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Post by Deleted on May 7, 2018 18:45:11 GMT
Blew the cob webs out. Short trip to our friends and neighbours up river at Middle Nene Sailing Club. They had an RYA sponsored Push The Boat Out open day to get people interested in sailing. They had a glorious day and plenty of footfall through the gates, several signed up for taster/beginner courses Couple of years yet till the dwarf is old enough to get involved with the juniors. It has rekindled my interest in dinghy sailing, two years gives me time to sort an Optimist for her and a nice GP14/Enterprise or a Wayfarer for a family boat. The wee boat in the foreground with the multicoloured sail is am Optimist, the dwarf fell in love with it The Freemans VSR worked faultlessly, Fairlight is all ready to head east in a couple of weeks time, on top of that I got my window cover templates sorted so we may have them fitted before we go. All in all a Very enjoyable weekend 🚢🍻👍
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Post by zigspider on May 7, 2018 19:02:16 GMT
Still currently sitting in Whilton. Had intended to be on the Nene by now, but making the most of our time here.. Aiming to be home by this time next week. Making the most of the weather, and emptying the account buying necessities. Hope to get out on our first cruise tomorrow. Jerry
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Post by twbm2 on May 7, 2018 19:35:57 GMT
We've been making out garden pond bigger .. ideal weather for shifting about a ton and a half of clay. Not.. Odd start to the day, our fish, about 50 of them, are currently housed in a paddling pool near the back fence, where a footpath runs past. Doorbell rang at 0800, a chap asking if we had a pond as there was a fish on said footpath. It's not easy working out how to get to the fronts of the houses from the back so he'd been looking for a few minutes. Went out to find one of our biggest carp - a good 15 inches long - just about on it's last gasp. No herons around so we assume it jumped out and went under the fence. Put back in the pool, seems OK, and there's been a lot of scope for bad fish puns all day. Did he scale the fence? He won't tell us, he's being Koi. etc. etc. Could you repeat that, I'm hard of herring. Have you checked for traces of jelly, fruit and cream? You could be a trifle deaf.
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Post by naughtyfox on May 8, 2018 7:35:34 GMT
Fens alive with the munching of buffalo - blessed are the cheesemakers.
1st August 2001
Chippenham Fen, at the heart of the East Anglian countryside, is not normally associated with exotic beasts.
The boggy wetland has remained unchanged for centuries, providing an ideal home for reeds but leaving it decidedly short of livestock.
That all changed yesterday with the release of four Asian water buffalo brought in as environmental managers for the fen, a National Nature Reserve in Cambridgeshire.
The buffaloes' task is to keep 40 acres of wetland cropped by grazing on the rough grass and plants that have to be cut down by English Nature each summer. Cattle would turn their noses up at the vegetation, but water buffalo are less fussy. Yesterday, the three steers and one cow appeared to have settled in and were wallowing in a ditch, Kevin Warrington, an assistant site manager, said.
Water buffalo were first introduced to Britain in the 13th century by the Earl of Cornwall, brother of Henry III. The four released yesterday were acquired from a farm near Cardigan Bay in Wales where their rich milk was sold to mozzarella cheese-makers.
A fen farm dream takes root
16th August 2008
Last week I met a farmer who is lucky enough to own a coral island.
I say lucky, but there's a problem: Andrew Green's 150 million-year-old coral reef is situated on the edge of the Cambridgeshire fens and covered with varying thicknesses of fenland soil that's great for growing celery but not much good for looking at the wildlife normally associated with coral reefs.
So Green has converted 150 acres of prime agricultural land into an astonishing wetland wildlife reserve.
In just a short visit to Kingfishers Bridge, I saw bitterns, a hobby, marsh harriers, redshank, lapwings, a sparrowhawk, swifts, swallows and sand martins. I heard turtledoves and a Cetti's warbler. I saw one of the rarest plants in Britain. To round it all off nicely, I had a bull water buffalo wave his horns at me. And that's not to mention numerous ducks, geese, cormorants, marsh orchids and a tremendous view of Ely cathedral.
Green is one of those unusual people who can turn a vision into reality and he is the latest individual I have met who is completely untrained but has created a conservationist's paradise that several established conservation bodies look on with envy.
His scheme is made even more remarkable by the fact that Green was born in London. His family moved during the second world war to the North Norfolk coast, where the eight-year-old Andrew became something of a hunter-gatherer to overcome the shortages caused by meat rationing.
After gaining a diploma in agriculture, as well as a degree in natural sciences, from Cambridge University, Green started working on a farm in the Cambridgeshire Fens. Through a mixture of hard work and good luck, he moved from worker to owner and the family business now farms 6,500 acres and is part of a company that is also operating in eastern Europe.
One of the farms it bought was at Wicken, within a few flaps of a bittern's wings from Wicken Fen. On its 300 acres grew excellent crops of wheat, celery, carrots, onions, potatoes and beetroot, and it also had much wildlife along its drains and wet grassland.
Realising the potential, Green drew up plans to turn much of the land into a wetland reserve. In 1994, the great ornithologist Sir Peter Scott visited the farm to offer his full support to the scheme. Green then met Roger Beecroft, a self-taught conservationist who created the Trimley Marshes Nature Reserve, as part of the mediation for the expansion of the port of Felixstowe.
"When Green asked me to work on the project in 1995," says Beecroft, "it took me at least two seconds to make my mind up."
Since then a wildlife miracle has taken place; a 155-acre span of wetland has been created, along with 75 acres of wash land that floods in the winter, while the rest of the land is still farmed - in a wildlife-friendly way.
The secret has been to produce a great variety of habitats: reedbed, fen, mere, ditches, ponds, islands, meadows, scrapes and cliffs. Part of the secret involves the coral - 12-16m thick limestone through which rain and ground water is filtered to exceptional purity.
Water depths are controlled and varied, from deep water, through shallow to mud. Into this the water buffalo are allowed to wade and wallow, grazing the reeds and creating channels that give fish access to large areas of the reedbeds, which in turn provide excellent feeding for the bitterns.
Unlike some conservation bodies, the fish population is checked regularly and newcomers have been introduced, particularly rudd, perch and elvers, to ensure a wide range of fish types and sizes.
Common terns breed, as do little ringed plovers, with wire cages over their nests. These allow the adult birds to move in and out, but help deter predators. As a result, more than 200 species of birds visit the site. Breeding cliffs and holes have been cut into the limestone for sand martins (there are now 40 pairs) and kingfishers, and a 30-yard deep cave has been dug into the coral for wintering bats.
A luxurious summer bat box even has a solar-powered radiator, apparently much loved by the pipistrelles that use it. And the reserve has one of Britain's rarest plants, the water germander, which has increased in number from a dozen to millions.
Many conservationists target some predators secretly, but Green is quite open about the fact that foxes, mink, rats, crows and magpies have to be controlled.
It explains why the Kingfishers Bridge bitterns (possibly four pairs - the first breeding bitterns in Cambridgeshire since 1938) can already be seen on their feeding flights to their young, whereas the nests at other fenland reserves usually get preyed upon.
Interestingly, too, Green and Beecroft are concerned by some of their success. The reserve has four pairs of breeding marsh harriers, but they would prefer only one. They also feel that they have too many sparrowhawks.
All in all, Kingfishers Bridge is the most remarkable coral island that I have seen in Britain. And is certainly an example of conservation at its very best.
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Post by naughtyfox on May 8, 2018 7:37:57 GMT
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Post by Andyberg on May 8, 2018 9:13:39 GMT
Dogdale Council doing the right thing this weekend! [
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Post by naughtyfox on May 8, 2018 15:16:47 GMT
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Post by JohnV on May 8, 2018 15:40:26 GMT
what thickness plate did he use to steel it ?
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Post by naughtyfox on May 8, 2018 16:39:42 GMT
And what have hoes got to do with barges? Here we see one in action in Ho-Chi-Minh-City. Ho, ho, ho!
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