Busy old Brock

Our badgers have been busy. That is possibly an understatement. I'll show you.

This is Parc Yr Odyn, around six acres or so of organic pasture. It looks a bit scrappy, but it's my favourite field. It faces south, warms up and grows quickly in the spring. It is right next to the house and has a lovely spring or two feeding into the little stream which pops into the bottom corner by the buildings to water the animals.

Now it is a field of two halves. Here is the other half:

The badgers have been digging for grubs. They are probably after leatherjackets, the larval stage of the daddy long legs or crane fly. The badgers, in their quest for a tasty snack, have removed the grass and it now looks like the surface of the moon.

I can only imagine what someone who was earning their living from the land would think, looking at this. Imagine if it were a silage field, all that lovely grass ruined by Brock's industrious front paws.

But we only have thirty sheep and their associated lambs. Luckily. I don't earn my living as a farmer. Luckily. The farm, all 22 acres of it, is Soil Association registered land. We're not supposed to plough, but the badger don't know that. The day after tomorrow a woman from the Ministry is coming to see us, but she's coming from the environmental point of view, to assess us for suitability for management under the Tir Gorfal scheme. Hopefully our vigorous badgers will earn us extra points.

Now, gather round gardeners, and look at this:

Lovely, crumbly loam. Tip-top top soil. The picture doesn't really do it justice, but it's good stuff. Which is why I've already annexed part of the field to grow flowers and veg on and have designs on the rest, particularly the section which currently looks as if it has been ploughed.

Instead of tearing my hair out at the damage, I was rubbing my hands with glee!

That's my hand print in the middle of the soil above, below is a badger's foot print.

It is a great deal of damage and at the moment it looks terrible, but they do it every year and by next spring it will be all green and grassy again. But there is a very large part of me that wants to run a fence along the middle, scrape up all the pulled off grass, and go mad planting up the lovely soil with all the plants currently waiting in pots.

We don't really need to grow grass on it do we?