Ditch Work
Mr Liam Lambert was back on site…must stop calling our home a site!
This time he was a week late as we had already shifted approx. 6-8 tons of sand and soil by hand (!) to make way for the willow coppice, but we always have things that need doing if you have a JCB for 10 minutes! This time it was finally clearing the last of the soil/rubble that the previous owner had excavated for the new drainage ditch. Finally the top paddock looks ‘neat’ and there are no piles of junk around.
Arrghhhh!!!! After trying to get my head round what is going to be the most appropriate ‘mower’ for the job, I am still no further forward in my thinking, or at least in acquiring one. The trouble we face is that at the moment we have 3 different areas that need managing: the top paddock which is rough with lots of thistles; the bottom paddock which is grass/meadow which is now well past cutting with any lawn mower; and the lawn/grass which is next to the house and will soon be too late to mow.
OK, I admit, it’s only a very small thing, but it feels good, and like a step in the right direction on the path to becoming self-sufficient, which in many ways is our ultimate aim with Waterloo Farm. The picture shows the pile of kindling that we generated by stripping the branches from the (soon to be completely deceased!) Weeping Silver Birch [see here for the post about it]. Big son and I spent several hours (some in the rain, we were enjoying it that much!) with the secateurs, loppers and bow saw making the kindling out of the smaller branches and as you can see, there was actually quite a lot of it! It will need to be seasoned (dried) for a year before we can use it, but it will feel like a real achievement when we come to burn it next winter, knowing it is available because of our hard work, and better still, was free!
