Episode 16: Underneath The Mistletoe

Announcer (00:15):

Chris Skinner's countryside podcast with Matthew Gudgin.Chris Skinner

Chris Skinner (00:39):

Good evening everybody. Beautiful night. We are very close to the shortest day, December the 22nd this year. And rat, my terrible terrier is with me, he loves coming out in the evening and he's just scooched off. We're right next to a very large avenue of oak trees here at the farm and it's a kind of time of the year where we have big celebrations here at the farm with the wildlife and of course the druids. They'll be meeting here on December the 22nd to celebrate the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year. And there'd be quite a number of them here, but there's some other celebrations happening and I'm just walking down this avenue of oaks and here comes the first one and I've got a torch with me. Normally I'll have Matthew Gudgin with me and sometimes Rat, they're quite different. They're both good company, but Rat takes a very intense interest in fox poo and Matthew's rather indifferent about that.
(01:55)
Rat loves the wind and the rain. Anything to come out in a walk. Well, Matthew's a little bit different about that as well, but nevermind, they're both very good company and Matthew will be here later on and we'll be looking at some of the other delights on the farm. Anyway, the first oak tree I've come to tells the story straight away and I can see what I need to see. Before that, I'm just going to shine the torch down inside this avenue of oaks and the air, it's unbelievable. It is absolutely full of flying moths. It's full of them. I can see three, four hundred of them. It looks like almost a snowstorm is the best way to describe it. And they're sort of heading into the trees onto the trunks. So first oak tree, it's perfect for me. There, perched about a metre up is a male winter moth with his wings.
(03:03)
They're shut at the moment. Another one a little bit. I'll just move around this side of the tree. There we are. The torch is fully on there on the moth and the wingspan is about just short of three centimetres, about 28 millimetres, and it's a slightest breeze and it's just blowing the wings to one side and then the other. And so why is that interesting? Because if I'd have brought you here on a sort of early summers evening, about late May, early June, and we'd walked along here, we'd suddenly have cobwebs all over our face and lowering themselves down from the oak canopy above us would be the caterpillars from these moths that we're looking at this evening. And they land on the ground as green caterpillars that we call them loopers or geo muds because they look as though they're just measuring out the length.
(04:08)
They're sort of ground measures if you like, the way they loop along and bright green caterpillars and they dig a little hole in the ground anywhere there's grass. They can't obviously do it on roads if they land on the highway, but they then pupate and form a little chrysalis in the soil and stay there until the coldest part of the year, which is now quite unbelievable why they do this. So they choose this season around about the shortest day to actually mate. And the ones that we're seeing, the ones that I'm seeing this evening flying about, they're all males and the females and the males emerge together on the ground, but the females can't fly, just can't make this up. They've got what we call vestigial wings, tiny little stumps. So in fact they look rather like six legged spiders crawling up the oak trees.
(05:19)
And the male's job is to come and mate with them as they ascend the oak trees. And they've got a big mission in their heads to get to high up in the oak trees to lay their eggs later on this evening. And after that, that's it. They die. So really a lot of them only have one day as adult moths to live and the females look rather an apology. So I'd kind of like to give the males a bit of a boy to boy tip about how to find the girls. They've just come out of the ground, a lot of them and they're in the bottom foot or two of the oak trees. And I'm just walking along just looking for one or two of the females. The side of this oak tree, wow, I'm just looking down probably 30 or 40 moths plastered on the side of an oak here.
(06:16)
It's not a very large oak, it's about 18 inches diameter, no branches on till about 20 feet. And the whole side of it, just out of the way of this slightest breeze that's blowing tonight. They're all just waiting. So I'd like to say them boys, if you want to get lucky, the girls are on their way up the trunk, but I've had a word with a local moth expert and sort of said, why aren't the male moths sort of flying right down low, whereas most of them are eight or 10 feet up the trunk. And he said, he kind of looked at me in a quizzical way and said, females have got it quite right. He said they suffer most of their predation when they're low near the ground, all the things that are likely to eat them close to ground level even in the dark.
(07:07)
So they're very vulnerable and it's not until they get about a metre up the tree trunk that they do their magic. They don't need wings because they've got a secret weapon, which is called a pheromone. And once they're up the trunk about a metre, they let rip with this perfume and that drives the boys mad, which is why they're all waiting here. And many of them then take to the wing once they scent this pheromone and they can pick it up from quite a distance. So I'm going to turn around, there's a meadow behind me, two horses here. You heard Rat barking at them as we got in to this area and all over the meadow, there's moths flying, but particularly close to these oak trees. There's a sycamore tree there that's got two or three on. There's Rat in the distance, he's there as well.
(08:01)
Young beach tree there. Now this is the secret how to find the girls. So hands and knees job and it's still quite early in the evening, bearing in mind they've got to get right up to the top of these trees that we're climbing on. They're not easy to, here we are, here's one right in front of me. I've got to really search to see them. It's not what you call a good looker. It really does look like a tiny spider. And there's a male quite close to it, but there's no kind of action happening at the moment if you give the description, oh, the males flattened his wings completely against the trunk now very, very beautiful. Sort of a greyish buffish grey, almost a hint of gold on the upper side of the wings and that close to three centimetres wingspan. And right next to him almost looks like a woodlouse to start with is a female winter moth.
(09:06)
That's their proper name. And she's just slowly, slowly climbing up the tree. To be honest, she looks like a woodlouse, one of those what we call piggy wiggys at school. She's kind of greyish same colour body, but these two little stumps, they look like almost rolled up leaves just sticking out of her body. And there the vestigial wings, she doesn't need wings. And I'll explain why she'll going to climb up this tree. It will take her. I'll stand back from the oak. The boys are all waiting on the side of the trunk. She'll go all the way up there and I'm just walking backwards right up into the canopy and way up there, there's all the little buds which will burst out into leaf March, April, May. And she will have laid her eggs right up there to three, four o'clock in the morning. It'll take her all that time once she's jettisoned the eggs and each of the females will lay between a hundred, 150 eggs up in the canopy.
(10:20)
And each square metre of canopy, there can be four or five females will make it up there. So it's a kind of mass migration. And they lay all these numbers of eggs because if you're ever up and about early in the morning and you see great tits, blue tits, long tailed tits, all sort of searching aimlessly about in oak woodlands in the canopy up there, what they're looking for are two things. First one is to feast up on the females. They don't make it back down to ground. That's the end of their life. They can either be eaten or they just drop off on back down onto the ground. It doesn't matter because they've passed on to the next generation, their species if you like. So their life's work is done very short life. And what then happens is those eggs, the ones that don't get eaten, there are thousands of these tiny eggs laid tightly in the little packed oak twig buds. They're searched out by lots and lots of the tit species, great tits, blue tits, long tail tits, all feast on those eggs. But because there are so many oh male moth almost landed on me, then, no pheromones on me.
(11:49)
So they're absolutely amazing. So those eggs will, they hatch out sort of time with the emergence of the oak leaves and they're really hungry defoliating caterpillars. But something else then happens. Blue tits, great tits, cole tits, all the tit species and many other bird species time their egg laying with the hatching of the winter moth caterpillars. It's an amazing story. It all works kind of hand in glove. That's why nature is so interesting. There's not just one part of it. Everything in one way or another is linked together. It's a sort of continuous chain. Just walk to the next oak tree. And it's exactly the same just on the downwind side. The whole side of the tree trunk is plastered with these male moths all waiting to get lucky tonight. So the blue tits great tits all do this massive egg laying. It's kind of all their eggs in one basket if you like, 6, 8, 10 eggs in a nest.
(13:02)
And their main food is, yes, you've guessed it. The winter moth caterpillars, those juicy green caterpillars that contain all the water and the nutrition that see absolute perfect food for their youngsters. Any that aren't eaten. Oh, look at this tree I just walked up to. Sorry, I get a little bit carried away. But this is 25 feet to the first branch. This is a whopping oak tree. And again, just slightly on the east side, there's a very gentle westerly breeze. You'd hardly know it. The moon in the background and the side of the oak trunk is plastered with boys. Yep. It's just amazing sight. Absolutely beautiful. So there we are. And the same fate happens to the boys once they've mated, they've completed their lifecycle as well. So they kind of provide fodder for any hungry birds that are out and about in the morning.
(14:05)
So many of those only often live one day as well, sometimes a bit more if they're lucky and they can stay overnight. And this one's got two or three girls. Here's another girl here with their little stumpy wings. She's about a metre up and a male again right beside her, but there's no activity yet. But if I stayed here, it's a little bit chilly Now if I stayed here a bit longer, then there'd sort of be some be X-rated. I'm sorry. So we'll just leave it there and let them get on it with their interesting and fascinating life story. And of course the blue tits and great tits, which frequent High Ash Farm are going to be well March, April, May time in 2024. Beautiful. And look at the moon just shining through the oaks. I think it's a full moon the day after boxing day 27th of December. And that will light up there and light the farm up at night. A lovely time. Oh, Rat's found something. He's oh dear, he's barking away in the background. What have you found? I did say he's good company, at least I know where he is. What have you got?
(15:32)
What are you doing? There's a horse in its meadow, Matthew and Rat do have a similarity. And I think neither of them actually like horses if I'm honest about it. And Rat doesn't think the horse should be in its own field. So that was what all that was. What are you doing? You terrible dog. Right, it's supper time for me. So back to the farm. Knock something up quickly and just take a final look at that moon and another oak tree in front of me plastered with winter moths. Enjoy winter.

Chris Skinner (16:17):

Morning everybody. It is just about the shortest day and the wind's blowing a hooley here at High Ash Farm this morning. Just going to open the big old roller shutter doors into the farm workshop to start off another day at the farm. Already lots of ladies down the farm yard attending their horses, some of them grooming before they pop them out. People's relationship with animals is very important. And I always start the day off, I'm just going to share this rather intimate moment with you, with some of the birds that spend the night here at the farm in the workshop. And I'm just squeezing down between a trailer and a water bowzer because it's just getting light.
(17:37)
And this is one of my favourite sounds. Always makes me smile. I just say good morning to my two bantams. Yeah, farmers have a huge and intimate relationship with all the animals they keep. These bantams, lay some eggs for me and with you're a farmer with livestock and you just lean on the gate and watching your cattle grazing or the dairy herd waiting to come in to be milked or if you keep horses grooming them if you've got a pet cat or a dog. And my little highlight of every morning is to come and let the bantams out. They're free to go out now outside and they forage for worms and sort of dig around the edge of the buildings and they always greet me with this. Well it's a bantams dawn chorus. Just listen to this. Are you all right you girls? It is good news for you two. I'm having a vegetarian Christmas, so not that I'd cook you, I don't think I'd really enjoy that after the sort of intimate relation we have here. So they're ready to fly down, I've opened the doors, so the lights increased a bit in the buildings, but they've spent another safe night here. They perch on the back of the old water bowzer here and they're now about to fly down. They both have a singsong there. Wine Spot Bantams. Beautiful.
(19:41)
Oh, the old girl who's about eight years old now. She's just started to chime in as well. Normally it's so silver spot there, which she's now going to jump off and fly off and spend the day worms for breakfast, worms for lunch and worms if they're lucky. And maybe the odd beetle for dinner tonight before they go back to roost in the same place. Just listen, she's now going to fly down
(20:26)


Chris Skinner (20:27):

They're both out of bed ready for another day on the farm. That's my little treat to start off on a gruelling day's work here at High Ash Farm. Matthew's coming round in a short while and we'll be looking at some of the Mistletoe here at the farm. What a lovely sound, sets the day up nicely.

Matthew Gudgin (21:00):

We're in the farm truck with Chris Skinner and it's our Christmas Eve edition and you're very welcome. Thanks for coming along for the ride. And we are on a ride at the moment because we're in the truck and we're about half a mile towards a mile away from High Ash Farm going through a neighbouring village heading out in towards the countryside. And Chris, you're taking us abroad.

Chris Skinner (21:22):

Yes, Matthew, your face just lit up because we just passed the railway public house and you thought you were going for a pint with me, but we're not. We're going on a mistle toe hunt and we are just driven past EACH, which is East Anglia Children's Hospice and we're just left Poringland and we're almost on the boundary of Framlingham Piggott. So we're driving down Piggott Lane and I've brought you down here for a very special reason. Little fields on our left, which all used to be market gardens supplying Norwich fruit market here. All of these were market gardens left down right hand side of us, very famous area. And we're already coming into what I want to show you, this is an amazing site. It's a Christmas special, so it'd have to be Holly, Ivy or in this case Mistle Toe. And I'm just going to stop the village sign for Framingham. Piggott is just in front of us. There's a little gateway here and I'm just going to pull the truck up and we almost don't need to get out the truck, Matthew. 

Matthew Gudgin (22:35):

There are trees here next to this road that are very mature trees. They're clad with ivy but they've got some other clothing as well. Look right up into the canopy and they're festooned with Mistletoe.

Chris Skinner (22:48):

They are, handbrake on, engine off. And I'm going to make you get out, although it's a breezy gusty morning, this is worth a closer look

Matthew Gudgin (22:59):

Well mistle toe on Christmas Eve. It does make absolute sense, doesn't it? And I've been down this lane before actually in the past, and this must be the best display of mistle toe that you would find anywhere. We're parked up next to the lane here near Poringland, just south of Norwich and we've got traffic coming past, but right in front of us, one of the finest examples of these mistle toe trees you'll see.

Chris Skinner (23:23):

Yes, I think so. Certainly in the county of Norfolk, it's most at home Matthew, down in the southwest where it's very mild. You've got the influence Atlantic Ocean anywhere around the Bristol Channel, Herefordshire, and that's also the area where most of its host trees grow, which are apple trees. But it's nowhere near as common as it used to be because the old mature apple trees are quite large, 15, 20 feet high and they've nearly all been replaced with modern bush varieties of apples seeded on a dwarf root stock. So it's much less common. But some things happened here. There were market gardens all around us here where we're standing and they all had lots of apple trees and that was one of the crops of apples that they produced and they were sold during the winter months. So the apples a top kind of host for mistle toe, which is what we're looking at and poplar trees and certainly number two. So in northern France where you get the big avenues of poplars for windbreaks, lombardy poplar, even that's their second favourite host tree. So there's one poplar tree in front of us and I reckon there's close to 50 clumps of mistle toe on that tree.

Matthew Gudgin (24:49):

Some of them are like perfect spheres, aren't they? And they are very visible at this time of the year because the tree is completely leafless and that's really the only sign of life on this tree is the mistle toe.

Chris Skinner (25:00):

Yes, that's the surprising thing about mistle toe. It's green at this time of the year and that's why it attracted so much folklore because if you, from an ancient culture, you kind of wanted things that stayed live over the winter, it's kind of defying death if you like. So it got heavily involved in early religions, which High Ash Farm is famous for. We've got a Romano Celtic temple at the farm and lots of Celtic settlement and the Celts had many druids there and Druids worshipped mistle toe. It is all part of their culture. The head druid was only allowed to cut mistle toe with a golden sickle. If you cut it with an iron sickle or mistle toe touched the ground, it would lose its magical powers. It was used in healing as well. All sorts of diseases, infertility and things like that were all meant to be cured with mistle toe. So a lot of history to it. 

Matthew Gudgin (26:03):

What is mistle toe?

Chris Skinner (26:04):

It's interesting because it's a much later addition to our planet because it's a semi parasite, not a true parasite, although...

Matthew Gudgin (26:15):

We're being warned off by the way.
(26:18)
There's a bird warning us off.

Chris Skinner (26:20):

Oh, I think it might be a mistle thrush. I did hear something

Matthew Gudgin (26:24):

It's chattering away.

Chris Skinner (26:25):

Yes, yes. Yeah, it was an alarm call. I can just hear it in the back. There it is. It is a mistle thrush. It's just flown through from one through to another and another one flying. There's three of them over the top of us. 

Matthew Gudgin (26:40):

It makes absolute sense doesn't it? Mistle thrush, Mistle Toe.

Chris Skinner (26:42):

Mistle toe, yes. And so it was a Mistle toe thrush originally and it's been abbreviated to mistle thrush. But back to your question, what is mistle toe? It's a semi parasite, that means it just doesn't reliance highly on its host for its nutrition, but it has to have a host. So a lot of people will argue that it is in fact a parasite, but it's a bit unusual. It's got green leaves so it can photosynthesize energy from the sun and that provides some of its nutrition. The rest comes from its host, which can be ash trees can be mainly apple, Hawthorne. I've seen it growing on and rarely and infrequently it's on oak. But poplar and apple are certainly the most common. And the other one, it seems to occasionally on Hawthorne, occasionally on Hazel and very rarely as well on one or two other species of trees as well.
(27:46)
Field maple would be one. It seems to like that sort of richer sap. But it forms these spheres up in the tree. And normally in the summer months you don't see it because the tree as you mentioned is in full leaf. So mistle thrushes will eat the berries and we just saw them, oh there they are. They're flying right over the top of us. That's Britain's largest native thrush, the mistle thrush. And so what they do, they eat the berries and the berries have glue them. It's a really long sticky glue. So the scientific name a mistletoe is viscom alba, literally white sticky berry. That's what it means in translation. So the viscous bit sticks to the birds beaks and the only way mistle toe can really get around the countryside and find a new host tree is for the mistle toe buried to be eaten by a thrush.
(28:44)
It can be red wing - what the wind's really blowing over the top of it. 

Matthew Gudgin (28:49):

That's not a jet aircraft. That is the wind coming through these poplars and other trees

Chris Skinner (28:53):

Yes. So black birds will eat them. Song thrushes will eat them. Mistle thrushes obviously eat them and field faires, they're the fame, the five main birds that will distribute the berries. But the birds beaks get glued up with all the gelatinous part of the berry as either one seed or two seeds in each little silver white berry that has this glue inside it. They're about a centimetre across just under half an inch across in diameter, perfectly round, perfectly white, but not all the bunches of mistle toe above us have berries on. Some are completely bare and that's male mistle toe. So it's rather like holly, you can have a male holly tree with no berries on whatsoever, but the male holly tree produces pollen and nearby you can have a female holly tree that also comes into flower at the same time. And then the little flowers get pollinated by the pollen from the male one. And the same happens with mistle toe. So you need both male and female to get a good crop of berries.

Matthew Gudgin (29:59):

Some plants swap over, don't they? But these don't.

Chris Skinner (30:02):

No ash tree is one that will swap sexes and mistle toe doesn't. But I have seen half a clump of mistle toe with berries on it and half without berries on it. So it does get a little bit confusing sometimes. And the reason for that is that two berries can be wiped off on whatever bird's beak it, just wipe them off to get rid of all this sticky glutenous substance on their beaks. And you can have a male and female mistle toe seed putting out these little roots into the host tree. They're called haustoria and it's almost like a little root that goes into the bark, but it won't really thrive on the old trunk wood. So when we look up the tree, there's very few if any on the trunk, they prefer the fresh growth towards the end of the branches and you can always age mistletoe.
(30:59)
So what I'm going to do is to take you back to High Ash Farm. I have an orchard there and I've got mistle toe growing instead of 40 50 feet up. I wondered whether to bring a ladder this morning, put you up in close contact with the mistle toe. 

Matthew Gudgin (31:13):

Not in this wind. 

Chris Skinner (31:15):

There's always an excuse isn't there with any danger? But anyway, we'll see if we can find some at ground level and see if we can get a picture of us actually looking at the mistle toe at the farm. And I'll tell you a few more of its secrets.

Matthew Gudgin (31:28):

These one's behind you actually, they're magnificent as well

Chris Skinner (31:31):

Yes, look at that.

Matthew Gudgin (31:31):

Come to Framingham Piggott if you want to see such a wonderful, especially at this time of the year display of, and there's many more trees round the corner here. There's more.

Chris Skinner (31:41):

Yes there is, it carries on, but we're looking at over a hundred clumps and that's the clumps are about as large as mistle toe we'll get. And in a wind like this, because deciduous trees have lost their leaves for a good reason when you get the winter, gales, can snap the branches off. But these branches here, the one tree closest to us are absolutely way down with a huge canopy of mistle toe. Fantastic plot full of history. And I explain a bit more when we get back to the farm.

Matthew Gudgin (32:23):

We've arrived at Chris's orchard, take our seat belts off. But before we pop in there, Chris, as always, lots of correspondence and I think this Christmas Eve edition, I think we ought to look at some people's questions here because it's lovely to see someone who listens in Norfolk at Aylmerton. Bob Selby. Hello Bob. Recently I've witnessed a few events that I wouldn't expect Today I saw a buzzard land on a branch and a grey squirrel kept approaching him, getting inches away. The buzzard just stared. Earlier, I'd seen a magpie land on the back of a perched buzzard, the buzzard didn't move. I've got videos of a fox sharing food with a hedgehog and again a fox sharing food with a badger. So how do the animals that are considered prey for the top predators know when they can approach and when they're not going to become the next dinner?

Chris Skinner (33:15):

That's a really lovely question and a very interesting one. And there's two completely separate aspects to that question. The first one is birds of similar ilk. They say birds of a feather flock together, but birds like buzzards and carrion crows and magpies are all sort of predators after the same food. And so birds like magpies and carrion crows will certainly try and attack or mob a buzzard to get it out of its territory because they're competing for food on the ground maybe as a dead rabbit there, which the buzzard's feeding on. So what they're trying to do is to get it to shift out of their territory and they get as close as they can. And often if the buzzard has had a good feed, it's a very lazy bird, it won't bother to fly out of the way because it kind of knows the magpie is of no threat, no consequence to it at all.
(34:14)
So it's not threatened by it. So that's quite a common occurrence. And often I'll see large birds of prey here at the farm and there's an entourage of magpies and jackdaws in particular occasional carrion crows and rooks will actually be after it mobbing it, a whole gang of them. And so just trying to chase it out of their territory. Obviously big competition, but they seem when they get really cross, they seem to lose all sense of fear about being eaten. And the second aspect, when you see a fox and a hedgehog feeding, usually it's a feeding site where somebody's putting out food for them and there's generally plenty of food so there's no competition. So the fox, although it probably top trump the hedgehog if it wanted to and give it a very bad time, won't actually bother because there's ample food in the territory.
(35:12)
It's when there's a food shortage, things start to get very aggressive. And also at certain times of the year certain animals will turn territorial and they won't tolerate other predators in their patch so to speak. So it is kind of a two answered, I'm not trying to avoid the question, but there's two answers to that and it is intensely interesting and the same would happen with a fox and a badger being allowed to sort of feed together. I've seen that several times and it just means there's ample food for both of them. So they haven't got to resort to violence, which can end up with one or other of them coming off worse.

Matthew Gudgin (35:54):

We've got Christmas greetings coming in from Robert Bright, who's lived an awful lot in Suffolk but has family links with North Norfolk as well. He says my late mum was born on Brancaster Stathe and he enjoys the podcast Long mate continues, says Robert,

Chris Skinner (36:10):

Thank you very much. It's always lovely to have emails like that. 

Matthew Gudgin (36:14):

Sheila Rolls says, I've heard a lot of tawney owl activity calling flapping and what sounds like a tussle. There seem to be several birds involved. Could it have been territorial or maybe searching for a mate at this time of the year?

Chris Skinner (36:27):

Yes, this is exactly the time of the year almost. Well we're almost at the shortest day, which is tomorrow, and this is the time of the year tawny owls pair up if they have paired up and there's a spare male or a spare female in that territory, they will certainly try and see it off, particularly two males that doesn't really work in the world of Tawny Owls. And they make quite a kerfuffle actually not the normal twit twos to it's various squeaks and screeches and lots of flapping going on, but that the pair is already set up and it probably has been since November. And so what's happening is the male is feeding the female, he's kind of giving her the equivalent of a box of chocolates at the moment to kind of fatten her up and she will get lots of extra fat just under the skin. It's called subcutaneous fat. And remember she'll be laying eggs just in a week or two's time. They're really early nesters tawny owls. And so he's doing a great job in the territory. So he's going to be seeing off any other males that might be offering an even better box of chocolates.

Matthew Gudgin (37:39):

Tim Knight has emailed, he runs a community garden centre near Manchester and he says, Chris, you fill me with optimism as I hear about how farming can actively increase biodiversity. But pardon me for being nosy, he says. But tell me, does that sort of farming pay compared with old school practises?

Chris Skinner (38:01):

Well, you are being nosy so far. I don't mind at all. I love questions like that. And the farm has completely changed. We have the farm orchard behind us and in front of us, our crops laid out over winter. Wild bird feed there, there's a field of teasels there, some grassland for hay on our left as we look over the farm towards the east. So it's completely changed from how it was when I was a child. It was a mixed farm. Cattle, livestock of all sorts, pigs, poultry here, big milk producers at the farm as well as the crops as well. And that was how it was back then and everything I was growing when I left college. The wheat, the barley, the sugar beet in particular, and the cattle as well all became commodities. And that means they could be brought into this country really from anywhere in the world.
(38:53)
I suppose if you go out from humanity and look back at what we do, I think we are the only species of a mammal in the world that brings its food in that isn't within walking distance where you live and all the other animals and birds which are quite mobile can fly around and find food. But generally the mammals have their food source where they live and we don't. So it's a really interesting question. So I started to realise that what I was producing was being grown anywhere in the world, particularly the cereal component and the sugar in third world, Afro-Caribbean countries for example. And the price was really low or below the cost of production. So a Norfolk motto is do different. And I decided to enter a pretty large HLS, that's a higher level stewardship, government sponsored scheme at the farm here that finished in 2016.
(39:54)
And the funding has dropped away like a stone BPS. The sort of area payment that farmers got has also fading away hugely. And so a lot of the farm income comes from diversification, which is the horses at the farm here and also for permissive walking, which is a really unusual crop and that provides the income for the farm to enable it to be run in an environmentally friendly way. So I'm not a different farmer. Farming's changing and has done for centuries. It's changing particularly at the moment with huge machinery in huge fields, still producing masses of food, which is ever so important. But also we're trying to do the impossible and to look after our natural environment as well. And that's what I do. I haven't got a farm that's a zoo by any means. Everything that's here is wild really and can roam about as it chooses. And the biodiversity has increased hugely so have fields with absolute flocks and flocks of birds on and that's the delight, that's the payback for me. But I wouldn't say I'm ever going to be a wealthy farmer. So there we are. But you do occasionally see me on a bike, but we're in a truck this morning.

Matthew Gudgin (41:17):

And finally before we go out and about once again, Elise and Jill, thank you for your photograph you've sent of a spider, big fat closeup of a spider. Couldn't resist taking the photo when I found the Huntsman taking a close look at the map and card of High Ash Farm. I have them both on display in my kitchen and there we are, Chris, there's a photograph of High Ash Farm and the Huntsman. Oh, he's a ferocious looking thing.

Chris Skinner (41:49):

Looks as though the spider is the size of the field. It's actually on the brochure. And so you've got a kind of disproportionate view of a hugely wide giant spider. It looks like 10 yards across.

Matthew Gudgin (42:03):

It looks like one of those horror films, monster.

Chris Skinner (42:05):

It does, but what a brilliant picture. But I particularly love the wildflower picture under the spider with all the clovers in there. Just wonderful. So thank you very much for all the correspondence we've received. We do read through it all. It's because of the volume, it's not always possible to answer all the questions and all the queries, but we have a jotted good go.

Matthew Gudgin (42:28):

Well moving into the new year, we'll be very happy to receive your emails and the address is chris@countrysidepodcast.co.uk.

Chris Skinner (42:40):

That should find me

Matthew Gudgin (42:46):

Here we go into the orchard, open the gate and it's looking like a winter scene here, isn't it? The apples all disappeared.

Chris Skinner (42:57):

Yes, the plum trees we're just walking through the first part of the orchard. These are Victoria plums. The wind is still howling. This area was covered in giant cedar trees and Scots pine and most of them got flattened on the 16th of October, 1987. And the area we are now coming into is all varieties of soft fruit and fruit as well. So we've got Victoria plums on the south side of the orchard, then eating apples, things like Cox's orange pippin here in the centre row and then good old bramleys here right beside us.

Matthew Gudgin (43:40):

Oh, and here's the star of our show today.

Chris Skinner (43:43):

Yes, right down at head height 

Matthew Gudgin (43:45):

With a bunch of, yes, this is very manageable for us. A bunch of mistle toe with a little pearl like fruit.

Chris Skinner (43:53):

Yes, this is it Matthew. And this is the time of the year that you can actually seed mistle toe. Some of the berries aren't pearly while you can see one slightly greenish there, it's not quite ready. And the white ones are just right for seeding and it's a simple thing in the world. You choose a small, fairly fresh twig within, oh, here's one just down here. We walk up to this just coming out the side of the tree and I squeeze the berry like this. And this is the interesting bit. There's a single seed in that particular berry you can see there's a long string of glue hanging out, which is part of the scientific name. And all you do, you polish a young piece of applewood like that with your fingernail. Don't scratch the bark too much, just polish it like it's a piece of cherry wood. And then you hang the seed on, pull the other part of the seed away and you leave it just like that. It looks like a

Matthew Gudgin (44:52):

Teardrop just

Chris Skinner (44:53):

Hanging. Yes it does. And it will pull itself against the twig and you have to wait a year or more before you see any activity that all over the apple trees here, are tiny little mistle toe self seeded ones, some of them high up in the trees, some of them really low down and they just germinate around about sort of next spring, but you won't see any fresh leaves. And each year mistle toe puts out a fresh pair of leaves and you can age it very easily. The leathery greenish yellow leaves, you can actually age mistle toe. You go back from each pair of leaves to where it joins the tree. So this is one year, two years, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9. And then I'm going to give it one more year. It actually showed itself. So that's 10 years old at clump and it's about nearly three feet across.

Matthew Gudgin (45:53):

So how old are some of those clumps on the trees that we saw at Framingham Piggott?

Chris Skinner (45:56):

I'd have thought they're 25 years old probably that's about as big as they get spherical huge clumps and almost causing a wind problem for the trees. But nevertheless, I just love it. As I mentioned, it's a semi parasite, not a complete parasite. Lots and lots of folklore attached to it and it's probably one of the best known plants in our country actually. So even young people know about it. And certainly kissing under the mistle toe comes right back from druid times and it's come into our culture today. People still hang it above their entrance door hoping that actually if you've got a clump of mistle toe, you can claim a kiss. But I'm not sure about that today with covid going around anymore. But there we are. 

Matthew Gudgin (46:45):

That's not my only objection. 

Chris Skinner (46:47):

No, it's a really interesting plant. So thank you for coming to the orchard and sharing some of the history of the plant, which really seems to defy death. So you can see the shiny white berries here right in front of us. There we are. I darent go into the farm yard with all those girls there armed with a clump of it. So it's going to stay on the tree this year,

Matthew Gudgin (47:12):

Christmas Eve Mistletoe. 
(47:12)
Well thank you for listening to another countryside podcast with Chris Skinner and just before we go, we've had great fun opening up your correspondence, but there's one last parcel, isn't there, Chris?

Chris Skinner (47:29):

There is. I'm just opening it as we speak. It's really well done up. It's been through customs because the senders name on the back is Tamsin Singleton, Dale Crescent, Mount Stewart, wait for it. Tasmania, Australia. And it's for you and I Matthew just opening it up. Let's see what we've got. They do parcels up well in Australia. Yes, it's been through customs. Oh wow. There's a beautiful card here. All done up nicely. Oh, we've got some chocolates and what else have we got here? Oh, you have spoilt us. There's not some more kangaroo meat is there? I'm not sure. Oh it is. It's from the doghousebakery.com Australia.

 Matthew Gudgin (48:23):

That'll be for your terrible terrier. 

Chris Skinner (48:24):

I think so. He is so lucky. Fancy that getting present through the post 

Matthew Gudgin (48:29):

Dinner time for Rat 

Chris Skinner (48:30):

...and a card, Matthew and Chris, happy holidays. Hoping you manage some few minutes or something spare there. There we are. From Tamsin in Tasmania. Wow, thank you very much indeed. 

Matthew Gudgin (48:50):

Lovely to hear from the other side of the world. 

Chris Skinner (48:52):

Wow, what about that? That shows the power of podcasts, amazing. 

Matthew Gudgin (48:58):

I think all that's left to say is a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year to all our podcast listeners. 

Chris Skinner (49:03):

And thank you for listening our way.

Announcer (49:21):

This is a SOUNDYARD Production music is by Tom Harris.