NEWS & VIEWS
Day after day of glorious sunshine and blue skies, it has been weeks since we had any significant rain which is now making things worryingly dry. It reminds me of 2018, where by mid summer our grazing looked more like African plains and 2023 when our springs ran dry for the first time and didn’t run again until well into November causing a huge headache with how to water livestock, ourselves and have enough for showering and the washing machine.
The sun has quite some heat in it which has confused our ponies no end with what stage their moult and coat should be at for the time of year. They live out all year round on exposed moor ground so grow a good few inches of coat by October and all that is now in various stages of coming out, some look quite smooth and summer coat like but our yearlings, ugh!! Definitely need tackling with a stiff brush when I get chance to see if I can help them shift their sweaty, dreadlocked clumps and makes them look a bit more presentable.
It’s nice to see them just being ponies though, spread out, forgaing and enjoying the sunshine, our damper, boggy land is fairing slightly better than our drier moor field so there is a nice variety of flowers and bog plants starting to show. The pretty pale lilac-pink Marsh Violets a favourite food source of the rare small pearl-bordered fritillary Butterfly, we are lucky to see a few. Sunny yellow Tomentil, Lady’s Smock or Cuckcoo flower as it’s also known, the beautiful tiny bright blue Heath Milkwort, funny looking, crinkly leaved Lousewort and Cotton Grass with its mass of white bobbing cotton heads. The ponies are good at selectively picking through this terrain and choosing what they like and finding little pools of fresh water to sip from. Our main spring in this field is barely running, normally a good source of crystal clear water bubbling away and somewhere to wade in, splash and cool off in summer but now resembling more of a sludgy puddle.
I know I should be careful what I wish for, when it rains, it will probably get stuck in a wet cycle and never dry up again but a refreshing warm rain or two would be beneficial just to help things along and get the grasses to grow.
