Willow Coppice Planting
At last after weeks of hard work and slog, and contending with snow and ice we can finally start planting up the Willow Coppice!
It was as ever a family affair and the kids loved pushing the willow ‘twigs’ into the holes and sinking in the cane beside it to hold up the rabbit guard. My Mum was also on hand to help dig and plant so we managed quite a production line, and got over half of the 200 trees planted.
Short Rotation Coppicing - Rows
We have always aspired to recycle as much as we can and ideally be self-sufficient. We seem to have made a slow start on the latter, but at last our plan to create our own coppice to sustain us with firewood has begun!
Today, following Tam’s careful plan, we marked out the 12 rows varying between 12 and 16 meters long. Not as easy as it sounds as we first had to shift tons of sand/soil etc which was in the way! Now the rows are marked out we need to get the turf/meadow cut so we can strip it off.
Solatube Light Pipe on Roof
A friend of mine reminded me the other day that we have never posted a blog about our Solatube ‘Light tubes’. So I thought it was high time I did!
A light tube is a way of getting natural daylight into a space where typically you might not have any windows. Due to the fact the Farm has been extended many times by the previous owners, the stair well and landing is almost landlocked, therefore we have installed and fitted 2 (third is waiting to be fitted) Solatube light pipes.
The second fix electrics and plumbing are now in full swing and things are really starting to take shape, which is just as well because we move in in NINE DAYS time!! The place feels marginally less like a building site and more like somewhere you could call ‘home’ with a little imagination! (more…)
We have so much ’stuff’ at The Farm that needs to be sorted out as a result of all the renovation work. Much of it is just rubbish – bits of old lino, huge amounts of dust and debris, broken toilets and sinks – but lots of it can be recycled, and some of it will even generate a very small income, as I discovered yesterday!
