WE PLOUGH THE FIELDS AND SCATTER....!

A cereal crop for "Docks and Nettles"

A third of the field next to the road at Noakes Grove, which is called "Docks and Nettles" for obvious reasons, will be ploughed this winter and prepared for sowing with a cereal crop.

Cereal fields that are not sprayed with herbicides and thus have a rich flora of cornflower "weeds", are one of the rarest Essex habitats. This is why the photo comes from the Netherlands.

Wikipedia commons photo by Paul van de Velde

It is unlikely that there will be many flower species nearby to self-seed our new field, so we will sow the land not just with a traditional type of cereal but also with the seeds of cornfield flowers: corn-cockle, cornflower and several others. Next summer we hope for a colourful display of flowers and come harvest a good crop of grain

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Traditional Farm Dates

Ploughing used to start on "Plough Monday" (January 6th in 2025). If the land dries out enough, our ploughing will be done a bit before then. Harvest, with luck, will be well before Michaelmas and the traditional harvest festival.

We use the traditional quarter days (Christmas, Lady Day, Midsummer and Michaelmas) to pay our (very modest) rental for the tenancy of Kings Field nature reserve.

Local Wildlife Sites

There are over 160 designated Local Wildlife Sites in our area of north Uttlesford. All have been designated as "LoWS" because of their biodiversity value and much of the survey was done more than ten years ago and most are privately owned with no public access except those with a public footpath. The protected wildflower verges are owned and managed bt Essex County Council and are also designated as LoWS. The Essex Wildlife Trust was originally much involved with LoWS but has recently ceased to continue with this work, presumably because of its current financial problems. The newly created ECC-backed Essex Local Nature Partnership has drafted an Essex Local Nature Recovery Strategy that has a long list of APIBs (Areas of Particular Importance for Biodiversity) but this seems not to include LoWS.

Walden Countryside hopes it can help with conserving the LoWS in our area and the first thing that needs to be done is to find out who owns each one. Only if we know that can we help owners seek wildlife survey aid and co-operate with the owners if they wish to apply for government grant aid to adopt more wildlife friendly land management of their LoWS.

Please will you help identify these owners? Just click your village or town in the list below and you will see a list of all the LoWS in that place. You will be able to click through to see the details and a map of each LoWS that interests you.

If you know who owns a LoWS, please tell us: info@walden-countryside.co.uk

Click a parish for a list of its Wildlife Sites

Stocking Filler A book created by children in our Wild Child group and their group leader and sold in aid of the group. A boy from our own time and Neria, a girl from the Stone Age, explore each other’s worlds. To the girl, our world is full of magic and magicians who can light matches, switch on electric lights and tame wild animals. To the boy the Stone Age is an exciting but strange place where he finds Neria knows much more about nature and how to survive than he does.		Available on Amazon - £6.50 Here's an Amazon review: 5 stars Great Book! Great book, we really enjoyed it! The Neria storyline draws children in and the story weaves in nature facts and science and history. The thought-provoking questions at the end of each chapter promote discussion, and more than once we researched things that cropped up during the chapter prompted by the questions. Recommended!

Work Parties

The regular 3rd Sunday (December 15th) meeting is at Noakes Grove from 10am to 3pm

Mainly hedgerow work. Come when you like, there may be a short Christmas party as well as a work party but bring a little snack as well. Scotch Patch apple juice will be on tap.

Saturday 21st December

Scotch Patch, Ellis Green - 10am to 2.30pm

Preparing planting areas for the sapling fruit trees which are due to be delivered in January. Also some cutting and stacking logs.

For details of how to find Scotch Patch click here

If you might be able to help at our reserves, please

phone 07 798 921 950 or email info@walden-countryside.co.uk

What trees are for

For their latest Friday session, the Wild Child kids decided to organise the session themselves. They wanted to do a good survey of the Noakes Grove trees.

What did they record? The kind of tree? No. How big it was? No. Its height? No. How old it might be? No.

They gave each tree a score that measured how good it was to climb.

Can you spot the two Wild Children in this tree?

Photo: David Corke

Happy 65th Birthday Essex Wildlife Trust

The Trust was founded (as the Essex Naturalists' Trust) in October 1959. It has three nature reserves in north Uttlesford. Walden Countryside is mere teenager (16 years old) but it too has three local nature reserves

Noakes Grove

Kings Field

Scotch Patch

EWT's reserves, like ours, are open to the public without charge.

Click these names for details of the EWT Reserves (each opens a new page):

West Wood

Shadwell Wood

Harrison Sayer reserve