From Field To Woodland

 I knew when I planted some of the trees, that one day, they would be productive. For somebody.  But I never thought it would happen so quickly and that I would be the beneficiary. The cob nut trees (still small shrubs really) have done incredibly well this year and given a decent first crop of hazlenuts.  Hazlenuts They are turning nice and brown and will be cracked open and roasted soon.  Despite the pear tree being a lot smaller than I am, it has produced 4 delicious pears already. The bramble jam was made with fruit from elsewhere, but only because I had thought there wouldn't be enough in my field - I was wrong, there would have been plenty. Next year I will make native jam perhaps.  I have a bucket load of crab apples to play with too. Not only do those trees have the most beautiful blossom of all the trees I know, they also appear eager to please with fruit. Lots of experimenting with crab apples will be happening this weekend.  Finally, these little...

  Sometimes, rules are silly. There is a silly rule, that if you don't close a permissive path from time to time, people can claim access to the path for perpetuity.  I am not ready to grant permanent access just yet, so we closed the paths for the weekend. Once a year we have to close the paths. They become private again for a day or two and we must record this closure in order to play the silly game to defeat the silly rule.  The paths now reopen for another year.  Just to try and negate a little of the silliness, we did actually hold a lovely family event during the closure- a very lovely family picnic. At which there were beautiful things and beautiful people, in a beautiful place. 

While doing a bit of path mowing this week and pausing for a drink, my owl friend called round to look for some lunch - in the middle of the day. He hung around for quite some time while I watched, hovering, dropping to the ground for a few seconds and then moving on. I wondered if he had a nest of young - forcing him out during the day to keep them fed. Anyway, what a treat to see him.

 Having purchased twelve railway sleepers four years ago "for making things" and so far, having used only two (for gateposts) and sold two, they were really getting in the way and given "benches" were one of the original plans for them, I felt I had better crack on.  I had one sleeper cut into three bits (to make legs) years ago, after that it was just the headache of getting them on site, notching bits out of the top sleeper so it sat nicely and them concreting them in.  Given it is tricky moving a sleeper around on your own, I was very lucky to have my friend Mr Peaches to assist me for the final install. And he did a great job.  There is now a nice spot to sit and enjoy the view. Or rest on the way up the hill.  Productivity always declines when the Sky Dog is on site.

 On arrival back from a lovely Cornish holiday, I popped up to see what was going on at the field/woodland. The grass growth has thankfully slowed and tree growth is going at a fair pace. Sadly,  so is deer damage. A number of (apparently totally random) attacks on specific trees almost entirely voiding them of bark - while remarkably not killing the poor trees (mostly).  Anyway, inspection complete, I set off back to the car, over the stile at the top of the field, and after a brief wobble, and a second "test the stile with a more deliberate wobble", I snapped the stile. One of the vertical posts was totally rotted through. Thankfully it didn't hurt a walker when it broke - it failed while I was testing its strength. I am thankful I was there. My plans to mow the grass and spray the trees this week were hastily re-arranged and a few days of timber-work began.  I decided to use thicker timber on the new model, a sleeper in fact, figuring it will hopefully outlive me....

 So, September 2nd was a bit of a milestone for the project. We both named the field, and also officially opened the permissive paths. It was a big deal for me - so I made a big deal of it - and invited some family and friends to come and make a day of it with a picnic.  The weather was hugely kind and my friends/neighbours/family were also hugely kind. The sun showed up and so did lots of lovely people. We even had family here from Australia.  We did a little picnic-ing , a little wine drinking, a lot of chatting and a bit of tree planting.  I had , in recent weeks dug in and installed some signage (see previous blog entry) to mark the new paths and confirm the field naming. It was the first time most visitors had seen them so it was nice that we could do all of this on one sunny day.  My parents performed the ribbon cut and officially named the wood and opened the paths.  So it was great to have moved onto to a new phase in the projects life - it feels as...