Winter Devastation

Its been a while since I last posted and for this I am truly sorry, however the weather has been terrible and no matter how hard I tried to get my legs out of bed they simply refused...but!, today I had a day off and had a trip over to Leeds to my Shoots to have a look over the land and assess what damage the weather has done.
Well it was going to be a heavy going sort of day so I kitted up in my Neoprene Wellies heavy coat and warm clothing...first impressions were that everything was fine but upon closer inspection it was not good...the area of the Badgers Sett was still partly under water and from what I could see they had not been near for weeks "note to diary to look out for sign's of new diggings" , the same area also has a family of Foxes who were still in situe, luckily for them they have the cover of the trees so their bit of land was reasonably dry....The squirrels had suffered  with many of their drays now languishing on the floor of the copses, more than likely due to the weight of snow and wrong choice of tree in the first place, but they are very willey and have several hidey holes so they will be fine...no sign's of any Deer and the Kites were a bit sparse as well, I would not be too upset if the cold has killed a few off as they were becoming a big problem with the Grouse and Pheasants, they just love those little chicks.
For me the biggest shock was the whole of 70 metres of ridge-line and hill side had collapsed and slipped forwards towards the brook in the big field (Lea) This would have meant the death of a few dozen Rabbits, their Kitts and if we are looking for someone to pass the blame to it is them who weakened the land in the first place....problem here is that the land is very sandy and crumbles easily and this will cause us a lot of problems with the lambing  this year as the slippage has obliterated the road from the high field to the farm...to be honest I have seen a lot of this type of slippage recently all over including one man made behind a new supermarket in Manchester and one hillside I reported to the police at the side of a very busy main road, this one was soon dug out and the threat of a possible major incident was averted.
The Brook had been diverted due to being frozen no doubt and had flowed over the track, it along with other water from the high field had left a mass of pebbles that had been originally part of the soil but had now been cleaned and left in piles...good catapult fodder... the land looked quite bare and the farmer has lost a lot of good soil from the fields as a result....problem with our brook is that we had some nice trout in there, not big ones just a nice size and a lot of proper crayfish, not these foreign invaders we have sen a lot of on the television recently....is was a healthy brook and along with the voles, ducks and other creatures made it a nice place to stop and have a "brew and butty" whilst recharging the batteries, usually made on my superb Trangia Swedish Army Stove...it is light enough to put in the pocket with fuel, tea and coffee stored safely inside, all you need is a small bottle of water in the other pocket to balance you out and hey presto you have your very own field kitchen and a brew is only five minutes away.
This took me nearly four hours to cover so it was time to go home...the other two farms will have to wait until Sunday and I will report them to you later....thanks for reading and bye for now.