Thursday 4 April 2019

Passing of the Warm Spell

We are back to single digit degrees Celsius and sleety showers. Much more normal for this time of year but less pleasant to work in. I hope the bees are still able to do their thing with the copious blossom. Sam the mighty wolf has gone back to wearing a coat on his walks.
Toby the Wrecker whose super power is 'getting in the way' is much happier as he never feels the cold but struggles in the heat. Our dogs are like chalk and cheese.

We have pear and cherry out at the moment with apple still to come. My daughter is here providing some youthful energy and enthusiasm and she has started battling the brambles and mature broom that fill the forest garden.

To help us in our battle we have secured the services of some sheep, their owners couldn't keep them and so we welcome Buster (Gonad) the ram and his lovely ladies (Lamb)Bretta, Chestnut and their lambs, Hansel, Gretel and Bam.
They eat young brambles and so we need to cut down the two metre high brambles to ground level and let them feast on the young emerging sprouts to keep it down, but first we need to get some electric fencing up and running to keep our own and neighbours dogs away from them. In the mean time they have the fenced chicken run and orchard to themselves while we do the preparation work.
Add to that soil improvement work, digging out the compost heaps and wormery and planting out the seedlings into the polytunnel and there is plenty of work to keep us going.