We have alot!

"Are we mad?  We ARE mad!"  was the general consensus as we sat in the dining room of the hotel where the auction had just taken place, surrounded by a wedding reception!  Neither of us felt safe to drive, dizzy with adrenalin, so we decided to get something to eat before we made our way home.

We had somehow bought Lot 2, sadly missing out on the more wooded, but smaller, Lot 3. Where to start?  On purchasing the land we had the legal obligation of repairing some of the boundary fencing, easier said than done, it had been left for years and was a jungle with low overhanging branches and thistles 8ft high!  Our first job was to start to clear a path in to the center of the meadow and start the slow process of clearing; dead trees, wood, brambles, gorse, old metal gates and other junk.  Sounds simple...

Field names always have a way of naming themselves; top or bottom field, road field, big oak, cherry tree, hill field etc.  The same logical naming started to happen with our land too.  So far it's Top triangle; the half acre triangle where the main entrance is, full of brambles, and Pony paddock; two acres of flat pasture with a pretty little oak halfway down.  It gets a bit "wooly" after that, the further you walk in the more you realise the old hedges have blurred into a mass of gorse.  There are other landmarks dotted about; a wet bottom corner, a pond, snake rockery, blue box, brick shed....etc... I am sure these will evolve as we clear, excavate and replant.

We started work on the Friday we completed and signed the last contract.  Woody hired the biggest brush cutter we could get in the car wedged in with saws, cutters and a kettle we left work early setting off for the land on a muggy afternoon in August.  Arriving at the land and unlocking the main gates we drove down the long driveway and finally bumped over the the grassy threshold (feeling a bit like trespassers!) into the first field where we negotiated a few rocks and anthills and made our way through the sea of meadow grasses.

We unpacked the car and woody got straight on with clearing an area where we could set out tools, have a fire and put the kettle on to start our obsession with making a good "cupatea" on the land.

I spied Woody after a few hours taking it all in, I think his face says it all....what have we done!?

 

The first few weeks were spent figuring out what we had.  We spend a lot of time walking round and round, finding something new each time.  The top fence was knackered and the driveway fence was pretty much rust and sticks so that needed sorting but to even get to them we had low hanging Oak branches and Birch saplings everywhere that needed to be cut back....we had a lot of sawing ahead of us...

Heavenly, but we've somehow got to get a tractor and post basher down there.....