Some of you might have seen me and Chris in the article in the Newcastle Journal on Saturday, pictured next to our new pond at our newly planted nature reserve.  I put a link there from our Facebook page too, so if you follow us you may already have seen and read all about this. Its great to have some publicity for our new venture and many thanks to Angela who took the photos, and had her photo taken by me (pictured here) and Keith who wrote the article. The pictures were taken on a rather blustery day, and we had to abandon the pickup as the route was so wet and walk rather a long way so rather than thinking I’d look windswept and rather like a Barbour advert, instead I look short and rather bedraggled! The area is coming on so well, we have ordered more trees for...

Come for a walk he said. How romantic I thought, but how wrong could I be. My first indication should have been when I wasn’t allowed to take our 2 dogs. Into the pickup we went, strange when we were supposed to be going for a walk. When we got to an outlying field, I found out why I had been invited for a walk. Blackgrass. One word but it can mean ruin to cereal crops. Last year Chris found a rogue patch of Blackgrass which appeared in the corner of a field, he rogued it which means walking up and down the rows, pulling out the rogue grass, by the root and then burning it well away from other crops. As it had been raining it was apparently an ideal evening to check for blackgrass as the rain would mean that the grass would be easier to pull out and...