February 2020 at Stourton

WE ARE AWARDS FINALISTS!

We are delighted to share that we have been announced as finalists in not one, but two categories at the 2020 Lincolnshire Tourism Excellence Awards!

The categories are:

• Experience of the Year – for our Deer Safaris; and
• New Tourism Business of the Year Award

We are very honoured to be recognised alongside other tourism businesses across the county and we’d like to thank the great team who work here, the other businesses we work closely with and of course you, our fabulous visitors!

The Lincolnshire Tourism Awards, created by Lincolnshire Live in partnership with Visit Lincoln and LNER are in their third year and seek to recognise, promote and celebrate the success of tourism businesses across the region and promote the strength of the business and leisure tourism offer, its venues, people, experiences and accommodation. They also serve to highlight the importance of tourism’s contribution to the regional economy – currently standing at £1.5bn.

The awards ceremony, a black tie event – takes place on 12^th March so we’d better find our best frock and suit!  Wish us luck – we will keep you posted!

Our Beautiful Woodland Wedding Venue

We know that there may be a few people who in February may be newly planning for a very important day, so firstly we would like to extend our congratulations to those of you have recently got engaged.

Did you know that you can hold your wedding on the estate? Couples can host their woodland wedding blessing and reception in our beautiful and unique safari tent which is nestled within our tree lined arboretum. Not only is the venue surrounded by some majestic woodland, the safari tent has views across the lake with deer grazing in sight on our parkland. Festoon lighting throughout the tent and arboretum means that not only is the venue beautiful by day but twinkles by night! Take a look at our Wedding gallery page to see what you can achieve within our Safari Tent.

We have a fantastic wedding package available starting from just £4,500.  Please click here for more information .  If you have any queries about our venue hire please don’t hesitate to contact us in the office.

Venison Donated to the Wragby ChEF Scheme

Wragby ChEF is a fantastic cause which allows children in Wragby to be able to ‘eat free’ during the school holidays. Wragby ChEF started in Easter 2018 and is run by a team of volunteers who decided that they did not want parents to worry about their children missing out on lunch during the school holidays.  We decided to donate some of our venison mince to add to the menu for February Half Term and we have heard that the children absolutely loved their venison meatballs.

The team are doing a great job – over 120 children’s meals were served over February half term!  If you want to find out more about Wragby Chef please follow the Wragby community page on facebook where there are regular updates.

Every Cloud!

Storms Ciara and Dennis have graced us with their considerable presence in February.  Luckily there was no serious damage to report on the estate and parkland, however it has brought lots of fallen branches and boughs across the woodland.  So, not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth we have taken the opportunity to book the chipper to come along in April.  We will collect up all of the wind-fallen branches from across the estate and turn it into lovely woodchip.  Our woodchip is very popular and has lots of uses whether it’s for landscaping your garden beds, laying a chicken run, or drying out a wet area such as a gateway or pathway.  To find out more about our woodchip or to place an order please click here.

Preparing for the 2020 Open Season

It’s been a year since the Safari Tent found its ‘forever home’ in the arboretum and it has hosted many successful open days and private events since then.  We are taking the opportunity of the ‘closed season’ to make some improvements to the area surrounding the tent.  We’ve soon got diggers coming in to have a bit of a general tidy up in the area and are more importantly we are creating a path between the car park and the tent.  This will help us to ensure that our events, whether public or private are as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.

If you want to come along to one of our events please keep an eye out on the events pages on our website or on Facebook.

On the Farm

On the plus side… we got some more winter wheat in the ground! Around 250 acres of winter wheat was sown into good conditions in the first week of February.  However, the subsequent storms Ciara and Dennis have not been particularly helpful, as some of the ground which was drilled is now waterlogged.

Looking for more positive news… we managed to get a little more sugar beet lifted in really good conditions. This will be delivered to Newark over the next few days before we carry out the final lift of the year to complete harvest 2019! Fingers crossed that after recent flooding in the Newark area British Sugar keep the factory open long enough for all growers to deliver their sugar beet.

In machinery news… we have made some changes this month. Our New Holland developed a significant oil leak from the transmission; the repair was due to be quite expensive so we were considering changing it. We decided on balance that because of the recent wet weather and the resultant uncertainty over the 2020 harvest that it would be best to repair it. We have also recently swapped our telehandler for a new one and to replace the two machines in quick succession was not a viable option!!

Also on the farm – the Horncastle Flood Alleviation Scheme has kicked into gear for the 10^th time in around 18 months. Some digging online (on riverlevels.uk) has turned up some quite interesting figures. The highest recorded river level on the River Bain at Horncastle’s Victoria Mill is 1.20m, reached on Monday 25th June 2007 at 9:30pm. This caused some considerable flooding in the town. Following the cloudburst in mid-June last year, the river level at Victoria Mill peaked at 0.89m. A difference in river level of 30cm (granted no two flood events are quite the same) during a time of high rainfall doesn’t sound a lot on the face of it, but properties at risk of flooding by the Bain appear to have been saved by the scheme. We are very proud to be able to do our little bit for the town, although the knock on effect for us has been the loss of two crops within a 6 month period.  So, we are now looking to convert the 25acre arable field upstream of the dam back into a meadow, the uses for which we are still considering so watch this space…

Deer Diary

Our herds of Red deer seem to be coping with the wet conditions very well.  As we don’t feed grains, soya or other concentrates, they have been enjoying our herbal silage made last summer.

Deer are notoriously picky eaters so our mix contains over 20 species of grasses, herbs and legumes to satisfy event the fussiest of eaters.  As soon as the grass begins to grow in April, we can stop outside feeding and focus on other pressing maintenance matters…

 We look forward to seeing you soon! Our 2020 diary dates can be found here!

 Antony & Helen