The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Community => Coffee Lounge => Topic started by: SallyintNorth on May 29, 2011, 09:33:09 am
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This arose from another topic and I thought it deserved its own thread.
We have observed significant damage to areas of hedge bank and field where the council put piles of grit in winter. Makes us seethe; everyone wants to tell farmers how to care for their land, makes out that (without direction from defra) farmers would be the scourge of the environment, but when it comes to a bit of popular inconvenience all that goes out the window and they can kill of as much of our pasture as they like, apparently. >:(
And we have wondered and worried about the effects of the gritty sludge draining into the watercourses, of which there are an abundance around here.
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Would agree with Sally's comments, we have seen hedges dying in parts where snow and salt melted into the ground and the salty residue appears to have killed the hedges, holly and some blackthorn seem particularly affected. We live about 1/2 mile off dual carriageway which was heavily salted/gritted as a main artery into the north, there was quite a bit of seemingly burnt grass which thankfully now we've had some rain is starting to recover.
Mandy :pig:
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We live on a small unclassified but hilly road which is nonetheless on the school bus route, a milk collection route and is a rat run for commuters. This all means that it is very heavily salted, sometimes six times in one evening. I have wondered about the amount of salt used and my OH complains every winter, but really the only damage we see is physical, when the snowploughs rip out stretches of fence because they can't see where the edge of the road is. They also pile huge amounts of snow across our entrance which is inconvenient to say the least. It is interesting that some of you are observing damage from the salt.
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I wish we'd stop gritting roads. And that people would put on appropriate tyres and drive appropriate cars.
I have friends who live in pretty, remote villages and then expect someone else to sort out their access to the nearest town. Surely if we choose to live in remote places (I do) then we take responsibility for being able get about. And that people who take school bus contracts etc. would have to commit to proper vehicles and tyres too.
Apart from the environmental cost, there's a high financial cost too!
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Absolutely agree with all of jaykay's comments regarding people who choose to live in remote areas.
Around here we still, thankfully, have a considerable "indigenous population." Only those who need 4x4s tend to drive them and the majority manage in small lightweight cars. A significant proportion still rely on the (increasingly poor outside tourist season*) local bus services.
Quite a few locals do change tyres for the bad weather - but then the best snow tyres are not suitable for well-cleared roads, so people are forced to use the hybrid type which can handle the roads which have been cleared as well as the snowy/icy ones.
* Dang, I just found a reason to be glad we have tourists around here!
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No-one is terribly bothered by grit because it mostly washes away and the surge in salt levels in the treatment plants is very short. But "mostly" leaves a lot of salt on verges and fields, and it is harmful.
In Sweden you're obliged to fit winter tyres in winter, but they do have rather more serious winters than most of the UK. I'm not convinced that 4wd buses are going to be bought by anyone, what with disabled access and so on also being required. I think the cheaper option of cancelling the service would be taken. Round here I don't know anyone else who owns tyre chains.
I suspect the real problem is that the enormous growth of the supermarkets and the necessary logistics means that supermarket shelves would empty and the consequences for politicians would be traumatic. We've allowed so much to be centralised in the name of cheap food that there's no real alternative any longer.
Years ago my great-aunt Ada routinely got snowed-in for a month on the moors above Kirkby Stephen but had the supplies to deal with it
but that was when Shap closed most years as well.
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Where did she live Waterhouse. KS is my nearest place and we get snowed in each winter, not for a month fortunately :)
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My great-aunt Ada Brogden married a railway man and lived in a cottage somewhere up one of the lines out of KS. She had to cross one of the big viaducts to get to it which she said was always scary even when not windy. That's all I know about the location, but she kept a pig out there. She did say that she threw her shopping from the train into her front garden once to avoid carrying it a couple of miles back but never found the joint. She was a long-time Sunday school teacher in KS. As kids we had holidays with her and with cousin Norman in Sebergham.
After she retired she lived in one of a pair of tiny cottages on the main road a quarter of a mile south of the church next to the Vet and backing onto Croglam Lane. The pair have been converted to one and are occupied by the retired vet - I barged in last year and asked. She got TB in her late 20's but lived to over 90: a very tough lady.
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I saw the result of some toxicity tests a farmer was doing for his public open day on growing countryside plants , at the road side site tests salt killed far more than Round up and most other weed killers as well as lasting far longer in the soil. So all being all the concentrations at the roadside that's been salted will hammer everything in range untill it gets massively diluted by water and more water. Plants in streams might not suffer so much but it does make you think about the effect on fish and molluscs etc. for miles down stream.
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Defra says that the increase in salinity downstream is of short duration and they think it does little short term damage and no long term damage. But I think they focus entirely on salt washing off roads into drains rather the stuff that's gone into the soil. Could be a much bigger issue in the arid deserts of East Anglia than in the North or South West where, I understand, rain has been seen this year.
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Waterhouse, the railway line through KS is the Settle-Carlisle line. I'm guessing from the 'snowed in' comments she probably lived in Mallerstang which is where I live :) It's south but uphill from KS. There is a railway cottage that fits your description :) The other possibility is north, Crosby Garrett.
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She talked about Mallerstang a lot so that fits. There was another relative always known as "Nellie of Crosby Garrett" so pretty sure it wasn't there
Utterly lovely place and my emotional home. I used to play in the river at Stenkrith and Water gate bottom. Trouble is I'm London born and brought up so a complete foreigner.
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Oh yes, Stenkrith is at the KS end of the Mallerstang road and 'watter-yat' common is where Mallerstang begins. It's currently (the common) covered in vardos (bow-top) gypsy caravans as the gathering has started for the Appleby Horse Fair, they've been coming through all day - very picturesque :)
It's wild here but incredibly beautiful :)
I will take a photo of where I think she may have lived next time I go past.
There are lots of foreigners about, including me - very well tolerated if you're seen to work hard and learn from the local farmers. We earned our stripes fencing for two days in 'four sets of waterproofs' rain - we were considered then to be worth speaking to :D and since then, local folk couldn't have been nicer.
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Being a southern softie I couldn't bring myself to write watter yat: had to translate it.
My apologies to everyone for hi-jacking this thread with a journey down memory lane: meant a lot to me. I suppose stuff does when you get older
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OH has pointed out that the willows we planted nearest to the main road have been blasted while she's found examples of a plant growing in the verge which is normally only found in coastal areas.
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OH has pointed out that the willows we planted nearest to the main road have been blasted while she's found examples of a plant growing in the verge which is normally only found in coastal areas.
Thanks for putting us back on track, wh!
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Round here I don't know anyone else who owns tyre chains.
So far as I know I'm the only person round here with a set, too. They're bl@@dy brilliant, though!
Our driveway is on a roughly 20 degree slope and prior to getting the chains it was nigh-on impossible to get the car out in the snowy weather. The ice was four inches deep when I broke it up with a demolition hammer.
The chains, although fiddly to fit, enable me to drive up with little fuss at all.
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So, don't you have to keep taking them off and putting them back on again? Or can you drive on cleared roads as well as snoy, icy & slushy ones?
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I work in roads maintenance as my day job, and fortunately we do not put salt heaps on the verges. The main reason it is put there is so that the folk staying in rural parts that are not part of a classfied/priority route treatment area, can treat it themselves as required.
Last year we had the water tested in our balancing pond next to our salt barn, which indicated a higher than usual amount of salinity, but actually it had a higher content of beasties than some of our other ponds.It is amazing how resilient verges etc are, but areas that are directly under a pile of salt can take years to come back to life - therefore normal salt spreading operations don't have as much of an impact on the environment as you might think.
You might have heard about rock salt that is coated with molasses to make it last longer from the rain/dampness - but on the routes that this is spread on - you will find a lot of road kill, as the animals like the taste of salt and sugary coated molasses and so does Hugh F W.
Nevermind the salt - you wouldn't believe the amount of heavy metals that you would find in a puddle next to the kerb on the street (and all of us road users are to blame for that)?
If you canvass your local roads dept - they might stop putting out salt heaps, as budget cuts is playing a big part in operational tasks, and any decent excuse not to put salt out, will save them money.
PS - i do Motorways not rural roads
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They've stopped putting out piles of molassed salt round here after the year the
sheep ate it all in the piles, long before anyone could use it on the roads :D
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So, don't you have to keep taking them off and putting them back on again? Or can you drive on cleared roads as well as snoy, icy & slushy ones?
You wouldn't want to drive far on a cleared road with them on but for short journeys it's ok.
Some days I only really needed them to get up the drive.
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so tobytoby that will be bear or amey you work for :wave:
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Round here some people use 'snow socks' which I think can cope with a bit of cleared road.
I just have a set of winter wheels/tyres and summer ones. They're on the car about 6 months each ::)
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Robert Waddell
I don't kiss and tell, but i used to work for one of them - since moved on, but in the same line of business.