When we first abought the meadow I planted 100 SHF bulbs and planted them in groups of five in 20 locations in the meadow. Now it is like an Easter egg hunt going to look for them at the beginning of April! Out of the 100, we probably only have about 10 flowering this year in just three of the areas. I do like them and they give me anticipation for the forthcoming spring!
by Mike Hopkins
7Mar2026
Evidence of Romans
With Halford being on the Fosseway, it will come as no surprise that I found a Roman coin just 100mm sub surface in one of the meanders of the river. Other items found whilst metal detecting have been bullet heads of differing calibres, shotgun caps, a snuff box, horse shoes, bridle ring, odd metallic looking stones, bits of wire, nails, tractor parts, car parts, aluminium cans, milk bottle tops, fishing weights, musket balls, a lovely sixpence and quite a lot of junk! I think the river could be throwing new stuff up regularly as there are always more stones lying on the top of the flow path areas after a flood, so if it can move a stone it can move a coin!
by Mike Hopkins
10Feb2026
Understanding the river behaviour.
This is a picture of the water level monitor that we installed at The Mill at Halford, just upstream of the Mill Race. My neighbour lives in the Mill, Paul Lucas, and he crafted the steel frame and made it big enough to capture water levels in the centre of the river to keep an eye on low flows too. The water level sensors tell us exactly how many times it floods a year, and also how big the floods are i.e. which areas of the meadow gets inundated. It is very interesting looking at the correlation between rainfall and river levels, we are building models and training them up against the data to understand more about the different weather patterns and how they influence the meadow. The next thing to throw in the mix will be the species counts and see how this has evolved in the differing climatic conditions. Its a tough place to grow anything on the floodplain, so recording what we are doing will hopefully make us and others more successful in the future.
by Mike Hopkins
17Jan2026
Pruning the fruit trees
The biggest job in January is pruning the fruit trees. Andy Howard from the Heritage Fruit Tree Company taught me how to prune the trees, and at this stage I am trying to get them to 6ft, so trying to put all the energy into going skyward. I would say that about 50% of the trees have made it already, and that is where I have been pruning the leader to a good south facing bud. I am trying a different mulch this year which is a compost I made in some quantity from the arisings from the meadow scarification's (Autumn 2025), horse muck and wood chippings. Lets see how they go!
by Mike Hopkins
16Jan2026
More Floods
This is the fifth flood of the autumn/winter, the first being on 15th November 2025, so the floodplain has had its fair share of water in the wet season. We have been lucky that the floods started as late as November as the final sowing of the meadow was completed on 23rd September 2025, so with the aftermath grazing and that little bit of time I am hoping that the seed has lodged itself in the soil well enough to hold through these relentless winter floods.
