A little bit of Keats.

For some reason unbeknownst to my technophobic self, my blog page hasn't let me add an entry for the last week - so the following is a bit out of date!  However, here it is...

Seasons of mists and mellow fruitfulness!  It has certainly been so over the last few weeks, with an unbelievable display of autumn bounty.  I have taken full advantage of the goods that Mottisfont and our surrounding estate has to offer and now my kitchen contains candied walnuts, sweet chestnuts for roasting, blackberry jam and whisky, spiced apple cider jam (with some left over for cider making) as well as having had several helpings of Hedgehog fungi, field mushrooms and boletes. 

Even whilst all this fodder falls to the ground, we can still look forward to some later crops of things like rosehips (squeeze a juicy rosehip sometime in November when they have softened, and the bright orange paste that comes out has a brilliant orangey taste – very rich in vitamin C) and Sloes.

In between scrabbling around collecting fruits and nuts, there has also been a lot going on of late – hence the delayed blog post.  Our autumn/winter works are now starting to be put into force and I don’t think any job highlights the beginning of autumn better than starting a new coppice coupe. 

Here at Mottisfont we have a working coppice of hazel, called Queen Meadows Copse.  It is right on the estate trail, so do go for a walk and take a look.  We cut a different section of coppice each year in order to supply the wood produce to be sold at the abbey.  This includes charcoal and kindling and chimenea wood, as well as using the brash to make faggots for the river or else pea sticks and hedge laying stakes and binders.  By coppicing different sections on a cycle of around 7- 10 years, we can have an endless supply of wood produce, whilst keeping the coppice woodland in a healthy condition with varying age structure and diversity.

A few weeks ago, some Directors and Managers from our head office of Heelis came out on a corporate day to help us do some coppicing.  We gave them a tour of the site, a low down on how we make charcoal from the hazel and then threw them into the woodland armed with saws and loppers.  Despite an afternoon of heavy rain they did a great job and cleared a good swathe between them, contributing to the huge coupe we have to clear this year – so big thanks to Mark, Graham, Carmen, Robin and Howard, I hope you enjoyed it – although I reckon you enjoyed riding around in the Polaris a lot more!

 

The Heelis crew

 

As well as help from our own, we have had other hands out getting involved.  Sparsholt College has sent us several days’ worth of students to help us with various tasks in return for them gaining some knowledge and experience of different management required for different ecosystems.

One day saw a group of students diving into the ditches of Long Lash at Mottisfont, to help clear out the encroaching reed that was beginning to stop the water flow.  I have mentioned in earlier blog posts about why we clear these ditches (Winter Hymnal post I think) and so I won’t divulge in detail again, but essentially, the ditches must have some flow of water to them in order to be suitable for invertebrates such as the Southern Damselfly which we have there.  The students got stuck in (literally, as the ditch was very silty on the bottom!) and by the end of the day we had about half the length of a ditch cleared and a group of absolutely filthy students and one lecturer who would never wear a white top to Mottisfont again…

 

Beginning the ditch work....

...And the end result.

Another day has seen students help me begin clearing out scrub from around our Juniper trees on Stockbridge Down.  Again, you can read about why we do this in Winter Hymnal, but basically it is to prevent the Juniper from being shaded out by the faster growing scrub species and try to aid its survival.

Talking of Stockbridge, we spent last Tuesday getting the sheep from Mottisfont to Stockbridge, to their rightful place on the Western slope….and what a day it was.  It was one of those days where everything that could go wrong – did.  We had transport issues with nearly taking the wrong trailer and having to ‘borrow’ back our tractor off the gardeners (sorry Howard), before finding the right trailer to use.  We had great ‘fun’ running around the field like headless chickens trying to flock up the sheep into a pen whilst they took full advantage of the fact that 4 of us could not block every angle and therefore they could break through our ranks.  (By the way, cheers to the 3 gardeners I pinched for 10 minutes to help me flock up the sheep!)  A few sheep almost had themselves a new home in our woodlands when they managed to slip through the hurdles of the pen and escape out the gate…luckily they were able to be ushered back in the field before they headed for the hills.  32 sheep is also a lot of animals to individually turn over (have you ever tried to turn a sheep?  It is tough to do on little ones, let alone on long legged, horned animals that are as long as I am tall) and by the time I had had each one on its bottom whilst I trimmed hooves and condition scored I was black and blue with bruises, aching in every limb and seriously considering threatening them with mint sauce.  In a darkly hilarious moment one of the sheep managed to get its horn tip caught under my thumb ring and then proceeded to run across the pen – dragging me with it, trying to keep on my feet – you couldn’t make this stuff up, really. 

Two trailer journeys later saw us getting them onto the Down – only to find the gate we were to unload them through had a combination padlock on that nobody knew – I mean seriously, a year of working here and I’ve never noticed that padlock, nor used that gate…cue a quick ring round of people who might know the code, all the while the sheep laden trailer is sitting on a steep hill overlooking the rather sheer western slope and there is no way to drive the trailer back up the hill with sheep still in it.  Luckily, we got the code, opened the gate and unloaded the animals – phew!  For the next few days they ran in the opposite direction every time they saw me, but they are now starting to come to the bribery of a bucket again.  A huge thanks to Ryan, Dylan and Neil who helped me round up, turn over and transport the flock and shared each moment of pain!

I hope the sheep are finding a good shelter in the scrub, because as I write this post, we are all under a storm warning that is heading our way.  The winds are already starting to pick up and the rain is hammering down – we shall see what my next blog post has to report, after what is looking to be a gale of hurricane force proportions – better get the chainsaw ready….

New arrivals...

‘The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away – next year I might be herding sheep’.

This is a line Elvis Presley once came out with and, in light or my new acquisitions, I think it’s quite suitable.

I am pleased to write that, as of today, we now have our very own flock of sheep here at Mottisfont to graze on Stockbridge Down!

This is the result of a lot of time and effort spent in looking into our grazing options in order to comply with our HLS (Higher Level Stewardship) for Stockbridge.  The Down is Common land, owned by the National Trust and, as stated in our agreement; it can only be grazed by Commoners livestock or National Trust livestock.

Whilst we have Commoner’s cattle on the Down currently, we had no sheep, and no commoners who owned sheep.  Therefore, after looking at all the angles we decided the only way to go ahead was to get our own sheep – and here they are.

The Ladies!

 

Grassland sites require active grazing in order to help create a varied vegetation sward and prevent dominant grasses from taking over.  This means there is a wide variety of different flowers, herbs and grasses all of differing height and structure, which provide fantastic habitat and food sources for invertebrates and so on up the food chain.  Habitats like grasslands and heathlands are remnants of a time when the first humans cleared expanses of woodland in order to build settlements and begin farming.  There were also some naturally cleared areas where large herds of herbivores used to roam and graze. Once humans started creating these large cleared sites, new flora and fauna species were able to take advantage and our southern lowland heaths and chalk grassland sites were born. 

Conservation work continues to this day to keep such sites open and prevent them from succeeding into woodland and this is an ongoing battle that every conservation organisation is continually fighting the good fight against.  I have very occasionally been asked why we bother, and why not let everything revert back to the wild wood habitat that existed thousands of years before grassland and heath land habitats developed.  Well I feel simply that if we have helped create a new ecosystem due to our ancient settlements and farms, and that ecosystem habitat has now existed for so many thousands of years that it has entirely dependant flora and fauna species which thrive there, then it is our responsibility to maintain that habitat for those species.  They are native to our country, have the most biodiversity and contain our rarest species of plants, reptiles and invertebrates.  Who are we to now turn our back on them and lose flora and fauna species that have existed for thousands of years?

And so, to this end, we have bought 32 Wiltshire Horn beauties to aid in the conservation of Stockbridge.  They are a traditional rare breed in this part of the country and have the added bonus of long legs (so good for running away from danger), horns (good self defence) and they are self shearing (not by going to the barber’s but by pulling their fleece out on vegetation, so they wont ever get tangled up and stuck.  This also means you won’t have the back breaking job of shearing 32 animals come summer).

They were due to arrive at Mottisfont on Monday, but due to some unforeseen issues at the departure end, they didn’t make it until Thursday.  I spent the morning pacing anxiously, like an expectant mother, waiting for them to arrive.  At the allocated hour I waited at the field site, wandering up and down the road and craning my neck to catch the first glimpse of a sheep laden trailer.  15 minutes passed…then 30…then 45…I finally gave the transporter a call and nearly had my ear blown off when he answered with a great bellow “IM IN THE PUB!”

“What!?” Visions of whiskey drinking sheep propped up at the bar popped into my head in a rush of comedic fear.  Fighting the panic I enquired as to why the hell he was at a pub, only to find he had pulled in at the pub down the road to ring me because he had missed the turn off for Mottisfont. Phew.  2 minutes later he rang again to say he was in the car park so I leapt back in the truck and flew down the road to the visitor car park and there, sitting out side Visitor Reception was a double decked trailer full of slightly disgruntled looking eyes and noses, peeping out the sides.  I drove back to the field site behind the Village Hall, with the sheep and transporter following and at last they were able to be unloaded and let loose on their new home.  As the trailer ramp went down there was a moment of startled silence where nothing moved – and then in one woolly rush, they all flooded out rushing over the grass to pee, poo and eat all at once.  The final sheep out expressed it best by leaping clear over the ramp, all four feet in the air with an exuberant ‘baaaaaa!’ of freedom!

They will be onsite here at Mottisfont for a couple of weeks whilst I get them bucket trained and get used to having them, and then they shall be moved up to Stockbridge Down to their real kingdom.  I am in the process of recruiting volunteer looker’s to help with checking them everyday and have currently picked up quite a few.  This basically involves just looking in on the flock to check they are all present, not lame or ill (or dead) and things like ear tags are in and water troughs are full.  This can be something that people do as part of their regular walk up there, and some of the volunteers are dog walkers who go on the Down every day anyway.  If you are interested in helping at all, even just once a month, then please contact me at Catherine.hadler@nationaltrust.org.uk for more details.

And finally, these next 2 pictures I took as real heralds of the season.  Can you guess what this first one is?

 

This is the first conker of Autumn.  I found it in one of our woodlands that is flooded with snowdrops in Spring and is now getting a carpet of conkers littering its soil.  I love the shiny swirling fingerprint patterns you see on conkers, like a beautiful grain that loops and swirls round and round until pffst! It disappears.  Next time you find a conker – and there are hundreds already this year – take a look at this natural work of art.

This next photo is of a tree that stands just across the road from our staff car park.  It has got the most incredible colour on its leaves at the moment giving the vivid impression that the whole tree is aflame.  The fallen leaves lie below like a carpet of fire and when you drive out the car park and see that tree glowing and burning in the evening sunlight it takes your breath away.

But with every passing day the leaves are falling, so try and see it soon!

Tongues of Fire

Pillars of Pine

If a tree falls over, and there’s no-one around to hear it, does it make a sound?

Well it certainly does if our countryside team has anything to do with it.

Over the last couple of weeks we have been felling an area of Scots Pine in the New Forest, in order to revert the land back to acid grassland.  The Pine we were felling has all grown up naturally, seeded by neighbouring pine trees, and had got to the extent of encroaching over a large proportion of an area of acid grassland.  Scot’s Pine trees are a native British tree, but they are native to the North of the country and to Scotland.  In the South they have mostly been planted for commercial use including before and during various wars throughout our centuries, when wood was needed quickly and we didn’t have time to wait for slow growing broadleaves like Oak.

The site we were working on after day 1.

 Don’t get me wrong, I love the sight of a striking Scots Pine, standing alone in the middle of a heathland bathed pink in the glow of sunset.  However I also realise that they need controlling where they have taken over other natural and rarer habitats such as heathland and acid grassland – take a walk on any heathland and you will undoubtedly be able to spot the Pine saplings coming up through the heather.

So Dave Johnson summoned as many of the countryside team as could be spared to come and help with the felling and extraction of the timber.  We also had all our countryside volunteer groups helping out with removal of the brash and we got a good system set up.

Those of us chainsawing would fell a section of trees (far away from each other, don’t worry!), cross cut the trunk to length and cut off all the brash and branches (called ‘snedding’).

We would then move across to another section of trees and continue felling, whilst the volunteers would come in to the previously felled section and take all the brash we had snedded and assemble it into a big pile.  This pile could then be picked up by the Avant (a mini telehandler type tractor machine) and taken up the slope to the bonfire.  

 

 

The Avant at work

  The Avant was also used to pick up the cross cut lengths of timber and stack them in accessible piles ready for the timber crane to be brought in to pick them up.  The timber is being sold for biomass fuel.

It was hard, sweaty work – chainsawing in temperatures upwards of 20 degrees is a very warm business.  My chainsaw trousers with their all round padding protection felt like individual leg saunas and the sweat was continually dripping off my nose as I worked, thanks to the constant weight of the chainsaw.  At the end of a day we all looked like we’d been down the coal mines and it got to the stage where Dave and Mike were bringing in 8 litres of water to drink a day – much more prepared than I was, with only 2 water bottles.

Despite the heat, it was enjoyable.  I enjoy felling larger trees as you get to use various methods to fell it the way you want it to go.  My favourite is the ‘sweep cut’ involving sledgehammer and wedges.  With a tree of a certain size – normally if the trunk is wider than the length of your chainsaw bar, you can use this method to ensure it is going to go down the direction you want it to.  Otherwise its sheer weight can mean it will just sit upright on your saw and trap it or there could be a slight lean or distribution of canopy that will shift it another way.

So you cut your front ‘gob’ cut as usual (like cutting a slice of watermelon) out the front of the tree, facing the direction it will fall.

Then you can bore in with the chainsaw behind this cut, parallel to it, and bring the saw round the back of the tree, continually cutting, so you are ‘sweeping’ the cutting edge round and cutting through the back and middle wood (ensuring you don’t plunge the cutting bar through the hinge of wood behind the gob cut).   Halfway round you can stop, put in a metal wedge in the half you have already cut and then continue cutting round until you are once again parallel to the hinge of the gob cut and you have essentially cut away the remaining holding wood.  This is where, on large tree’s, its own weight prevents it from falling over as it can just happily sit upright so you put in another wedge to join the first and then, using a sledgehammer and a few choice words, you whack away at the wedges, driving them into the back cut until they are enough to slowly tip the tree….and with this little bit of encouragement, the weight of the tree is then enough to carry it over whilst you calmly walk away, out of reach of the tree should it happen to bounce and kick up.  Great fun!

Of course sometimes a tree is so heavy and so stubborn that you can be hammering away for a good 5-10 minutes as I was for one tree, and this gets pretty tiring and sweaty.  However, if you get it right, they always go over in the end – even if you end up lying on the ground in an exhausted coma for a few minutes afterwards.

 

At work - and yes, we cut down those stumps to ground level!

 So we worked our way across the site and bit by bit, we edged our way further in and up the slope.  Progress was quicker some days than others as we had to ensure we tidied up as we went along – so trees felled, snedded, cross cut, brash burnt and logs piled up, so we didn’t end up felling trees on top of trees and making what would have been a huge mess to try and clear up afterwards.  We also had to take into account where everyone was working and if we had volunteers helping, make sure that they were at a safe distance from us and that we were each then far enough away from the next chainsawer.  The poor avant broke a couple of times, her electrics gave up at one point as the front armour was cracked and broken and there was so much rubbish that got inside (not all from this job) that it affected the wiring and connections.  She was promised brand new armour and protective grills and so, at 7pm one evening she was coaxed back to life by an engineer and the show could go on.

We were racing against the weather as we could only do the work and extract the timber whilst it was dry – the site gets very wet and boggy in damp conditions and it would wreck the ground too much if we were working in there in the rain.  This is also why we have started the work in September as oppose to October which is when the traditional felling season starts – we had to take advantage of the good weather and it was late enough in the season not to be impacting upon birds.

One bit of wildlife we did come across was this caterpillar.  Found by Anne one of our volunteers, it was a fabulous creature with really grippy legs that took a bit of effort to peel off yourself.  It is a Pine Hawk Moth caterpillar and after we all had a good look at it I put it back on a pine tree that I knew we were not going to fell – so it could pupate in peace.

Pine Hawk Moth Caterpillar - see the black spine on its back end, always a sign its a Hawk Moth.

 

After 2 weeks hard at it we have made a good impact – there is still more to do, more trees to be removed which we will continue with when Dave gets back off holiday.  Hopefully by then the weather will be a bit cooler so we don’t all get quite so warm when chain-sawing – although having said that, I always keep my fingers crossed for a late Indian summer…

We left feature trees like this, which are visually striking and good deadwood habitat.

Cuthbert, Diddle and Grub

September is upon us!  The first few hints of the impending season are working their way into the landscape – there are some leaves on the turn now and the nights have a distinctive chill about them.  Much to my delight though, I am still able to spot the odd symbol of summer that lives on – like the photo below, which I took outside the Social Club next to the staff carpark.  A young House Martin, just fed by his parents but still peeking its head out the nest hoping for more food.  Some birds often have 2 broods of chicks in a year and this must be the tail end of that second brood – just enough time to fledge and plump up on Autumn bounty before it turns really cold.

Peek-a-boo!

I have realised that throughout my blog I have been mentioning my colleagues regularly – but with no proper introduction as to who is who.  Therefore, I instantly want to set this right and show off our countryside team – and we are a fairly new team with six out of ten of us having been recruited within the last year and only two who have been here longer than 2 years.

So let the photo line-up begin…

First, our esteemed leader Dylan.  Countryside Operations Manager, he runs the Countryside department here which covers our New Forest sites, Mottisfont Estate, and our sites at Stockbridge and Curbridge.

Dylan

 Then we have Michelle, our Visitor Experience and Communities Ranger.  Michelle organises events in the New Forest, markets and advertises the work we do and engages with the local communities to better enable them to understand and support our work.

Michelle

 

Following on from that is this inspired yokel like photo of 3 more of our team…Left to Right we have Laura, Neil and Dave Johnson.

Laura, Neil and  Dave J

 

Laura is the Outdoor Ranger for the New Forest.  Elements of her job include co-ordinating volunteers, assisting in carrying out HLS (Higher Level Stewardship) work and carrying out habitat and species surveys.

Neil is our River keeper here at Mottisfont.  We own sections of the River Test, one of the most beautiful chalk streams in Britain, and world famous for its fishing.  Neil manages and conserves the river habitat (with a little help from us in weed-cutting time!) to keep it wildlife friendly, whilst also working in conjunction with the local fishing club who fish our waters.

Dave Johnson is one of our New Forest Estate Rangers.  He carries out much of the on the ground practical work in the Forest, including tree felling, bracken cutting, track and path maintenance and repairs of fences and gates.

Following on from Dave we have the newest addition to our team, Mike who is also a New Forest Estate Ranger.  He has just joined Dave in the role and the two of them will be working together across our sites.

Mike

 This next picture is of Lee our Lead Ranger in the New Forest.  He heads up the New Forest staff side of the department and all the work that goes with it including the HLS's, cross complience, licensing, tree planting and felling works.

Lee

 Our other Lead Ranger is Dave Chase.  He is the Mottisfont Lead Ranger, so head of the Mottisfont side (known previously on this blog as the rescuer of sunken tractors) and also runs the log sales and forestry work we do here and the EWGs (English Woodland Grant Scheme) that our woodlands are involved in.

Dave C

This is Ryan our Ranger at Mottisfont.  Ryan assists Dave and I with carrying out woodland works, Stockbridge HLS works and organising and running volunteers, as well as doing surveys and taking on the production of charcoal using our own hazel coppice and charcoal kiln.

Ryan

 

Finally we have me – although you probably know who I am by now if you read my blog, but I am the Outdoors Ranger for Mottisfont – so same role as Laura, but on the Mottisfont side, not New Forest.  I co-ordinate the volunteers, run events like bushcraft, set up and carry out surveys, run the HLS’s for Stockbridge Down and Marsh and am the representative ranger for our Curbridge Site.  I also like to stick my nose in where I can though, so I help out in the Forest where I’m of use and am involved with the Outdoor Guides here at Mottisfont.

Me and an Adder

 

That sums up our motley crew, so next time you see one of us out and about working you will have a vague idea of who you are saying hello to.  You may even be able to identify us by which habitat we are spotted in – Neil usually haunts the river, Dave Chase lurks in the woods, I skulk on Stockbridge Down, Laura wanders the heath lands of the forest….you get the picture!

A Tale of Two Tractors.

‘It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness’.  Charles Dickens once wrote these words about two cities; last Sunday they became a hideous, surreally hilarious reality for us, in the tale I am about to tell, about two tractors….

Mid August – the final weed-cut of the year is underway and myself and Neil were working in the river on Sunday, cutting and chopping whilst Dylan took to swiping some of the river bank areas with a tractor mounted swipe (essentially a chain mower on the back of a tractor).

The day progressed well, the rain cleared up and the sun peeped out, and all was as it should be.  Until the phone call.

I received a slightly worried sounding Dylan on the end of the phone saying he had got the tractor stuck in an area at the top of the Duck Grounds.

Now the Duck Grounds at Mottisfont is a stunning area of wet woodland, reed bed and peat mire complete with running ditches and ponds.  Water vole, otters and kingfishers abound and even Bittern have been known to overwinter in the reeds here.  It is a private area, only open to the public through daily guided walks from the grounds of Abbey.  However, its tranquillity hides its deadly nature – the general rule is to keep to the boardwalk in the Duck Grounds – and this is beyond compulsory in the winter months.  Members of staff (naming no names) have come close to leaving the gene pool by straying off the boardwalk here and sinking up to the neck, simply because the Duck Grounds is Mottisfont’s answer to the Grimpen Mire.  In amongst the trees and banks are treacherous areas of peat bog that to the untrained eye appear solid enough.  However there are rumours of a Victorian horse and trap that remain lost and sunk in the bog and when the ponds were widened in 2005 they found a pair of old workman’s boots deep in the peat. 

So naturally, where else would you want to take a tractor?

After getting the call I made my way from the river to the top of the Duck Grounds, found the woodland track he’d gone through and followed the tractor tracks – coming to a dead halt as I saw the sight that awaited me.  There, tilted at a wacky angle was the tractor, its back wheel firmly sunk into a canyon of its own making, the swipe acting as a huge spade and dug in and sunk under the peat.  Dylan stood to the side chain smoking roll ups and muttering: ‘I got it through once!  I got the river bank swiped it was just on the way out!’ 

The sight that greeted me.

 

After having a go myself at driving it out – about as likely as it floating up and flying away, but I had to try – we went back to the yard for the other tractor. 

‘Don’t worry’ I said confidently, ‘the other Massey is more powerful, it should pull it right out’.

The other Massey tractor had the timber crane on the back which would add to the difficulty and restrict its power but it takes such effort to remove the crane, and we were short on time, so I just drove the tractor and crane as a complete item.  I trundled through Long Lash, into the Duck Grounds and through the woods on the track way that Dylan had followed to get to the river.  Having driven my tractor up nose on to Dylan’s, we attached a heavy chain to the pair, each got in to our tractors and made our first attempt.  As I had to reverse the timber crane through woodland I was fairly restricted so although the pull did move Dylan’s a fraction…my front tyres soon started digging in and were at risk of becoming stuck themselves.  We unhooked the tractors and I ensured mine could still move. 

Dylan was adamant we call our colleague Dave who, having worked the tractors for over 2 decades, could make them do anything he wanted in the most hideous conditions and restricted space.  I wanted one more go at pulling from a slightly different angle, to try and pull his out of its tilt.  I don’t like giving up after one try, and I was insistent we try it this slightly different way. 

Pride Cometh before a Fall.

So I realigned my tractor and tried again from a slight angle…and due to my realignment slightly to one side of the track, slowly, surely I felt myself tipping softly to the side like some slow motion horror film.  The peat bog loomed up in the window as my tractor started sinking sideways, its connection to the timber trailer the only thing preventing it from tipping full into the bog.

Uttering expletives, I shut it down and leapt out the door.  Dylan got out of his and we just stood and stared at the land based equivalent of two ship wrecks, both tilted at ridiculous angles in the mud.

The result of my rescue attempt.  Peat bog to the left.

 

‘Well thanks for your help there, Cat’ Dylan half giggled in a slightly hysterical manner.  ‘Now instead of just the one tractor, we’ve got about a hundred grand worth of kit sunk in a bog!’

And so it was, that Dave, having been on annual leave for one, single day, got a sheepish phone call to tell him that we’d sunk both tractors, the swipe and the timber crane in the Duck Grounds and could do with a little bit of help.

Bank Holiday Monday dawned bright and clear, the steam rising off the dewy grass signalling what a scorcher the day would become. 

9am saw Dave, Richard (Dave’s son), Gareth (a local farmer complete with a kick ass tractor), myself and Matt (my boyfriend, who seemed perfectly happy to witness my tractor devastation) all start the uncertain attempts at rescuing our poor machines.  Gareth made short work of pulling out the first tractor, having first disconnected the swipe.  His monster tractor had it out in a jiffy.  Hooray! One down, one to go! 

I felled a couple of small tree’s that were hindering the access route and we started by hooking Gareth’s tractor up to the Timber crane and attempting to pull it all out.  When Gareth’s tractor started up ending onto its two back wheels, we ditched that attempt.  Next came the idea of using Dylan’s original tractor as a sideways anchor to keep mine from tipping further over as Gareth tried pulling it out backwards.  Barely budged an inch.  Richard walked around the side to take a close look and SLUEEUURP! Shot down through the peat and sunk up to his waist in a second.  There was a split second of disbelief and a mental fight against the urge to take a photo before we grabbed his arms and hauled him out, with Dave gibbering slightly at the thought of nearly having to explain to his wife that he’d lost their son to the famed Duck Grounds Bog.

Now forever known as 'Richard's Bog' - you can see from the watery puddled bit, where he sank.

 

Several more attempts were made using different pulling techniques.  The winch was brought in on the back of the tractor and we tried diverted pulls off sturdy trees to drag it out frontwards but when the clutch started burning out we ended that attempt. Gareth tried bigger chains pulling with his tractor but with a loud BANG! One of the chain links actually snapped – chains that take several tonnes of pull, snapped like elastic. We tried pulling with both Gareth’s tractor and our other tractor but both started digging their own wheels in under the weight.

Eventually we realised the only hope was to unhook the timber crane and pull it out the way, leaving the tractor lighter and more accessible. 

Given that I was lightest and it was me who got it into that situation, I clambered inside the tractor to release the timber trailer hitch.  Matt held the door open so I had a quick getaway if needed as the tractor sunk and tilted with every move I made – made worse by the fact that as it was almost sideways, I had to brace my feet on the side door and various levers to try and keep upright.

However, we succeeded in unhooking the crane and Gareth towed it out the way. 

Then came the final test; if this didn’t work we were out of options.  We hooked the poor half sunk tractor up to Gareth’s tractor one more time, with a chain that looked big enough to anchor the Titanic.  We held our breath and stood clear as Gareth put it into gear and began to pull…..an inch…two inches….then Gareth’s tractor started sinking and the Massey rolled back into its ditch…

Trying to pull it out with Gareth's tractor (hidden behind the crane) and our second Massey (front).

‘It’s got to be driven out!’ Dave yelled and he leapt into the leaning Massey, fired it up and hit reverse, whilst Gareth started pulling again with his machine….and slowly oh so slowly it began to heave its way out of its boggy tomb.  We cheered from the sidelines, urging it to keep going and for nothing to snap as that would surely send it back in with such a jolt that it would tip into the peat completely.  Richard held a hammer ready to smash his way through the window should he need to get his dad out in a hurry and we watched between our fingers as the two tractors managed to drive their way up, up and out onto the track and freedom!  Whooping and cheering ensured and I almost hugged the tractor with relief at seeing it back on all four wheels and with nothing broken and no lives lost!  The stench coming out of the depths of the gorge was incredible, a hideous boggy sulphuric smell, oozing out of layers of rotting vegetation long since buried and seeing the light of day for the first time in decades.  We made short work of hitching up the timber crane again – left it to Dave this time and he glided it between the trees like tractor ballet – and used the crane to pick up the swipe which was still lying in the mud where Dylan got stuck originally. 

And so if you were visiting Mottisfont on Bank Holiday Monday, you may have seen/smelt an unusual convoy sludging its way through the field and the visitor car-park.  It would have consisted of two filthy, smelly tractors that were shedding peat pats every few yards and included one man who looked like he’d fallen into a cess pit as well as the rest of us smudged with dirt, peat, oil and grease yet grinning inanely with relief.

Me standing in the canyon left behind by my tractor...

 

So we all learnt our lesson – Dylan learnt not to tractor through peat bog woodland, I learnt that following your leader is not a good game and Dave learnt that when he goes on annual leave he should hide the tractor keys in an undisclosed location known only to himself.  I also got some video footage out of it that should earn me a cash sum on 'you've been framed'...

And here endeth the Tale of Two Tractors: ‘It is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known…’