Mean Green Blogging Machine!

Just a quick, but a very, very important post to thank Woody for...well a lot of things; making a decent cup of tea, putting up with me leaving the butter out, encouraging me to work where I do and believing in my ability, getting up with me in the dark every morning to wash buckets and groom the pony while I muck out, allowing me to moan all the way home about how crazy work is, eating my strange "lara foods", indulging my horse obsession, letting me push/bully him when I have an idea I wont let go of (I don't mean to bully you I just get a bit "jackrusselly" with my goals), understanding "lara English" that can sometimes be a bit...nothingy...and generally being a jolly good fun husbandy man beast.

He bought me a new laptop today.  Out of the blue.  Very naughty. 

Thank you, you are the best!

x

Here's to the mean, Green, blogging machine!

(very cool and way too much technology for my little brain!)

2015 goals and dreams...whatever the weather...

"Little-big tree", the small but perfectly formed baby oak

With work looming and both Woody and I feeling well recovered after the new years "do" we set about our last couple of days grafting on the land before we went back to the office

Stone wall, log pile and the new fence posts

There were huge branches that had been felled by Ian several weeks earlier that we had been avoiding dealing with because they were just so huge and we did not have a working chain saw.  

There was no putting it off any longer we had to try and move them and create a workable space.  Rather than trying to tackle the branches as a whole we just chipped away with cutters at the smaller outer twigs, then the smaller branches until we could work with a hand saw on the bigger stuff.  Little by little, and it took two days, we finished clearing the boundary ready for Ian to come back once the weather and ground improved.

We work up on the land in most weather conditions, it is beautiful when the sun is shining with views of the forest and river.  There are often buzzards hunting or playing overhead waiting for you to disturb a mouse or vole for them to pick up for lunch.

Lovely frosty mornings

Fence posts waiting for the gate and wire

It is not always quite so idyllic and we have been stranded up there in pouring all-day rain, sudden and violent hail storms, wind too dangerous to work near the trees or so biting that we end up with terrible wind burn and look like we have spent the afternoon slapping each others faces.  

The pony paddock...i think

Being so high up sometimes all we get is a cloak of fog, so depressing and clinging that everything is wet with dew, logs slip out of your grasp and you loose all sense of scale of the field you are working in.  All you want to do is start a fire but that is almost impossible with everything dripping but what a huge relief when it does finally roar into life!

One of the log piles

The more time we spend up there the more we will learn about the conditions and best places to grow and replant new trees and hedges.  We were given a beautiful big Quince tree by my dad but are waiting to figure out the best location to plant it, we must do that this year.  Our main goals for the next few months are;

• Secure the top boundary fence, paint and re-hang all the gates - by end February
• Re-connect the water and re site the trough - by end February
• Fence off the pony paddock and top triangle - by April
• Re-lay the bottom hedge and part of the middle hedge - before growing season.
• Finish any major tree pruning - before growing season

There are other goals like planning where to plant, what repairs are needed on the cow shed or can we get planning for a dry store/stables etc. but we can start daydreaming about the fun stuff once the priority goals are achieved.

We have booked a weeks work with Ian in February, keep your fingers crossed for some good weather!

"Young Farmers" (and why you should not drink a pint of champagne)

After our holiday to Oman to visit friends we were looking forwards to getting our hands dirty after a well earned break.  However little was done in December in the run up to Christmas with trips to London and a busy time at work.  

The only brief bit of work that was carried out was to get a flail mower in to take any bumps and anthills out of the 2ac pony paddock and to top it so that it is ready for the new growing season.  Flailing (cross between a topper and a chipper) produces a very fine mulch that will fertilise the remaining land, however it can spread weeds too so grazing and careful management is needed.  

Flailing is unselective and takes everything back to soil, we had the opportunity to blitz the entire eight acres back to bare paddock and destroy all the gorse but we felt that this was too destructive.  We want to work alongside the wildlife and manage the grazing areas carefully.  After seeing what sort of result the flail mower achieved, although useful in some areas, we decided we will happily continue clearing the rest by hand.  (Although Woody still insists he needs a tractor!)

Newly flailed 2 acres

Flail mower reduces everything from small trees down to mulch.

Safe from the mower; The wooly 5.5acres in December sunshine.

Christmas itself was quiet but we spent it catching up with family and pottering about at home with only a couple of brief visits to the land.

New Years was a different matter altogether!
Our lovely "land neighbours" invited to their NYE barn party, dress code; Farmers.

A barn, rope swing from the rafters and a wheelchair made for a messy evening.  In the excitement of a piggyback race (no that is not a euphemism) I may have jumped on Woody from a hay bale landing on my face in the dirt of the barn floor, bloody everywhere but I got away with keeping all my teeth!  After carrying on till beyond 4am we were found snoozing with the dogs, in a pile of horse rugs in the hay barn the next morning.  What a night!  How lucky are we to have such cool neighbours!

Happy 2015 Everyone!