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Stinkhorn Fungi, Broxtead Estate, October 2011

Shaggy ink-cap, stinkhorns, parasols – you have to be a country person to know these are names of fungi that appear in the autumn.  The parasol is a common species that likes well-drained soil and gets its name from the shape of a “lady’s parasol”.  Stinkhorns have a spore mass that smell of carrion or  dung in order to attract flies and insects who disperse their spores.  The Shaggy ink-cap was originally boiled with cloves to make ink.  From the names of fungi and mushrooms, I think our forebears had a closer relationship to wild mushrooms than our generation who view such “growths” with suspicion.

The landscape at Broxtead is a mixture of farm land,  heathland, and mixed woodlands.  Many of England’s finest trees grow here, particularly the English Oak (Quercus robur) so it is with great sadness we have learnt of a new disease in our Oaks called acute oak decline (A.O.D.) which kills the trees within four to five years.  It is a bacterial infection causing extensive “bleeding” of a dark, sticky substance from splits in the bark.  Canopy dieback is not severe until the tree is near death and as it appears to be easily transferable, it has the potential to have a serious impact on the health of our Oak trees.

 We have also found a wood-boring beetle in affected trees known as the Oak Jewel beetle (Agrilus biguttatus).  Since the 1990’s, this beetle is becoming increasingly common taking advantage of the tree’s weakened state and further debilitating it.  The larvae feed on the inner bark, pupate to form the adult beetles which leave the tree via “D”-shaped exit holes.  The Forestry Commission and the Woodland Trust are carrying out further tests.  If you would like to add to their research,  visit their website at www.forestresearch.gov.uk/oakdecline  or contact them on sandra.denman@forestry.gsi.gov.uk.

 Our onion harvest has finished now with massive yields recorded and whilst the weather continues fine and dry, we are drilling  winter cereals.

Firewood logs

 With winter around the corner, the estate is cutting and delivering firewood, and muck-spreading is under way to prepare the soil for next year’s crops.  Other pre-winter jobs include repairs to farm buildings and machinery maintenance of items to be laid-up for the winter.

Whilst we enjoy the current sunny days and mild temperatures, gardens and fields are bouncing with Greenfinches, Gold finches, Blue-tits and Great-tits who love to feed on seed heads, in particular, thistles.  Grey squirrels scurry everywhere hiding their winter-store of nuts.  A particularly laden walnut tree outside the office has been systematically raided over the last few weeks by these clever little tree-rats.

It’s been a busy time at Broxtead these last 6 weeks.  We are into onion harvest now hot on the heels of potatoes and cereals.  We have also been sharing our onion harvest with the rest of Great Britain through the media.  AJ Paul took part in “Foodie Friday” on BBC1’s, The One Show on Friday, 16^th September and as I write, he is being interviewed for a weekend piece coming up in the Telegraph.  Anyone for Onion Soup?   Our potatoes and onions are available for purchase at The Suffolk Food Hall, Wherstead, near Ipswich (underneath the Orwell Bridge) or visit their website.

 This month’s weather has been warm with regular showers and our hedgerows and wild spaces are as colourful and abundant as anyone’s garden.  I spotted a wild mint with a pretty pale purple flower growing by the side of a farm road last week having just marvelled at the water lilies flowering again on the loam ponds.  The cereal crops have sprouted and bring a fresh green to the countryside whilst “tree-greens” are tiring.

       Pink Water Lily flowers emerging on the loam ponds

  As summer blooms into autumn, there will be all sorts of fungi emerging and I shall  attempt  to include some photos and descriptions next month with AJ’s help who is  knowledgeable enough to avoid anything poisonous.  I am looking forward to the array of  Autumn’s leaf colours and newly turned ploughed soil on the land, and the wildness and  drama that appears along the Suffolk coastline when the winter sets in.  Even better when you can return to a warm fire either in our local pub in Shottisham, or at our holiday lets at Vale Farm.

                                            Wild Mint at Broxtead              

 In the office too, our year end approaches with preparations underway to give some thought about the financial year to come.  We are also taking bookings for the year ahead at Vale Farm Barns particularly for the party season (that shall remain nameless – it is only September!) .  Vale Farm Barns can be rented as a whole providing accommodation for 18 people – all of whom can dine around our enormous dining table in Vancouver barn for a great get-together.  (All the necessary decorations are provided so no “taking-down” session in the New Year which I always think is the worst bit!)  (Visit Big House Holidays website for “whole-barn” bookings or www.suffolkcottageholidays.co.uk.)

 In farming, there is a feeling of our “year” drawing to a close – once marked by Old Michaelmas Day on October 11^th when tenant farmers traditionally paid their farm rent to their landlord.  The nights drawing-in will be welcomed by our arable staff who seemed to have worked all the daylight hours since last Spring!  Once our onions are safely stored, we will have plenty of time to enjoy the Broxtead autumn and winter.

BLACKBERRIES, HARVEST, AND CHRISTMAS!

 I have decided that seasons are like friends.  You can divide them into two categories; those that arrive early and those that arrive late.  This season is definitely an early one.  I have picked 2 kg of blackberries (by 8^th August) and the spring barley is going through the combine as I write (9^th August) with winter barley cut and already in the barn.  This photo is our foreman David harvesting on Meeting House field.

We are mainly vegetable growers here at Broxtead.  Our light sandy soil  is ideal for growing great veg that can be lifted in all weathers.  We supply all the supermarkets with red, brown, and spring onions, carrots, and potatoes. and have been lifting potatoes since 7^th June.  Lorries are loaded almost every day at this time of year with the men working long hours after a 5.30am start.  Throw in a couple of breakdowns, wet weather, and a difficult growing season behind us, I admire their patience in “getting on with it”. 

These 4 photos explain the process of lifting and transporting potatoes from the field before they are collected for distribution around the country.

The potato harvester is very hi-tech with adjustable lifting shears, webs and cleaner-rollers  and a “tent” at the rear where a “gang” get rid of any rubbish that made it over the webs but doesn’t meet the produce quality standard required.  Our man-in-charge of this bit of kit is Colin who has eyes in the back of his head by way of a monitor in his cab rigged up to cameras all over the machine so he can check for blockages and get a visual connection to the pickers on the back.  The tractor drivers have to move in harmony with the harvester as the potatoes are loaded into each box on the trailer.  As they leave the conveyor arm they fall through a net system which breaks their fall so they don’t bruise.  Everything about this harvesting system has been cleverly thought through to ensure you all get great potatoes.

The harvesting season being 2 weeks earlier than normal will hopefully mean less of a panic to get next year’s crops drilled before the weather turns and 14-hour-days are just a memory.  Thank goodness for fixed calendar dates or Christmas would be 2 weeks early!

WILD FLOWERS, CROSSED BEAKS AND 100 NOT OUT!

Some wild flowers, just like more “domesticated” plants, flower better in some years than others.  Long dry springs followed by torrential early summer showers are clearly good for Ragwort whose yellow flowers seem to stand so tall and luminous against their leaf-green backdrops in the hedgerows and fields here at Broxtead.

  It really does stand out this year blowing in the breeze with                   equally tall Willow Herb blooming and is all interspersed with umbellifers (great word – my computer is not liking it so I do!) – this describes the Cow Parsley and Hogweed that form part of the plant family known for their aromatic qualities with hollow stems whose cluster of flowers form a compound “umbel”.  I shall be looking out for the rare Red-tipped Cudweed that is due to flower this month – it likes bare ground with no competition.  These umbellifers are standing proud in Sandy Lane, Broxtead.

Meanwhile, on the commercial growing side of things, the rain has perked up all the crops and we look set to start harvesting cereals shortly.  The yields will be low and the straw short due to the dry spring.  We continue to lift potatoes – two different varieties of delicious Bakers known as Maris Piper and Marfona.

After the excitement of last month’s sighting of the European Roller, our local newsletter contains a photo of a Crossbill, taken at Tangham near Upper Hollesley Common just at the edge of Broxtead. Described as “a chunky finch with a large head and bill which is crossed over at the tips”, adult males are a distinctive brick-red and females greenish-brown. They are resident all year round and eat conifer seeds.

Here in the Estate Office, alongside all the every day management tasks, we are looking to the future by looking back!  Before you think we are taking the Pilates and Yoga practised by staff a little further by turning into time-travelling contortionists, we are looking to celebrate the 100^th Anniversary of the Paul Family’s ownership of the Broxtead Estate in 2014.  The estate’s history until 1914 has been extensively written about in the book “Sutton People”  by Greville Bickerton (visit www.suttonpeople.com )  and this is a great opportunity for us to research life at Broxtead  since then by talking to retired members of staff about their recollections of working life here – and I mean life – several worked here from the age of 14 until they retired and who now live on the Estate in our retirement homes.  I also hope to look into the history of some of the families who have been connected with the Estate and whose twenty-first century generation still work here today.  We envisage a display of some sort once we have collected and collated all the information over the next 3 years so if you have anything to add, please contact Ali Hollingsworth on 01394 411242.

LIFEBOATS, ROLLERS, AND THE END OF AN ERA                   BROXTEAD JUNE 11

The nearest beach to Broxtead is at the end of the peninsula; a little village called Bawdsey.  It boasts a fine Manor House now an International School, a WWII radar bunker, and a small sandy beach.  You can catch the little boat across the mouth of the River Deben to Old Felixstowe and admire the view to your right, clear up the river to the BT tower in the distance at Martlesham, and to the left, the river draining in and out of the North Sea at a frightening rate.  In the winter, it’s a spot that can be bleak and moody with the wind whipping little frothy white waves up the river whilst the grey winter drizzle descends, and in the summer it is popular with families enjoying the beach.  I probably love it the most when it is deserted in the winter and I have to remind myself of the importance of sharing this great place in the summer with Suffolk’s visitors.

As I sit admiring the view from the Boathouse Café I can see that it is Lifeboat Day today and I can see this great boat-shaped spectacle of nautical advancement moored up at the opposite quay.  The local fishermen are roaring up and down the river in the fishing vessels with their RNLI flags flying to show their support of this unique and valuable institution whilst at the same time drawing the public’s attention to their means of fishing.  The fishermen work hard in all weathers, take financial risks,  all in a notoriously dangerous industry – no wonder fishing and farming are so closely linked. So many similarities.

Our voices as farmers were hopefully heard above all the Trade stands and exhibitions at the Suffolk Show at the beginning of this month.  The public need to understand how this recent drought impacts on the price of food produced in the Eastern counties.  Hopefully the farmers will receive some of the increased prices paid and it is not wholly swallowed up by the Supermarkets’ global drive for increased profits. 

This month at Broxtead will see us lifting more potatoes and possibly harvesting barley and wheat earlier than normal.

There has been a sighting of a European Roller on Upper Hollesley Common (northern edge of the Estate).  This rare visitor normally sticks to Spain, eastern Europe and Asia.  From the comfort of my office, I can see in the identification book that the adult birds are a beautiful blue with a reddish-brown “top-coat”.  No doubt he is feasting on the varied insect diet we can offer him here at Broxtead.

Finally, the end of an era has drawn to a close in the history of the Paul Family in Ipswich.  “Woodside” was the family home of Miss Jean and Miss Pamela Paul but has now been sold to new owners.  Mr Colin Prew was the Woodside gardener for 40 years and it was my priviledge to join him with AJ and Julie Paul on a tour of the house and garden.  It truly was like stepping back in time and I am looking forward to interviewing “Prew” as part of the Broxtead Living History Project (more to come on this subject later!)

For now, a picture of the house and AJ and Julie Paul.

MAY 2011,  BLUE TITS, WEATHER, & NEW POTATOES

Through my open bedroom window last night, I could hear the gentle chit,chit,chit of an irrigator pouring gallons of fake rainfall (an expensive substitute) on the next-door crop of Spring Barley.  I recall the brown dust bowl that is now my garden, and think I have woken up in late summer.  I then remember that I heard the cuckoo yesterday; that I still have vegetable seeds to sow, and …..REWIND!  It is still May and the driest since 1910 and I wouldn’t be either British or in farming if I didn’t like to moan about the weather.

The weather is the hardest challenge in farming; so completely out of our control.  If we could, I am sure we would be up there, above the clouds, spraying them with whatever the stuff is the Americans have instead of just carrying out daily rain-dances and muttering non-American Indian chants like “I wish it would bloody-well rain”.  The actual fact is that we have had 3.5mm since 20^th April and on light sandy soils (seriously, our farm tracks are like sandy beaches all year round) our crops would be dust without the intervention of irrigators 24-7.  The heathland is looking tinder-dry too and I have just had a tenant asking for a fire-break near his cottage as he is so worried.

On a brighter note, David, our farm foreman, is making his annual noises about lifting some new potatoes (samples only, of course!)  making us office staff drool at the prospect of those little round tubers dripping with hot butter, sea-salt, and black pepper.  Definitely one of my favourite times in the farming calendar, although this year it will be when I can get drenched in the rain whilst out walking.

 Which reminds me, I hear the Common Spotted Orchid is blooming on the Estate and I must capture its beauty in a photo for next month’s blog.  In the meantime, this photo is of a very frayed and overworked parent (no, not me) of cute Blue Tits who have reared their young in between the walls of the Shepherd’s Hut.

   The young are now sticking their heads out of the hole and starting to look at a whole      new  world that awaits  them.  With their dark coloured band of feathers across their eyes, they look like little bandits.  The Broxtead Grapevine tells me that they have equally greedy cousins nesting in the old blue tractor opposite the Estate Office and also in the garden of Broxtead House.  Any day now the estate Blue Tit population is going to swell quite considerably…..

Being a newish estate resident myself, I am amazed at the variety of birdlife in my garden at Pinetree Cottage.  The main attraction is the ‘free’ food and drink (my hen’s layer pellets and water) but it’s a small price to pay to have such brilliantly coloured feathered lodgers in the shape of Gold Finches and Chaffinches, a cheeky cuckoo who took a bath in the little iron water trough, and a Dunnock who produced three young from my Sage bush right by the front door.  ‘Best Song’ category definitely goes to the Blackbird who sits on my now defunct old TV aerial atop the cottage and “gives it large”  to anyone who cares to listen and the ‘Small but Gutsy” section is won by the Wren whilst sitting on a branch of my uncut log pile.  How does such a small creature produce so much song?  Clearly not down to lung capacity.  “Greediest Bird” category has a clear winner with Mr and Mrs Pheasant.  Could be good with those new potatoes…..?

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