Are there any fish? If you have been visited by a heron, one would assume so.
No, there aren't any fish but herons apparently like to eat frogs and newts and we've got a lot of those. The ponds are fed from three sources. The upper ponds are fed by the quite substantial groundwater in the clearing - there is a large boggy area and it made sense to use a bit of it for ponds as this would increase diversity of habitat without substantially reducing the boggy habitat in size. When we dug the ponds we wondered how we were going to fill them, but the next day they were almost full just from seepage, even when it wasn't raining! They are also fed by the water coming off the roof of the building - we harvest the rainwater but once the tank is full, the overflow goes into the ponds. They are all linked (not obvious) and all at slightly different levels, so that there is a directional flow when required.
The lower ponds are fed by any overflow from the upper ponds, plus a drainage ditch that drains the land adjacent to us on the west side (farm land) and then comes under the road and into our ditch. Most of the year it is effectively a spring, as there is always water draining. Between maybe July and October there isn't any flow unless it has been raining. The lower ponds were originally one large pond, but this had gradually silted up and then got colonised with willow saplings that dried it out even further. We decided to divide it into three ponds (with the remaining bit remaining undisturbed as one pond). We have given water places to go to deposit silt which can then be removed relatively easily, rather than just dump silt over the whole base of the pond. So hopefully, management of the silt will not be a big issue.
MikeJ - I've made some key fobs and today have been working out a mechanism to sand and polish the wood to turn some slices into drinks coasters. We do have a lathe and plan to start wood-turning, but we don't really have enough seasoned wood - we only started management last September after months of getting planning permission. However once it has been seasoned we will try our hand at wood-turning. A former client at the gym has offered to give us some instruction. You can see the key fobs on our web site, although they don't look nearly as good in photos as in real life.
Alvecote Wood - Products.
We are also planning to make links with the local colleges' art departments as they may be interested in some of the more sculptural pieces of wood as material for their sculpture course. We do want to leave a lot of dead wood on site but we can certainly spare some as we have a number of fallen trees some of which we want to cut up so that we can clear the area where they've fallen of brambles, allowing new saplings to grow in the space - at the moment they don't have a chance. We can't get the tractor in there with a fallen tree in the way.
