The Site
Our farm has land either side of a very small road. South of the road the fields run along the Ythan, a river which, a few miles downstream forms the Ythan estuary, a RAMSAR listed wetland and SSSI.
North of the road most of the land is curently bare grazing land. Just above the road however we have an area of beautiful mature scots pines and some old beech trees, standing among old stone dykes and patches of gorse.
What's there now?
We are seeing more wildlife than we expected as our baseline, and even the heavily grazed grassland is showing a much better mix of wildflowers than we had hoped seeing the bare grazed fields in the Winter.
The River
Our fields include about 1/2 km of river bank along the Ythan. These are in a flat bottomed river valley, and largely flooded during snowmelt in the Winter. The prevalence of rushes highlights the wet nature of this land.
Previously most of these fields were seasonally grazed like the rest of the farm, and they are already showing a mix of wild flowers in contrast to the grazed fields just over the river.
We saw otters along the river regularly from December through early April.
The Trees
We have, according to the delightful tree specialist who came to assess them for us, about forty trees on the land, all to the North of the road.
We are especially keen to see regeneration of the scots pines, which are all large mature trees. We also have some enormous beech, which are starting to develop decay holes, providing great little habitats. Last year was a bumper mast year, and we are seeing lots of beech seedlings. We're waiting to see how they do with no livestock grazing, just the pressure of feeding deer.
The Stones
Like most farms locally, we have stone dykes, supplemented by barbed wire fencing, marking our boundaries. We also have much smaller enclosures marked out by old stone walls in one area just above the road. The walls are great habitats, and also aesthetically charming.
Rocks are a major feature of the land here, above and below ground, and of diverse types. Apparently moving glaciers collected a cargo of rocks from multiple locations and dropped them here as they melted, leaving us with a stunning collection of minerals scattered over the fields, and a virtually unploughable quantity of rocks in the soil.
The Grass
We have grass.
Lots of grass!!
The farm was grazing land until the end of December 2022.
The largest area is improved grassland, comprised of a limited number of species of agricultural grasses. Left ungrazed in 2023, this generated tall grass which rippled in the wind and shone in the sunshine and provided a nest-site for yellowhammers. In general though, 'improved' grassland supports very limited biodiversity.
We also, it turns out, have multiple patches of species-rich, unimproved acid grassland, a rare habitat supporting a range of native wildlflowers and hence invertbrates. Which is nice!
The Reeds
The Last field to the East along the riverbank is fenced and was not previously grazed. We were initially puzzled by its different appearance in the Winter, it turns out to be a cultivated reedbed, apparently planted historically to provide reeds for thatching hay ricks. This adds an interesting additional habitat, as well as a pleasing bit of historical context. Any living- history enthusiasts in need of authentic reeds, please get in touch!
Ooops!
We expected the last domestic livestock to have finished grazing the land in November 2022, however, 'Daisy' the right-to-roam cow has sullied our base data by regularly clambering over the boundary wall to get back to familiar ground. We had a quick learning excercise on the Scottish 'fence out' rather than just 'fence in' policy, and some emergency stone shifting and wire twisting seems to have deterred her for the time being.