The Drone Moss Welly (near) Disaster

So another month has passed and I am now exactly one year into my apprenticeship, just six months to go *panic*. In my second month at Edwin Thompson in Berwick I have been all over the countryside, making me wonder why anyone would want to work in a normal 9-5! The deadline for the SRDP passed without major incident, though Patrick (my new mentor) and I were in a mild panic at 4pm, with just one hour to go we were still frantically emailing documents faster than the system could cope with. Following that we both had a few days off to recover, which I mostly spent sitting in a tractor with my boyfriend doing the harvest, can’t get away from this farming!

Since the deadline we have had a steady stream of emails from case officers wanting us to change things or asking us questions on the application. The most ridiculous request that we have had is for photographs of every single fence for which we had applied for removal. So of course, I then spent a whole day driving round 7 farms taking photographs of delapidated fences (which involved being chased by a herd of young bullocks, being scratched to pieces by gorse and hawthorn and wondering where on earth I was going with my career!). I then spent the whole next day sorting through 204 photographs of fences trying to remember where on earth the photo was taken, and yes, they all look the same!

There have been some good times in the last month too. I went to SAC Ayr to do a two day Phase One habitat surveying course which (although ridiculously far away!) was very useful and I picked up a few new plant names as well. I have also been out with Sarah Eno from SNH to do some site condition monitoring on Drone Moss near Coldingham. Again, there was a lot of scrambling through gorse, and various spiky things, but it was a lovely day and, having never studied moss before (I know Oliver, it’s shocking!) I learnt a lot. The day nearly ended in disaster though, when I was walking merrily along, admiring the moss and the birds and thinking life was marvellous when I fell and my leg was instantly sucked into the dark depths of the bog. Now being a farmer’s daughter, I have had my legs caught in many a clarty hole, and I was all too aware that I may lose my welly (heaven forbid). I tried the traditional method of extracting oneself from a bog, i.e. I scrabbled around hopelessly for something to grab onto, and then attempted a rocking motion to create more space around my welly. It was no use however and I had to pull my foot out welly-less. Thankfully, due to my lightning reactions, I was able to retrieve the welly by hand as it was slowly disappearing from sight and disaster was averted!

Aside from the near-loss of my welly, things have been going well in my new placement. I am starting to learn about the English schemes and how they fit in with farming in the Borders and North Northumberland, and I hope to do some applications on my own, which will mean a chance to do an application from the survey stages right through to the finished result, which is a lot of pressure but I’ll enjoy the challenge! Meantime, here are some pics from my survey days oot and a nice picture of the tractor at sunset. It really is the good life round here you know!