You could hear a pindrup

By now the Glorious Grasslands project would have switched from seed harvesting to seed spreading. But the amazing hot week and how late everything is this year means that it’s still productive to harvest seed.

I shared a lift today with Andrew, which turned out not to be an optimum decision after the way the day mapped out. We thought we would spend the whole day with two harvesters at Pindrup farm. I had visited there a couple of weeks ago, but everything was still in flower. Today the second growth had come through and the dead seeds had fallen to the ground.

We managed to harvest a few field margins but there were slim pickings. One of the sections was species rich, but small.

There was a lot of blue fleabain, which is quite rare to see. We hand harvested a good portion of that. There was also a lot of wild basil, but that didn’t pick up well through the harvester.

After lunch, I went to Shill Hill with Lorna – a much more reliable site and a place where we do a lot of habitat management in the winter. This was a very rich grassland, and everything was in seed. The field scabious in particular was a good haul. I would estimate we collected 15kg.

Andrew went with Harvey up to Bourton on Water to do a small field there. But of course he had to come back to pick me up. So all in all, it was not a great day for logistics.