May has been a warm and wet month; you have kindly been busy booking slots for your four-legged friends and we have been planting some trees at Fenland Dog Park.
Spring has arrived and finally we have had some lovely sunny days which conveniently coincided with the weekends, hopefully allowing us all a bit more time to enjoy it. You have been very busy booking Fenland Dog Park recently, with the Bank Holiday week and last week having an average of over 60 bookings in a week, or nine bookings per day. In order to keep on top of the higher demand we have been topping up the poo bags and filling up the water dispenser more frequently. The weather has also meant that the grass is growing rapidly, so the mighty Kubota has been mowing on a weekly basis for the few weeks to keep the grass short. Please continue to pick up after your dogs and help keep the paddock tidy for all to enjoy.
After the miserable winter and wet start to spring, finally ground conditions are better and we have been able to fulfil one of our Dog Park council planning conditions by planting some trees. At the two feedback sessions we previously held (Sept ’23 and Jan ’24) some of our neighbours supported our tree planting intensions, and others were not so keen to have trees nearer their sites. We have tried to be sympathetic to all, and have planted over three dozen one- to two-meter-tall trees on the Fenland Dog Park site which we look forward to seeing them grow and mature, and hopefully help enhance local wildlife and biodiversity. Although the trees came in 20L pots with compost around the roots, we will also water them as needed to help them get established.
In the field next to the dog park the farm has been very busy planting quite a few more trees in the last couple of weeks. This field has been planted with young olive trees as part of a long-term project to see if we can get other crops to be grown in the UK, rather than importing produce from overseas. The success of English vin yards is a great example of this, but our local soil type does not lend itself to vines. The olive trees will take many years to mature, but with a little bit of luck and some favourable weather we hope to harvest and process the first olives into olive oil in three to four years’ time, and reach full tree potential in ten years’ time.
We hope you all have a great second half of May, and fingers crossed that the Bank Holiday at the end of the month has some lovely weather for us and our dogs to enjoy.
