'Wake me up when September Ends'

The morning mists have begun to creep across the river meadows here as a signal of approaching autumn.  Things are on the move with the season; Ospreys have been seen several times over the last few weeks, flying over Mottisfont on their long journey back to Africa – I was lucky enough to see one myself wheeling over Long Lash last week – and I watched a V formation of at least 30 geese fly over the village honking directions loudly to each other.  For some reason this time of year seems to be peak spider time – every time I have wandered the woodlands or fields I emerge looking like Old Father Time with a wispy white beard and hair from all the cobwebs I’ve walked into.

A busy spider in my garden - it was interesting to watch it weave its web and see how the silk emerges from its body.

The fields next to the river as you drive into Mottisfont have had five Devon Red (also known as Ruby Reds or Rubies) cattle in them, all of which are pregnant and counting the days until they pop forth a miniature version of themselves.  These beautiful cattle are part of a much larger herd that belongs to one of our tenant farms on the estate which also grows crops as well as having animals.  I knew the cows were due to give birth in September time so every time I have driven passed that field I have slowed down and cruised along to get a good look and see if I could spot any sign of the action.  Finally, last week my curb crawling was rewarded when I spotted a small reddish brown blob next to one of the cows.  I pulled over and snuck into the field for a closer look and there lying in the long grass, its wet fur steaming slightly in the September sunshine, was a tousled looking calf, no more than a couple of hours old.  I didn’t get too close as I didn’t want to disturb them or anger the mother but she seemed content enough with grazing nearby and uttering soft ‘moo’s’ to let her calf know where she was.  I watched the female calf (despite the umbilical cord tuft which people often mistake for male genitalia, I couldn’t spot a ball-sack so I could see she was female) wobble onto its hooves and stagger over to its mother, obviously feeling the impact of being folded up for 9 months – must have had some wicked pins and needles to stretch out!  The remaining four cows are still to calve, so fingers crossed for the rest.

 

Whats that in the grass....

A bright shiny new Ruby!

 Now I mentioned in my last post that hay was being cut off an area of Stockbridge Down, in order to improve the diversity of this stretch and also provide some winter feed for our flock of Wiltshire Horn sheep.  I had envisaged a moderate number of bales, being that I thought the grass was quite thin and of fairly poor quality, so I was guessing maybe up to a hundred if that.  However the result blew my guess out the water, when the contractor rung me to let me know how many bales were on their way to Mottisfont – 348. I frantically started dragging my colleagues and volunteers into a pledge to help me unload and so it was that as the sun began to sink one evening, two huge hay trailers and tractors chuntered into Mottisfont, looking like they had the ramparts of a castle made of hay on the back.   

We led them to the barn we were to keep it in and began the monster task of unloading by hand which actually proved quite enjoyable and much quicker than I feared, with 9 of us working at it.  Dave and Dylan took the job of placing the hay and stacking it correctly, whilst myself, Laura and the contractor were chucking it down from the top of the hay trailer to the rest of the team who waited below in a human chain style to grab a bale and pass it on to the next person.  The bales were of much better quality than I had hoped for – they were packed tight with thick grass and smelt lovely and sweet and dry which, being that it was a late cut and the morning dew had been heavy, I hadn’t thought we would get.  It was so dry in fact that the dust being thrown up was unbelievable – I had my bandana across my face as I think we were all getting a healthy dose of farmers lung – and you can see from the photo’s how much was in the air.  However I am sure the sheep will appreciate the effort involved in this task when the time comes – and when they get hungry!

 

Unloading in the blizzard of hay dust

The re-enactment of the building of the Pyramids

All in, safe and dry.

 In one of my blog posts last year, entitled ‘Waders of the Lost Ark’ I mentioned how we all had to jump in and clear the backlog of weed that had got choked in an overgrown side stream of the river, and had consequently flooded the gardens.  Well ever since then this stream has needed to be cleared back completely, have all the overgrown shrubs cut back and have the fallen trees removed and for the last few weeks Ryan, myself and the volunteers have been working on this.  The volunteers did a sterling job of cutting it all back both sides of the bank so that we could actually see the stream clearly and see our next problem; there were several very large, old fallen trees spanning the width of the ditch that were going to require sawing up and winching out.  So whilst Dave took the timber trailer and removed the log piles, Ryan and some volunteers chipped up all the brash and myself and a couple of other volunteers began the task of removing these fallen titans from where they had lain quite happily for the last decade or more.  The chippings that Ryan created from the brash were to go to an area on the estate where we will be planting trees this winter and so they will act as a good mulch mat to prevent weeds growing around the new saplings.

 

Chippings

 

Putting my chainsaw trousers on again I felt the perceptible shift of the seasons slot into place – chainsaw trousers meant felling season was almost upon us!  Or it could have been due to the sawdust and leaves that remained stuck to my trousers from the last time I used them….

A job I had hoped would be simple and take a day inevitably was much more complicated and more time consuming.  Some of the stems were so old and rotten that when the winch cable pulled tight, the chains around them would just smash through the rotten wood and lose their tension.  Stems on top of stems meant we had to laboriously winch them out one at a time instead of pulling two or three in one go which took longer time- but you just cannot rush winching.  I set up a diverted pull for the first day, to enable us to pull the trees onto the opposite bank to the tractor – by running the cable from the tractor and winch, across the stream to a pulley and strop which we put around a sturdy tree on the other side and then attaching it to the fallen trees, I could winch them onto the bank into the undergrowth instead of out into the parklands where we had the tractor and where we would then have to remove them offsite.  However due to the nature of the job with the rotten stems and the crowd of deadwood to pull through, the cable sometimes lost its tension and jumped and this meant that at one point it jumped off the pulley wheel and wedged itself down the side of the wheel and the metal outer casing – which stopped play completely.  However with the aid of a hammer and vice, Tony soon had it released and bent back into shape and the show could go on.

Day two saw us doing a straight winch of wood up the bank we were on and into the park fields which should have been straightforward enough.  However they gave us some good challenges in that I was crosscutting the massive stems to separate them from their root plate, with my chainsaw which was essentially too small.  After cutting from the top and both sides and what I could reach underneath, we would then attach the winch chain and winch on an angle in order to try and snap the remaining holding wood.  This worked for three of them but the biggest one wasn’t giving up without a fight and we had to keep winching it from back and forth angles to try and snap the middle hinge and I kept nibbling away with a chainsaw each time the trunk shifted position and I could reach uncut wood.  After several good attempts where I had to resist the urge to push the winch beyond what it could do, and the entire stem and root plate was in danger of being pulled fully into the ditch and blocking it completely, we stopped for a tea break and pondered the situation.

 

Handy use of scaffold bridge to span the ditch and allow us to work on the tree stem without sinking in the silt...

 Approaching it with tea filled fresh eyes, we decided to give it one more go from another angle.  I repositioned the tractor and revved up the PTO, jumped out and pulled on the winch rope to retract the cable with my fingers crossed….the slack reeled in, it tensed, pulled, held, aaaaand CRACK! With a snap and a crack the stem finally broke off from where I had cut it and came thundering up the bank like some titanic wooden tsunami, before coming to rest on the field. Yeeees! Job done.  Looking at the snapped off bit, we could see that the heartwood that had been holding it together and which I hadn’t been able to cut with my saw was barely 5% of the whole width and was partially rotten – but it had still held firm for many attempts, showing how tenacious Beech can be.

 

Winching out the Beechy Bu**er at last!

Some of the stems that came out the ditch.

 

And finally the late summer warmth has combined with the harvest time and produced a fair apple crop in our orchard at Mottisfont this year – and this can mean only one thing; its cider time!  I spent a couple of evenings after work gathering fallen apples from the orchard and knocking some down with the help of a long stick (I did get the odd funny look from passer’s by.  I climbed up the apple tree in the staff carpark and shook it vigorously like some kind of apple scrumping school boy and listened with delight to all the heavy thuds as the apples fell around me and hit the ground. Between the orchard and the carpark tree I had a very good mix of apple varieties, which always helps add depth of flavour and body to the cider.  All I needed now was a small proportion of crab apples which do the job of adding tannins to the juice.  Ryan told me of some crab apple trees in Oakley copse on our estate and so I drove there and to my glee there were two trees absolutely heaving with crab apples.  I stood on the roof of the truck and shook them down and they fell like pale green hailstones, bouncing off my bonnet, my windscreen and my head – I’m still finding some inside the truck that must have snuck in through the open windows.  

 

Mottisfont Orchard apples - lovely mix.

Loaded Crab apple trees!

 

Loaded with my lot of apples and a load from the apple tree in Matt’s garden, we used the scratter and cider press where Matt works to create a fabulous 16 gallons of apple juice – and it tasted stunning.  Matt tested the ABV (alcohol by volume) potential of the juice and it came out at around 6%.  By the time it has gone through the entire process and had sugar added, it will have gained around 2.5%, so it is looking to be some killer stuff.  It is all now in demi-johns just starting to froth up and begin the fermenting process, the first stage of a long but very worthwhile journey – watch this space…

 

Pressing the apple pulp and producing beautiful juuuuuicce.

Hamble, Hay and Harvest time

 “Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.” 

                                                                       - Henry James

There is a distinct nip in the air these mornings which, combined with the first hints of autumn colour in the Acer trees tells us that Summer is fading.  The ‘Fire tree’ as I call it, outside our staff carpark is beginning to turn its vivid red, looking like someone has lit the flame from the top of the canopy, which will slowly engulf the whole tree over the coming months. 

My butterfly surveys on Stockbridge are getting quieter week by week – the Skippers, Marbled Whites and Fritillaries are long gone, with Meadow Browns, Small Coppers, Blues, Brimstones and Speckled Woods the last soldiers holding the fort and fluttering on; however the decreasing numbers seen each week signals that they are one by one dying with the season.

Whilst this time of year marks the approaching end of summer, it does signal the beginning of something else – harvest time!  Everywhere you look at the minute, the trees and bushes are heavily laden with fruits and nuts, again looking like a bumper year for autumn foraging – last year was also superb.  The hazel nuts are beginning to ripen and fall, and the Blackthorn bushes are already absolutely stuffed with fat looking Sloe’s that whisper ‘gin…giiiiiiin’ in your ear.

But the winner this year for impressive produce has to be – blackberries.  Normally, bramble bushes are something I despise.  As a conservationist I shouldn’t say that as they are a brilliant source of nectar and food for insects, birds and small mammals but: I hate them.  All year round they torture and maim you, they scratch and cut and claw at your skin with their little backwards hooking thorns that tear through your clothes.  They trip you up with their sinuous tendrils and capture your hair in a thorny embrace all year round.  They untie your laces constantly, and then dig in a couple of thorns into your fingers for good measure when you tie them back up.  You are left with the endless rotation of scratches and scars on your arms and legs from their touch, thorns in your scalp and under your nails as well as nearly losing an eye to them on a regular basis.

Blackberry glut - and Comma butterfly enjoying the nectar

 

However, this time of year they present their one redeeming feature (in my eyes); blackberries.  And boy, have they outdone themselves this year!  The bushes are absolutely heaving with blackberries, hundreds of shiny, juicy, globules of deep purple fruits hanging off the stems, tempting you to brave the clutches of the thorns and pluck them.  The New Forest, Stockbridge, Mottisfont – all our sites are just crammed full with these fruits at the moment and I have been taking full advantage and getting my own back for the pain they usually cause for the rest of the year.  Laura and I picked a haul of blackberries at Foxbury and I then couldn’t resist picking more in our Mottisfont woodland the other day – they were just so plump and shiny that I couldn’t resist.  I took my bandana (I wear one on my wrist or neck most days as they really are the most useful thing at work; they can be headbands, sweat rags, nose/face masks, small critter catchers and so on) and with a few knots here and there I had fashioned into a small collecting bag, in which I proceeded to place blackberries.  From these I have so far made Blackberry whisky – an old favourite – and am in the process of making Blackberry wine – a first attempt, so fingers crossed.  If you get the chance, get out and pick some and make something – booze, crumble, blackberry fool, anything!  They are too good to miss.

 

A bandana of blackberries - new collective noun

 

I also got back from holiday last week and found my vegetable crop in the garden had finally borne fruit (haha).  I had actually managed to grow a couple of cucumbers that resembled cucumbers – all the previous ones had grown in interesting bendy, curly shapes – and my tomatoes have at last decided to put on their red coats and throw away their green summer vests.  Unfortunately the slugs have also been enjoying the glut and I found them savaging a couple of fallen tomatoey victims – damn them!

 

Straight cucumbers - hooray!

Slug attack

So have a go and see what you can create from the summer and autumn goodies – so far this year I have done Elderflower champagne, pickled cucumbers and chillies, honey roast tomatoes, chutney, rhubarb crumble, blackberry whisky and blackberry wine…and the best is yet to come, with Sloe gin, cider, sweet chestnuts, walnuts and much more still on the menu – yum!

Gluttony aside, we have been finishing our summer tasks at work and planning ahead to winter.

Last week we performed the final bat survey of the year across our Mottisfont woodlands.  We conduct these surveys in July, August and September each year to monitor the Barbastelle population we have here.  I have mentioned before about our Barbastelle and how rare they are, so it is important we keep monitoring how they are doing in conjunction with our woodland management work.  Maintenance of wide rides (which they use as flight corridors) protection and recording of tree roost areas and thinning of plantations and regeneration of broadleaves all contribute into the woodland management plan, and the bat populations are one aspect of this.

So Ryan, Dylan and I each walked our individual transect routes through separate woodlands, recording the bats heard on the bat detector on a sound recorder, as well as tallying off heard bats on a survey form.  You always hear interesting noises when walking alone through the woodlands at this time of night – large shufflings of heavy mammals, the screeches and hoots of Barn and Tawny owls and, once, the sudden squawk of a pheasant that burst up out of the bushes in the dark straight at me and made me shriek like a banshee – all recorded, doh!  On the last survey the owls were going wild – they were shrieking and crying and there was a lot of hooting and calling noises from one area in particular, and sounds of bustle in the branches – possibly young tawnies trying to compete for territories?  The cry of an owl always sends a shiver down my spine – there is something so ethereal about it, something that makes you think of haw frost covered lands overlooked by star-ridden night skies….or maybe that’s just me.

Back to the light and daytime, and with the saying ‘make hay whilst the sun shines’ dancing through my head, I have got a hay cut being taken off of Stockbridge Down this week.  It is on an area of particularly tough grass that is near the entrance to the Down and consequently is of fairly poor quality.  The cows do not graze that area particularly and so by taking a hay cut we can remove the dominant grasses and nutrients which will allow a greater diversity of grasses and flora to grow and seed next year.  The hay can be used to feed our sheep flock should they require any extra help over the winter and so we kill two birds with one stone – benefitting the grassland habitat as well as the sheep flock.  We are lucky that the dry weather has continued this far – there are still many farmers still cutting hay and straw whilst they have the chance and the gutter sides of all the roads are littered with bits of hay from where bales have been transported in mass loads – fingers crossed the dryness keeps up until we get the hay in.

Cut hay on the Down

Last week Ryan and I went to our site at Curbridge Nature Reserve, alongside the river Hamble.  This is one of our furthest sites, lying an approximately 40 minute drive from Mottisfont, but is a beautiful stretch of ancient woodland, running alongside the River Hamble estuary.  Mature Oaks and Ash stand tall in this woodland, with an understorey of hazel, field maple, holly, crab apple and even Wild Service tree, to name but a few.  The bluebells here in April and May are fantastic and there are many other ancient woodland indicators to be found here too, including Dogs Mercury and Solomon’s seal.  It is a lovely place to take a walk and when you get to the end of the woodland you come out onto an open field that I hope to turn into a wildflower meadow, by taking a late hay cut each year.  Adjacent to this field is the river estuary itself where you can watch the tide turn and chase itself in and out, revealing wooden structures sticking up out of the mud flats when the tide is low.  On the other side of the bank are the remains of a roman villa that lies on the confluence of the rivers Hamble and Cur and must have made a very pretty summer house in its time.

 

Running through this woodland are stretches of boardwalk to take people over the wetter areas and the creeks and it was these boardwalks we were attending to.  The Sunday Volunteer group spent a very productive day with Ryan a few weeks ago, replacing broken/missing steps and repairing rotten bits of boardwalk.  Ryan and I went back to finish the last few bits and replace some old rusty chicken wire that was coming loose – by the way, if anyone knows of a low cost alternative to chicken wire for providing grip on boardwalks, do share, because chicken wire is so terrible for coming loose, breaking and rusting and causing trip hazards, and it’s like painting the Forth bridge – by the time you replace it all, the beginning needs doing again.

Whilst there we also removed some old rotten sections of old boardwalk that had been left rotting in the bushes for a decade and took them back with us to be burnt.

Hamble Boardwalkin'

Before we left we stood on the banks of the river looking out.  The tide was low and the sun was warm on the back of our necks, with the air smelling of heat but with that tiny touch of freshness that hints at impending seasonal change.  The trees on the other bank were reflected in the water perfectly, their autumnal colours just beginning to show and the only noise was the egrets and other estuary birds calling softly across the water.  Then we became aware of another noise…a sort of snap crackle and pop! noise that rice crispies make.  We wandered around listening before ascertaining that it was coming from the mud below our feet – mud that was usually covered at high tide, and now had hundreds of tiny air bubbles escaping and popping in the suns warmth making a very pleasant – if unusual - soundtrack to such a peaceful view.

 

River Hamble

Peace!

There was an old lady who swallowed a fly....

In my last post I told you about the wiggly beasties in my eye and I also mentioned that Laura telling me she saw living things in my eye was a sentence I never wanted to hear again.

Well, I can now add to this with another sentence I never want to hear again in my entire life, which was when I got the results of my eye tests back yesterday as to what the creatures where, and the missing link as to why my sinuses have been a sneezing, running, blocked and irritated mess ever since the eye incident.

Oestrus Ovis: Sheep Nasal Botfly larvae. 

Oh. The. Horror.  

I had sheep botfly larvae (or the after effects of) in my eye and hiding out in my sinuses which was why I’ve felt so rough for 3 and a half weeks and been sneezing and snotting like I was suffering from the worst hayfever ever…aaarrrrrrggggghhhhh it is beyond gross, hideous and just downright bizarre.  However, I have had cameras put up my nose and through my sinuses now (horrible) and had it all washed out and am already feeling much better today and best of all – my sense of smell and taste is returning – hooray!  Hopefully that was an element of the job I will never suffer again…botfly, I mean, just EW.  (When I had the phone call I spent about ten minutes sitting at my desk staring blankly at the screen in silence, and just occasionally uttering the word ‘botfly…’ in whispered horrified tones, until Laura told me to stop repeating it as it will not help.  Googling it didn't help either as it was just full of horror stories.).

Anyway, so all seems well again and I can focus on the job without feeling like my sinuses are about to explode anymore.  So let me move on to nicer things and talk about the Marsh project

I mentioned a couple of posts ago, about the river bank restoration work that we have started undertaking on Stockbridge Common Marsh this Summer.  The last I wrote, we had installed a fence and put in the geotextile edging into the river following the line of where the bank should be, before it got so eroded.

The geotextile in place in June

 Well following on from this in July, I had contractors working in the river to plant up the backfill area and try and fold down the bank turf to create a sloping margin.

There were a few teething issues; turns out that instead of a peat bank, the bank in this particular area was two thirds chalk, from previous years of bank repairs and track installations dating back decades.   This meant the bottom third of the bank was peat, and this was what was getting washed out by the river until the top two thirds of chalk were so overcut that they collapsed in.  This gave our contractors a problem in that they couldn’t dig out and slope the bank as planned because the chalk would just crumble and give way.  So they ended up managing it in some areas, and in others where the chalk had already cracked and fallen, this was made into sloping areas.  Plants were taken from the other side of the river and planted in between the bank and the geotextile – again, more difficult than planned as they should have had more peat backfill from the bank to plant into.  But as the bank turned out to be chalk, the plants had to be planted direct into the silty edges of the river bed.  This will still result in sedimentation and stabilization, but will take longer than if there had been peat backfill to put in with it to begin with.

However, they planted up all along the area and will do two more days of planting in autumn once things have silted up a bit more.  The visual difference after they finished was brilliant and when I went back there a few weeks later to add some more faggots across inlet areas, I could see even more growth of vegetation.  Fleabane, water forget-me-knot and water parsnip were thriving on the bank side already, a marked difference to the eroded wasteland that it had been only 2 months earlier. 

 

From this....

...to this - see the water forget-me knot...

...and this!  Within a month, you can see the amount os peaty silt that has begun to fill in this inlet section.

Planted up.

So it is ongoing but the early results are promising.  We cannot possibly foretell the future – this winter will obviously have an impact as if we had flood levels like last year it may pose a risk to the planted vegetation.  We also know now that the re-profiling of the bank is not something that can be done with picks and spades if chalk is present so we will potentially have to plan something else for further stretches.

Still, I am sure you agree that from these photos this stretch of bank is looking healthier than it has in many years – so all we can do now throughout winter and into the next growth season is watch and wait and hope.  Grow nature, grow!

I leave you on a nicer note than the one i began with - took this shot in the Mottisfont rose garden of my favourite butterfly species.  Butterfly season is almost over - enjoy them whilst you can!

Rotting Flesh and crawling vision - the perks of the job...

Rarely a week goes by in the summer months when I am not chatting to someone, a visitor or office bound colleague, who remarks on how much I must love my job and how lucky I am to work outside at this time of year.  To which of course I reply, with a suntanned grin, that yes, spring and summer are the bee knees of working outdoors and I wouldn’t swap it for anything (needless to say, they do not make this comment in the depths of winter when they see me trudging into the office soaking wet and frozen to the bone).

However, I feel it is only right to share with you the aspects of the job that come with this luxury of days spent working in the sunshine and fresh air, for with the peak growing and living season it is not only the nice plants and animals that emerge and thrive…

Our Wiltshire Horn sheep flock are a hardy breed that has the excellent quality of shearing themselves, by shedding their fleeces off in warmer weather.  This and the combined attribute of having a very short fleece means that they are generally not very prone to getting hits of Blowfly strike.  Blowfly strike is a hideous scenario that comes in in the warmer, wetter months of late Spring though to Autumn.  Sheep are very prone to it as are long haired pet rabbits (I’ve heard).  Flies will hover round areas of a sheep that are mucky and moist, such as very dirty back ends where the fleece is soiled with faeces or afterbirth and they will land and lay eggs on this soiled fleece.  The eggs hatch, and the maggots eat their way through the soiled fleece…and keep eating.  Eat, eat, eat they burrow their way down through the flesh, with more eggs being laid and hatched continuously.  If the problem is not caught quickly, it can lead to a horrible toxic death within only a few days.  With this cheerful thought in mind, I have been paranoid about fly strike this year and have trained the sheep lookers in the early signs to look for, which includes dark stains on the fleece, scratching, stamping and the sheep generally acting off colour.

We have treated the flock with a flystrike preventative since March this year and I had my fingers crossed we would get away with it…but a few weeks ago Mike, my Thursday looker rang me to say he was concerned about one sheep he had spotted with dark staining on her neck.  I went up to the Down and it didn’t take me long to find the ewe in question and even from a few metres away I could see, without a doubt that she had been hit with blowfly strike.  I coaxed her to me with a bucket of nuts, got the halter on her and commenced a 30 minute battle to get her to the holding pen – she may have had maggots in her neck but they obviously hadn’t weakened her yet as she kicked, jumped, bucked her way to the pen, sometimes lying flat on the floor and refusing to budge – and I defy anyone to try and drag a 70kg sheep by a nose halter if she doesn’t want to move.  However eventually with a mixture of nuts and tough love I got her in the pen, tied her halter to the fence and commenced the clean-up job.  And eeeuuuuurrrrrgh!  What a joyful hour I spent!  On closer inspection I found the poor thing had two holes in her neck both heaving with maggots.  Cracks radiated out from the holes showing where the smaller maggots were starting to spread outwards in fleshy highways and there was a lot of bloody fluid leaking out.  Bearing in mind that the lookers check the sheep daily, this must have been the result of only a day’s worth of hatched maggots which, in the high humidity and very hot weather had accelerated their devastating munching march.  As I scooped out maggots with my finger, reaching as far down into the neck wound as I could reach, I tried not to throw up at the stench that wafted up and around us.  Rotting flesh flavoured my nostrils and the incessant buzzing of more flies around my face had me muttering, swearing and retching at the maggots in equal turn even as I decimated them with the Finger of Death. 

After an hour’s worth of baby wiping, trimming away the blood stained, crusty fleece and ejecting maggots I quickly called Ryan to ask him to come up with suitable sheep transport so that we could take her to our Vet Field at Mottisfont for her recovery.  I poured in some Crovect fluid which did the very satisfying job of burning out all the remaining maggots that were lurking further down under the neck skin and which I couldn’t reach with my finger.  Out they came, wriggling in agony and shrieking their maggoty cries as they abandoned their fleshy ship and threw their grotesque plump bodies over the edge.  I watched with cold eyes and helped them on their way with more scooping actions.  Finally the poor girl was clear of maggots.  I applied various treatments to the holes in her neck including antibacterial and antiseptic spray and, when Ryan and the volunteers arrived we loaded her and one other lucky ewe (to keep her company) into the truck and took them back to Mottisfont.

 

From this...

..to this...

...to this!  Finally looking much better, only a week after the last photo was taken - amazing really.

It is now 3 weeks later and, after a daily routine of cleaning out pus, cleaning the wound and surrounding fleece (I tried several methods to get the blood stained fleece clean including shaving, trimming and a natural nettle shampoo which worked best) she is healing well.  The vet had to come and cut off two big chunks of over granulated gristle which had swelled up out the hole and was preventing it from healing over (I know, more bleurgh) but now she is looking like a much happier sheep again, with the surrounding flesh returned to a healthy pink, and the holes almost fully healed together.

Even now though, as the hot spell has let up slightly and some wetter weather has moved in, I keep my eyes anxiously peeled for any more cases of flystrike…

And talking of eyes, I had an interesting experience with another creepy crawly recently.  During one of my daily clean up visits to Maggot Face (as I fondly named my poor ewe) I was besieged by…well no one knows what.  I had just caught the sheep and was in the process of tying her halter to the gate when I felt and saw something land on the lower lashes of my right eye – and then the pain kicked in as it went in my eye.  Fumbling with the halter I finished tying up the sheep and then climbed over the gate and ran to the truck and looked in the wing mirror looking for the fly or whatever it was that had flown into my eye.  I looked and looked but couldn’t find anything and, blinking hard, I decided I must have blinked it away.  Well throughout the rest of that day, the pain returned off and on to my eye and each time I looked in a mirror and saw nothing, finally concluding that I must  have scratched the lens, or that a fly or a hair must be stuck at the back somewhere and would work its own way out.  I used an eye wash to try and flush it out and carried on with my day. 

However by evening, the pain was still off and on and when it did return it was getting more intense and my eye was more irritated.  My housemate Laura finally got tired of my yelping in pain and running from the kitchen to the mirror that she had me pinned down and peered in my eye with a torch, looking for the elusive hair or whatever it was.

After a few seconds she inhaled and then putting down the torch she put her hand on my arm and calmly said a sentence I never want to hear again in my life:

‘Now.  I don’t want you to panic….but...there is something crawling around in your eye.’

‘Oh very funny!’ I snapped, sure she was joking.

‘Noooo, seriously, I’m not kidding.’

Disbelievingly I looked in the mirror myself, holding the torch to my eyeball and there…at that exact moment…SOMETHING crawled across the black pupil of my eye and disappeared into the other side.

Cue Panic.

As I hopped up and down beating the side of my head and gibbering about staying calm but oh its soooooo gross, Laura grabbed her car keys and ushered me out the door (we realised later how rubbish we would be in a real emergency, as we both ran out the house without money, phones and barely even shoes).

As it was late evening and everything was shut, Laura drove me to the Eye Unit at A and E and I had to endure the disbelieving looks of the receptionists, nurses and eye doctors as I retold my tale.  However once the eye doctor had me strapped in the chair and examined my eye….he almost gave up looking when ‘aha!’ He extracted out the little wretched creepy thing, using the most sophisticated of tools, a wooden stick (very painful on the eye!).  I sighed in relief – until he picked up the stick again and went back into my eye…and again…and again!  After the fourth one he switched to tweezers as he assured me it would be less painful (gibber) and 7 alien beasties later, he washed my eye out and gave me some eye drops to prevent infection whilst assuring me that nothing in the UK lays eggs in eyes or can cause blindness….

Getting home to a ruined dinner and feeling slightly depressed at the whole situation, I shuddered with horror when I felt the familiar pain return…and consequently I plucked two more of the tiny things from my eyeball before finally feeling like they were all gone.  Argh! If they ever get the results back on what the things were, I will let you know – Dylan’s bet is on aliens, other people thought it was something that jumped off the sheep, but based on how they floated down into my eye and the way they wriggled more like some kind of water larvae I am not convinced. 

So the next time someone remarks on how lucky I am to work in the great outdoors, I will smile and nod in agreement, all the while remembering that after the nettles stings, bramble scratches and insect bites, we still have flesh eating maggots and eye dwelling beasties to contend with – but I will still be content, knowing these are only the slightly less desirable perks of the job.