As described in the previous entry for this project there were three major tasks to complete before the emus, rheas and sheep could move back into the paddock and with the cottage garden proving too small and not secure enough for them even as a medium term prospect time was of the essence. The three tasks were as follows;
Remove the old (well new actually) 1.2m fence and install a 1.8m fence to prevent the emus being able to vault over it at will.
Re-seed the paddock and establish a good growth of meadow grass prior to letting the animals back in.
Install and commission the attenuation tank/pump to remove land drain water from the paddock and deposit it into the wet drainage ditch at the front of the property.
So to the first of these jobs which was the fence that needed to be 1.8m high to prevent emu escapology. We decided for aesthetic and cost reasons to put 2.4m posts in (to a depth of 600mm), re-use the rails from the 2 year old fence and add a further rail with tensioned wire above this. So the fence rails were carefully removed, the stock wire unstapled and, as they had been recently renewed we could pull the existing posts out intact (for use elsewhere on a future project) and re-use the same holes for the new posts. So with new higher posts installed we stapled on new finer mesh galvanised wire and attached four instead of three rails. We then added three tensioned wires around the very top of the fence to make it up to the required 1.8m height all the way round.
Two other bits of work we undertook during this process was to:
widen the gate from 1.8m to 3m in case we needed to get any plant or machinery in to the paddock in the future. This consisted of digging out the old post and moving it to the wider location where it was re-concreted in place and a new gate purchased and hung.
install weed matting on the gravel area cleared earlier, insert gravel boards to delimit it from the grass and move and level 20 tonnes of gravel into place to provide the gravelled access area to the paddock.
The old fence removed, new one installed and the gravelled area established round the stable and north end of the paddock.
In terms of the second task, that of the grass seeding, while the re-fencing work had been taking place the paddock had been weed-killed, re-ploughed and re-seeded and this time the seeds germinated properly which was very welcome news.
Two images of the new grass taken approximately two weeks apart.
As we waited for the grass to become more established we turned out attention to the third task, the attenuation tank. The hole for this had originally been dug as part of the land drain installation, but it turned out that part of the sides of the hole had collapsed since then so we needed to dig it out again, but this time manually which was 'fun'. Once this was done we put 150mm of concrete in the base of the hole and dropped in a 1200 litre plastic round tank that had a depth of about 1.5m internally and a manhole cover on top. The land drain perforated pipe was connected to the tank by cutting a hole in the tank wall and then the tank was part filled with water and 3 cubic metres of ready mixed concrete was then poured in around it to hold it in place.
Next up a submersible stainless steel pump was installed in the base of the tank and the float switch adjusted to allow it to switch on to pump out when the water level reached the bottom of the inlet pipe and to switch off when the pump head was just out of the water. MDPE pipe was taken from the pump through the top of the tank and then via a right angle bend into a small trench that connected it to the discharge pipe via an inspection chamber that was already in place. The tank area was then backfilled and seeded to match the rest of the paddock.
The intention had been to try and let the grass settle over autumn/early winter, but when one of the emus vaulted the fence again (and took 2 hours to retrieve this time) the decision was taken to move them in earlier than would have been ideal. As such, the new grass round the edges of the paddock has suffered over winter and the decision has been take to potentially re-sow it in spring/autumn by temporarily dividing the field in two so the animals can be in one area while the seed takes in the other doing one area in spring and one in autumn. However, it maybe that the grass survives well enough over the next 6 months in which case this won't need to happen, but only time will tell.
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