The Complications and Fun of Clearing a Pond

It can be extraordinary the way that events over three hundred miles away can impact upon this mouse’s activity here, but the fresh outbreak of Foot and Mouth down in Surrey has done just that.

Yesterday was the monthly committee meeting of the Friends of Chopwell Wood. Since I was elected Vice Chairman, I take my role of promoting Vice in the wood seriously; I have to make the effort to attend. Yesterday however was significant as I was also chairing the meeting for the first time. All in all I tried to be fair and I hope that I allowed everyone the chance to say what he or she needed to say. It did have me feeling a little stressed and I had, had quite a bit of work to do in the last month as well.

Therefore, I particularly wanted to get out today to do some practical work in the countryside as it’s a great stress relief valve for me and it’s a lot of fun too.

As I had been so busy I had not really had the chance to hear the news yesterday so it was a surprise to hear of the fresh outbreak of Foot and Mouth. Add to this it was not until this morning while having my task fuel of porridge that I read that today’s task was at a wonderful community farm at Bill Quay. I already knew of the farm as I had visited previously and had lived near there before moving to this village.

I had great fun; the task was clearing out vegetation from a small wildlife pond and wetlands area. Its part of why I do like the Farm is that everything is on a small scale and is full of great examples of how things can be done.

However, I was quite mucky and tired when I got home, and I tried to rush around to get ready for another meeting tonight. I had to cancel attending. Apart from the fact that I would be late, it occurred to me that several of the people there would need to be taking “Bio Security” measures as protection against Foot and Mouth. As I had been working at a farm, all be it a small one, the risks are the same no matter what the size. And even though there are no known cases of Foot and Mouth locally, I couldn’t justify the risk that I could inadvertently carry the infection to others.

I just hope that it doesn’t take long to eradicate the infection this time.