No to Fracking in Turnditch

We'll be opposing the move to create a fracking site on the orchard. Meanwhile we managed to get some hedge cutting done as our fitness returns. We found a good number of old nests in the hedges, an increase over previous years.

We've noticed the soil is quite dry for mid-February.  Hopefully we'll get some meaningful rain this Spring.

Hedging started at the Orchard.

We called in at a local agricultural and building supplies merchant (Lester Lowe) yesterday afternoon to pick up a couple of bundles of fencing stakes. The merchant offers cracking good value for fencing timber. We'd calculated we'd need something in the order of 100 stakes. We plan to use some for staking the fruit trees and also providing fence enclosures for the trees. Our hedging contractor Adrian also mentioned he needed a few stakes. The stakes are rough sawn untreated wood about 1.5 metres in length and about 4 cm square. The first problem we faced was getting them to the site as we didn't want to hang around awaiting a delivery, so we took our Freelander car to the Lester Low site. With the back seats folded down we just managed to cram the 100 stakes into the back of the vehicle and squeeze the door shut.

Trees damaged by the sheep

We drove on to the Turnditch site to drop off the stakes. We found Adrian working on the site starting to clear some of the overgrown hedgerow ready for laying. He was quite concerned about the potential damage caused by the sheep chewing the bark of the bushes he'd cut down. They'd already damaged some hawthorn, but left the blackthorn alone. It looks like we need to install a temporary stock fence on our neighbours land to protect the hedge from the sheep for a few months. We've tried to contact the neighbouring farmer last night to discuss the options.  Oh the joys of restoring farmland, more expense!

Adrian also mentioned the gully under the embankment. His thoughts were that we could see some flood waters coming through from the other side of the road if the Ecclesbourne River flooded those fields with the heavy winter rains. He'd found the location where he was working had become quite boggy with the action of the sheep hooves and the wet conditions.