, Matthew. Aquifer is the kind of layer of water permeated into the chalk layer beneath our feet. The chalks only just a few feet down. We're at the bottom of one of the valleys here at the farm. And when I went into HLS, that's Higher Level Stewardship is what it stands for. Part of the prescriptions I went into hedge planting, woodland planting and all the hills was to harvest the water that used to run off. There's a field in front of us here, Matthew, with a very sharp slope on it and it is solid clay. We've talked about that field before. It's called Dirty Close, but the bottom of it, there's a 50 metre wide strip running alongside a stream and that's planted with tusky grass grasses like tall fescue and cox foot, which forms clumps. 

(34:25)
And since I've done that in 2006, there has been no runoff into the stream, but the water is still there on the land and it percolates down, but it takes a long time to go through the layers of topsoil, subsoil, and then right deep down into that chalk layer and then it has to travel a mile to where the water is pumped out to help supply Norwich over 20,000 cubic metres a day coming out from underneath High Ash Farm. To give you an idea, Mount Everest is about 9,000 metres plus high. So it's twice the height of Mount Everest, a metre square every day. And it's astonishing how much water we all use. More house building on this side of Norwich as well. Large numbers of properties being built. So it's putting pressure on the aquifer. So I think it will take a long time for this winter's rainfall to percolate down into the aquifer so you can actually visually see a difference. High Ash Farm is in what's called the cone of depression from where the water's being pumped out. That sort of amuses me, that word. Most farmers, if you talk to them, always sound a little bit depressed, but not this farmer because we are harvesting water as well as looking after the environment. 

Matthew Gudgin (35:49):

Greetings to Joseph and Catherine who are listening in Northumberland at Hedley on the Hill, and they're going to send you some photographs of the beautiful county of Northumberland, which if we couldn't be in Norfolk, Northumberland wouldn't be too bad.

Chris Skinner (36:02):

I think it would be a second choice. I had a sister and she lived up in the lake District quite close to Kendall. And I must admit the scenery, the countryside, and it's kind of going back in time. I don't mean to be rude, but the way some of the farms have run up there have run on a historical basis and it's very traditional and I absolutely love it. It's like a different world but still in this one.

Matthew Gudgin (36:30):

Onto Rose Shepherd who's emailed with a photograph of a bird in a greenhouse. I thought I'd contact you to see if you had any advice to prevent birds flying into windows. And she said, we photographed this sparrow hawk during the summer trapped in our greenhouse overnight. And later on in the summer I heard a loud bang and I ran to the source of the noise and saw a sparrow hawk lying on the paving slabs below the front window. This is a bit of an occupational hazard with bird lovers, isn't it?

Chris Skinner (36:59):

Yes, it absolutely is. So what happens is when you feed birds in your garden, you kind of magnetise a particular area of where you live for birds, all the birds that you want to come into your garden to feed, and that's really good, but at the same time, you'll attract the predators as well. Things like in the evening and overnight, birds like owls obviously come in and birds have prey during the daylight hours. Sparrow hawks are absolutely incredible hunters, very skillful, very fast, small agile, bright, bright yellow eyes, long yellow legs as well, and very powerful and sharp talons as well. Although they're only small birds, what they do is fly down one side of a hedge and at the last second flip over the top of the hedge, almost like a bullet, the speed is incredible and they take birds by surprise. They're kind of stealth hunters if you like. 

(38:00)
I love to watch them hunting. And all you generally see is a little puff of feathers because normally their legs outstretch and they catch the bird on the wing as they're flying past and take it off and dismember it a few hundred yards away on a sort of stool or a stump or something like that. 

Some early morning walker going past morning. Hello, morning. Morning. 

Sadly with modern house building with more and more larger areas of glass in modern buildings, particularly the big bifold doors where the entire side of a house appears to be glass, sparrow hawk casualties are going to increase. Inevitably, it's almost as big a threat to them and their way of hunting as it was when farmers in the 1950s and early 1960s were using DDT and that affected the thickness of sparrow hawk eggs and so that they actually broke when the female birds were incubating the eggs. 

(39:04)
So it is a really difficult issue and thank you for the question, Rose. So the only possible thing that you can do is to do what I've done on the office windows here at the farm and in the new building where we've got large areas of glass and that's to stick transfers on of various birds. You can actually see through the transfers, but it just acts as a tiny deterrent and whether it's going to be effective on a larger scale because many people don't want the transfer stuck on their windows when you look through, but it does seem to help in a minor way. Or the other alternative is to have completely filthy windows so the birds don't fly into it. But that's not really an option. So difficult question. And it's always so sad when you see a beautiful raptor like Sparrow hawk with a broken neck. So, so sad. It's just a symptom of our modern way of living. Thank you. 

Matthew Gudgin (40:07):

Well hopefully that is a solution for you, Rose, you've moved someone to poetry here. Good morning to, I think we have a listener in Hampshire called Jenna. Yes. Jenna Cazalet, who lives near one of your heroes where he used to live. Gilbert White.

Chris Skinner (40:23):

Gilbert White down in Selborne down there. Yes. Move to poetry. Most people when they listen to me are moved to tears, actually, but oh, it's such a rewarding experience to have one of your little anthologies here and it's called No More Sloes. 

Matthew Gudgin (40:40):

Yes, Jenna has written lots of poems and she's part of this anthology and the little book has been sent to us. And yes, she points out no more slows as an example of her love of wildlife. 

Chris Skinner (40:51):

Yes, I opened the book, Jenna, and the first page that it fell open to was the anthology of No More Sloes. And it kind of describes, well, the pillaging of the countryside. That hasn't just happened in Norfolk, but down there where you are in Hampshire, lots of hedge grubbing in the 1960s and seventies. And strangely that was done under government grant. Farmers were paid for people not take their hedges out. They say life goes in circles and certainly history does that. We're now being paid to put hedges back in the game. It's crazy, isn't it?  But it's really moving to see how those changes have been recorded in poetry and this anthology of verses.  

Matthew Gudgin (41:39):

Shall we read out a verse? 

Chris Skinner (41:40):

Yes. Go on, Matthew. 

Matthew Gudgin (41:42):

Oh I thought you we going to do it?

Chris Skinner (41:42):

No, you do it. You're more articulate. I keep stopping halfway through. I didn't bring my glasses either. 

Matthew Gudgin (41:50):

Well, Jenna Cazalet has sent us the book that she's contributed to, which is called the Unicorn Poetry Anthology, and it's published by Action Press. And one of her poems is called No More Sloes. 

They've dug up the hedge in the top field 

Severing the roots where rabbits flashed 

Their scuts at tardy dogs. 

No more sloes

To stab and drown the Rowan and the Holly down 

Travellers joy trails its way through mud and stone 

Tree sparrow, yellow hammer, the dunnock, gone. 

Chris Skinner (42:27):

Goodness, that's so moving and very true. But I can promise you there's a huge turnaround in farmers' care of nature. We farm most of the land in the United Kingdom, obviously we produce food, but there's a big shift happening. It's turning slowly and well, we're doing it here in Norfolk because the Norfolk motto is Do Different. And I've started that and I put some signs up around a farm explaining that I am doing different. And we just heard some people walking through the centre of the farm on the permissive walks here at the farm. They're all free. You can make a donation if you like, but it's lovely safe walking and you can do it all year round and you can see some of the wildlife that you wouldn't normally ordinarily see. And we are stuffed to the gunnels with yellow hammers. And we're also standing by little roads. So cars going past there, somebody's waving.

Matthew Gudgin (43:27):

Well, I mean if you would like to send a note in to Chris, then we'd be delighted to receive it. And the best way of doing that probably is via email. And the address is Chris@countryside podcast.co.uk. But you can also write to the farm as well. I think there's a postal address

Chris Skinner (43:48):

Address, isn't it? Yes there is. It's High Ash Farm, Caistor st Edmond, Norwich, Norfolk and the postcode NR14 8RD. 

Matthew Gudgin (44:00):

And you don't have to be moved to poetry to write in. Don't worry if it doesn't rhyme. 

Chris Skinner (44:04):

No, exactly that. But in future weeks, future podcasts, Matthew, I'm going to be taking you into one of the yellow hammer hides and one of the woodland hides as well there right at the end of November. This is a time of the air that I start fueling up the hides. I'm going to be sitting in there with you. We're going to be doing some lazy bird watching. That'll be right up your street and just see what we can see because you never know. But the yellow hammers from now on, they were mentioned in that poem. They start to get their yellow heads and get into breeding plumage already at the end of the year. They're then ready to find mates early next year.

Hello - Anna from Soundyard here! Now,  A few weeks back we mentioned that we’ll be sending out posters soon to spread the word about The Countryside Podcast, thank you for getting in touch with all of your suggestions and offers to do this. If you think you can help as well by sharing a poster or two in your local area then ping us an email here chris@countrysidepodcast.co.uk

And a special thank you again if you’ve been helping us fund our CD service for people without internet for whom the company of Chris and Matthew each week is hugely important, it means a lot. Head to donor box.org/countrysidepodcast if it’s something you would like do too.