Springtime Whirlwinds

Woody and I witnessed something a bit magical on Sunday.  It was warm enough to work in t-shirts and there hadn't been any rain over the last week or so.  A playful breeze kept the air fresh and shifted the dry brittle leaves that had collected under the trees.

We were working away with the bolt cutters clearing a section of four strand barbed wire from the trees when Woody shouted to look up at the top triangle.  From where we were stood some 400m further down the field it looked like two dozen brown butterflies fluttering about in the sun but its too early in the year, they must be birds?  We stood watching them twirl round only to realise they were just dry leaves in a whirlwind going 10ft up, they were so beautiful and so alive!  I should have gone for my camera but I didn't want to break the spell, sometimes you just have to watch and take in the moment.

So we are still clearing wire and the fencing is still not complete due to a million other things going on but we feel like we just have not stopped.  We cannot wait for a long hot summer!  We are ready to enjoy this now, truly, we just want to stop with the graft for a bit!

Yet another barrow load of rusty barbed wire.  There are bluebells sprouting all along this treeline.

However spring is now with us meaning everything will start growing again so we cant relax just yet (if at all!).  The 2.5 acre pony paddock needs harrowing but we may just put the ponies on their first to graze off the old dead grass so that the new stuff can break through in a month or so, but first the fencing.

I have also been looking at what to plant for the future and found a good website kissmygrass.co.uk that stocks both wild meadow flowers and bulbs.  I will wait to see how many bluebells and spring flowers come up over the next months, make a note, take photos and plan my seed bank purchase! 

We have had allot on; family stuff, vehicle stuff, work stuff with trips away then I add on three new ponies we are maxed out, in a good way, they are all good problems to have (we try to remember how lucky we are) but it's been a whirlwind!

Green Week??!

Somewhere I heard or saw on the internet that the 9th-15th February is Green Week.  It jogged my memory to have a look on The Woodland Trust website to see what their contribution was...of course it turned out it wasn't "green week "in their world....perhaps that's because their world is always green? 

While I was mooching about their website I started reading up on the support they offer to people wanting to create a woodland project, they might be able to help us get started with replanting trees and reinstating the hedges on our little patch.  With lots of information and not much time to read it all in my lunch break I sent them off a quick email outlining our project.

Minutes later I received a reply!

Dear Lara

Thank you for your recent woodland creation enquiry. I hope you will find the information below useful - I’d be happy to chat through anything you’re unsure about. We are currently offering advice and guidance on woodland creation to individual landowners though our MOREwoods project, which I’ve outlined below. We can also advise on applying for more generous funding through the Welsh Government.

Through our MOREwoods scheme we are offering guidance and support on woodland creation, and we also have a small pot of money available. We offer onsite advice as part of this project so an adviser (from the Woodland Trust or one of our partners) can discuss species mixes for your site in person. In order to apply for MOREwoods you need to have a minimum of 0.5 ha (1.25 acres) of non-wooded land that you would like to plant and be willing to plant between 1000 and 1600 trees per hectare.

We also have funding available for landowners who wish to create ecological links to woodland by planting new hedgerows on their land through our Trees in Hedgerows (TiH) scheme. To qualify the new hedge must link with areas of existing or newly planted woodland. You will need to plant at least 100 metres of new hedgerow, up to a maximum of 750 metres per applicant. We are offering a subsidy of 60% against the total cost of the plants and guards, but cannot arrange or fund fencing or contractors for hedging.

The alternative would be to apply for the next EU-funded grant scheme from the Welsh Government who have invited expressions of interest for planting of at least 0.5 ha. It  has also been announced that they expect to offer a parallel scheme for smaller scale planting such as small copses, shelter belts, field boundaries, field corners and scattered individual trees. The new grants have not yet been finalised and the scheme is unlikely to be available until the 2015 – 16 planting season. Our advisors will be able to provide further information. 

For small scale planting on agricultural land in Wales we can supply trees through our Farm Tree Pack scheme. These packs are supplied with guards and are subsidised to around a third of the nursery price, although due to demand we can only provide a maximum of 2 packs per person per season. We have three types of pack available for you to apply for, with a higher land species mix available for land more than 150 m (500 ft.) above sea level:

Native Tree Belt (210 trees)

Sessile oak, wild cherry, downy birch, rowan, hazel and hawthorn (supplied without cherry for higher land)

Wood Pasture (20 trees) 

       Sessile oak, common lime and beech (lowland); sessile oak, downy birch and rowan (higher land)

       Planting for Pollinators (210 trees)

       Hawthorn, blackthorn, goat willow, crab apple, rowan, hazel and dog rose (lowland and higher land)

So that we can identify the potential planting area and suggest the best source for funding for your land please could you answer the following questions:

• What’s your motivation for creating new woodland? (e.g. wildlife habitat, fuel)
• How is the land currently managed? (e.g. mown grass, grazing land, scrubland)
• Are then any services (e.g. power lines, gas pipes) passing through or adjacent to the site?
• Is there any other woodland close to the site?
• Are there deer in the area?

Please can you also send two maps and we will be able to advise on the next steps when you get back to us with a bit more detail on your plans.

  

If you have any questions about MOREwoods, grant funding or woodland creation please do let me know.

Kind regards, Woodland Creation Project Officer

How exciting!  A lovely email with some great information to get us started, giving me a warm feeling to know we will be able to get access to knowledge and possibly financial support for our project.  The best option for us would probably be to show an expression of interest in the small scale planting scheme that the Welsh Government are looking into setting up.  We had better start thinking about putting a plan together.

We have a busy time ahead as Ian is due back to finish off the first stage of fencing, we have a real deadline now with spring on its way and (to help with the grass management) 4 ponies arriving!

Oh and I did a bit more digging, it IS Go Green Week for People & Planet! (had to be somewhere!)

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!

Motivation from a mangled mess

Due to our work commitments we can be move around a lot, so it was a great feeling in August to reach our one year milestone of living in the same house and even better when we bought our patch of mud.  It felt like we had started to put down roots.

Because of the past years events it was a bonus when we found a busy and social livery yard for my horse Easter only a couple of miles from home.  We made an instant group of friends, useful contacts and had an active social life, something you can be in danger of giving up on when you keep moving and leaving friends. We thought we found a good bunch of like minded people but it was a real tragedy when it all fell apart at the end of the summer due to some silly decisions made by a few of our friends, people we trusted.  

September was a tough time and going up to the land most nights and weekends gave us some space to get away from it all.  Clearing paths, chopping and burning gorse took our minds off the feeling of being cheated.  Needless to say we got alot done out of shear bloody mindedness that autumn.  "Never let the f**kers get you down!".

Woody (mostly) and I hand cleared this path through 5ft high gorse

Another bundle of brambles for the pile

Woody making short work of the top triangle brambles.

The first of many bonfires

40 winks?

Remember the cow shed?

July 2014

September

July 2014, there's a shed and yard in there somewhere...

There is it! 

As you can see we had been busy but we were only just scratching the surface. We were loosing the light in the evenings and the ground was becoming difficult to cross in a normal vehicle.  We needed to get some hard standing in to allow us to drive in and work on through the winter and so far we had been doing everything by hand (except for the brief stint with the brush cutter that was useless!) we needed help!

Summer Treasures

Fox Moth Caterpillar

The pond and natural spring

Five Spot Burnet Moth

Brick cow shed

Meadow Brown Butterfly

Treasure haul from the brambles

Late flowering Eastern Gorse

Bedstraw

Common Lizard

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.....