May 2012

Visits & wildlife tours - on 6th March Bill Gander visited again with his Healthy Walkers and our season of tours kicked off with a Shipley Forest School day, Belfast Uni and Plaistow & Kirdford School.  Our next day for the general public will be on 17^th June – do please register with Sandra@knepp.co.uk  if you would like a tractor tour around the project. 

Rare wildlife – as we have all become more aware of our wildlife, so we have started recording rare sightings, and we hope that local readers will let us have any unusual sightings too.  In early Feb, Daniel who works on our farm, spotted a Pallas’s warbler at Brookhouse whilst out looking for a covey of 10 English partridges spotted at the end of the shooting season.  A black redstart was spotted at Pound Farm on 18th March by Paul & Gil Martin, and we are keeping our fingers crossed that the lapwings displaying around the place will once again rear some fledglings. We know that one nest has already 4 eggs.

Hedge survey – a massive survey of many of the estate’s hedges has been completed by Andy Challis and a team of volunteers as part of the Sussex Hedgerow Inventory Project for Sussex Biodiversity Record Centre.  This provides a record and illustrates the diversity of the 80 or so miles of hedges over the estate and can be found on the attached link HEDGES.  The volunteers are coming for a picnic & a tour of the estate on 3rd May to hear the nightingales.

River project & Bay Bridge – we wait with great anticipation for the next phase of the river restoration project to start.  Our hopes for new meanders all the way to the A24 were thwarted when modelling revealed that it would cause a slight risk of additional flooding to Tenchford Bridge, so instead the riverbanks will be re-shaped and the floodplain naturalised by closing ditches so that they retain floodwater.  Meanwhile Bay Bridge is to be re-modelled to make life easier for migratory fish to pass up the river.  John Whiting’s Ouse and Adur River’s Trust is leading the project.

Carriage Drive - on 11th March Joanne Hartland arranged for a dozen magnificent carriages to meet at Knepp and travel around the parish.  A truly magnificent spectacle that will hopefully become an annual fixture.

Cattle - Calving started early in the park due to an early maturing bull calf last year covering 10 cows unexpectedly.  Just as well as poor Draco never did his stuff so most of the cows remained uncovered.  Calving is now fully underway in the other two herds also.

Meanwhile Pat & Craig have been building new improved cattle handling facilities at Pound and Brookhouse Farm following a visit from Temple Grandin – legendary designer of cattle handling systems in America.  We hope that the new systems will allow the safe and humane treatment of the cattle.  Gathering the cattle will be done by Charlie, Mark & Ned on the estate’s beautiful new Camargue ponies, bought especially for this purpose and trained all winter by Mark Bateman.

Deer, pigs & ponies – the deer stalking season is finally drawing to a close with Adrian and his team successfully culling the required number of animals to keep the herd sizes stable.  Meanwhile the pigs have been breeding away merrily with 16 piglets at the last count from our six fertile sows covered by the boar that we hired in November.  We are hoping the offspring will be fat enough for slaughter by the time the ground softens this autumn.  And the Exmoor ponies continue to flourish in the southern block, with no plans at the moment to breed from them.

History and archaeology - Richard Symonds of Horsham’s archaeological society has been uncovering some fascinating history of the estate – see the link to a history of the river Adur.  His group are linking with the Shipley History Group for a historical tour of Knepp on 12^th June starting at the Knepp ruin, passing through a ridge & furrow field system, onto Floodgates Farm, up to the old windmill site near the dam, past the ice house to the Nash castle. 

Open Garden - Simon Hillery & Helen Butler have set themselves a target of June 17^th to get the Knepp gardens fit for opening to the public for the first time since the family has restored them.  We very much hope that 17^th June will be a celebration of the family’s vision and Simon and Helen’s hard work.  Meanwhile Simon is running his second London marathon on 22^nd April raising money for the Snowdon Award Scheme for people with physical or sensory disability.

Property repairs – David Francis ticks off yet another barn restored on Knepp with Sherwood hovel, a redundant cattle yard on Swallows lane, hidden for the past decade by a tarpaulin duly repaired to withstand the next 100 years.

Meanwhile Andy, Brian & Ben have started to refurbish Swallows Cottage which has been in a tenancy since 1923.  It is a challenge to try to get these old cottages up to sensible insulation standards and deliver the mod cons required for today’s tenants.

The Jubilee – on June 5^th, Knepp will host Shipley Parish’s Jubilee event.  The festivities will start at 4pm with a raft race on the lake, followed by an evening of old fashioned fun for parishioners and their families. See the link to the flyer. If you would like to join the organising committee please email jason@knepp.co.uk

Ragwort - We will be taking Shipley Parish Council for a tour on 19^th July, principally to consider the dreaded ragwort and how we are dealing with it this year after it was so dominant in 2011.  We have taken a risk assessment approach to the plant to help others understand that we take the issue seriously.  This includes looking for traces of liver damage in any cull animals or fallen stock.

As well as our usual employment of extra labour to pull ragwort in sensitive areas, we have purchased a new bigger cut & collect machine and a big tractor to pull it…so with all this preparation and extra investment we can be sure that the plant won’t grow in 2012!

HLS scheme – Jim Seymour, our project officer with Natural England has asked us to publish our scheme requirements on our website – so it can now be found on this link.  This is the 10-year Environmental Stewardship scheme that replaced our Countryside Stewardship Scheme and now underpins the re-wilding project.

Apple pruning – the Shipley apple group met on one of the few really wet days this Spring to prune some of the fruit trees in the orchards, and again a few days later to plant more trees in the community orchard in the village.  

Brands Hatch – On 1^st April several of the Knepp workforce went for a day out at Brands Hatch courtesy of neighbour Jonathan Palmer.  We had a lovely day watching the touring car championships, which included a spectacular 8 car pile-up near our stand!

If you would like to read the Annual Newsletter on the Wildland please click on the following link for  2011 (0.9MB) or  2010 (0.6MB)

If you would like to see past news letters click here