I am sorry there have not been any entries for a couple of weeks. We have been down south preparing for our holiday in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas. Needless to say we are very giddy about the forthcoming adventure. I expect there will lots of pictures to post in due course.

In the meantime, we have now got a Facebook page established. For those of you who are Facebook registered, please use the Croick Estate link to have a look. And feel free to put some comments on the wall.

The other news is that forestry work is finally planned to start next week. Along side a large area of new native caledonian forest we have two blocks of commercial forestry, originally planted by the forestry Commission in the 1950s. They are a bit of an eyesore and are long overdue attention. But the low price of timber has made it unaffordable to do any serious work. Fortunately the price has moved sufficiently that it should no longer cost us money to harvest some of the crop. So we are starting a thinning programme to remove much of the non-native lodgepole pine and give the rest of the trees room to develop. As with any forestry work, it will make an enormous mess but the long term benefits should be a much nice plantation that sits more easily with the newer planting. Our long term aim is that it should all merge into one band of trees between the grazing and the hill.

More news when we get back from India towards the end of the month.