Week Ending 26th January 2014

It's the end of what has been a mentally rather than physically tiring week for us down in Devon.

Most of our spare time has been dominated by the question of what happens once our last 3 weeks here at Occombe are finished. For several weeks now we've been trawling through the job adverts weighing up pros against cons, and trying to judge whether swings or roundabouts are better for you. The answer after all of this soul searching is still not clear.

It's especially difficult when your head and your heart constantly pull you in opposing directions, and you are never quite sure which one to listen to. We've now sent in applications for a couple of different jobs (including one to stay here at Occombe), and I guess we'll just have to see how they get on. Sod's law is the one that we want the most is the one that's last to recruit, and so we may take another job only to find that we could have got the one we wanted. Equally if we turn down another offer first there's no guarantee that we'll even get an interview for it!

Whatever happens I'm sure we will have fun whichever direction we go in, and the only truly bad situation would be that we end up with none of them! 

Going for a walk through the woods

Our drainage trench at the back of the Anderson Shelter is still not completed as the flooding did not subside until the middle of the week, and pressures on out time meant that other things had to take priority when the weather actually did play ball! When it is finished (and the rain stops for long enough to get the camera out) I will take a couple of photos of the shelter and pop them on here as I know a few of you are keen to see it.

This week has seen us down at the seaside for a couple of days, with a coastal geography lesson on the cards for a few groups of school children. We have been helping them to discover the problems of coastal erosion by making them build a mini Torbay coastline out of sand, which is then subjected to some imitation waves (courtesy of a bucket of sea water). The challenge for the children is then to rebuild their model, but this time with coastal defences (such as sea walls built of rocks and stones) and we compare what differences their defences make to the erosion that their model suffers.

On another day we were filmed taking a small group of children rock pooling as part of a new promotional video for the Trust. So before too long there will be such a video out there on the internet with both of us being interviewed!

The great office reshuffle of 2014 is still in full swing, and much of our time has been taken by helping to pack up various offices and all their resources and move them to a new location (normally to find that the builders haven't quite finished yet!). 

This last weekend we got a chance to catch up with our friend Stuart with whom we worked on Flat Holm. Stu is now a trainee with the Devon Wildlife Trust living just up the road from us outside of Exeter. A few drinks were enjoyed by all as we caught up on our latest escapades!

Wildlife sightings have been few and far between this week with most of the animals doing the sensible thing for once and staying out of the rain! There were still a few birds down at the hide though where I was trying to keep myself dry during one of the showers!

A Bull Finch and a Blue Tit enjoying some sunflower seeds

This weeks news story is all about birds and comes from the Vatican. The white doves that the Pope releases are of course a well known sign of peace. However a Herring Gull and a Crow show what they think of this display of peace. They always say never work with animals....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-25905108

See you next time! 

Week Ending 19th January 2014

It's been a quiet (and rainy) week here at Occombe Farm, with very few people tempted to come out in the bad weather. The weather continues to be remarkably mild for this time of year, although one day this week did bring quite a crisp frost with it.

The frosted details on the leaves looked amazing!

The main task of the week has actually been prompted by the bad weather, as the Anderson shelter in our wartime garden has been continuously flooding in the heavy rain. With anywhere up to 2 feet of water inside it has remained off limits to the public for quite some time, and so the decision was made to install a drainage system.

With the shelter already being buried half way into the ground there was a lot of digging involved to simply reach the base of the shelter where the pipe would be installed, followed by an even deeper trench that the pipe would then run off into. Finally even more digging would then create a soak away at the end of the pipe to take away all the water. The largest issue came in the form of the ground already being saturated, making the heavy clay soil here even heavier.

The start of the great dig, before the monsoon that followed around an hour later!

With the rain continually falling while we were digging the trench began to fill up around us, with our bailing out efforts not keeping pace with the water coming in! After 4 days of battling the elements we had to accept that the weather would have to improve and the water subside before we can finish the job. At the time of writing the water level is still an inch or so above the top of the trench, so finishing the job tomorrow is not looking likely!

Despite the bad weather, the birds have still been out in force with flocks of redwings, several herons and woodpeckers all being spotted on the farm.

Great Spotted Woodpecker hiding in the tree

Green Woodpecker down on the ground searching for ants

While the squirrels may be a nuisance eating all of the bird food they are still pretty cute!

Our application to work on the Calf of Man has unfortunately been unsuccessful. After making the shortlist we were not selected for an interview, but it is good to know that we are not falling at the first hurdle for these types of  job now. We still have a couple more irons in the fire so to speak, and we will wait and see what comes of them. 

This weeks odd news story comes from Japan, and highlights an old tradition for bridegrooms that I am glad we do not have in this country!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-25777727

See you next time!

Week Ending 5th January 2014

So here we are in 2014! I hope that you all had a good Christmas and hopefully 2014 will be a good year for you all.

It's been a few weeks since I blogged last, so apologies to those of you that have been waiting patiently. If there were two words I could use to sum up the last few weeks they would be wet and windy. Certainly while we have been down in Devon I have never known an area to get so much rain, and the ground here has gone well beyond saturation point. I guess that it's a blessing that we are not any nearer the sea or a river on the farm down here otherwise flooding would become a serious consideration. The wet weather isn't bad for everybody though as these visiting ducks proved after the copious rain filled a ditch, forming a nice lake for them to swim on!

Nice weather for ducks!

The wind has been equally as strong, and on some nights we sit watching a film feeling the caravan rocking in the wind around us. It is a step up from a tent however, and it makes me think back to some of the terrible storms we camped through in various parts of the world!

It was great to get home and see friends and family for a short while at Christmas, and as you would expect there was certainly the feeling of eating too much good food afterwards! It was also nice to be a little lazy for a while as we put the studying on the back burner for quite a few of our "home days".

Merry Christmas everybody!

The course seems to be going well on the whole, and we are now approaching the point where we are about two thirds of the way through. It would be nice to see if we can finish it by the time our contract finishes in Devon, but as that is only 6 weeks away it might be cutting it a little fine!

Where we will be come 6 weeks time however still remains a mystery. We are going to apply to stay at the farm for a further 9  months in a similar capacity, which would also bring some extra qualifications along with it. We have also applied for a paid position  as wardens on the Calf of Man, and so we will wait and see how that application goes. If all else fails we do have some work lined up from June onward with the Kent Wildlife Trust, but at only 3 days a week and with no accommodation it falls behind the other two in terms of our current preferences.

So the real work begins again next week as the rest of the team come back to the farm following the Christmas break. It's going to be a busy time as there is a departmental shake up underway and we are all having to move offices as well as making space for a few new staff. Fingers crossed it will all run smoothly.

As a last resort should we not get a new job straight away, I could always try and use this blog to sell my skills to potential employers; much like this man from the Netherlands did....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-news-from-elsewhere-25574651

Have a good week everybody!