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Amid the thawing remnants of a harsh January frost at High Ash Farm, Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin witness the Norfolk countryside stirring from snowbound stillness, where a mild south-westerly wind sweeps away icy veils to reveal resilient early blooms like sweet violets, viper's bugloss with its ox-tongue bristles, and cobalt-blue speedwells defying the chill on sandy slopes. Chris shares a personal turning point—clogged arteries leading to urgent bypass surgery, echoing his father's fate and prompting reflections on farming's relentless pace, where one plans for eternity yet lives for the moment, now facing a compulsory step back from chainsaws and ceaseless toil. Snowy imprints transform the fields into a wildlife ledger: fox pads with claw marks, roe deer slots with dew claws, badger's broad strides, and avian arrows from jackdaws and wood pigeons, while overwinter seed mixes teem with goldfinch flocks, linnets, and elusive Chinese water deer hunkering in thistle patches. Redwings and blackbirds swarm ivy-clad woodlands, feasting on berries in a cold-weather eruption from the Continent, underscoring nature's unyielding adaptations. Listener tales add warmth: rooks or crows mobbing a buzzard to drop its prey, evolving farming practices from min-till to green manures sustaining soils for generations, and buzzards soaring in courtship spirals as rookeries buzz with nest repairs. This episode blends seasonal tenacity with life's unexpected pivots, ideal for cherishing nature's quiet fortitude in the face of change.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2432378/episodes/18479632-episode-2-54-frosted-footprints-and-floral-pioneers.mp3?download=true

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This podcast is brought to you by High Ash Farm. To support our efforts in creating this content, please consider making a small monthly or one-off donation. Your contributions help us with production costs, and after expenses, every penny goes towards conservation and maintaining free public access at High Ash Farm.
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In the crisp dawn of a new year at High Ash Farm, Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin usher in 2026 with the aerial spectacle of black-headed gulls wheeling westward in V-formations, drawn to ploughed fields teeming with worms, while a muntjac deer ambles across the lawn and scraps from last night's dinner lure a swirling flock to feast. Reflections on evolving habits reveal how these "laughing gulls"—once harvested for eggs and masqueraded as plover meat—have adapted to inland life amid min-till farming that spares soil compaction and boosts invertebrate bounty, transforming them into acrobatic garden visitors brightening even rubbish tips in winter's low sun. A ramble yields glimpses of roe deer lolloping through overwinter seed remnants, their dark coats and flashing white rumps a seasonal hallmark, alongside muntjacs nibbling hawthorn and a cock pheasant in resplendent breeding plumage. From a secluded bird hide in Fox's Grove, they marvel at a frenzy of woodland titmice—long-tailed tits with punkish white Mohicans, blue tits flashing azure crowns, great tits sporting bold black breast stripes, and coal tits probing conifer feeders—amid nuthatch courtship calls and the vulnerability of hole-nesters to opportunistic green woodpeckers. Listener voices enrich the dialogue: clarifications on trusting continental robins in northern Europe, the dawn of electric tractors grappling with heavy loads, wildlife-friendly gardening triumphs in urban oases, solar farm campaigns, absent fieldfares and redwings lingering eastward due to mild weather, and a treasured photo album chronicling Norfolk's vanishing rural crafts. This episode heralds renewal in frost-kissed fields and avian choruses, ideal for embracing the fresh rhythms of a budding year.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2432378/episodes/18443853-episode-2-53-gull-glides-and-tit-troupes.mp3?download=true

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Please email any questions for Chris to answer on the podcast to
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This podcast is brought to you by High Ash Farm. To support our efforts in creating this content, please consider making a small monthly or one-off donation. Your contributions help us with production costs, and after expenses, every penny goes towards conservation and maintaining free public access at High Ash Farm.
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As the year draws to a close under grey December skies at High Ash Farm, Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin embark on a twilight quest that uncovers unexpected melodies amid urban clamour—a robin serenading from a floodlit supermarket car park in Poringland, its song piercing the roar of lorries and shoppers, a testament to avian adaptability in human realms. Back in the farm's tranquil lokes, flanked by ancient ivy-draped hedges, they delve into the robin's winter repertoire: males staking territories with high-pitched tunes from September onwards, forming pair bonds through courtship feeding that builds vital fat reserves for early nesting in February, while sharing folklore of blood-stained breasts on Christmas cards and heartbeats racing at 1,000 per minute in life's fast lane. A chance diversion yields thrilling glimpses of elusive woodcocks—chocolate-brown waders with twisting "jigsing" flights and sensitive beaks that flex at the tip to probe for worms—flushed from overwinter seed mixes, their camouflage and reticence a marvel in the cold easterly winds sweeping from frozen Europe. Reflections turn to seasonal flocking: linnets, goldfinches, yellowhammers, starlings, and gulls gathering for security and subtle pairings, mirroring human year-end communions, with early breeders like mallards already in emerald plumage and goshawks lurking in woodland shadows. Listener insights add depth: innovative solar solutions from French car parks, ancient yew trees predating churches as pagan relics, and festive cards from afar, all weaving into contemplations of renewal as bluebell seedlings stir beneath leaf litter. This episode celebrates nature's quiet persistence through winter's hush, ideal for embracing the cyclical wheel of renewal on the cusp of a new year.

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This podcast is brought to you by High Ash Farm. To support our efforts in creating this content, please consider making a small monthly or one-off donation. Your contributions help us with production costs, and after expenses, every penny goes towards conservation and maintaining free public access at High Ash Farm.
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In a festive yet contemplative midwinter visit to High Ash Farm, Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin mark the approach of the shortest day with reflections on renewable energy's double-edged sword. Amid the bustling farmyard, tales of a bygone wind pump—installed in the 1930s to harness gusts for electricity and water—spark a journey into modern dilemmas, as they venture to the proposed East Pie Solar Farm in South Norfolk's undulating clay lands. There, amid ancient hedgerows teeming with hares and rabbits, and patchwork fields echoing centuries of cultivation, the vast scheme threatens to blanket over 1,200 hectares of fertile soil with towering panels, eclipsing wildlife corridors, historic footpaths, and food production in the name of fossil fuel reduction. Balancing the allure of sustainable power against the heartache of industrialising cherished landscapes—where barbastelle bats, white-clawed crayfish, and seasonal blooms thrive—Chris grapples with temptations for farmers facing inheritance taxes and the broader call for rooftop alternatives or brownfield sites. Back at the farm, listener shares add warmth: early bluebell shoots nibbled by garden visitors, a beaver's wanderlust stirring rewilding dreams, and heartfelt Christmas cards from afar, including Tasmanian treats evoking vineyard visions. Culminating in a twilight vigil within Woodcock Wood, Chris captures the cacophonous corvid roost—jackdaws, crows, and magpies chattering amid solstice shadows—interwoven with echoes of Druid gatherings, Iceni reverence for seasons and sustenance, and Anglo-Saxon legacies, as the farm's ancient rhythms pulse onward. This episode navigates the tensions of progress and preservation, ideal for pondering nature's enduring cycles amid human innovation.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2432378/episodes/18379730-episode-2-51-solar-shadows-and-solstice-songs.mp3?download=true

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Please email any questions for Chris to answer on the podcast to
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This podcast is brought to you by High Ash Farm. To support our efforts in creating this content, please consider making a small monthly or one-off donation. Your contributions help us with production costs, and after expenses, every penny goes towards conservation and maintaining free public access at High Ash Farm.
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In the mild glow of a mid-December morning at High Ash Farm, Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin bask in unseasonably warm skies, where a jay's loping flight heralds a day of countryside revelations. Amidst the lingering half-moon and sun-kissed fields, they explore the enigmatic European larch—a deciduous conifer that defies tradition by shedding its needles, introduced from southern Europe in the 1620s for its graceful form and later prized for its resilient, resin-rich timber. Historical whimsy unfolds with tales of the Duke of Atholl, who, besotted with the tree, fired cannonballs laden with seeds to cloak Scottish mountainsides in larch groves, yielding cones that dangle like weighted ornaments and burst forth with winged seeds for crossbills and bramblings. Recent rains have transformed the Tass Valley into a shimmering expanse, not from overflow but from the river's porous gravel bed, a legacy of 1960s dredging that now nurtures gulls on impromptu lakes. The spotlight turns to the farm's overwinter wild bird seed mixes, a bountiful mosaic of sunflowers, millet, fodder radish, mustard, barley, and native fat hen, drawing flocks of goldfinches, linnets, and skylarks alongside deer and partridges, while teasels stand sentinel for winter feasts. A little owl perches in apricity—the forgotten word for winter sun's gentle warmth—its grumpy gaze and speckled camouflage a nod to its Victorian reintroduction and nocturnal prowess. Listener tales add charm: a tree creeper's bold shoulder perch and early snowdrops defying frost, underscoring nature's shifting rhythms. This episode weaves seasonal serenity with echoes of innovation and resilience, ideal for contemplating winter's quiet enchantments.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2432378/episodes/18343234-episode-2-50-cannon-seeded-conifers-and-winter-warmth.mp3?download=true

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Please email any questions for Chris to answer on the podcast to
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This podcast is brought to you by High Ash Farm. To support our efforts in creating this content, please consider making a small monthly or one-off donation. Your contributions help us with production costs, and after expenses, every penny goes towards conservation and maintaining free public access at High Ash Farm.
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Join Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin on a frosty early-December morning as they squeeze inside a 350-year-old hollow oak to stand beneath Britain’s largest wasp species’ abandoned hornet palace – a two-foot-tall paper cathedral of perfect hexagonal brood cells and ventilation chimneys, built by a single overwintering queen who turned a rotten heart into a palace of exquisite engineering.

Discover the deadly beauty of the English yew – the churchyard tree whose blood-red arils tempt birds while every other part (leaves, bark, seed) contains the lethal taxine poison. Hear the story of the 1942 Luftwaffe bomb that landed six feet from a young yew, carving “UXB” into its trunk forever, and feel the weight of the jagged shrapnel that punched through an 18-inch farmhouse wall while Chris’s pregnant mother sheltered inside.

Witness the heart-breaking reality of avian flu as isolated, wobbling rooks and piles of wood-pigeon feathers appear across the farm, and marvel at the ash trees quietly committing suicide – their roots eaten away by dieback until they simply lie down like tired giants, leaving perfect root plates and no warning.

From the phallic, corpse-scented stinkhorn seducing flies with its black slime to the promise of thousands of bee orchids already pushing through frozen soil on Arminghall Field, this is winter at High Ash Farm: death, sex, poison, hope and absolute wonder, all in one square mile of Norfolk.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2432378/episodes/18305256-episode-2-49-inside-the-hornet-cathedral-the-poisonous-yew.mp3?download=true

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Please email any questions for Chris to answer on the podcast to
Chris@highashfarm.com

This podcast is brought to you by High Ash Farm. To support our efforts in creating this content, please consider making a small monthly or one-off donation. Your contributions help us with production costs, and after expenses, every penny goes towards conservation and maintaining free public access at High Ash Farm.
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Join Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin on a crisp, overcast late-November morning in Fox’s Grove as the last leaves carpet the woodland floor and light floods in for the first time since spring. Stand beside the old ash tree that still bears the carved letters “UXB” from 1942, hold the jagged 3 kg lump of bomb shrapnel that tore through the farmhouse wall while Chris’s pregnant mother sheltered inside, and feel the weight of history on a quiet Norfolk morning.

Discover the invisible killer that terrifies foresters – honey fungus – as Chris peels back bark to reveal black bootlace rhizomorphs and slices open a log to expose the exquisite “spalted” butterfly patterns that furniture-makers prize, even while the fungus rots the heartwood of living trees.

Meet the outrageous Phallus impudicus – the stinkhorn – emerging from its egg in the horse ride, growing 3 inches an hour and releasing a stench of rotting flesh that draws clouds of flies to carry away its sticky black spores in one of nature’s most shameless acts of seduction.

Then walk to Arminghall Field in stunned silence as Chris drops to his knees in December to reveal thousands – literally thousands – of bee orchid plants already up, their blue-green rosettes scattered across the hillside like emeralds on clay. Some will flower in 2026, some will wait years, but every one is living proof that nature can survive a century of ploughing, spraying and heavy iron.

A poignant, funny and utterly unforgettable wander through war memories, fungal sex-lives and the quiet defiance of orchids in winter, and the sheer privilege of watching a square mile of Norfolk wake up to another season.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2432378/episodes/18267268-episode-2-48-bombs-bootlaces-and-winter-orchids.mp3?download=true

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Please email any questions for Chris to answer on the podcast to
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This podcast is brought to you by High Ash Farm. To support our efforts in creating this content, please consider making a small monthly or one-off donation. Your contributions help us with production costs, and after expenses, every penny goes towards conservation and maintaining free public access at High Ash Farm.
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Join Chris Skinner and Matthew Gudgin on a crisp November morning venturing to Lakenham Mill on Norwich's outskirts, exploring the historic River Yare's controlled sluices, ancient mill wheels, and granaries that once ground local grains, amid discussions on recent torrential rains unleashing 220 tonnes of water per acre and innovative flood management through managed retreat and river re-wiggling. Return to High Ash Farm to witness the aftermath of storm surges transforming streams into raging torrents, while examining avian flu's grip on isolated rooks and wood pigeons within control zones, and the farm's shift to water harvesting via blocked drains and wildflower fields to recharge chalk aquifers. Delve into fungal wonders in Fox's Grove, from deadly honey fungus bootlaces killing trees to gelatinous jelly fungi like yellow brain and crystal brain wobbling on decaying branches, alongside puffballs exploding spores like green smoke. Savour listener queries on identifying roe deer antlers shed during rutting and a seaside slime mould—actually a migratory protozoa—resembling scrambled eggs, alongside reflections on nature's raw power and avian vulnerabilities. A captivating cascade through watery wonders, microbial marvels, and seasonal struggles, ideal for pondering the interplay of history, hydrology, and hidden habitats.

https://www.buzzsprout.com/2432378/episodes/18230059-episode-2-47-sluice-secrets-and-jelly-jiggles.mp3?download=true

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Please email any questions for Chris to answer on the podcast to
Chris@highashfarm.com

This podcast is brought to you by High Ash Farm. To support our efforts in creating this content, please consider making a small monthly or one-off donation. Your contributions help us with production costs, and after expenses, every penny goes towards conservation and maintaining free public access at High Ash Farm.
Support us here:
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or from the Podcast page here:
Podcast | High Ash Farm