The story of the walled garden is a long one, We have had ownership of it since October 2009, we have hit many, many speed bumps (and still are hitting them) along the way to opening it to the public, but we're finally up and running.
It started last year when we got the garden it was pretty overgrown, we had our work cut out for us, but lucky enough Jenny and Derek are gardeners! The first month was a lot of hard work clearing and cutting, but we realised whilst clearing away the garden and clearing out the buildings that we had mice, so we moved two of the greatest mousers on earth across. Ginger and Blondie our two farm cats.
So after just a few weeks of being at the garden the mice problem had disappeared. We had already got chickens at our house so we decided to move them over to the garden in early November.
November was a very busy month usually as was December, The Cairngorm Reindeer herd were going out on reindeer events all over the country. The owner of the cairngorm reindeer herd is Derek's brother. So therefore Jenny and him would be going around the country with the reindeer so there would not be a lot of time for the walled garden.
This year though was the least busy for them which was good for the garden.
In the middle of December Scotland entered the 'Big Freeze'. Record breaking snow for almost four months. By that time we had chickens and cats at the garden so Jenny and Derek had decided to stay in the little bothy right next to the garden until the snow cleared up so they were able to feed the animals even if the roads were blocked. During the winter months they even lost electricity in the bothy and cooked over the little stove located in the kitchen/ Living room of the bothy.
In the end of march beginning of April the snow cleared and work on the garden could begin again. We got even more chickens, we rescued battery farm chickens and released them into the free range. We got ducks and geese, we got the sheep, one of the sheep we had raised from a lamb and has the name of lambkin even though its no longer a lamb. Our other two sheep were called Tulip and Rosa. In may Rosa gave birth to a little lamb but sadly Rosa passed away three days later and the lamb was left to me (The youngest daughter) to raise.
At first the lamb was meant to be left with Tulip and Lambkin and get fed a bottle through the fence but the older sheep started to get jealous of the attention the lamb was getting and they would beat it up so we had to take the lamb out and i raised it, which included getting up at 12, 2, 4 and 6 in the morning for the first three weeks. I named her Maisee May, but Maisee for short. She follows me around the garden to check on the animals. Near the middle of may we had trouble, the ducks were being attacked by something, they're enclosure is in the far left corner of the garden, in the corner of the enclosure is the big duck pond with a fence then the wall on the other side, and a couple of ducks were killed and dragged between the fence and the wall. We found out that it was Mink, Mink is an American weasel type animal that just kills for the sake of killing, it does not need to be hungry, it just kills. We had a specialist come to the garden to set humain traps to catch it, but we had no suck luck. But ducks were still being killed, eggs were still being stolen so this started the 'Duck Walk'. The Duck walk is where we have a food bucket and take the ducks from the bottom of the garden to the top to an enclosure that is completely secure, they all follow the person leading them and the slow ones are guided from the back by the person at the back. All in all its quite a fun thing to do. Our ducks and hens have many characteristics, we have our four little Call Ducks who are great, they are basically pets, they are so very funny and great to watch.
For a while the duck walk stopped and everything went back to normal, buisness was good, word was spreading, Then in June it went down hill again, 'mink' had started again rarely but it still happened and by the middle of july it was nearly everynight. We lost one of our little call ducks and since then they have not been like pets, all the animals are quite spooked. We then thought it was Pine Martin. So we took extra measures to keep them out of the garden, then we had local people buying eggs who said they had a pine martin in they're garden just a few weeks previous our attacks. Then one night a friend of ours was staying at the garden with her rabbit Twinkle, and in the morning we found the rabbit headless, We knew right then we really had to stop the pine martin. The next week i got bad news, my three rabbits had been killed as well. Right then i went over to the garden and took my lamb away home from the garden. We had to lock everything away at nights. No where was safe for the animals we recently built a duck hut with ply wood and metal for the ducks and we would lock them up at night and something got in the there and killed ducks and one duck had its leg ripped off but it was still alive. One night Derek went up to shut everything up and saw a big black cat in the garden, a domestic cat had been in the garden to, by this time we weren't sure what was getting in the garden. Things were still getting killed up untill last week, in the traps we never caught anything. The ducks now get locked up in a concrete byre at nights which takes back the duck walk but now even longer. We're still trying to stop what ever mixture of animals getting into the garden and killing things. Its a horrible thing to happen. But hopefully we'll stop it and get everything back to calm, relaxed normal.
Even though all this has been going on people can still come to the garden, its still nice and peaceful through the day, so please spread word. its a good day in the country side for the family to enjoy, take dogs go for a walk, take a picnic and just relax!
