RAISING APPLE SEEDLINGS Orchards accompanied every farmstead and small holding in the Olden Days. The seasonal pressing of apples for cider and juice was part and parcel of normal life. Back then, leftover ‘mash’ (pulped apples) was fed to pigs or spread in odd field corners to over-winter and, the next spring, see what came [...]
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Posts Tagged ‘fox’
DIRTY NAILS BLOG by Joe Hashman RAISING APPLE SEEDLINGS
Friday, May 28th, 201027January 2010 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman ROADKILL
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010ROADKILL Randy dog foxes are on the move. The lust inside males of this species seems to be as strong as that which grips two-legged mammals. In these long dark months before the spring he’s out and about, hot-footing it through the landscape in search of a mate. I saw three stark signs of sex in [...]
Read More »16 January 2010 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman SIGNS OF SPRING
Saturday, January 16th, 2010SIGNS OF SPRING On the homeward leg of my daily constitutional, I swung left along a barbed wire fence below the slippage underneath fields adjacent to what was Church Farm. The ground was squelchy; stud-bottomed trainers sunk uncomfortably deep. Leg over an iron gate, across the Very Steep Hill, another gate and shimmy through a [...]
Read More »29 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman OBSERVATIONS FROM THE A34…, HEDGEROW TREES UP FRINGFORD WAY, MILTON KEYNES CENTRAL
Sunday, November 29th, 2009OBSERVATIONS FROM THE A34 NEWBURY BY-PASS HEADING NORTH A MILE SOUTH OF CHIEVELEY SERVICES Hawthorn and hazel in a lay-by on the A34 Newbury by-pass are doing well. They bulge within their corrugated degradeable plastic tubes and make a fine, shrubby hedge behind the steel crash barrier and line of four evenly-spaced rubbish bins. These [...]
Read More »22 November 2009 DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman IN THE MARL PIT
Sunday, November 22nd, 2009Tess is a fox who lives in West Dorset. She’s five years old now, which is ripe old age for this heavily persecuted species of wild dog. I’ve told Tess’s early history in A Vegetable Gardener’s Year on pages 48, 49 and 96. Yesterday I popped in on her adopted carers, Derek and Elizabeth, to [...]
Read More »18 May 2009: DIRTY NAILS’ BLOG by Joe Hashman OPENING A NATURE AREA, MEMORIES, GREAT TITS PREPARING TO FLEDGE
Monday, May 18th, 200918 May 2009 OPENING A NATURE AREA Life has many surprises. A recent one for me was being invited to open a nature reserve area in the grounds of Stalbridge Primary School. The cutting of the ribbon took place this morning in breezy sunshine at nine o’clock. In front of the entire school and interested [...]
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