A Week on the Estate: Pushing Silt, Boosting Volume & Gripping Ragwort

The Lake is still outwardly appealing but needs a generation’s worth of maintenance. An original depth of 2m has been reduced to 10cm by sediment. While our ducks, swans, greylags and other wildfowl may enjoy the novelty of foraging without getting their tail feathers wet, the lack of volume limits the scope for plant and animal life.

A temporary track has been laid from Brinkhill Road and it’s going to earn its keep. A silt pusher – essentially a hefty, amphibious bulldozer – is gathering up silt from the lake-bed for excavators to scoop up and deposit on the land. That silt is then removed by lorries to be used as a home-made, organic fertiliser on our arable land for many seasons to come.

Improvements to the Lake are drawing upon 18th and 19th-century illustrations as a guide to the original designers’ shared vision. We’ve already reduced fencing and tree-crowding and new and sympathetic planting will frame the setting nicely. We’ll also fix the leak in the lake-head, add a fish path, re-create a boathouse and dredge metres of sediment. We’re looking into the possibility of hydro-electricity generation.

In the next few years, we hope that a deeper, more capacious and free-flowing Lake in our biodiverse setting will attract all sorts of new residents. Maybe we’ll get to talk about eels, otters, pike, trout and more in years to come. And when you buy our produce, it may have been helped to grow by generations of lake silt.

On a slightly smaller scale but no less important for that, the Saturday Club finished off clearing ragwort from the parkland last weekend in weather that was perfect for outdoor work – not too hot, not too cold and dry for a change. They also took the opportunity to bone up on the risks posed by ragwort to grazing animals, the need to wear PPE while handling it and how to dispose of it safely. Weeds love sunshine and showers so the team made time for garden maintenance too. It looks like their pumpkins are going to be huge by October.

Finally, are you on Etsy? We’ve set up a South Ormsby Estate Etsy Shop for our hand-crafted products, starting with Massingberd-Mundy Milk Soap. If you’re an Etsy user, it would be hugely helpful if you could follow our page and tell your friends. Click HERE to find out more.

Thanks, as ever, for supporting us in our endeavours.

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