Fate

It had been a hectic and stressful week up until today. Although we have had sunny weather almost continually for a fortnight, we also have had no rain and thus we have been worried about our water supply (Though our spring seems healthy at the moment). We recently lost a dear friend, who died young with brain cancer, and thus needed to travel into a city in England to be present at his funeral. On the day of the funeral the main arterial route to the city was closed and we needed to start our journey in the middle of the night to be able to travel the extra miles and arrive on time. However, with the aid of modern GPS mapping technology this did work out satisfactorily. The holiday let business had also been busy so we were looking forward to a quieter, and relaxing weekend.

When we had finished preparing the cottage for new visitors, I was standing outside enjoying the sun and preparing to do nothing at all for the rest of the day. Fate had other plans for me. I heard a loud humming in the berberis bush and noticed that there was a swarm of bees hanging there. They were not from my hives and looking at the swarm it was going to be fairly easy to collect it. Although it was among berberis branches, a bush that is famous for its ability to fight back again anyone messing with it, it was fairly low hanging and we managed to collect it in a box quite easily.

As luck would have it, I had cleaned out and old hive just over a week ago, so I had a place ready to accept this swarm. (We had lost that hive’s bees in the serious cold weather at the beginning of the year, so I had cleaned it up and renewed the frames and foundation inside.) The first time I moved the swarm I had obviously failed to collect the queen as when I watched the bees would not settle and a small swarm had recollected at the bush. On the second transfer we had success, and they were all happily ensconced in their new home.

Bran, my helper, and I felt quite proud of ourselves and celebrated our good luck. We felt fate had rewarded us for cleaning and preparing the old hive. The swarm had been in the right place at the right time. But perhaps there was also a little bit of bad luck. Just after I had completed the transfer the young lads who are developing a smallholding just above us came round to cut some bamboo rods. They mentioned that they had recently reconditioned an old hive and joined the local beekeepers’ association and were now on the look-out for a swarm to start them off in their beekeeping. Perhaps fate had intended the swarm for them, but it was too late now to move the bees again. I have solemnly promised that when we see the next swarm, and there will be one in the next few months, I will help them collect it and their hive will have inhabitants before the end of this summer.

Climate Change and the Nation State by Anatole Lieven

This is an important book that should be widely read. It takes a broader, and very sobering, look at the threat that we face from climate change. It is well written, lucid and clear, and he manages to make the reader aware of the impending apocalypse we face without hyperbole or histrionics.

It covers a lot of ground in detail and it would not be possible to summarise this in a short review. However, the key idea is that to deal with climate change there is a basic problem. We will need to change our behaviour and way of life. We can wait until climate change forces us through drought, famine or forced migration, or we can wait until we are forced by authoritarian moves to try and cope or we can band together to try and change early and possibly mitigate the coming changes.

But there is a major problem; how do we agree to what we will give up or change? I am quite happy never to fly for recreation again, but are you? I am quite happy to see my energy consumption reduced, but does that fit your future plans? If we are going to make these decisions, we will need a forum to discuss and agree them. That needs to be a real forum where we can feel we are connected and “all in this together”, this needs to be the nation state with a strong sense of civic nationalism. In this setting, rather like in times of war, people can discover purpose and duty and work with their fellow citizens the change behaviour and course.

Correctly people have described our setting being that of a climate emergency – in an emergency all other issues take second place as we have not time to give them focus. in an emergency, as in war, all actions are driven and guided by the need to win the war or end the emergency. Only by working as nations will we gather the cohesion necessary to meet this challenge.

You find me at the wood pile.

I was struck in the old cowboy films, I watched as a child, that whenever the someone arrived at the homestead the owner would always be outside splitting logs. In fact this is fairly accurate; for most of the year felling and preparing timber is a constant background task.

We go though a lot of timber as our heating, hot water and cooking is done on the wood fired range. We do switch to electricity for a time in the summer when the PV panels are buzzing (and to have the wood-burning Rayburn tends to turn the kitchen into a sauna). The volume of firewood we need is large and we need to season the wood, depending on type, for one to two years, so, every year, throughout the year, I am to be found trying to build up the wood store for the next years winter.

Winter 2023

We were lucky at the start of the year when two red cedars were downed in the storm. Later a large beech shed a huge bough. Yesterday a birch came came down in the sheep field and earlier this week a large oak was blown down across the stream. This oak and an ash which succumbed to die back are unfortunately caught up in other trees so are going to be much harder to deal. I’ll get the advice of my neighbour, who was a forester, before I tackle these as hung up trees can be very dangerous.

The constant year round work is useful. It fills the gaps in any days when you might be at a loose end. It also reminds you that we are playing the long game. As is often the case on the smallholding, you have to appreciate that any benefit you may get from your work may not be evident for quite a while – as always, deferred gratification is the order of the day.

Another value of this piece of work is that it improves our appreciation of the mundane things around us; not all wood is the same. Over the years I’ve learnt that, when cutting and burning wood, wood differ greatly. The list of features I’ve collected, from a variety of sources, is attached below as it may be a help to others when they start their wood piles.

Alder
Poor heat output and short lasting. A low quality firewood.
Apple
It is easier to cut when green but absolutely terrible to burn if not seasoned properly. When seasoned it burns slowly and steadily with little flame but good heat. The scent is also pleasing.
Ash
Arguably the best firewood in the UK providing plenty of heat and flame that lasts (will also burn very well green!) Easy to saw and split.
Beech
Good when well seasoned, it may shoot embers out a long way. Easy to split.
Birch
Good heat and a bright flame, burns quickly. It will burn unseasoned. Can cause gum deposits in chimney if used a lot. Thin sheets of bark make a good fire starter and can be peeled from trees without damaging them.
Blackthorn (Sloe)
Burns slowly, with lots of heat and little smoke. Dreadful to handle as it fights back
Cedar
This is an aromatic wood that puts out a lot of lasting of heat but it produces a small flame. Great splitting wood.
Cherry
Burns slowly with good heat and a pleasant scent. Slow to start.
Cypress
Burns well but fast when seasoned, and may spit. Good as kindling.
Douglas Fir
A poor fuel that produces little flame or heat.
Elder
A mediocre fuel that burns quickly without much heat output and tends to have thick acrid smoke. Avoid.
Elm
High water content (140%) that may smoke violently and should be dried for two years for best results. You may need a faster burning wood to get Elm going but once burning large log will burn for hours. Splitting can be difficult and should be done early on.
Eucalyptus
A fast burning wood with a pleasant smell and no spitting. The stringy wood fibre can be hard to split and one option is to slice it into rings and allow to season and self split.
Hawthorn
Very good. Burns slowly but with good heat .
Hazel
Very good, tends to burn up a bit faster than most other hard woods.
Holly
A good firewood that will burn when green, but best if dried a year. It is fast burning with a bright flame good when well seasoned.
Hornbeam
Burns almost as good as beech with a hot, slow burning fire. It is easy to split.
Horse Chestnut
Widely regarded as a poor firewood but if seasoned long enough will produce good flame and heating power but spits a lot.
Laburnum
Terrible firewood with acrid smoke, best to steer clear of it.
Larch
Fairly good for heat but crackles and spits and forms an oily soot in chimneys.
Laurel
Produces a brilliant flame.
Leyland Cypress (Leylandii)
Burns well with a bright flame but crackles and spits needs to be seasoned well and is another that leaves an oily soot in the chimney. Smells great and its resinous wood makes great kindling. Best used on an outdoor fire.
Lilac
Thinner branches make good kindling, whilst the thicker burn well with a clear flame and a very pleasant smell.
Lime
A poor quality fuel with dull flame.
Maple
A good all rounder.
Oak
Regarded as one of the best in the UK, Oak is excellent, burning slowly with a good heat.
Pear
It is easier to cut when green but no good to burn when green. Pear burns slowly and steadily with little flame but good heat. The scent is also pleasing.
Pine
Burns well with a bright flame but crackles and spits needs to be seasoned well and is another wood that gives off an oily soot in the chimney. Smells great and its resinous wood makes great kindling. Best used on an outdoor fire.
Plane (London Plane)
Burns pleasantly, but is likely to throw sparks.
Plum
Provides good heat with a nice aromatic sent.
Poplar
Widely considered one of the worst firewoods in the UK. It will burn but needs to be seasoned for at least two years. It burns very slowly with little heat which is why poplar is used to make matchsticks.
Rowan
A good firewood that burns hot and slow.
Rhododendron
Burns well with a bright flame.
Robinia (Acacia)
Burns slowly, with good heat, but with acrid smoke.
Spruce
A poor firewood that burns too quickly and with too many sparks.
Sycamore
Burns with a good flame, with moderate heat. Lovely to split when green.
Sweet Chestnut
Burns when seasoned but tends to spit excessively.
Walnut
Mediocre firewood but has an aromatic scent.
Wellingtonia (Giant Sequoia)
Poor for use as a firewood.
Willow
Widely considered as a poor firewood although some consider it contributes if mixed with other species.
Yew
Burns slowly, with fierce heat.

Cleavers

I know it as ‘sticky willie’. This is not some discharging illness of the nether regions associated with intimacy, rather it is the popular roadside weed. Every morning, while on my circular constitutional, I collect mounds of the stuff as it is a particular favourite of our goats and they now expect this mid-morning treat. It is extremely easy, and enjoyable, to harvest; simply running your arm through the hedgerow will reward you with mountains of free animal fodder.

Sticky Willie (Gallium Aparine) is related, distantly, to the coffee plant though its pleasant smell always reminds me of peas. It has many names including Goosegrass, Bedstraw, Potherb. These link back to its use as bedding and animal feed (often for poultry). It should be remembered that it is an edible plant, high in vitamin C and a possible, valuable aid in your herbal pharamacopoea. Though these uses interest me now, in the past, I was more impressed in its other property, its stickiness. It has often been likened to a natural vegetable Velcro. This was its source of fascination in childhood as it would stick to our wooly jumpers. It could also be fashioned into a ‘summer snowball’ and scoring of this ‘snowball’ fight was easy as the balls stick to your opponent.

The Greek Name Gallium Aparine come from the words to “lift” and to “seize” and this property, of stickiness, is the origin of its other common name, that of ‘cleavers‘. This comes from the verb ‘to cleave’ meaning to adhere or stick tightly. This is a long established word , it appears in 15th centuary texts on herbs ..

“An erb that is cald clyvers that yonge gese eten “

Dawson, W. R., A leech book of the Fifteenth Century  (1934)

and can be found in the Bible when used to describe marriage ..

“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.”

Genesis 2:24 

This is also its meaning in phrases such as “she was parched, and her tongue cleaved to the roof of her mouth“. This verb comes from the Dutch/German ‘kleven/kleben’ which also gives rise to the words clay and climb.

In my Welsh classes an early source of annoyance for students was that a word could have quite opposite meanings. I and my fellow students used to get tangled up in the apparently contradictory meaning of “byth” as, depending on context, it can mean either ‘ever’ or ‘never’. We used to complain that this was a strange thing for a language to do and our native, English, tongue would never do such a thing. Except that it does, with the verb ‘cleave’.

While cleave can mean to adhere tightly and to stick closely together, there is another use of ‘cleave’ coming from the German/Dutch ‘klieben/klieven’. This means to split apart, separate, to hack into separate parts. This has exactly the opposite meaning of the first but identical spelling and pronunciation. You could use them in the same sentence with exactly the opposite meanings “Those who have cleaved together in marriage let no man cleave asunder“

When class resumes after the summer break, I’ll have to go back to the teacher and offer penance and confess, that as I really already knew, English is every bit as infuriating as Cymraeg. But I’ll keep calling this plant “sticky willie”, hat way, there will be less chance of misunderstanding, – “Watch out I’ve got Sticky Willie here!” – risk averted

Triskaidekaphobia

I am not, as a rule, superstitious. I do feel luck is important but only in a “karma” sort of way. I guess I avoid walking under ladders, but more for fear of falling buckets than for fear of incurring bad luck. I did for a time own a “lucky tie” which I wore at interviews, but even before it proved itself to be impotent and pointless I knew it was silly and felt a frisson of embarrassment when I put it on. However, after today I think I am going to have to rethink my belief in rationality as today, the 13th of July, has proven to be a pig of a day which I could have happily done without.

It started early when I went round to wish our visitors bon voyage as they left our holiday cottage and went home. As they told me what a great time they had and gestured to the garden to point out how they had enjoyed it, as an oasis of calm and colour, I noted that two others were also enjoying the garden. The two bucklings had escaped from the goat yard and paddock and were happily munching their way through the floral display.

My day therefore started with an hour of chasing goats. Each time I got them out of the garden, by chasing them over the fence back into the sheep field, I would run round into the field to get them through the gate back into their paddock. Both of them would wait until they knew I had traversed the circuit of garden gate-sheep gate- cross the field before they would just skip back over the fence back into the garden. After half a dozen iteratiosn of this I did manage to grab them and take them squealing their disappointment back to the barn. Safely locked here I coudl find out where they were getting out.

There was a clear exit point form the paddock. A wall had fallen down leaving a pile of large rocks that would act as a launching pad for a easy jump over a low hung area of fencing. I firstly started to move the. Largest one was quite a challenge and needed the crowbar to move. Even with this it did manage to catch my finger a couple of times before it came free. My delight at seeing movement of this rock soon turned to horror as I realised that this rock, despite being rectangular, was now starting to roll down the steep part of the hill away from me. I watched as it picked up momentum and crashed into the fence at the bottom of the paddock, taking out a fence post on its way. No problem, I had a fence post spare up at the house. After the better part of an hour, I had collected the post and rammer, re-sited it and repaired the lower fence. Now to fix the top fence.

I needed about 15 yards of fencing and I had none, new and unused, about the place but could remember where an old fence had stood and thought there may be enough there that I could salvage to fix the job. I checked and was in luck. There was an adequate length; if I could hack it out of the undergrowth that had grown to cover it over the past years. I should have anticipated, that being the 13th, the overgrowth was a mixture of briars and nettles. The nettles were about 4feet tall, so they fell on my face and arms as I tried to hack through. Now with my forearms on fire I could try and remove the briars. This is when I discovered that the roots had grown around the lowest strand of fence making it necessary to manhandle the wire free. As the pain from the nettles eased on my forearms it was replaced from the discomfort of repeated bramble scratches on already sensitive skin. But by lunchtime I had enough salvaged fencing to do the job.

To tell the truth I had enough to do the job it I could stretch the fence to be 6 inches longer. This was beyond the capability of my bleeding and scratched arms, but we did get it into rough position. This position was alongside a hawthorn hedge. Next to berberis this is the jaggiest hedge I know, so that by the middle of the afternoon I had managed to ensure that any areas of my skin that had avoided injury by the briars had been torn by the spikes of the hawthorn. Nonetheless, my work meant that I was able to let the two goats back into the paddock and that I could go and sit down with a cup of tea and a biscuit.

My endeavours had contained the goats long enough to make the tea, but not long enough to drink it or eat the biscuit. No sooner had I sat down than my wife had hollered “they are back in the sheep field”. We both went to catch them and to see how they had breached my defences. We could not work it out, the stonework and fence had held, there were gaps along its length. After rounding them up we went to get the trail camera to see if we could work out where they were getting over the fence. The we had out only bit of luck. While setting up the trail camera the two goat kids ran to the end of the fence and went through the narrow gap between the fencepost and the wall. For the last years this gap has been fine – too narrow for a pot-bellied nanny goat, or a full sized billy, but just right for a young kid wanting to see the outside world.

We constructed a hasty repair with baler twine and some wood and the paddock was secure again. I sat down with a cup of tea and was ready for a well deserved rest. Then the cry went out – the dog’s got diarrhoea !! Yes, I can’t wait until midnight tonight and I can see the back of this 13th of the month.

Moving Muck

One of the regular jobs that I quite enjoy doing is mucking out the goat shed. It may seem counterintuitive that this task, to shift a ton of goat manure mixed with straw from the shed to dung heap. is one that I don’t mind doing. But in all honesty, it has a lot going for it.

Firstly, the dung itself. Goat dung is formed in dry pellets and much easier to move than other dungs. Cow and pig dung is a lot wetter and harder to handle. It is also much less sticky and rolls rather than sticks so is again easier to move. Bird manure, especially duck, is terrible stuff – its adhesive properties would give superglue a run for its money. A final advantage is that it doesn’t stink. Many types of dung smell strongly, goat manure does not. There is a warm, goaty smell when working in the shed but it is not at all unpleasant.

Just helping

Secondly, the job itself has a number of advantages. It is physical but not excessively so. On a cold day the work will keep you warm and on a wet day a large part of the task is done indoors so it can be better than other, wetter and colder, jobs around the smallholding. You know where you are when you ae shifting dung; the whole job is alike a visual progress bar, each square meter of concrete floor that becomes visible tells you how much you have done, and you can easily see how much more there is to do. If you are lucky to have young kids about, they can also “help” by jumping on your barrow or running across your path.

Although the work demands physical labour it is not mentally taxing and this, allied with the gentle environment, makes it ideal for listening to the radio or a podcase. A good drama can make this task fly by, but recently I have found the treasure trove of David Cayley’s programmes for the Ideas series he made for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. These are excellent discussions and this time I had found one of the last interviews with the economist and philosopher Leopold Kohr. He had made this not long before his death. He was old and almost completely deaf by this time but his warmth and wit were still clearly evident. He is, rather than Schumacher, the author of the phrase “Small is beautiful” and it was interesting to hear how chance played such an important part in his life and to hear him describe his ideas on the importance of scale and size for human society.

One such lucky chance was that Gwynfor Evans, the leader of the Welsh Nationalist Plaid Cymru, party had read the excoriating review of Kohr’s book in the Observer. He felt that any book that an “English” newspaper hated this much must be worth reading and made contact with Kohr. This contact led to him being appointed to a Welsh University post, despite not speaking any Welsh, and living in Aberystwyth. Kohr and Schumacher’s ideas about the dangers of large-scale organisations has proven a valuable way to look at the nationalism of small countries such as Wales and Scotland. These ideas were important in their early political development. It is not a danger that these countries are too small to go it on their own, as is often proposed, it is precisely because they are small that they might succeed. Their smallness could help them become better places to live and trying to create better places to live is what should be at the heart of all political action.

When I lived in Scotland I latterly voted for the SNP and while in Wales I have looked to vote for Plaid Cymru. I have to admit that some of this was purely opportunistic. While in Scotland, I was looking for some way to avoid the rampant individualism of Thatcherism and hoped that a smaller independent Scotland might tack to kinder more communitarian values. Similarly in Wales, I hoped that drawing back power from a remote political bureaucracy would make it closer to the people and more responsive and engaging. I saw this as a way to reduce scale and, as a consequence, counter the ever increasing alienation of the populace from the government.

Unfortunately, it seems that many in Plaid Cymru and the SNP have not read, or have forgotten, Leopold Kohr’s work. Or possibly now many are just being opportunistic, like I was, but in a different manner. I fear many now vote for these parties as a way to undo the effects of Brexit. They see break away from the United Kingdom, not as a way to create small independent states, but as an escape route back into the bosom of the large European Union. This may suit those in these parties as they see it as an easily usable fault line in the British body politic, and those politicians will have as much, if not more, power in the European setting. It will not reduce things down to a more human scale, it will not promote more local cultures, and will not bring power closer to the citizen either geographically or in terms of accountability.

Listening to the podcast and realising that the UK nationalist parties have thrown away their Raison d’Être in the pursuit of power suddenly everything seemed to gel. Politics at the moment – It really is all a pile of manure!

Ovine Chiropody

I should hopefully sleep better tonight. The last two nights have been rather fretful as I knew a challenging task was looming. I knew that I was about to meet the consequences of having broken our first law of smallholding. Our primary rule was ‘Never keep an animal you can’t beat in a fair fight’ and we were now going to discover why this was important.

Never keep an animal you can’t beat in a fair fight.

Rule1

Our ram had gone lame over the past two days. He was limping and keeping his back right leg raised off the ground. At first, we’d prayed and hoped that it might fix itself (sometimes it does) but after the second day it was clear that we’d have to intervene. Now, catching the sheep, turning them over and trimming their feet is no walk in the park but the ram is a different matter entirely.

Our first ram was a docile creature who did his work well but was always well behaved. He also had the endearing habit of being slightly worried of handguns. If you pointed at him with index and forefinger outstretched, and made pitchow pitchow noises, he feared you had a pistol and kept his distance which made him easier to corral. Our present ram has obviously less experience with weaponry and is not so easily fooled. Therefore, at nights, I have been dreading trying to round up 15 stones of grumpy, muscular ram, flip him on his back and attack his feet with knives – I know he wouldn’t be keen on this plan and would not cooperate.

Come the day, however, it went better than we expected. He did try and decline the pedicure and a couple of times he nearly had me on my back (rather than the other way around) But although he is stronger, meaner and faster than us, we are slightly smarter and using a couple of hurdles, joined with rope, we were able to construct a temporary crush to hold him. We then found he had an injury between his hooves which we were able to clean and dress with biocidal sprays. The spraying was perhaps less accurate that it should have been as he didn’t like the sound of the aerosol, this caused him to struggle and my shaky aim meant we shared the violet spray about equally between him and myself.

Having managed this the result was almost instantaneous and very gratifying. He walked off with no limp whatsoever, but with no thanks either. Hopefully, it will be a long time until we need to do this again and, in the interim, we can look for a ram who is more cooperative or docile. Although I fear that those are not words that are in either the job descriptions, or characters, of rams.

Do I look as if I am going to cooperate?

Daw eto haul ar fryn.

There is a saying in Wales which has been pressed into service a lot over the past year during the pandemic: Daw eto haul ar fryn. It is a call for optimism and hope and roughly translates as ‘the sun will come over the hill again’ or good times will return. Today I have felt in sympathy with this motto at both the beginning and the end of the day.

This morning I actually watched the sun coming over the hill. For the last year or so I have had easy mornings as we retired our elderly milking nanny goat. She is now over 12 years old she deserves a long service medal. Her niece has taken her place but this meant a period of some months (while we got a billy goat to get her niece pregnant) that we were not milking every day. I had started to get used to the civilised later starts to teh day. Without the need to do the milking the animals would happily wait until 7:30am before demanding I got up to see to their needs. But this morning milking restarted so we had an unaccustomed 4:45am start.

Getting up at this time is surprisingly pleasant. The crepuscular light casts all the farm in a different glow and for some strange reason things look cleaner and fresher than they normally do. The dawn chorus is also welcome. The wild birds settling down for the night as dusk are noisy but their sounds are deeper, more tired and slightly angry. In the morning the birds are much louder, but higher pitched and the song has a positive, optimistic tone which suits the start of a new day.

Daphne surprised that there is any milk left

Milking went well and Mindy took to the milking stall and procedure without any hitch. Her kids, Donny and Daphne, had obviously been up much earlier than me. I entered the barn to find them playing ‘king of the castle’ on top of the rotavator. They were not too pesky and watched the milking with interest, though I also think with the knowledge that they had been there before me and had already drunk their fill. I am probably going to have to separate them overnight if this system is going to work.

After looking in the polytunnel some of the French and runner beans have not started to break through the surface and should be ready to plant out next month. So, in the spirit of optimism and in the belief that things will get better I finished the day by starting to erect the bean frames. The great pleasure of the smallholding life is the living by routine and rhythms. Both the short cycle routines like milking which delineate the day and give structure to it and also the long cycle routines which help us plan through the year. But more importantly, the seasonal work reminds us that even if we have no evidence that good things are coming, experience tells us they will, and through work, with no immediate reward, give us hope.

Getting ready although not a leaf is visible yet.

Mole catching

A rather practical blog today. I have had a problem with moles in two of our pasture fields. We usually have evidence of mole activity but when this is limited to the garden or vegetable area I am not too bothered. Though they can create unsightly molehills here there is little else untoward that they do so I just ignore them. However, in our pasture I need to do something as they significantly reduce the pasture available for the sheep and the molehills are more than unsightly as they damage the cutter bars when we either top the field or take hay in the late summer. Molecatchers are rather thin on the ground so you may wish to do this task yourself as it is reasonably straight forward.

Before & after raking

The first step is to find where the moles are active. If you only have new molehills this is obvious. But, if like me, you have signs of activity over a wide area it is advisable to rake all the molehills flat for a day or so before setting traps. By doing this you will be able to see the new hills easily as set your traps accordingly. To find your mole tunnels you need to remember not to be too focussed on the molehills. Their tunnel systems can be over 100m long and the molehill is just where they get rid of the earth they have dug. Often a run which is used daily will be alongside a wall or fence. The size of the molehills will give you some help. The larger these are the deeper will be tunnels for which you will be searching.

Dibber

As you walk around you may feel areas of earth that “give” and are a clue to a tunnel underneath. But other than this use a dibber. This can either be a metal rod or any long straight thin object with a pointed end (rigid hose, stick, etc). Prod the dibber in a straight line with the prods being made very 4cm or so. Once you feel the dibber drop into tunnel then prod in a circle around this to work out in which direction the tunnel runs.

Now you need to dig a hole to insert the trap you are using. You want this hole to be not much larger than the trap itself and to cause as little disruption to the tunnels as possible. It is important at this point to be wearing cloth gloves and to have these well covered with soil. You can grab a few handfuls from a molehill and wash your gloved hands in the soil. If you don’t do this your smell will be in the tunnel and on the trap and alert the mole to your plans and reduce your chances of success.

Tunnel

Once you have dug into the tunnel make sure you can see both an entrance and exit into the tunnel. Make sure that these are not blocked by soil that has fallen and also make sure that the floor of the tunnel is free from soil and pressed down smooth. It is important to compress the bottom of the tunnel so that the mole does not proceed past your trap by digging under it.

Now carefully set your trap. I am using scissor traps which are kept open by a latch pin. This needs to be set so it is at the very edge its grasp and on a “hair trigger“. Be careful when doing this as you will want to be using very strong traps which could do severe damage to your fingers if it catches them. You do not want to be using weak traps as you want these to act quickly and decisively, and hence humanely, in killing the mole. Poor traps may just injure and trap the mole.

Trap in situ

Set the trap in the tunnel and turn back the turf you cut to open the hole. Cover the whole thing with earth so that no light can shine into the tunnel and warn the mole. If you have animals in the field you may want to place two sticks either side of where you set the trap and then put a stone, or other cover, over the trap itself. If a lamb, or other animal, put its foot down into a trap it could sustain serious injury. A much better plan is to do trapping at a time you are not using the field for grazing, if possible.

Either way mark where your traps have been set using a stick or rod that is easily visible. Make sure that this is not stuck down into the tunnel on which you have just been working. Now it is a case of waiting and checking. When you check you trap from above it is easy to see if it has been triggered or not. If it has been triggered you should find a mole when you remove it. However, if all you find is soil then you have not set the trap well and the mole has probably sensed what you are up to. If it sensed danger, it will sometimes turn round and block up the tunnel (hence triggering the trap) leaving you will a sprung trap and a handful of soil.

We have been successful but if you are finding yourself with just empty, or un-sprung, traps then move elsewhere and seek different tunnels.

The Chutney Problem.

Chutney is, at the same time, the solution to a problem and also a problem in its own right. Like others, I have been happy to make chutney when there has been a glut in the garden (when the courgettes have exploded into unmanageable numbers) or when the green tomatoes have failed to ripen. I too have been right there, with all the sharp recipes, creating little jars of concentrated taste and roughage.

This is a useful long-standing tradition and was a way, in the days prior to freezers, dehydrators or canning, to preserve the excess fruit for consumption over the winter months. Certainly, through judicious use of chutneys I have survived the winters and never fallen foul of the scurvy or the dreaded, potentially fatal winter constipation (The hard bindings). But there are problems with chutney.

The most basic problem is that it converts a glut of one thing (marrows, tomatoes, apples, etc.) into a glut of something else – chutney! The average dose of chutney is perhaps a teaspoon on top of some cheese repeated a few times a week. Chutney has quite a novelty effect; the first few spoonfuls from a freshly opened jar are quite pleasant, but once the jar is half eaten, and the rim crusty with brown gunk, it becomes less appetising. At a generous estimate the annual family consumption might be about 1 jar per year. In creating chutney we have taken a glut of something nice and edible and made a larger glut of something only transiently interesting.

A second problem is that we have made the problem mobile. A glut of courgettes is your problem. It is your storage that is filled and it is your ingenuity that is taxed trying to think of new tasty courgette based meals. Once you have made chutney you are now at liberty to give it to other people. By writing a nice label, and possibly decorating the top of the jar, you can now pass your glut onto someone else. I suppose in this way perhaps you have solved the problem of your glut by giving it to your neighbour. But, be careful, this may work here but the same principle will not be well received if you have an infestation of rats – throwing them over the hedge (wearing ribbons and hats, or not) will be frowned upon.

With chutney the problem is that these little jars become little jars full of guilt. You have to express thanks when you receive them and pretend that you found them a delight on your tongue. After they have hidden at the back of you cupboard for a decent period (on average a year – you’ll be prompted by the arrival of new jars “because you said you liked it so much last year“) you have to throw them out. This will make you feel guilty as you are throwing out something you have barely touched. The disgusting task of trying to empty the gelatinous gunge from the jars for recycling will amplify your feelings of guilt and shame for treating a well meant present from a friend so shabbily.

There is a way to avoid all of this horror. The obvious way is to stop making chutneys but many people would miss this little momento of country life. A simpler method is to recycle. After you receive the chutney, steam off the label, write a new label (“Our Chutney 2020“) and affix this in its place, then at the next present giving session give it back to the original donor. They must have liked it to give it to you, if not it serves them right. The life span of chutney is such that one jar could probably pass backwards and forwards in this system for a decade or so. Think on the green effect of the savings of glass jars – now all you have to do is to think of a way to use up all those courgettes.