We often hear tawny owls at Century Wood in the evening and overnight, but we’ve never seen proof of them or other owl species until this year. Last month I was walking towards a small isolated shed in the wood in the afternoon when I saw an owl suddenly fly out of its open doorway while I was still 50m away. It flew off between the trees at not much above head height and disappeared. Inside I found four owl pellets which have revealed lots of small mammal bones including skulls.
Last month we went to the Cumbria Nature Festival at Rivendell near Workington. It was very enjoyable and informative plus it’s an interesting woodland site.
One of the first things you realise in any off grid set up is how much we take clean water for granted. It’s literally “on tap”. Soon after we built the Log Cabin at Century Wood I installed a kitchen sink with a waste going to a gravel trap dug into the ground behind the Cabin, and a tap supplied from a water carrier. After 15 years of this set up, I decided to upgrade it with an on-demand pump and a better tap.
This is the coffin of Pharaoh Ramesses II (Shelley’s “Ozymandias”) about 3300 years old and made of imported cedar. Wooden objects last really well if… Read More »Look on my timber, ye mighty…
For three weeks every March, Houston hosts the largest rodeo in the world, along with a livestock show and a fairground / carnival. We go to events like county shows and the Game Fair in the UK, but my trip there this month was my first time at any kind of state fair type event in the US, or rodeo anywhere.
Today is the feast day of St Milburga, abbess of Wenlock Priory, who died on 23rd February 715. It is now also celebrated as Shropshire… Read More »Happy Shropshire Day!
Last spring I had a bad fracture in my left wrist, had surgery to put the fragments together, and then got the bombshell advice to avoid use of vibrating machinery like petrol chainsaws from now on. As you can imagine, that’s a life changing injury in my case. Since then I’ve been working out what to do and getting as much advice I can including from my physiotherapist. I’m planning to make posts about how I carry on managing Century Wood and I hope it will be useful for other people who are dealing with injuries and conditions like arthritis.
Well, to be specific, Lantra wants to criminalise chainsaw use by private individuals on their own land unless they have paid for a Lantra-style chainsaw course. Lantra describes itself as the UK and Ireland’s “one-stop-shop for land-based training and careers”. It has a dominant position in regulating training courses for rural skills. Since there are HSE regulations that require businesses to ensure that workers are properly trained, this brings some Lantra qualifications into that mandatory framework – you can face criminal prosecution for employing people to use chainsaws without the proper training. That’s reasonable and we have a long tradition starting with the Factory Acts of requiring safeguards when employment is involved. But now they are seeking to extend this to private individuals.
This month I’ve visited the Bois de Versoix, a forest of about 1300 acres about two miles from the shore of Lake Geneva in Switzerland. This woodland is a working forest but also contains a nature reserve, Les Douves, with amenities for the public. In particular, there is parking near the nature reserve on the Chemin de Douves, and so it’s a good place to start.
In 1425, 600 years ago this year, the town of Shrewsbury had a stamp made for the wax seals attached to official documents. On the stamp are three shield designs: the three leopards of the King of England, a cross of St George, and on the right the three leopard heads which have become the emblem of Shrewsbury and its county of Shropshire. But why leopard heads? And why are they called “loggerheads” in Shropshire?
