I’ve been using Photoshop for over twenty years but I’ve never got into using masks to select areas of an image, partly because I find it difficult to draw precise outlines with a mouse or a graphics pad. Now that there’s an iPad version of Photoshop I’m beginning to see the point of it. Masks are non-destructive, so your original image, in this case the highland cow, is still there if you decide you’ve erased too much of it.
The meadow is the river embankment at Skelton Lake, while to highland cow (or bull?) was grazing in a pasture at Middle Wood near Redmire Force on the River Ure in Wensleydale.
Despite the stringent security, the sheep in the beet field have finally staged an escape and half a dozen of the more adventurous of them are enjoying the lush grass in the back garden of the end terrace house on the other side of the fence.
“What variety are they?” I ask the shepherd (I knew he was the shepherd because his 4×4 had an ‘EWE’ registration).
“They’re Swaledales with a few Texel, but they’re mainly mules. These came from Horton-in-Ribblesdale.”
So none of them are Beulah Speckleface, as I’d guessed the other day.
Hawes Round-up
A few weeks ago in Hawes we saw Swaledales being rounded up from the moors. That morning we’d seen people gathering up at Bardale Head two miles south of the town, so I guess the sheep had been driven up Bardale and Raydale onto the moor then turned back down Beggarmans Road and through Gayle into Hawes. There were certainly hundreds, if not thousands of them.
The man with stylus and tablet isn’t drawing, he tells us, he’s surveying trees and vegetation impinging on the power lines. The pole that he’s looking at is so swathed in ivy that it almost looks like a tree.
“Do you have to go to species level?” I ask him.
When he explains that he’s a trained arborist, I can’t resist asking if he can tell what species of pine I’ve just photographed. Is it Corsican? Or Scots Pine?
As the tree is 50 yards down the lane, I’m expecting a lot, especially, as he points out, if it has been pruned that can change the silhouette, but he suggests that it might be black pine.
Ash Die-back
This old milestone from the Wakefield to Huddersfield Turnpike was catching the sun this morning.
Opposite the pine, an old ash tree was pollarded a few months ago, following hints of die-back on some of its boughs.
A report on BBC Leeds Look North this week showed the efforts that the National Trust are going to in the Yorkshire Dales to deal with the 80% of ash trees in their woodland that have been infected.
The surveyor tells us that local authorities have been surveying their ash trees because an infected tree can shed a large bough.
We tell him of a couple of near misses that we’ve had with the sweet chestnuts shedding branches in the woods at Nostell, where in recent years they’ve lost some centuries-old beech trees.
The trees around here are either 200 years old or saplings, he suggests; there hasn’t been any consistent replanting.
Beet Eaters
The sheep in the beet field look like Beulah Speckleface, or a similar-looking hybrid, a breed that combines the hardiness of hill sheep with the growth and reproduction rates of lowland varieties. For the last few weeks, these sheep have been enjoying a more high-energy, sugar-rich food than they’d get out on the moors, eating first the tops of the beet, then the beets themselves, although I can’t help thinking that they must be looking longingly at the grass in the next field as a change from gnawing the beets.
Shetland Pony
I’m trying to photograph three ponies feeding together at a hay bale but I don’t have much luck with the Shetland. All I can see are the tops of its ears at the far side but then it spots me and wanders over to the wall to say hello. Some day I might get a group portrait.
It droops like oats and it has long awns like barley. As this is growing at the edge of a wheat field, I’m guessing that it is great brome, Anisantha diandra, although there are some similar-looking species. Great brome is a grass from the Mediterranean region which grows on waste ground, roadsides and field edges.
The Wikipedia reports that it, and a similar brome, also get referred to as ‘ripgut brome’ in some parts of the world, where the species have become troublesome weeds.
While some of the ponies on Middlestown Hill are still wearing their winter coats, there are three nearer the village that are now roaming about unencumbered. They’re enjoying the freedom of being able to groom each other and to roll on the ground to hit that hard-to-reach itchy spot on their backs.
But yesterday morning the wind was from the north and all three of them had gathered in the lowest corner of the field, sheltering close to the hedges.
Cold Front
Yesterday at 9.30, we could see the cold front moving in from the north across the Calder Valley. Ten minutes later it had reached us and we had a very light shower of rain. Cool breeze.
Fifteen minutes later, this faint rainbow appeared over Thornhill Edge.
As happens to me with so many farm animals, as soon as I tried to photograph him in a relaxed, natural pose, this White Shorthorn bull immediately stopped what he was doing – grazing – and looked straight at the camera with a suspicious ‘what are you doing?’ expression.
White Shorthorns are a rare breed, well adapted to being out in all weathers and here at Nethergill Farm in Langstrothdale they’re free to roam, either in the fields around the farm or on the open hillside beyond Oughtershaw Beck. They tend to have a daily routine, making their way down from their preferred overnight quarters towards the beck during the morning.
Along with some light grazing by a limited number of sheep, the White Shorthorns act as landscape managers here, rather like the Longhorns on the Knepp Wildland Project in West Sussex.
Wildlife projects at Nethergill include managing the meadows to encourage wild flowers, the woodland to encourage red squirrels and the beck for fish, insects, birds and the occasional visit by an otter.
Trump
Chris & Fiona Clark run the award-winning Eco-Farm at Nethergill but the bull belongs to a farmer friend of theirs in Cumbria – Gordon “Gordon takes our calves when old enough,” Fiona tells me, “and we use his mature bulls to cosy up with our girls. ‘Trump’ is the new kid on the block, 2 years old. Probably weighs 700kg approx. The ladies rule at Nethergill he sidles up to each female over several weeks. His technique obviously worked as all bar 1 are in calf due this Summer.”
Room for one last little landscape sketch in my postcard-sized Seawhite Watercolour Travel Journal: a stubble field at Field House Farm, Overton, seen from the Seed Room Cafe at the Horticentre. The houses of Thornhill Edge sit amongst the trees on the ridge in the background, on the far side of the Smithy Brook Valley.
The original sketch is 9 cm, just over 3 inches, across.
Four weeks old now, and the piglets at Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour are larger and leaner.
I choose a couple to draw that seem to be settled but soon another piglet nuzzles in to sleep beside them, then another squeezes in between them.
The piglet’s concave snout fits comfortably into the concave contours of its sleeping partner.
Another sign that the piglets are maturing: today, when the sow finishes feeding and disappears into the shelter, the piglets are grunting, rather than squeaking, as they did when they were younger.
Looking northwest over Mirfield in the Calder Valley.
12 noon: When we arrive at Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, Whitley Lower, there’s a clear view across Mirfield and the Calder Valley to the hills beyond, with patches of sunlight scudding gently across the landscape.
On the highest ground in the distance, there’s a white brilliance, which appears to be a powdering of snow.
A buzzard circles over Liley Wood, below us to the west.
Grey cloud and misty rain obscure the view for ten minutes or so, as a shower passes over.
Whitley Wood
Charlotte’s used to be a regular weekly destination for several years, when we’d head here on a Thursday morning for coffee and scones with my mum. She died a little over two years ago but, had she lived, we would have been celebrating her ninety-ninth birthday last Sunday. In fact, she once suggested that for her one hundredth birthday she would like treat all her family and friends to a gathering at Charlotte’s.
Her latest great-grandchild, Henry, is making his first visit here today, but he’s far too young to appreciate the ice cream.
A large spotted pig is contentedly snoring in its pen.
Also taking a break, there’s a pochard on the duck pond, sleeping with its bill tucked under its wing.
Her latest great-grandchild, Henry, is making his first visit here today, but he’s far too young to appreciate the ice cream.