By Tria Stebbing.

The field remains beautiful, with autumn colours now a kaleidoscope of orange hues. The Ash has dropped everything while the Oak is hanging on to its leaves. We have two deer that have taken up residency under one of the oaks. They bask in the sun but remain vigilant, constantly watching and alert.

Hedge laying is again taking priority over the small jobs that usually take all the time. If you can imagine the hedge being a living corridor in which insects, birds and mammals nest, while at the same time acting as a barrier to stop the sheep from escaping, then you can see why we need to preserve it.
To the untrained eye it might look fine, it is after all a hedge, doing its job. The reality is that it is getting thin, dying back in places and becoming top heavy, a lollipop hedge.
Him outdoors is shortly to spend his annual leave in the hedge, cutting nearly all the way through the pleaches in an uphill direction with his billhook and lying them down so they can thicken the base and send new shoots up, forming the new stronger hedge.

Different parts of the country have different methods of hedging as they have different needs – some hedges have a line of woven Hazel to finish off the top, ours remains rustic and functional. Time is of the essence again as hedge-laying after March is not allowed, as the birds and mammals will have begun to nest again.
As the field is currently resting with the sheep away on summer grazing, it is a good time to do a bit of nettle pulling. Every year we think we have seen the back of them – and then whoosh, there they are. The sheep are not keen and do not graze patches with nettles, so we end up with areas that are not touched. I do wonder why it is they love the wild garlic, though, surely nettles are nicer?

The sheep are looking good, there are rather a lot of them now, scattered in different paddocks around our home village. We are late lambing again next year, so the girls are grazing fresh long grass this week to flush through before Humphrey visits them next week. I think they are getting used to the weight of their sodden fleece, looking particularly curly at the moment – at least they are clean!
It is a quiet time at the field, time to step back and marvel at those colours.