Right. Yet another idea.

So, where the sheep are there is also a hazel coppice. It's a large area of hazel that was planted goodness knows when and very little of it has been coppiced due to a lack of time and staff.

Tom suggested that it might be a project. Daisy said that she wants to get it in shape and has been trying to persuade two staff members to take it on. Including selling or at least using the products - pea sticks, stakes, binders and so on.

Right now, it's so overgrown that there's no ground flora. And the hazel doesn't look in the best of health.

That said, it's clearly been producing plenty of nuts.

Daisy said we would talk about it next month when the lambing is over.

This is how I envisage it: I run a work party of volunteers each week, doing work by hand - which might be cutting or tidying up after a previous day in which members of staff (Michael has said he's up for it!) and I would cut with chainsaws.

To be fair, I'd rather use the hand tools and be like an artisan, but the area is so large that it seems sensible to use the machines.

We would brash up the stools and dead hedge the coupe. That would be artisanal work for sure.

This would open up the area and allow flowers and grasses to colonise the ground. The varied structure of the hazel would also be good for biodiversity.

What I would want is for my mileage to be paid - and I wouldn't say no to a share of the sales if we do sell produce. That seems rather unlikely.

I think it would be good to do a ground flora survey before and after - also anything else we can see/hear in there.

It's an idea. And I do love coppicing. I guess I'd like some 'ownership' - I mean to feel that it's 'mine' to some extent... that I have a say. We shall see.