Hi everyone.
I thought it was about time I posted a blog to let you know what my apprenticeship involves. I am the new farmland conservation apprentice working with the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group (FWAG) based at Vogrie Country Park near Edinburgh. I have been working in the office with Tony Seymour and Rory Sandison (previous apprentice), who have been passing on all their invaluable farmland conservation experience. I have been working for FWAG for 2 months now and it has absolutely flown by!
The first part of my apprenticeship is focussed towards learning about the new government legislation which allows farmers to recieve funding for the conservation work that they do on their farms, making it a viable business option. The new Scottish Rural Development Programme (SRDP) is incredibly complex so I won’t bore you with the details! I have learned how to use a mapping programme to map the farms which we are submitting grant applications for, and have created many a wonderful map, which Tony described as “things of great beauty”, praise indeed! I have also been learning about the different options available to farmers: they can recieve funding for all kinds of things, from planting hedgerows, trees, creating buffer strips along water courses, restoring buildings, and even for new tractors. Through working on the applications I have had the chance to meet many of our clients, and have mastered the art of dealing with farmers’ dogs, I seem to be a collie dog magnet – I have permanent paw marks on my clothes from where I am jumped on as soon as I get out the car! It’s been great to go out to the farms and see where the funding is going, looking at areas where we intend to plant hedges and whole fields which will be turned into seed eating bird heaven.
I have also been working on a pond project which aims to create a network on Great Crested Newt ponds across the Lothians. One site which we are working on in West Lothian already has GCN in some ponds which were created last year, and I hope that the new ponds that I am creating will soon be home to many happy newts.
Anyhoo, I will blog again soon, hopefully I will get some pictures up to show what I have been doing! over and out.