New Year 2024

I am smiling at the moment because the wind and rain have stopped but my to do list this year is growing and not just in the Outback. However, it is all VERY exciting.

• We have ponds full to the brim and have found more Woodcock in the Outback enjoying the damp contions and long grass.
• We can now see where the emerging scrub and trees are and so are able to make informed decisons on which areas to leave to grow and which to cut with the tractor horse (new breed!) and encourage a meadow.
• Hedge laying can commence now the berries are disapearing fast. We have a window to do this work and any other hedge trimming before the 1st of march and nesting season.
• Ivy berries come into their own now for wildlife as the only berry that is still on the bush into February, so please give them a little longer before your trim!

It is also the season for conferences and CPD. I have a few scheduled but two deserve a mention.

EA Sustain at First Sight in Colchester. Two days of amazing discussions with brilliant people all along the theme of sustainability and doing something good with the land and this year water and sea too.  I really reccomend a visit next January. Take a look at the line up on the photo below.

Also a Landowners information and discusion group at Great Braxted Hall organised by Essex County Council to develop the Landscape Nature Recovery Network. Identifying existing and possible sites for wildlife and carbon sequestration and linking them up across the county. As I say a habitat cannot exisit is isolation, it must be connected and that goes for your back garden too, so plant a hedge, a tree and pop in a few hedgehog holes at the bottom of your fence!