Important things behind the scenes.....

The land project was a dream, a get-away.  "Land" was always something we had aspired to have.  Before "Land" there was long, wild, free, adventurous dog walks, exploring new places on foot.  Before "Land" there was an order of priority, horses in livery, dogs walked before breakfast, running clubs or gym visits in the evening.  Before "Land" there was a dream...

The reality is emotional, expensive, enormous, draining, hard work, with the responsibility to "do it right".... as I am writing this I see there must be parallels to having children!

We both work in stressful jobs where there is much expectation and responsibility.  We are both proud of what we do but ultimately it is not what drives us and the commute is a daily torture that we have both endured for the past two years.  We want to make the most of life, have fun, take risks, as it is so very short.

Woodys mum & dad as our wedding 6th July 2013

Everything stopped two years ago when Woody's mum died from Pancreatic Cancer, it was a horrible death, one you would not let your dog go through.  Shirley was a fanatic gardener, there was not much she didn't know about plants, and if she didn't know what it was she would plant it anyway to see what would happen, often with spectacular results.  Her garden was the show piece of the street.

Shirley's Roses

Our house comes with the job and although we make the odd attempt at a veg patch or flower boarder (I planted a rather fetching snake of daffs through the front lawn once in Shirley's honor) there is little motivation to improve our outside space.  Hence why the connection to some of our own greenery was so important.  Somewhere we could plant and conserve some of our and Shirley's favorite plants and keep the memories alive.

Woody, Shirley and David at the allotment; August bank holiday 2013

Perhaps if we had we known land ownership would take over we would have got an allotment!  What we have achieved so far on a limited budget with limited knowledge in an area where we have had to find our feet and make new friends is something to be proud of.  Shirley would have got stuck in with us I have no doubt of that


So here's to making dreams a reality, even if they arn't quite what you thought they would be, here's to adventures, here's to living a crazy life outdoors.

Land Week 14th - 18th September

Woody and I have been slowly chipping away at all our land projects making progress, developing and improving ideas and plans as we go (in between work, (a lot of...) pony shows, family duties and the occasional weekend in London!)

 

Every so often we have a splurge on money, kit, time, energy and brainstorming of future plans.  Some ideas lead to constructive ways forwards....other ideas hit us like a bad hangover leaving us wondering why we ever thought that would be a good idea!  As I often say we are learning as we go and we hope this will be our practice run before buying a bigger smallholding in the future.

It's been six months since our last concerted effort of "Land Week" where much was done to establish the fencing and tidy the tree line on the driveway.  With the trees now getting ready for winter and while the ground was still firm we organised for another push.  

This time jobs included; getting the enormous gate posts in, clear more gorse, raising the height of the tree canopy in the far corner (willow corner) up to the pond and address any weak areas of hedge that need fencing. 

The vital planning stage

Day one; experts arrive to carry out chainsaw work along the bottom boundary, tidying up hedging and taking down a lot of dangerous low beech limbs (Beech trees are renowned for "dropping" without warning...branches or whole trees!  Sadly I have a friend who lost a horse this way).  Once the low limbs were felled and cleared the digger could get in to remove the sheep dip that has been causing me sleepless nights since we put the horses on the land.

While the boys were armed with chainsaws and diggers, I just hauled the branches and debris into piles for sorting and burning.  Important for everyone's safety but also a morale builder seeing how much had been cleared.

Wood-dogs in his element! (mud!)

The Beech trees after their haircut, the dangerously low branches removed and the crowns raised gives space and lets in light so that the digger can get in to level the area, filling in the death trap that was the sheep dip.

The area leveled exposing the old concrete pad where an old pole barn stood. handy for storing this winters haylage.  The bare areas will need to be reseeded with grass seed, I am hoping the bluebells that were abundant in this shady area come back unharmed next April.

Before: in the distance Willow Corner

After: lifting the crowns means we can get machinery right up to the boundary to repair the fence/hedge.

For some time we have had the two 12ft main entrance gates tied to posts via their hinges with "farmers friend" (baler twine!).  Every now and then one "hinge" would wear out and snap, usually when we were in a rush, in the pouring rain or my favorite...in the dark!

A small tantrum was had and the installation of proper gate posts was moved to the top of the priority list.

A couple of months ago Woody had purchased 6 very large telegraph poles at auction for about £80 so we had all the kit, the problem was that the bed rock was only 6-12" down but a hole of about 3ft deep was required.  Hence we needed a serious digger.

A tonne of rock and a water main strike later the holes were dug and the posts were leveled into position.  Woody will back-fill with concrete later on.  

Then there was the small matter of repairing the water main, done fairly quickly at the time but it raised a few questions over where our supply was coming from as this was not where we thought it would be.

Another 50m trench had to be dug to the old stop-cock and a spiders web of dead pipe taken out.  New pipe had to be laid with spurs and the stop-cock moved to the driveway for easy access. This resulted in a rather late night session on the digger as it was the last day we had it on site. 

All the hard work, early starts and late finishes are paying off. Woody is a legend taking time off work to project manage and get stuck in with the big land jobs.  He goes out of his way to help with the horses and goes off to get haylage for the ponios...ok my truck wasn't best pleased about it but I was :)

A lot of gorse was removed by the digger this week so there is more open land/grazing available, we just need to get the Calci-Lime added to give it a boost.  Not everything was finished this week as problems crop up and take up valuable time but it is another push into the Autumn stint of work to give us some focus on what needs doing next.

• Gates on (nudge, nudge)
• Winter corrals fenced with a water supply - we want to focus the ponies on clearing a specific patch of gorse next.
• Log processing
• Weed control 
• Fill old cesspit/clear stable corral
• Plant blubs

Welsh Dragons

After a grim August you can pretty much guarantee that the first weekend in September will be gloriously warm and sunny.  Sparkling dewy mornings with a gentle nip of autumn in the air, the start of my favourite season.  

It coincides with the Burghley Horse Trials in Lincolnshire, for years I worked at the event and loved being outdoors during the change of season.  Recent years we have only visited for Pimms, Cross Country walking and "Burghley Bingo", this year however was spent on Eight Little Acres.  With the humidity levels dropping and my pretty white pony on her holiday after a busy competition season we can start to get back into some pre winter graft.... oh and a little nature watching too;

I could have sat by the pond and watched....and been watched it seems...the red damselfly and the huge Hawker Dragonfly for hours, but poo picking the pony paddock beckoned.  For more info on British Dragonflies; british-dragonflies.org.uk

Woody has been putting his tractor to good use shifting some of the massive logs and scrap metal remnants, it is all looking a lot tidier. 

I spent half a day "weeding", digging and shifting huge rocks to create what is just a flowerbed on the driveway...I am sure I could have been doing more useful jobs but once I started it I just had to keep going!   I have ordered some bluebell and snowdrops bulbs and will plant these along with Narcissus "Jetfire" in the next month.

We have begun to feed haylage to make sure the ponies are all in good condition going into winter, if we have a flush of grass in October I can re-balance their intake but would rather start preparing for the winter early.  We are still missing dear Jen and have started eyeing up potential horses to join the gang, now alot of the gorse has gone we have much more land to graze.

It is a privilege to be able to watch the colours changing on our own trees, the first to turn gold are the Beech Trees that look iridescent against the bright blue sky...

 

The gorse is also turning gold as it is just starting to come into bloom, sitting its yellow buds next to the complimentary colours of the purple berries and heather (nature is amazing!)

Welcome to autumn!