Devon SSSI nature reserve and eco lodges - Maggie's Blog
19 September
Not letting the grass grow under our feet...
This month's good weather is a boon for land management. The ban on hedge work is over now that the bird nesting season has passed. The flowers have mostly set seed, and the ground is dry enough to work.
We've made a start on part of Popehouse Moor that we can't graze. The cows don't go this far because it's difficult to fence them out of the woodland, and because of poisonous hemlock water dropwort. It's the roots of this plant that are toxic (not to be confused with the much more deadly hemlock). Apparently cows get a taste for it - often when it's cleared out of ditches, exposing the roots. Fatalities are rare, but they do happen, and since the cows aren't ours, we're reluctant to take risks.
Anyway, just in case anyone else out there could do with sharing some tips on small scale non-agricultural grass and scrub management, here's what Ian thought of the flail mower we hired:
"What a couple of days we had! Luckily my nephew Tim was around so at least there were two of us to keep the hired flail mower busy for as many hours as possible. We had an unlucky start when the gear shift broke on the flail, but South Molton Tool Hire were very quick to mend it so we were able to carry on without too much delay.
The priority was to artificailly graze the area of the nature reserve that we were unable to get the cows into. It is pretty wet in there despite several weeks of dryer weather, and the vegetation was at least waist height all through.
But the flail only has small wheels so despite being self propelled, it was very hard to manouver it through the tussocks of purple moor grass - big lumps, with soft mud in between. We soon gave up. The long grass was best tackled with a brush cutter with the special heavy duty nylon strimmer wires - square section and about 3mm thick.
So it didn't all get done, but then that's maybe no bad thing. We left patches of devils bit scabious (food plant for marsh fritillary butterflies) and there are some flowers left for the guests. Next year we'll do the last bit!
Elsewhere the flail mower really came into its own. We tackled a bit of the ever-encroaching brambles, where it was superb. But we didn't want to do too much because the dormice will still be feeding on the berries(we came across a nest when I strimmed a path along the edge of the grass - and left it alone, as dormice are protected. You need a licence to handle or in any way disturb them).
We'll have to come back to bramble bashing later in the autumn. The problem will be if the ground gets too wet. But at least the brambles tend to be in the drier areas.
We put the flail mower to use outside the reserve as well, on grassland we don't graze. I guess it is designed for use on rough overgrown paddock and for that (where the wheels can get traction on firmish ground) it is brilliant. We cleared big paches of thistle and low bramble as well as the tangled overgrown grass. Running it for 8 hard hours I think we only used about 7 or 8 litres of petrol too, so full marks to Honda.
South Molton Tool Hire provided the mower at the best rates available locally. Now we just need to maintain the areas we have cleared and attempt to expand on them year on year..."