Drainage required...

Spent an exhausting few hours cutting my way along inside a holly hedge between the paddocks, in order to install stock fencing netting between them, as we have woodcock and ducks nesting which wouldn't take kindly to the dogs running around. To save time, I thought I'd run a load of fence posts and wire up in the Suzuki Jimny, which I bought as it's quite light and has chunky mud tyres.

However, it proved no match for the sodden ground and got stuck. It has a winch but the nearest stout tree was too far away. Eventually, I attached the winch cable to a small scrub willow, which was only about 3" in diameter. Surprisingly, it help well and I managed to pull the car out (sideways!) in just under 2 hours after dumping all the cargo in the middle of the field:

Bit muddy then...

The transient pond in the lower paddock, which will eventually be dug out into a much larger lake, has carved itself a decent little stream that overflows down beside the barn, making much of the ground down there waterlogged too. The plan is to get a proper drainage channel in to direct this into proper ditches as large portions of the land are currently impassable, even on foot (although I did manage to carry all the fence posts and wire up to where it's needed, in several trips)

The problem with drainage on this ground, I'm beginning to discover, is that with the very fine sand, even a decent size of drainage pipe will clog up quite quickly. For example, this pipe has been in the trench for under a year and is already buried in several inches:

Clogged drainage

Burying it in gravel might stave off the blockage for a bit but the old land drains I've discovered in my excavations are completely solid. The sand is so fine, it holds together almost like clay - doesn't let water through and sets solid. Where the inlet to the pond is (see earlier posts) a beach has formed. At first glance it looks like it would never hold any weight but it's quite firm underfoot

Spring 2016 - beautifying the willow

Can't believe it's been so long since I last posted but it's done little but rain...

Trees are just starting to come into leaf and we harvested the osier growth to build a twigloo:

Twigloo!

The osier was used to make the main structure and the yellow willow (which wasn't as tall) was planted around the bottom - it really glows in the sunshine and once it starts growing properly, we'll weave it into the twigloo which should eventually form a complete screen. There's also some violet willow planted on the entrance although the ground is so waterlogged, I'm not convinced it will survive... After some strong winds, I ventured out to find that most of the knots had failed and the whips were not joined at the top again. They're now tied with multiple whippings (using sisal) as well as being twisted around each other - shouldn't come apart again, especially one it begins to grow together.

This is one year's growth!

The osier is already sprouting and as you can see from the picture above, it's putting out multiple shoots and should continue to do so. The mulching at the bottom of the willow isn't really doing a great job any more, although now that the willow is established, I'm not sure it matters. 

The grey willow along the side of the barn needed sorting out as it was putting out shoots everywhere. The plan is to create a row of pollards so after a good deal of cutting, the larger trees looked like this:

Willow pollard

Some of the other trees had been cut a lot lower in the past and were resembling untidy shrubs, which made it very difficult to mow underneath. All the shoots except one were trimmed and regular bud pinching is carried out to prevent side growth. With any luck, these stems will thicken and next winter, they'll be trimmed higher up to stimulate growth from the top.

Single stem remaining

 Also bought a new billhook - this is an ex-military one and required a lot of filing/sharpening to make it fit for purpose. It's a bit heavy for the wife, though, so there's another one on the way! The handle on this one is cracked but currently solid. I've cut some holly down and there should be enough to make a handle for the new one as well as a replacement for this one too.

Cornelius Whitehouse 1940 billhook

More mulching trials

The purpose of mulching is to suppress weeds and retain moisture until a tree is established. Commercial plastic matting is not only expensive, but it's often non-biodegradable. For individual trees, I like using cardboard. It's free, easy to handle and will rot down in a fairly short time. I know there are inks, glues etc. that are probably not ideal but it's a lesser evil than some of the alternatives. I recently completed my winter tree planting (up to 2,051 trees!) including some more dogwood on an unused corner. The previous planting here had been, shall we say, "disrupted" by an over enthusiastic use of a strimmer (not by me) which had cut through the spiral and stripped the bark without snapping the stem.

Strim that!

 The new trees were planted and a piece of cardboard was cut to fit over the stem and the supporting cane. These were weighed down with logs and then covered in woodchip. This should act as a decent mulch for some time, especially as the logs will take a long time to decay. 

Planting on a slope

 Some violet willow was also planted but on a sloping bank. This time, some synthetic membrane was used and it was found that the supplied pegs did not hold very firmly, especially in the wind. To counter this, some stout wooden stakes were roughly made with an axe and hammered in. These not only held the membrane down but also supported longer logs which really weigh it down. The logs also act as barriers to prevent the woodchip layer gravitating down the slope. We now have 6 species of willow growing:

• goat willow
• grey willow
• common sallow (osier)
• almond willow (black maul)
• yellow willow
• violet willow

The last 3 will be used for basketry and decoration once properly established. The almond willow isn't growing as vigorously as I'd have hoped but I'm told it often takes a year or two to really get going.

A pair of ploughs for Christmas?

Christmas Day was not a Dickensian display of white snow but the standard grey drizzle that seldom seems to feature on any cards. My wife announced that she had bought me a present but it wouldn't be ready until the end of January. I asked her to keep it a surprise.

However, after I'd opened a book on smallholding and another on keeping pigs, I enquired if she'd bought me a pig. She replied that the seller wouldn't sell them individually and so a few weeks later, I collected a fine pair of Gloucester Old Spot/saddleback cross weaners from a nearby farm:

Scratcher and Hamlet (yes, I know you shouldn't name them)

Currently they're in an enclosure build onto the back of one of the stables. There is a partition inside and a door was cut in the back wall so they have somewhere to sleep. Due to the inclement weather, they haven't been pooing outside as we'd hoped, but the mixture of straw and dung should make good compost in a few months

I remember there being green...

The bottom of the enclosure has an electric tape (7000V!) running around it, to prevent them from digging under the wire. The pigs (both males, by the way) understood the significance of this tape in a very short order, although the dog was desperate to get at them. Funnily enough, it took her a lot longer to realise (after poking her paw through a few times) that pigs=pain but now she won't go within 20 yards of the pen. The other dog (not pictured) has been in to meet them and didn't seem particularly interested or fazed.

The plan is to move them into an electric enclosure that we've paid out in some scrub that will need to be cleared in order to survey and dig the lake. Once they've reduced this to bare mud, we'll move the enclosure to a different part:

Electric enclosure

However, despite them going frantic at the sight and sound of a feed bucket, they were so scared of the tape running across the gate into their enclosure, that we couldn't initially get them out (even though it was switched off as the energiser was moved to the temporary enclosure). Putting a piece of carpet over it solved that but then, despite being knee deep in mud for long periods of time, they wouldn't cross the muddy threshold into the paddock, let alone make the journey up to the enclosure (they hadn't been fed since the day before) and after a period of comedy pig chasing, we cut our losses and put them back where they were. The next plan is to buy an old horse trailer and let them feed in it. This will then somehow be manoeuvred into the field and reinstated as a mobile pig ark. However, with the state of the ground being so bad, it's not going to be easy...

Pigs are due to be slaughtered in June but we have some others on order already to replace them. It's going to be difficult as they're charming beasts but we must remember they were only born because people eat them (and with the amount they eat, they're expensive pets!). Hoping that once the willow really gets going we can supplement their diet with tree fodder but it may have to be a summer thing for the next pair...