Land Manager's Diary: Read it here>

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On Tuesday the volunteers were back at Mazonwath doing our monthly dry stone walling day. It was lovely to welcome three volunteers new to walling and for them to learn tips and tricks working alongside our experienced volunteers.

We were so lucky with the weather and managed a bit of sunshine, and the sun was setting over the Lake District fells as we left for home. We took a long section of wall down and most of the day was spent getting the footings back in. These really are the foundations of the wall and it is worth taking time and trouble to get them right, both in terms of the line of the wall, but also their structure as they support roughly a tonne of stone per metre of wall. It can be slow and frustrating work, but as more courses go on the wall things speed up.

We also had a look at the trees we put in tree cages a couple of years ago and they are doing really well. 

Coming after a couple of weeks of hard work on the property budgets for next year, it was good to be out on site building something. We have three year budgets and with the present flux in public funding for agricultural and environmental work it is hard to plan what to do.

We have lots of exciting ideas for our land but if we want external funding to help then these can only be done under new and not existing schemes. But it is still not clear what the new schemes will be like in detail, what will be funded, how much the funding will be and what we will be required to do. So we either have to push on with our plans and find funding elsewhere, or it is a waiting game to see what the schemes will end up being like. This is the situation that all the farmers and land managers in the country are in, and like the wall, it sets the foundation for the future years but is also very frustrating…

Talking of future years, we are planning the workparty dates for next year, so they will be out with you in the next few weeks 😊