Strange phenomena

It's been, I think they call it dry, and then there's that big light in the sky which I'm told is known as "sun" and is responsible for the warming of the air.  Whatever it is it's most peculiar.  Although I do like the lack of wet being a coldblooded type of person who revels in the white stuff I'm already grumbling - and planning a work-in-freezer! But AW is still wearing her fleecy footwear.
As the seasons change summer noises emanate from SubEd HB's desk with little hisses of "get in" which we're translating as another wicket gone in the Test Match.  At the other end of the seasons KH is getting twitchy about the end of winter - tomorrow when the Aviva premiership comes to a close with the final at Twickenham, poor office dog Hebe is already fretting about the effect of the oval ball on her Beans.  On the up side then the yellow fluffies start (that's tennis) on the clay in Paris next week and then onto the lawns of Queens and Wimbledon.  AW is dreading it all, she doesn't really follow sport and gets a bit jumpy when various scores are shouted out with varying degrees of vigour.  Despite our various sporting proclivities none of us is overly bothered about the Olympics, maybe we're just too far away.  Or the Jubilee either come to that - well the village events anyway.
Full busy week next week and then a couple of quiet days with the double bank holiday - we have lots planned to do whilst it's quiet but more of that at a later date.

Great excitement this week, we've got a new kettle! 
The lid on the old one didn't always stay closed which made for a sauna-ish kitchen.  The new kettle boils the water hotter, I understood water boils at 100 degrees C (except at altitude, which is why tea is revolting on Everest of course) but somehow the water from the new kettle is hotter so the question is did the old one cut out below 100 and new one above? Did the old kettle exist at a higher altitude? Is there something quantum going on in our kitchen?  As we've now disposed of the old kettle we can't check.

This week we've updated out Terms & Conditions explaining our lack of cookies - no annoying pop up cookies consent boxes for us. This week's CJS Weekly edition has gone to press there are 16 pages including the second half of the Training Calendar, details of next month's work days, 13 adverts for volunteers and 41 for paid posts of which 32 came direct to CJS.
Enjoy the strange phenomena and the sporting events of the weekend.

One for the birds

What a week for bird spotting.
It started on Tuesday (OK, I know most weeks start on a Monday but this Monday was rather boring so we're starting on Tuesday just to be different.).  We have several house martin nest pockets under the eaves, it took several years for them to be used and then they were abandoned again fro several years but on Tuesday morning outside the bathroom window could be hear the distinctive tweeteling of house martin conversation.  The curtains were very carefully drawn back and there peeking out of the nest was a little black and white head which was then followed by body as the martin dropped out followed by a second one which then flew around the garden before popping back in.  They've been seen and heard over the week.  It's so nice to have them back.
Wednesday was for the cuckoo, one has been heard at Green End and then again at Darnholme gradually getting closer to us and moving down the tree line. CMH heard it on Wednesday morning, at last it reached us.  I've not heard it but on Wednesday evening I saw a male flying in and out of the oaks (which are still to bud up never mind come into leaf.). It was also the day the wol (no that's not a typo) came back to us, read more here.
Thursday was the biggie, in the evening I saw a short eared owl hunting the Mill Scar moor, we've been here since 1984 and it's the first one I've seen in or around the village. I watched as it quartered back and forth flashing those typical creamy under wings, then there was a second less distinctive but still owlish shape, they circled for a few minutes before the second bird flew further up the valley and the first individual returned to its hunting pattern before dropping down out of sight behind the reservoir.  I've watched intently, gazing into the middle distance since but have yet to see it or them again.
Although the oaks have not made it into leaf (neither have the ashes so it could be a soak or splash yet) one robin has decided it's autumn and on Thursday evening was singing his autumn territorial tune.
Lunch time today and it was back to the cuckoos, a female this time flying over the hawthorn spiny making all the wood pigeons take to flight in alarm before going behind the trees and down the river valley.
In the office it's been an odd week intermittently quiet and thumb twiddling (well not quite but you get the gist) and then frenetically busy. The end result is a fair few jobs online, plenty of training courses, lots of news and last but not least a Weekly edition now printing. It's 21 pages this week including the Training Calendar for July part one ID skills this week, the rest to follow next week along with details of work days. There are 58 new paid posts of which 48 came direct and 21 adverts for voluntary posts.
I'm off bird owl spotting have a good weekend.

Look who's back!

We went out to enjoy the sunshine at lunchtime-  it's such a rarity we're determined to make use of every possible second.  Whilst we were out we wondered why the blackbirds were jumping up and down quite so much. And there on the wires was the owl. Eyes tightly closed against the bright light in the sky, fast sleep oblivious to the blackbirds clamour.

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This owl has slightly different plumage from last year's owl, it's paler so we're guessing it's son (or daughter) of wol number one.

Sounds of summer (yes, really) and Christmas dinner!

Thursday lunchtime the first swift was seen swooping across a brilliant blue sky, I'm not sure what was more welcome the clear blue sky or the swift!  either way the swift stayed with us longer and by early evening was part of a small squadron of five swooping and screaming across the now grey sky.  Oh, well close your eyes and listen and you can pretend summer's here.

AW writes about the latest arrivals on their small holding.

My husband had placed 4 goose eggs under a clocker (possible Yorkshire term, may just be a Green End one!) in the caravan, our make shift shed 28 ish days ago. On Friday morning three had hatched and dried off and the hen was starting to lift up and wanting to be off. So for the sake of three healthy goslings they and their mum were moved to the rearing shed.  The last egg which must have been a few days older than the other three and therefore took longer to hatch was chipping and the gosling was cheeping but mum would not have stayed on the nest much longer so a dilemma of what to do with the emerging gosling. Luckily we have a Rayburn with a warming oven at the bottom so the gosling within shell was placed in the oven so to speak. Over the day we kept peeling a bit of shell off but the membrane within the shell was bleeding which means the gosling is not quite ready to come. In this state you can cause them to bleed to death if you just pull all the shell off. So gently does it. My husband who in years gone by would have insisted on leaving it and moralising that if they can’t manage to get out of the shell on their own they are not destined to live has now gone a bit soft and with me badgering kept peeling a bit more of the shell off. It was laying at the wrong end of the shell, normally they come out of the air sac end of the shell but this was the other way round. We have two small people under 3 so there was much opening of the oven door (which wasn’t tight shut I hasten to add) and gasping and pointing and trying to poke and every time we did this there was the little cheep cheep so we knew baby gos gos was still with us. Finally by the end of the day gos gos was out of the shell but too weak to go out with mum so would spend a night in the Rayburn. I only cuddled it once which is quite restrained for me and went to bed hoping to see it stronger in the morning.

The next morning there was plenty of cheeping and looking around so I thought I would try and put it out with mum, but it hadn’t had anything to eat so wasn’t strong enough to push back in the warmth under mum and was left out in the cold. I brought it back inside and fed it some bread, milk and sugar using a toothpick and warmed it up in the oven. The fire was obviously a little hotter than the previous day because at one point the gosling was panting (oops). A couple of hours later I put it back out with mum where it then stayed and you can’t now tell which one it was. Success. We’ll now be able to eat it in 7 months time!!!

Thinking of Christmas,  the light levels have been so odd that the Christmas cactus is smothered in buds again.

Back in the office it's been busy again with plenty of jobs being posted online this past week although the news has been a little quieter. Which means this week's edition is a little smaller at 13 pages including eleven adverts for volunteers and 56 for paid posts plus some for training courses and information on how you maybe eligible for funding for training courses.  It's all now printing and will live online for digital readers soon.
We're going to go and sit by the woodstove nursing mugs of hot chocolate whilst we watch the walkers muffled up in hats and gloves on this gloriously soggy day in May.

The latest edition of CJS Monthly is now online, read it in full here: http://www.countryside-jobs.com/cjsmonthly/Monthly.htm   (you may need to refresh your browser)

Jobs advertised in this Month's edition:
Projects Co-ordinator, Cairngorms Outdoor Access Trust
Estate Worker, Roche Farms
Suffolk Coast Reserves Assistant, Suffolk Wildlife Trust

Other adverts:
Did you know that you could be eligible for free training? Smart Training

CJS notices:
Advance notice of CJS Focus on Wildlife, to be published on 25 June, in association with The Wildlife Trusts for their centenary year.  Send us your adverts and suggestions

Top headlines from the past month: Click here to read

Training Calendar for July is 11 pages Click here to read

Weekend of Dance

Well, it may have been colder than Christmas but at least it was dry.  The sword dance teams  danced around the village, ceilidh'd their way into the early hours of Sunday and even the school children got involved. 

We have a mobile village maypole with various sockets in the village greens.  On Sunday with it being the Mayday Bank Holiday and to join in the dance festivities it was decided that the maypole would be danced around.

Being only a small school Mums (could be Dads too but no volunteers yet, perhaps because there are no swords involved, now that could create a whole new style of maypole patterns) and teachers are required to make sure all the ribbons are used, the resulting patterns are incredibly intricate.  HB is one of the dancers along with Master and Miss B too.

But the pole almost became a victim of the weather, the ground was so soggy that after the second pattern it was obvious that it was leaning quite precariously. Mr B was made to join the dance and keep the pole upright.

So at least one dad was press ganged into maypole dancing!  Maybe he'll have a ribbon next time?

Dreich

there really is no other way to describe the weather today and most of the week.  Dull, drear, grey, grizzly, wet, miserable on their own are not quite descriptive enough.

It's rained so much the electric fencing in TB's top field is more than slightly wobbly and on Tuesday she'd no sooner sat down at her desk than the phone rang, "are your horses meant to have the whole of the fields?", "No!".  A quick dash back up to Green End where is seems that Titan had found a reasonably dry patch to have a roll and had rolled into the fence shocking himself in the process and like the race horse he was took off at, probably, high speed for the other side of the fields to escape the violently shocking 'wolf' pulling tape with him.  By the time TB got there all the horses were lying down very happily in the long, lush green.  No one had any injuries (and so far no evidence of laminitis from the excessive amount of super rich grass, phew) but they were very reluctant to be called in even for big rattling buckets of feed, curiosity got the better of them and they were safely corralled whilst the hunt began for the fencing posts which had sprung out of the exceptionally soft ground at high velocity being fired in all directions.  The fence was reassembled and powered up and the now very mulish looking horses were released back into their smaller grazing strip.  And whilst we're on teh subject of akward animals.  Occasional office hound Finnegan caused chaos last Friday afternoon (which was why the blog post was late) by ripping the bandage of his tail and chewing a huge hole in it which then bled copiously, profusely and all over. A hastily applied pressure dressing stopped the dripping and then a swift exit to pay a visit to his favourite vet. He came back with a bigger dressing, assorted medicines including antibiotics and more dressings.  A week later and it's healing nicely and he's able to spend large portions of the day 'undressed'.  But he will insist in clattering it on every surface, corner, person and hard upright within range!

 We're really hoping the weather picks up because this weekend the village sword dance team, The Goathland Plough Stots, are having an historic weekend of dance with teams from all over the country.  HB has today off to help with the setting up, so AW's editing the Weekly edition and putting it online too.  This week it's 14 pages long with 43 new paid posts of which 31 came direct to CJS there are also 14 adverts for volunteer placements.  Online and digital copies will be on their way soon, paper editions are printing.
OK now back to the himalya of paper on my desk before it avalanches across the floor...

Reasons to be cheerful

It's been grey, damp and miserable all week. So here's a pot of Cheerfulness to cheer everyone.

And now the sun's come out, it's making all the ponds, puddles and small lakes sparkle! Very pretty.
Although we're fortunate enough to be well above the flood plain, all the talk of flooding has worried HB's little girl, who was concerned enough ask what would happen to her when the flood came.  Promises of a swift exit into the loft seems to have done the trick and she's now puddle jumping once again.

Not enough cheerfulness?  Here are a few more reasons
A cuckoo has been heard in Ravenscar, a few miles down the coast.
AW's ewe has finally started producing milk so the lamb doesn't need bottle feeding any more.
It's been so wet it's brought our resident tawny owls out onto the wires earlier in the year than usual.
And best of all today is Friday so that means you receive your digital CJS, paper copies as usual will arrive on Monday (post allowing).  it's another big edition this week at 20 pages again, this week with details of next month's volunteer work days, plenty of jobs too with 61 new paid posts of which 45 came direct to CJS and by co-incidence there are 45+ volunteer placements too.

Have a good weekend all. We'll be back and still cheerful on Monday.

Horses, rain, sheep and useless software - oh, and a big CJS Weekly too.

With more rain threatened (promised) TB decided to risk the fords and move the last two horses up to their summer pasture on Monday morning.  Apart from a sore shoulder when Titian remembered he was a racehorse and took off for home it all passed uneventfully.  All five equines are now blissfully reunited and strip grazing their way across the top field.  The rain started on Monday night so it was perfect timing, the river is now very deep and there's no way they would be able to cross for quite a while.  It feels like it has not stopped raining since, TB's top field is now in two halves, a lovely lush green side and a brown paddled side where the horses are grazing.  It's so wet and the mud so deep (on both sides although only visible on the horsey side of the fence) we're thinking of investing in some rice seed!

 AWs ewe, Blossom, went into labour on Sunday night, she was struggling so investigations were required.  AW could feel a small head and feet but they didn't seem right, being out of practice (their first ewe, Blossom's Mum, had lambed for years without any problems) she wasn't quite sure and called her in-laws to come and take a look.   The first lamb was delivered but it had been dead for a while, over a week they think, and it was blocking the way for the second one.  He arrived safely and is huge but the troubles are not over, the dead lamb has upset Blossom's natural rhythms and although she produced colostrum initially there is only a very small amount of milk and so the new arrival is being bottle fed for now.  AW's 2½yr old daughter has named the male lamb Bambi, we have no idea from where she heard or found the name but it's firmly fixed now!

Poor AW is not having a good week, she signed up to take part in a webinar from home yesterday afternoon.  Towards the end of we received an email with the subject line, "I want to scream!" First the app for the ipad couldn't be found so she'd use a laptop instead but the software for the webinar wasn't compatible then finally in desperation tried the desktop but being at the end of the broadband string it took over half an hour to download and when it did finally launched the software decided that the connection was not strong enough for the files being transferred.  Obviously only intended for people in town with superfast broadband.
Back to quill and parchment...

Which this week has been working overtime to produce a big CJS Weekly, 20 pages this edition with lots of news about 'the drought' although here in soggy North Yorkshire we're thinking it must be the wettest drought on record, the second part of the training calendar and those all important jobs, 35 new paid posts of which 32 came direct to CJS plus 19 volunteer placements.  We're also asking for your feedback on some proposed new features.
Paper editions are already falling off the printers, digital ones will be live and emailed later this afternoon.

Batteries charged

7:30 this morning - no, it can't be.  Oh no, it's snowing - AGAIN.
 Immediate reaction? Yes, that's right plug in all the backup battery powered equipment to make sure it's fully charged.  So now it all has a full charge it will be fine  - won't it??

The BBC weather says it's 12degrees with light drizzle, the met office gives us a yellow snow (I think it's supposed to be amber) warning, however, the forecast actually says rain but the Weather Channel says 2degrees and light to heavy snow until 11am.  How come the Americans on the other side of the Atlantic can get it right whilst our home grown forecasters / computers are simply daydreaming?

Flowers, nests and jobs (and more snow?)

We may have had an extra bout of winter with another possible over the weekend but the natural world is springing along nicely. Our first flush of daffodils have gone over, second and third ones still blooming nicely and the first early tulips are beginning to show colour.  The bluebell woods above Beck Hole are beginning to haze with the first hints of blue heralding the full carpet to come.  The first swallow in the village was reported on 4 April and we've heard a rumour of a cuckoo.  The chiff-chaffs have been chiff-chaffing for a few weeks now.  This morning one of our robin pairs was strengthening the pair bond with some mate feeding and Mrs Blackbird is getting very demanding for breakfast, lunch and dinner too if we'll let her get away with it; she looked rather ruffled this morning.  At lunch time a lovely little jimmy wren (for some reason in this household the females are Jenny - like most people - but the males are known as Jimmy.  Not a clue why) was hoping through the shrubbery and flitting off with a beak full of nest material and a glorious mistle thrush was wandering across the field for food before also flying off with nest material.   I hope they're all making good use of the dog groomings; Senior Office Dog Maia has a problem with her nerves (the physical kind not the mental ones) which means she can only be groomed in small burst with a zoom groom tool resulting in tufts of fur flying across the garden to get lodged in shrubs and stuck to the fence - it doesn't look untidy for long it's all soon removed.

UK job vacancies 'rose in March' reported the BBC on Wednesday.  The article continues: The number of job vacancies in March grew at its fastest rate for eight months, led by the IT and computing sector, a report has said. The Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) report also said that permanent staff placements rose for the third month in a row.  

CJS has had its busiest February and March for a few years, more job ads than we can remember for a while producing the largest Weekly editions since about 2008. This week's edition is just about to go to press, it's 15 pages with 57 new paid posts of which 25 came direct to CJS there are also details of 16+ volunteer placements and the first part of the Training Calendar for June.

CJS Monthly - April edition

The latest edition of CJS Monthly is now online, read it in full here: http://www.countryside-jobs.com/cjsmonthly/Monthly.htm   (you may need to refresh your browser)

Jobs advertised in this Month's edition:
Site Manager & Team leader, Essex Wildlife Trust
Farm and Woodland Conservation Manager, the Wyre Community Land Trust
Project Officer, River Nene Regional Park

Other adverts:
Yes, you can get the job! - One week no cost course, Operation New World
Free training for the Level 3 Diploma in Countryside Management, Smart Training
Want to work as ecologist? Identifying Grass indicator Species in Flower run by Ptyxis Ecology

Campaign information, petitions and notices:
NERC Postgraduate Skill Review 2012, survey
Communities celebrating their Diamond Jubilee legacy - Queen Elizabeth II Field Challenge 2012
Greenspace Forum: Letting the Grass Grow survey


Top headlines from the past month: Click here to read

Training Calendar for June is 13 pages Click here to read

A technicolour world again

So far (whisper it quietly) we've kept our electricity and everything is still in glorious technicolour, what a joy to press a switch and the lights come on! - small things... 
Even better news is that a a generator was delivered to  AW's dad's farm followed by new poles and mains electricity was restored by Sunday.
It seems that the first part of our IT upgrade went smoothly and the website is  being found by everyone without too many delays, although Friday's blog post didn't appear until Saturday.  Next phase will be the email transfer, this is slightly more complex from our point of view but you shouldn't notice the change.  We'll let you know when it's going ahead and what to do if you do encounter problems contacting us.

In the midst of the black out and ensuing chaos we missed Senior Office Dog Maia's 12th birthday, it was on Friday.  She got her present on Saturday so she's got one less day to wait for the next birthday!  Here she is in her birthday outfit.
It was a busy weekend for TB too, she began the process of moving horses from their lowland stabled winter accommodation to their summer pasture in Green End.  Three were boxed in two trips but Titian (remember him, of the dodgy feet) and his friend Robbie (the naughty little pony) have to walk because, crackpot that he is, Titian will not get in a box either a static loose box or worse a mobile trailer or even a big HGV type box.  Walkable routes have to cross the river and unfortunately the shortest route has fords to cross, after last weeks rain the river is too high to walk across safely.  The only route without a ford is much longer and on main roads, not especially good for an old boy with bad feet.  For now, he stays at the stables until the water goes down.

And then the world went black...

March was a month of holidays - or so it seemed. First KH had a week off, to spend gardening and recovering from the January / February madness, then AW was away for a week with the family at Center Parcs (they all came back with colds!) and finally TB went to Spain to recuperate from the hard labour that is winter when you've got five horses wintering out and get away from the stress of trying to sell a house. But now the Team is back to full strength (although AW is still coughing).  There we were complacently sailing along at the beginning of the week relishing being back to 'normal' with adverts beginning to arrive in increasing numbers and then bang. The world exploded. The snow arrived in huge great large heavy dollops bringing down power lines, snapping poles like twigs and cables as if they were string. Worst of all was the lack of information from Northern Powergrid (the company responsible for the network, and to compound matters when you did information it frequently turned out to be wrong.  Adding to the woes was the failure of our backup system despite rigorous testing, maybe we over tested maybe it just wasn't up to what we were asking of it.  Anyway we were isolated from the rest of the world.  Thursday TB in Egton Bridge (3 and a bit miles away) had power and internet so the team descended on her small home office with a collection of equipment and managed to get some work done.  News from Goathland at lunch time said the power was back and shortly after so were we but then the water went off.  Battling through the heap and backlog. So far we still have electricity although the power company say we're due to be re-connected by 4pm today!  However, AW out at Green End is still without power and her dad's farm is also off and thus can't pump water from the borehole for the cattle. The poles have fallen and the engineers don't know when they'll have replacements.  Northern Powergrid can't even supply a generator, it goes from bad to worse.

And in the midst of all this we're moving bits of website and some emails too!

But we can still claim we've not missed a deadline. CJS Weekly has just gone to press, digital editions will be live soon.  A little short on news this week (we were slightly too busy being in the news to read and collate it all) but there are 72 new paid posts, 54 of which came direct over sixteen pages, 17 adverts for volunteer placements too.

Before the world went dark: AW writes, Our ewe Blossom is due to lamb in the middle of April. We know there are at least two from a scan but she is absolutely huge so there could be anything in there.  She has been out at grazing, about half a mile away, for a couple of weeks whilst the grass has chance to recover and with luck grow a bit more at home. As the date approaches we want to make sure she is near to home with a cosy barn for comfort during and following the arrival of her babies.

She was walked on to the grazing but being so large and the in hot weather (remember last week?  it was scorching, ice cream weather) we didn’t want her to have to walk back, so AW’s better half would hitch up the trailer and go and get her. Blossom and her grazing mate Keith are very tame and greedy so will usually do anything for nuts. The nuts were placed in the trailer and the sheep approached. Almost in and they realised something was afoot and tried to run, Keith escapes. Man grabs sheep, man tussles with sheep, sheep decides her legs don’t work any more and sits down. Now given the fact that she is very large, an immobile ewe is quite difficult to move but man would drag, push, pull and carry sheep to trailer. Almost in and she regains the use of her legs in one last ditch attempt at escape man has to grab sheep at a funny angle and wrenches already tender back. She is in the trailer, Keith is still free (he, although large is not close to giving birth) and can walk home.

Safely deposited at home Blossom has a slight limp and man has a very very tender back. Once snotties (small people) were in bed that evening AW would go and walk Keith home lured by nuts, in the near dark.

No, Man has not had any thanks from Blossom!

So that's it, our own little series of disasters, events and news.  I think we all need another holiday of failing that chocolate, now where are those Easter eggs.

Happy Easter everyone.