From Field To Woodland

 It wasn't all work during the winter. Sometimes you just have to stop and enjoy the view. Stop and just enjoy being there. Stop and watch what is going on around you. These are some of my favourite times and I have to make myself make time for it.  Due to the altitude, we had a reasonable amount of snow. I had learned from the previous owner that it was a popular sledging field with the local youth. We found evidence that it still is popular on one visit, though it is going to get much harder in the future.  The frost did magical things to the snow on the walls of the lower boundary one morning.  As the thaw came, I spent a few minutes mesmerised by the melt water bouncing down a sunny wall. You have to be a little patient. 

 So , the blog has been quiet but the field hasn’t.  It has been a tough winter both from a personal point of view and a weather one. The cold hung around for a long time. The low temperatures and low mood were lifted by a lot of progress with tree planting though.  For all 25 trees being planted in a day doesn’t seem a lot , when you do this once or twice every weekend , suddenly the field starts to fill up and the whole feel of the place changes. Every now and again , you look up from your digging and realise just how much work had been done. So many people answered the calls for help and turned up in shockingly bad weather to push the plan forward. Working in icey winds, hail, snow and frozen ground, progress continued due to the kindness of volunteers.  The Woodland Trusts’ delivery of bundles of 25 trees turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Though the overall quantity was intimidating sometimes (having several hundred trees that need planting before spring w...

 So , it was Boxing Day, there were 225 trees left to plant this season, we needed to crack on and get planting.  Twenty five trees at a time has turned out to be just a nice number to deal with. The Woodland Trust delivery was conveniently bunched into bundles of twenty five and it turns out , 4x people for 2x hours can manage those in a relaxed fashion including tagging them (and if I am one of the four , I get to plant a few too).  We had planned to plant twenty five Hazel trees on Boxing Day in order to work off a bit of Christmas dinner, two hours would be enough time in the chilly weather and we didn't want to pressure ourselves.  We managed to get the planting almost completed in double quick time when Caroline (who features regularly in this blog - as she helps me out with so much stuff) asked a favour.  Her friend Patience Mackarness, who is both a writer and a fellow outdoor swimmer, had lost her elderly Mum the day before. On Christmas Day. Could we p...

 What to do when the Woodland Trust deliver 225 trees on the Friday you are moving home - and 6 days before Christmas? Well after a rapid request for help and advice, it seems, you don't actually have to panic. It seems that, as with small children kids on Christmas Eve, if you are crafty, while the trees are sleeping you can tiptoe about, moved them around a little and they don't even notice what is going on.  Unlike myself, the trees apparently, don't mind moving home a couple of times in quick succession.  With previous tree deliveries, because the delivered trees were bare root stock (just twigs with their roots exposed and no soil or plant pots) , we have had to move quickly and plant them before the roots dry out and before the trees notice they have been uprooted from their first home. Realistically, this means planting the trees within a week (and they have usually had a couple of days on a couriers truck by the time they reach me). Even a week is a little risky i...

 As a data geek and lover of google maps, the possibility of tracking all of the tree planting in a database and showing each numbered tree on a map, was too much of a temptation to ignore.  I had tried to encourage The Heart of England Forest to do this on a larger scale when I worked for them. Not individual trees, but a record of what they planted and where - so it could be visible on their website with a maintenance history and extra planting information. They did for a while and then after I left, it fell into disrepair.  For me though, tracking the planting was a must. As I have written in previous blogs, the pleasure of having kids plant trees and know for certain, which individual trees they planted and where, is too huge to pass up. I like to imagine that some of the children at least, will return in years to come and see how their efforts have been rewarded and witness the start of something, something  that will continue long beyond their own lifetimes....

 It is funny when you day dream about something , and then you worry (or I do) whether it will live up to expectations. I dreamed about our first "real planting day" - planting days like the ones I have done years ago, with the Woodland Trust and the Heart of England Forest, where dozens of trees are planted and a woodland actual starts. This dream has gone on for years, but it has been much more in my thoughts this year for obvious reasons.  That dream planting day came all of a sudden, and to a certain extent took me by surprise. I got an email from a tree supplier to say "your order has been despatched". It didn't say which order (25 trees or 45 trees - or both).  In my head, trees wouldn't start to arrive until the really cold weather in the New Year. It still feels (and is) absurdly warm - which is a worry for climate change reasons. I had imagined that I would have all the paths marked out before  tree arrived - but no, trees were arriving very soon. T...

 Sometimes when you day-dream about something for years, when the time comes, it isn't quite as good as you imagine it. I know that the day I get to take to the stage with the Foo-Fighters, my windmill guitar moves won't be as wild as I have imagined. It will be great, but not quite  as the dream.  Occasionally though, stuff does work out as you hoped. Today was one of those days. I had planned to plant some daffodils as you walk into the field. I know thad daffodils isn't a wild woodland thing, but it is nice right - and I want it to be nice. In 50 years time when I am nothing but a skeleton under some of the trees, nature can decide if the daffs belong or not, but for now, they belong. I am over-ruling nature in the short term.  On this basis, I ordered myself some "bulk" bulbs. How many is enough? How much qualifies as bulk ? I went for 25kg. If I had too many, I could always give some away, too few, order some more. £44.39 well spent (including delivery).  J...