Episode 18: How Much Is That Doggy In The Window?

Chris Skinner (00:29):

Happy New Year everybody. It's one o'clock in the morning. It's the 1st of January and rat, my demented terrier has asked to go out because he's seen a fox in the garden. Just listen to this rat. One side of a bush, the fox, the other, right? Right. Would you come out of that bush? The fox is gnarling and gnashing its teeth noise is called geck and it's bearing its teeth and gnarling and gnashing it rat because he's cornered it in my shrubbery. Oh dear. I'm in a dressing zone and the wind's blowing a hooley. Come on. Would you come out? I'm not going to walk into that shrubbery. I've caught bare feet. If anybody's got any ideas, you can write. You can write in, right? That is it. I'm going to have to walk on to the shrubbery with bare feet and try and grab a terrier, which will be shortly for sale. No, I've now got wet feet and there's holly nearby. Rat, would you come out here? Come on. Wrap Rat. Come on here. Rat out. Come on. It's gone quiet. There's a standoff. I think I'm only two feet, three feet from the dreaded terrier and I think, I'm not sure. 

Chris Skinner (03:38):

No, 

Chris Skinner (03:39):

I thought the fox had lagged it, but it hasn't. Right? Would you come here? Come on out. Come on. Soaking wet feet. Would you come here? 

Chris Skinner (04:02):

Here, 

Chris Skinner (04:02):

Come here. Come on here out dear. Oh dear. They're shouting and swearing at each other. 

Chris Skinner (04:36):

Rat. 

Chris Skinner (04:44):

Come on here. Rat. Would you come out 

Chris Skinner (04:48):

Here? 

Chris Skinner (04:49):

Come here. Good boy. Here. Come on. 

Chris Skinner (04:55):

Ah, 

Chris Skinner (04:56):

That was hopeful sound. I think the fox has just lagged it and has run off out of my shrubbery with rat behind it. Now it's pitched up. I'm going to walk back carefully and that's how you start the new year off. 

Chris Skinner (05:26):

Oh, 

Chris Skinner (05:28):

Hopefully he won't catch up with that fox. They're way too quick. The lucky thing is I pinned the end door open because it's a bit breezy and I nearly got locked out of my own house, dear. Right. We've just got to wait for him to come back. Now. There'll be a few choice, so I'm going to turn the microphone off now because you won't want to hear what I'm going to say. 

Chris Skinner (06:06):

Oh dear. 

Chris Skinner (06:08):

I made it back indoors. It's warm. I've got wet feet. I am just going to sit and wait. See you soon. 

Matthew Gudgin (06:36):

Muddy and wet. Welcome to another countryside podcast with Chris Skinner, Norfolk Farmer and nature lover who invites us here most weeks for a podcast and it's a beautiful sunny morning low sun. Lovely January morning and it's the first of a new year, 2024 now. And we've slosh through the mud because it's been raining so much, Chris, isn't 

Chris Skinner (07:00):

It? Yes. And there's more rain forecast for us shortly, although it's going to turn colder, so you neither have the cold or the wet, whichever is your choice. Although we don't have a choice with nature Anyway, we're standing on one of the high spots of high ash farm, which I normally say is at Castus in Edmond, just a couple of miles south of Norwich, but we're in arming hall this morning and the church is just peeping up through the trees just through there. Arming Hall Church. So we are about 150 yards that will be southwest of Arming Hall Church. We're standing on Budha away. There's the big footpath sign, and that goes right down the eastern side of the farm. 

Matthew Gudgin (07:44):

Lovely mediaeval church there. I can see the Flint tower just sits in the countryside beautifully that 

Chris Skinner (07:52):

Yes. And then we turn around the other way and just through the hedge is a panoramic view of about half of high ash farm there with two of the valleys and hills in front of us. And they were running like a river yesterday. And the soil at the bottom of the valleys has chore underneath, so it's very porous. And the water has just disappeared as though somebody's pulled a plug out of the bath and it's gone down into the aquifer exactly what we wanted to happen. The 

Matthew Gudgin (08:22):

River though, on a neighbouring property, the TAs is completely flooded out onto the surrounding fields, 

Chris Skinner (08:28):

Isn't it? Yes, my grandfather's old farm down there at Mark Saul where my father was born, and it's doing exactly what it should do. It's called the water meadows down there, and it floods at this time of the year and kind of stalls the water before it courses a bit further down into the river year and it can be held up if necessary with some slus at Lake Andum, close to the old cock public house there at Ham and the water's held up artificially, and that makes the water back up over those water meadows. Otherwise it would overwhelm the river year further downstream. And so they're doing exactly what they're meant to do. And again, this soil is very fertile in those river valleys. It's peat with some sort of UV content in it as well, but underneath that is a 30 foot layer of pure gravel and that's very porous. 

(09:27)
And beneath that is chalk, and that again is porous. And so we're recharging the aquifers to make up for the last two summers where it's been incredibly dry. Anyway, a little bit. That's a bit of history, and this is a lovely walkway. It's called Hall back Lane Matthew. And it forms the northern boundary of high ash. And there's some venerable old trees here. Just look at this fellow here. It's a massive oak tree and a big scar right down the side where it got struck by lightning about 30 years ago. And gradually the tree is healing up both sides to cover that incredible scar, which goes right up to the crown of the tree. That's a wonderful gnarled old tree, isn't it? It's yes. It just makes me smile. It can tell so many stories. It looks out over the farm and it would've actually seen oxen and certainly horses ploughing the fields when it was a youngster. 

(10:30)
And so much has changed in our countryside and we haven't got much further to walk to find this week's subject, which is right in front of us coming up on the left and it's elms this morning. I thought all the elms had died. Yes, most of them have. And I'll show you an example of dead elms and all over the farm. It was by far the commonest tree. They were English elms and there about four species that are easy to identify. That's the English elm. And that's the one John Constable made very, very famous in his painting called the Cornfield, and I think it was in 1826. He did that and quite remarkable and it kind of, I suppose he epitomises the English landscape and he painted that. And this big billowing crown on top of it with lots of leaves on the leaves are unusual on elm trees because one side half of the leaf is longer than the other half, so it kind of laps over and all the elms are like that. 

(11:41)
So you've got the common or English elm is one a little bit smaller. One is called the witch elm, and that's all twisted and nulled rather like that oak tree we looked at then got smooth leaved elms. And then the fourth one is the Dutch elm, but really nothing to do with the Dutch elm disease, which is a bit of a misnomer really because it wasn't discovered in Holland and it's got nothing to do with Dutch elms either because Dutch elm disease affects all the species of elms in some form or other. 50 years ago that was big news, was it? Oh, right across the world really, particularly in this country. And there's elms over in Asia, different species of elms, and they're all susceptible to Dutch arm disease, but it's spread by a beetle. The beetle itself doesn't do any harm whatsoever, but it's the fungus that the beetles carry with them when they fly. 

(12:41)
Now in the 1960s it kind of a new strain of the fungus developed and it was incredibly virulent. It was sort of first identified properly in France in about 1918, but it wasn't a very virulent fungus back then. And about 20% of all English and native elms were killed. Some only partially killed. And elms have this habit of suckering out from the trunk or the base and regrowing. And so it wasn't disastrous, not until the sixties when this new sort of fungus sort of strain developed and absolutely went right through the elm population and devastated the ones at the farm. In a few minutes we'll move to the other side of ash farm, and I'll show you some of the giant elms that were left and a new one that we've planted. But this is the largest elm on the farm. This tree by the side of the lane? 

(13:43)
Yes. No, I'll give you an idea how big it is. I'm going to try and put my arms around the trunk. And there's what about a couple of foot left? Probably. Yeah, another 20 inches. You can't. So that means it's about eight feet around the trunk at the moment, and it's a good straight bowl up to about 20 feet. And then you start to get that billowing crown. I don't think there's any sign of the leaves left on the ground. They've all gone back into the soil with the high worm population here. And the roots seem to go straight down in the base there. Yes. Oh, it's really well rooted and it's really lovely as a little bit of ivy just on the first 15 or 20 feet, Matthew. And that might help to deter those beetles. They don't fly very far, but the worst thing is they carry this fungus and it affects the water gathering capacity of the tree. 

(14:40)
So the little water sort of vases you can call them get blocked up and the tree loses its ability to get water up the crown. So the tree, you get patches of leaves dying and then those leaves drop off and then the fungus takes over and just overwhelms the tree. It can't just be that this has got ivy, that this has survived. There must be some other reason. And that's what we're trying to find out. We think there's some resistance beginning to develop because if we just look on the other side of the track here and just walk through the mud a little bit more, there's a lovely old, another lovely oak tree there, and this is what we're looking at here. And this is typical of Dutch elm. That one's got to about 25 years old and the bark's already peeled off and it's just a skeleton, just a bad way really, isn't it? 

(15:39)
Yes. And the same with that one. So you kind of start to get some hope that some of those young elms are going to survive. And if you follow that one up to the crown, there's the bark off at the top where the woodpeckers have been after those Beatles. And there's some even bigger specimens if we walk just back here a little bit that are also doomed. And so it's some hope with fingers crossed that quite a number of these elms, oh, it's just through there. The other side of that venerable old ash tree. Can you see? Yes. Just through there with the bark, the bark peeling off all off, all the way up to the crown. And so that's where the hope lies, that some resistance because elms are unusual. They come into flour, which is unusual, sort of bright pink little rosettes of flowers in February and march. And once they're pollinated, they produce seeds, a little wing seed in a circle with a little notch on it, and the seed is bang in the centre of that and that lands on the ground. And a lot of botanists think we're being sworn at by a great hit at the moment. Oh, there he is, right above our head, Paris major. Just swearing away. 

(17:06)
What are you doing here? Yes, what are you doing here? This is my territory. Really lovely. So the seeds drop on the ground in about June july time, and as I said, a lot of botanists believe they're sterile, but what happens is unless they drop on bare ground, they won't germinate. And their germination ability is so short, it only lasts about a day or two or three days after that they won't germinate. So their really odd seeds, so elms get themselves about the countryside by something called suckering where you'll have an elm tree like this one and then a few feet away you get a little sapling growing up and that's come off the roots. And again there, there and there and all the way down and it almost forms hedges and that's the way it gets itself. So it takes thousands of years to get across the British Isles obviously. 

(18:04)
So they rhizomes, they're light rhizomes, but roots. It's just a normal habit that elm trees seem to have just because they don't seem to see themselves very successfully. Most of the elms you'll see that are left have come from the old parent trees which died and got felled and long since forgotten. And that's the thing why I brought you here this morning. Elm trees have almost become a memory for people that you just don't see them. So they don't feature in our new generation's life if you like. They never were there to start with. Anybody who's 30, 40, 50 years old won't know what an elm is or the shape it was or how important it was to some of our butterfly species, like one of the hair streak species, the butterflies with a W on the underside of the wing, it's called the white letter hair streak butterfly. And that's almost exterminated because it's lost its food plant, which is elm. So there we are a little bit of history. So we're going to hop back in the truck and go and fingers crossed, see the new generation of elms that have been bred to be resistant off we go. 

(19:38)
Well, we've got in the car and come probably 10 minutes at least because the direct routes aren't really open to us today. No, Matthew, it would've been quite a walk to go from one elm tree on the northern side of high ash farm to this new version of elm trees, which I'm quite excited about. We're just going to be visiting it in a minute. But all the way down here are elms that have lost their bark. There's one laying on the ground there quite nice. It returns to the soil. Two youngsters there both about what? 20 feet tall and lost their bark already. So they seem to get to that stage of 20 years old and then succumb once again to that virulent fungus. Now the field behind us is quite interesting. Certainly the archaeologists are really interested in it. It's got a particular name, it's called Elm Bank. 

(20:39)
And right through my childhood there was a massive, and I mean massive row of elms there. And here's a photograph of me standing at the top of the hill looking, we are standing just there and they're 220 foot tall English elms all gone, all gone. They were felled In 1975 the stumps remained and somebody came with a chainsaw that didn't have a chain saw on it, it had an aga, and he drilled down beneath each of the trees and he used a kilo of dynamite under each one. So quite laid back about it all and blew them out. And they went up into the sky, these tiny little dots and landed all over this field. I'll never forget it, that's how we got rid of the stumps. But it was so sad. They were almost like brothers to me. The chap that originally fell them, his name was Mike Watts, he was a timber merchant at Dunston in the neighbouring village just south of Norridge. 

(21:47)
And he cut one of them down. It was 29 feet, six inches circumference around the trunk, which made it about what? Nine and a half, nearly 10 feet through the trunk. And they made some tables from it, mostly elm trees because the wood last quite well underground. And this is why it's a bit of a sort of sombre tree I suppose. They're used for coffin building, which is really sad. And why that's happened, I don't know. But elms has just beautiful trees and I miss them terribly. So my children for my 70th birthday have bought me this tree which we're just walking up to. It's a new variety of elms, which is their scientific name, cock. Pheasant. Just running through there just disturbed him. And if we walk in a little bit, I've planted it dead in line with this old bank. And the reason the archaeologists are interested in it, because bank, if you think about the word, it's somewhere you keep your money and they think that that's quite an interesting site. 

(23:02)
There's been quite a number of coins found on the field behind us. And so this is the new tree, Matthew. This is my 70th birthday present from my children. Oh, happy birthday. But it was a few years ago. It wasn't. It was a few years ago and I need to now slacking off the little band and it is absolutely thriving it round Rodd straight, isn't it? It is. Must go up 20 feet now. It's a good 20 feet. Yes, I think it will see me out, but it just makes me smile. So they say you plant a tree for the next generation to enjoy. And I hope my children will come back and sort of remember me, not too sombre because I love laughter and sort of the funny side of life. And this is beautiful and it reminds me of the trees in this corner of this area of foxes grove. The elms Matthew were so close together that you could hardly squeeze between the trunks. And I just remember as a youngster, I mean I never thought anything would happen to them. And then in the 1960s onwards through to the seventies, that devastating fungus came and virtually wiped out all the elms here 

Matthew Gudgin (24:19):

Where we're standing here where your new elm is. 

Chris Skinner (24:22):

It was thick with absolutely very mature trees is the exact spot where these mature trees were so thick that you couldn't really squeeze through them. I mean it was impenetrable and they 

Matthew Gudgin (24:34):

Were hundreds of years old. 

Chris Skinner (24:35):

They were hundreds of years old. That giant elm that I described that got blown out with dynamite. The stump was just left in the middle of a field really. And the fella that took it down the lumberjack, he had great difficulty and timber merchants will know exactly this. He took what's called a front out of the tree. He had a 50 inch chainsaw bar and he cut right through. The tree was so perfectly balanced, it was left on a little hinge and he cut through that and the tree still stood for another five minutes having been cut completely through. It was so absolutely perpendicular. And then it went and you could hear the crash from a huge distance and the trunk could only be cut into 10 foot lengths because even the crane that came to lift it struggled and the lorry couldn't get it off the field. The back wheels just sunk in with the weight. 

Matthew Gudgin (25:34):

Did you count the 

Chris Skinner (25:34):

Rings? No, I didn't. That's the thing with elms, they're really difficult, but we estimated it to be about 450 years old, so it would've seen unbelievable sites when you go back in history. And that's the thing that I'm interested in most about the countryside. Lots of people gets excited about archaeology and the former inhabitants, the Saxons, the Romans, the neolithic people. And I am equally interested in what's called the living heritage. And that's the bit that fires me up. Got my hands around this tree. It's wonderful feeling to think and hope as long as nothing else falls on it. It's got its own little clearing with blue sky above to grow. What's to 

Matthew Gudgin (26:19):

Stop this succumbing though to those beetles and Dutch elm? 

Chris Skinner (26:22):

Yes. Well it's disease resistant, Matthew. It's called New Horizon. And so it's been bred to be completely resistant to that particular strain of fungus. So fingers crossed this tree will be here when both you and I perhaps be pushing up the daisies. I think we 

Matthew Gudgin (26:43):

Ought to go and answer some questions we have. So you've had another bumper post band, have you? 

Chris Skinner (26:47):

We have. I think there's more questions than answers this morning 

Matthew Gudgin (26:51):

That prompts me to hum a song, but I won't 

Chris Skinner (26:54):

Best not. 

Matthew Gudgin (27:06):

Well, we've picked a terrific morning to come and visit Chris Skinner on this current edition of the podcast because the sun is shining and although we've had some very dodgy weather recently, it's a lovely morning with some blue sky and I think it's high time. We had a look at some of the things that people are saying and coming through to you on the email, chris@countrysidepodcast.co.uk. Bridget Gardner, who lives in the or nearby, really in the south of Norridge, who's also a sponsor of the farm walks. And I walked the paths at 8:00 AM on Boxing Day on the farm. It was a beautifully bright morning as I was passing a tree sculpture you've got on the farm. I heard two skylarks over the field on the left hovering, is this too early though to see them? 

Chris Skinner (27:57):

Matthew accidentally we bumped into the sky lucks at High Ash Farm on the other side of the farm last week's podcast. And I explained what they were doing. They're flocking up at this time of the year and pairing up as well. And that's why we heard the singing, which is on the last week's podcast. You managed to record some very well indeed and it's quite normal for them. And remember, many birds are now in full breeding plumage, particularly our watercolour birds like Mallard Sporting, their emal, green heads and the females as well. And they're all paired up. Lots of the cor species as well. Certainly Jack, doll and rooks are all paired up or are pairing up at the moment. And skylar's are no exception to the rule. So what you saw is probably a pair. They're already sort of forming a territory broken away from the big flocks of skylarks. And once you've got a mate, you will go and often find your own territory. And that spot of the farm, which is called Kenley Hill, is quite high up there is an ideal spot to see and hear Skylark. 

Matthew Gudgin (29:09):

Here's a sound that's been sent in via email by Maggie Quinn and Maggie writes currently that the bird that you can hear is waking me up at 5:00 AM It's still dark, although I'm in the city. The street lines lights are dimmed until six o'clock. So minimal light pollution on recording it can hear a response from another bird in the distance, but it's not picked up on the recording by seven o'clock, it's all over. And I'd be grateful if you could identify the bird. 

Chris Skinner (29:46):

Yes. Well, the robin there is guilty as charged. It's a perfect recording of a robin and it's setting up its territory, but instead of fisticuffs, it's a good lessons for humanity here they're sorting out their territories, which we can't see. It's invisible. It's not necessarily the boundary of your garden or any particular area, but a male robin will set up the territory and defend it by singing. Occasionally a male robins will meet at the boundary of their territories that remember they're early nesters. You can have eggs in the nest, certainly at the end of January in a mild winter. And all the members of the thrush family will be doing the same blackbirds in particular early nesters song thrushes to missile thrush to very, very early nesters. And the two migratory species of thrush, which we have here in the country, red wing and field fairs, they'll go back to their territories in Western Europe. So that's it. So definitely a robin. I listen carefully and it's another robin in another territory answering back, but they're just sorting out in a very gentlemanly way. 

Matthew Gudgin (31:05):

Thanks for the recording, Maggie. And hello to Frederick Olt who sent us a note to say a couple of podcasts back. Chris, you mentioned you had dozens of bird boxes scattered over the garden stabling area. I have a couple of boxes in my garden and the blue tits are in and out already as I think they may be preparing already for laying. I really don't want to disturb them to clean the boxes out as the RSPB suggests to get rid of ticks and lice, but it's maybe enduring the process. Old nesting material of course builds up. So the question is, would it be okay to leave it as it's not as it is and not clean them out? 

Chris Skinner (31:44):

Yes, I've got, my target was one nest box per acre of high ash farm 640 in total, and I've still got over 600 nest boxes of various shapes and sizes. The smallest ones are for solitary bees to nest in and the largest ones without doubt for barn owls and in general, I don't clean them out generally with the tick boxes, the material will build up a little bit, but birds at this time of the year will go in, take fresh nesting material in quite shortly. And they're just also using the boxes. Remember it's still the coldest time of the year, what we call the hungry gap as well, when birds are searching around looking for food. So they need somewhere warm at night and nest boxes are ideal. Generally I leave them until they get quite full and then I'll generally replace the whole nest box with a fresh one in a similar area. 

Matthew Gudgin (32:43):

Ron, who lives in old Buckingham, was enjoying our chat about missile toe just before Christmas and he sent us a photograph of some of his missile toe in one of his local trees and it's a perfect sphere. Ron says, how does it grow to this shape? Which almost seems unreal in its symmetry. 

Chris Skinner (33:01):

Yes it does. And we noticed that when we visited the missile toe down pig lane, Framingham Piggott just in the village next to the farm and all the missile toe clumps up in the trees were the same shapes spherical. It's a perfect description of the growth and the reason it's that shape is missile toe grows out in every direction from its routing point and it grows in an equal amount each year and each of the little growth points divides into two equally. And so you can actually count the age of missile toe by counting back those growth points where you get a pair of leaves and then a joint and then another pair of leaves and you can age missile toe because it reproduces exactly from the original growth in the equal direction. So ends up as a complete sphere, well spotted, 

Matthew Gudgin (33:59):

Well done wrong. And Ken Gillingham or maybe Gillingham, I dunno which. But Ken, thank you for your email. He's really enjoying your podcast, Chris with trustee sidekicks rat and Matthew. 

Chris Skinner (34:12):

Yes. Which of you the troublesome one, aren't 

Matthew Gudgin (34:14):

You? I'm sucking billing I think. And Ken has sent us a photo of a ren sitting motionless on his lawn. He was raking up dead leaves and came across the bird. It didn't appear to be injured, so I waved my hand in front of the Rens face, but it just sat very still and I stopped raking, moved away to work elsewhere in the garden, returned a quarter of an hour later and the rent had gone. Is this motionless approach a defence mechanism? 

Chris Skinner (34:39):

No, not in this case. There are a few birds that adopt this posture. The most extreme one birds that we used to have at the farm here. They were Guinea foul and if you scared them or made a really loud noise, they would lay on their side and feign death. In this case, the Ren had almost certainly flown into an obstacle, almost certainly a window hadn't broken its neck but became completely traumatised and stunned. And it was like semi-conscious. And I have seen this in bird life before. Other birds can fe injury as well, but that's a sort of defence mechanism to protect the youngsters. One bird that's immediately springs to mind would be lapwing when they've got young in the nest or egg laying on the ground and the females incubating the eggs. The male lapwing will run along the ground with one wing, which is obviously broken to deter the predator. 

(35:42)
In this case, probably a human away from the nest, but quite often I've seen this with birds that fly into glass. And in this case almost certainly the renar stunned itself and it's lucky to be alive and probably made a safe escape. Yeah, sounds like a happy ending. Anyway, and we're almost ready to get towards our ending on this week's podcast, but finally we go to Wendy, Wendy byot, who is our whatever did the Romans do for us. Correspondent. Yes, exactly. Wendy's very knowledgeable with the Roman occupation of East Anglia. And she queried last week about whether er here near Norridge is the Roman capital of east of England or Colster where she used to live. And we sort of fudged it by saying, well, Colster isn't properly in the east of England near London, isn't it? Yes, we did. It was set up as a Canton, but which is a Roman garrison divisions if you like Wendy says, Colster was used as a retirement village for Roman veterans from about AD 49. 

(36:42)
And that is why the Norfolk girl Bodier was so successful when she took over. Yes, because they were all retired and they'd probably forgotten how to fight and give a good account of themselves. That's how she was able to overtake a Colchester. But the same didn't happen here at Caseas and Edmond, although we've got the walk to remind us and remember that this was the Iceni capital and Buda was the Iceni queen. We think she was at Castus and Edmond here because there's lots of Iron Age remnants and the beautiful little I see e coins, which we sometimes find about the size of your little fingernail in gold or silver, reminds us of generations and occupations that have been and gone and forgotten about apart from the artefacts that they left behind. Chris's email address for future episodes of this podcast is quite simply chris@countrysidepodcast.co.uk. But all that's left to say now is friends Romans Countrymen. Thank you for lending us your ears this week. Indeed. And thank you for venturing out to the wildes of High Ash Farm Matthew for yet another episode. It's always great fun and sharing the countryside that we all have to enjoy, especially on the morning like this. I can feel the warmth coming through from the sun as it creeps a little bit higher each day.