At Glensaugh preliminary investigation work is under way in advance of the construction of our wind turbine. A geotechnical survey is being carried out to determine the composition of the underlying bedrock (which is reported as “sound”) although laboratory analysis is required to give us a complete report. The photograph shows the subcontractor’s drilling rig as the second of two cores are drilled 7 metres into the underlying rock. The results of the survey will influence the design of the foundation slab and ultimately the cost of the project as a whole.

A week of fine weather allowed us to do some useful heather burning on the Cairn hill. Further old growth has been burned off, as well as some small areas of new growth. The purpose of burning a little of the new growth is to improve the age structure of the sward and is analogous to the premature felling of conifers in a first generation forestry plantation. In our heather, the target age for burning is about ten years. If we maintain our present efforts all old growth should be gone in about another five years, by which time twelve years will have elapsed since we commenced systematic burning in 2002. While the sward structure is not yet ideal it improves every year.

If you accept the argument that there is a bright future in low input hill farming there are good reasons for continuing to actively manage both our grazings and our Blackface sheep stock. Turning to the ewes themselves, one of the weaknesses in the flock is the premature culling of individuals due to tooth loss. Teeth become “long” (in reality gums recede) and ewes are no longer fit to forage on the open hill. The reason for the gum disease (if this is indeed the problem) is a mystery which we would like to solve, and which could be related to the use of molasses-based feed supplements. The other way in which we can improve our sheep stock is to increase their foraging area and our eyes are now set on releasing underutilised parts of the deer grazings which could become available at the end of the WP 3.6.2 study.

WP 3.6.2 is a two plot landscape scale grazing experiment involving both deer and sheep, and has two seasons still to run. We have now completed the servicing of GPS tracking collars, from which data are downloaded at 6-monthly intervals. Sheep have been removed from Plot A, and returned to Plot B (which was not grazed by sheep in 2008). In 2010, sheep and deer will graze both plots.