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