The natives are getting restless!

I'm making another escape attempt as soon as it gets misty!

 Earlier in the week,  Matt the stockman for the Belted Galloways at Crickley, had phoned for Martin's assistance. One of his cows 'specialises' in breaking through weaknesses in fences and had spotted an opportunity in part of the stock fencing adjacent to the wooded area down from the 'fort'. So instead of completing the fence clearing work at Clump Farm Martin and I headed for Crickley Hill armed with the required fencing tools. The approach over two long stretches of stock fencing was to take out the top wire and replace with barbed wire to act as a greater deterrent to the rogue cow pushing at the old fencing posts /fencing. A new fence would eventually be required but for now this would suffice. Some basic clearing with loppers was the first step before some neat work with hammer, staples and the all important Myti Strainer braced against the straining post {not the 'monkey strainer' this time!} to get the required tension in the barbed wire strand. Unfortunately we ran out of barbed wire but a quick visit to Ebworth down the road remedied that and we completed the work before close of play.

As Mike was on leave, yep even Rangers can escape, Martin had the chance to use my spare day to catch up on the fence clearing at Clump farm.  Again the weather was misty but we ploughed on with the work with Martin cutting back the hawthorn, crab apple and eldar  as we advanced down the old boundary fence. At first glance, to my untrained eye, it looked like Martin with chainsaw was on a search and destroy mission. However there is method in the madness as a balance is struck between ensuring a clear ,stable fence line is made but healthy hawthorn,crab apple etc will grow back over time hopefully 'balanced' and not weakening the boundary fence.

Anyone seen the chain saw and fuel

Here's the chainsaw!

Found the fuel

For the first time this week the misty weather relented around lunchtime and the sun came out so we didn't feel so cut off from civilisation.  So after a hard mornings work we took a short break. At this point it became obvious we had quite an audience of the local sheep who obviously had heard about the need for more volunteers and were clearly keen to lend a hand. I did point out to Martin the H&S issues e.g. they weren't wearing steel capped chainsaw boots,  proper chain saw trousers or safety helmets. Anyway the sheep saw the sense in this and decided to take advantage of the new food source we had provided while we continued with the work.  Needless to say in spite of best endeavours we couldn't finish the work but we certainly left a large amount of brash for the ever growing bonfire the tenant farmer is building. Hopefully when lit it won't cause a panic throughout the land.