A Week on the Estate: Walnut Harvest, Bird Census & Fruitful Foraging
We hope we find you flourishing as we welcome a fine spell of autumnal sunshine. Last week’s decidedly dreich weather has yielded to high pressure and the weekend is set fair but breezy with sunny spells and a temperature range of 16C-7C.
The Saturday Club have been busy with autumnal jobs. They’ve been checking some of last year’s bird-boxes to see how many have been used. It’s looking like good news so watch this space. Out on the parkland, the team harvested walnuts ahead of the Lincoln Reds moving into a particularly lush paddock. Our cattle are expert foragers and are partial to low-hanging fruit as well as fresh herbage.
The Saturday Club’s job-list doesn’t lack variety and aficionados of our award-winning artisan gins may have cause to be grateful. The Massingberd-Mundy Distillery is working on a special edition of Marie Jeanne Pink Gin featuring seasonal wild berries picked by our hard-working young people. Keep an eye on Massingberd-Mundy socials HERE as this strictly limited edition will sell quickly.
Lovers of a fine tipple won’t be the only ones to benefit from the Saturday Club’s largesse. Our diverse and thriving population of wild birds will be helped through the coldest months by suet balls made by the team using the Estate’s own beef fat, seeds and grains.
Don’t forget to check our BirdWeather HERE. Our acoustic monitors keep track of the movers and shakers in our population of wild birds and there’s a lot going on out there. At the time of writing, the diminutive goldcrest is our most vocal resident with 498 detections in the last 24 hours. At the shy end of the chart, we’ve had a single report each from a meadow pipit, a yellow-browed warbler, an osprey and a long-eared owl.
