August

1 – Back home yesterday. Now wedding is over (but I’m still on cloud nine!) decided to let the peahens and older chicks out of barracks. A few anxious moments as the chicks got muddled up with wrong mothers. In a day or so they will learn to follow the peahen.

2 – Official opening by the Duke of Northumberland  of the refurbished National Park visitor centre and the brand new “Decade of Discovery” exhibition. Several finds from the archaeological digs are now on permanent display at Ingram.  Ceremony followed by buffet lunch in the village hall to the accompaniment of tunes on the Northumberland Small Pipes played by acclaimed performer Kathryn Tickell, and Louisa, one of her pupils. When she’s not on tour Kathryn lives locally near Rothbury in Coquetdale.

Pictured Left to right: Paul Frodsham, National Park
archaeologist, Alan Vout, of Brandon and the Duke of Northumberland standing
beside the big cup and ring marked stone, thousands of years old, unearthed
by Alan at the nearby Hedgeley gravel quarry.

3 – Sightings by Johnny today included a red-legged partridge with six chicks, a hen pheasant with three chicks, a pair of buzzards at very close range and two roe deer amongst the crop of kale. The grouse broods on the moors at Linhope, further up the valley, have fared badly. Many chicks perished during a spell of wet weather soon after hatching.

4 – First calf in the autumn calving herd born today.

5 – Brought ewes and lambs off the Haugh to the sheep pens. Marked some lambs for market next week. All except sale lambs sprayed to protect them from blowfly strike. In warm, muggy weather these particularly nasty flies home in on certain sheep and lay eggs that hatch as maggots. Dealing with them is a most unpleasant job, not nice for the sheep either. 

Wild raspberries very good this year, big berries, also lovely dark cherries on the tree near Ingram Bridge. Can’t resist picking a handful. The orange rowan or mountain ash berries provide a nice splash of colour just now, the birds enjoy them.  

8 – Young peachicks have quickly learnt about the big bird table outside our breakfast room window. Beaks to the glass they are frequent visitors now, scrounging for digestive biscuits or corn. The adult birds actually peck the windows – and recognise the biscuit tin!

9 – The hot sunshine over the weekend has given way to torrential downpours. Worried about peachicks. Bedraggled but coping.

10 – Took the small premature calf, which Johnny brought in on Sunday, away from its mother. We call it “lifting”. She needs lots of TLC and special care, just as a prem baby does. Her initial quota of colostrum was given by tube but she happily sucks a lamb’s teat on a baby size bottle. For the time being she will get blue top whole milk from the supermarket. We’ve christened her “Minnie”. 

11 – Very thick fog this morning over hills and in bye ground. Brought sheep off Haugh. Found them more by accident than design. Fifty six lambs away to market. 

12 – Archaeologists rained off after two hours

13 – Yet another dreadful day until late afternoon when sun came out. First we’ve seen of it since Sunday. Final day of the dig. Peter Carne, the director, showed me around. Basically a multi-phase site occupied between 100BC and 200AD, probably not continuously. The excavations are incomplete. One or two extra days are planned.

Supreme, one of our Limousin bulls is pictured doing “solitary” in the cattle pens after demolishing a gate. He literally walked through it much to the amazement of two visitors who watched the spectacle. He’s a nice chap actually, loves a back scratch. On this occasion he was miffed at being taken away from “his girls” and had also fallen out with our other two bulls.

14 – Fine day for Glanton Show as it was for Powburn last weekend. Local village shows are held most Saturdays in August and September. There are classes for sheep, vegetables, flowers, baking and lots more.

Sightings this week include a long-eared bat, spotted by the Clench family at Shepherd’s Cottage, and swallows gathering on the wires, always a sign that summer (missed it!) is coming to an end. Picked field mushrooms on the Haugh, brambles and raspberries from the hedgerows.

17 – Last year’s autumn born calves, weaned yesterday, are shouting for their mums. We keep them shut in for a few days to settle down. Some of the cows weren’t too happy either. They twice jumped out of the hill field and appeared in the farmyard.

18 – The rain gauge at Brandon recorded one inch of rain falling this morning between 6a.m. and 8.30a.m. Thunder and lightening this evening caused a power cut for about 15 minutes. Pleased I cook on Calor Gas and not electricity.

The heavy rain has kept water levels high and locals have enjoyed some fishing mainly for brown trout. A salmon grilse weighing two and a half pounds was landed further up the valley.

Minnie is doing well. She now gets powdered milk mixed with warm water instead of fresh blue top. She drinks seven pints a day in two feeds. Charlotte is pictured feeding her. In the foreground is the racing pigeon, rings on its legs, which arrived several days ago. We feed it corn. Not quite sure whether it’s just very tired or perhaps slightly injured.

In Northumberland the harvest is way behind. Some crops are ruined and other fields of corn very black. The land is so wet that combine harvesters are getting bogged in the fields. We have just one field of spring-sown barley to combine. At the moment it is taking no hurt.

22 – Party in the farmhouse garden – and the SUN SHONE! Some friends couldn’t make it, a rare dry day to catch up with their harvest.

25 – Weaned remaining in bye lambs.

A mild electric current was passed into the water with a probe. The fish are attracted towards it, scooped up in a landing net and emptied into buckets. They are tipped, for a matter of seconds, into a mild anaesthetic to stop them wriggling on the pre-marked measuring tray, then put into a bucket and tipped into a holding cage in the river. The fish were mainly between three and six inches long, the biggest being one year old, the smallest having emerged from the river gravel only this spring. James Hunt, assistant biologist from the Tweed Foundation, who did the measuring, explained that it is done every three years to check that all is well in the river.

29 – Wonderful walk today with friends Anne, Keith and Ian, to the trig point on top of Bloodybush Edge, at 2013 feet (610 metres) one of the high hills at the top of the valley. A watershed of the River Breamish, it was the scene of utter devastation in 1893 when a torrential thunderstorm gouged out acres of peat causing the river to rise in spectacular fashion.

Sightings included a pair of ravens above High Blakehope and the beautiful Grass of Parnassus, a delicate white flower, rather like a buttercup. Past its best but nonetheless a pleasure to see. Wonderful views of Cheviot and Hedgehope from the newly painted trig point.

Waterfall on the Ainsey Burn.	Breamish above High Blakehope.	Cheviot from Bloodybush Edge.