Bats about Butterflies

This month we completed the soil health tests over most of the Estate. This will give us a good starting point to see how much we are improving our soil by the different experiments conducted which includes using diverse herbal lays, spreading compost, mob grazing cattle and also potentially sheep. We are also looking into agroforestry, this is where trees are used as forage to improve the health of our livestock. This is a very interesting project starting with deciding the location of the plantation to which species to plant whether it is Willow, Birch, Hazel or others. We need to take into consideration the right time for the trees to become established and also the right time for them to be grazed. With the Estate being organic it is a wonderful concept to improve the health of our livestock further. We look forward to finding out more about it at the next Soil Association meeting. Another aspect to consider is would agroforestry also improve the taste and texture of our meat, but only time will tell. Realistically the timescale for this is approximately two-three years.

The farm has started to cut our crops. We are looking forward to see how the Partridge broods have done this year. There has been a sharp increase in the number of butterflies around our grass margins, which is mainly due to the hot, wet weather we have had recently.

Down at Comielaw there was a sighting of a young bat, the common Pipistrelle, clinging to the outside of one of our biomass plants, it was first thought it was in need of some help but it was not too far away from one of the bat boxes that we have located around that farm. The young mammal was probably out for its maiden solo voyage and became a little disorientated. On the days that followed the young bat was seen going to and from the boxes safely.