Kilkhampton Parish News – September 2012

 

Once again, floods feature in the news! Saturday 4th August was a much anticipated day, being the date on which we had arranged to pick up our Balwen lambs and shearling ewes. Armed with a brand new sheep trailer, Dennis and John set out in the afternoon to pick up the sheep from Ian and Gillian Dixon at South Yeo Farm, near Hatherleigh.

Everything went smoothly and according to plan until the return journey. Leaving Holsworthy on the road to Bude it was obvious that the immediate area had suffered an extremely heavy rainstorm. Water was pouring on to the road from the fields and at the small bridge by Pancrasweek turning the water was at least a foot deep across the road and rising fast. Worse still, as we approached Barton Gate we could see a traffic jam ahead that obviously indicated worse flooding at Tamarstone.

Not wanting to be stuck with a trailer load of sheep we decided on a quick turn around in the farm gateway and headed back through the deepening floods to Holsworthy. We decided on the high road to Chilsworthy and across to Kilkhampton cross the river at Tamar Lake. Even the Chilsworthy roadways flooded in places but the trusty Land Rover saw us home and the patient and well travelled sheep were released on to the Commons just before darkness fell. Quite an adventure!

The Balwens are now well settled in and a couple of cases of lameness have been treated by the vet and are on the road to recovery – one was due to the long trailer journey and another lamb based her shoulder in the new sheep pen (more on the saga of Cornwall Council Planning office and the sheep pen next month by the way). The Balwens have been joined by three Jacob sheep on load from John and Ruth Burrows to help eat the grass. We managed to cut 150 bails of hay at the end of July so plenty of food is in stock for the winter! Look out in the next weeks for some Gotland lambs that we are also getting from South Yeo farm. These will be joining the Balwens in our small rare-breed sheep rearing enterprise.

This month we owe a very big thank you to Richard and Carol Hindle who have most generously donated another parcel of land to our charity. This field is situated behind land that we already own opposite the offices in West Street. We plan to make a gate so that it can be accessed by tractor from the road and this will enable us to get the flail trimmer in to tackle encroaching brambles later in the year as a first step to bringing this land back into good condition by next summer. We will use it for additional grazing and it will be a good spot to keep out rams that we plan to buy in November.

Dennis Vanstone has sweated buckets in his endeavours to stem the encroaching tide of Himalayan Balsam and has also declared war on the Ragwort, which although a food plant to a variety of insects, is very poisonous to livestock and very common all over the UK. Dennis and Neil have also built yet another bridge – this one to replace the somewhat perilous stepping stones along the river walk. Patrick Lavender is claiming to be the first person to cross the completed bridge but we all know that he was actually dragged across by his faithful hound, who takes the honour of being the first pet across!

Sorry the promised bigger map was not done this month – we will try and get it done before September.

See you on the Commons!


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