Its cold today, after the glorious weather of the last few days, its a bit on the grey and chilly side today. I had planned to mow and do some spraying, but its not that welcoming outside. Yesterday Adam and I took down all the signs in the carpark, so the hanging sign with our logo, that is safely put away and will come with me, the others all went in for recycling. The carpark looks very odd without them, but perhaps it will encourage those who come to visit that the only notice left is the one that says Closed Permanently and yes it does mean it.

Just over 30 birds have gone so far, with a good number going in the next three weeks. All that have left are settling and we have had photos from some of the people who have had them which is really nice. Viruses have been causing us a few problems though!! Either people who were due to come can caught covid and so could not come. Or they have ended up in a surveillance zone for Avian Influenza, all of which slows down the process of rehoming. It is hard to see the birds go but it will be better for those going to public facilities to have visitors seeing them again, and those going to private people are generally those who did not like the public anyway.

Stratosphere who will go to Helmsley this coming week

The dogs are of course missing visitors, or perhaps I should be more honest as I think really they are missing the scrouging of food!

Another member of bird staff has a new job and the last two are going for interviews in the next couple of weeks. April approaches quickly with Easter very late this year, we are still going to have our traditional easter egg race in the field though.

 

Adam is over in Wales a lot of the time building wonderful temporary aviaries for the vultures who are going over. He hopes to get that all finished by the end of May. Holly has been going over to help with a couple of the eggs that the vultures have laid.

Eager and mate went today to a great home in Norfolk

I am still looking for a new property, the exchange of contracts here I hope will happen in the next couple of weeks, and then I can be more serious about looking. There is not much on the market but I hope that will get better when more people put their properties on the market. It is really frustrating when the estate agents leave all the sold properties on their website. I am also finding that the brochures do not give you the information that you need. Views from above are really useful but rare. A plan of all the buildings would be really useful but also rare. As for the ukfarmsandland website, the damn thing crashes with monotonous regularity which is seriously frustrating.

 

Indian Chestnut, not so beautiful now

There is still some clearing up of tree damage since the last storm, we lost a huge branch off a sycamore tree and that hit my Indian Horse Chestnut, but we have had to wait until the ground is dry enough to take a trailer down and do the clear up.

I had thought that perhaps when I move and have a bit more time and privacy that I would grow my own vegetables, but last year Anna gave me some tomato plants, which grew really well, but only have 5 tomatos and they never went red, so I got fed up with them!

 

So we move on with the next chapter, and we are all on board with what we are doing, the plan is a good one. Actually looking at the horrific price of fuel right now I doubt we would have had many people be able to afford to come, so we have by sheer chance timed it right for ICBP

Not successful tomato plants - never again!!