With Solstice Christmas the New Year all behind us it was left to celebrate the day after the earth was closest to the sun. It was bitterly cold despite the proximity of our source of heat and light.

The planet is now moving away from the sun, does this mean it’s going to get colder?

The marsh is frozen solid. A flock of teal bobbed about in the tiny patch of open water and we gathered to explore the marsh.

The water that surged over the marsh two weeks ago has almost all gone.

We walked side by side, trampling the frozen grasses. It’s going to make the path wider and easier to use when the planet warms up again and everything starts to grow.

The water had washed away much of our dam. We’ll be back to fix this. We want to hold back some water but we know it works.

We also have designs on this pile of old railway sleepers will be repurposed once more. They were once holding up the rail tracks, when the railway was taken up a few sleepers were kept and then a few years later used to build the footbridge over the stream. They have been replaced so we can use them this time round to make some benches.

The marsh stayed frozen all week, it even had a covering of snow for a while.

Then along came another storm. storm Goretti, although we escaped its full impact. The marsh flooded again.

Once the storm passed we headed back into the marsh

Walking through the marsh was quite an experience. The flood had come up over the ice and then frozen. So there were two layers which made walking quite interesting.

When we got to the dam we had quite a nice surprise. Although all of the top of the dam had moved the lower part was now a weir, creating a turbulent pool which then flowed out through a narrow channel left by the old dam.

The flow of water has scoured away some of the mud exposing river gravels, probably for the first time in years.

We scythed a small area and made a couple of small haystacks.

We’ll probably use them for rebuilding the dam once the floods recede

The following day we were greeted with news of the approaching Beavers. A year ago they were quite distant. Two years ago we were contemplating reintroducing them. Now they’re in Padworth. They’ll be here soon enough. Perhaps they’ll rebuild our dam?

So we thought we’d better plant some more willows. We identified a couple of hybrids that had sprung up from seeds blown into the fields in spring a few years ago. Their most useful attribute though is as beaver fodder.

We pollarded them in the way that has been done in marshlands for centuries. Continually pollarding produces new growth indefinitely. And the branches we cut off we planted. They’ll grow into new willows and hopefully the beavers will enjoy them.

So one day we might be able to sit back and let the beavers do all the work for us.