Far Lands

...and preparing the ground for the foraging hedge is definitely work. Cold work at the moment. I am still making progress of about a metre a day (half a metre in the morning and then a repeat performance in the afternoon). Preparing the ground involves double digging; so, de-turfing, digging down 30-40cm removing all the stones and roots, then inverting the turfs at the bottom and re-filling with the soil and plenty of manure. The encouraging sign is that I am past halfway. In fact I have allowed myself a quick measure. I have nearly reached the single hawthorn tree (the one with the robin nest box and some of my hawthorn / pear grafting experiments if you are a regular reader) which means I am almost two-thirds done. To those of you closely related to me I know you will enjoy the fact that I have achieved 28 metres of 45.

...sorry I mean work. KFC have been laying eggs underneath their house, clearly a cry for some bespoke laying boxes. Designing them has been tricky because I had to complete the job in one go, not wanting to leave a half-job for the hens to cackle at during the night. In the end, I built my own flat box kit complete with pre-drilled screw holes. At the weekend, and with Ms Fix-It handing me stuff, I climbed into the chicken house and constructed my kit. It all seemed to go OK, but the hens are yet to lay in them, still preferring to lay underneath the chicken house. My current dilemma is that only two hens seem to be laying. Any ideas on working out which one is not laying? Apart from a stake-out, an occupation I am successfully distancing myself from.

...or at least photos! Ms-Fix-It has been home, and seen to all things technological. So, the blog is complete again. A picnic without a sandwich without them. At least 10 cm of snow overnight, but it is not especially cold. About 1C during day and perhaps -1C at night. So I cleared and gritted our road, and Sarah drove to the station and made it into work ok. We spent the weekend clearing snow, and doing some Winter walking. But we also added some colour to the garden: Nepali prayer flags - a present from Charlie some time ago. Thank you!

I have had a very worrying morning. One of the chickens disappeared. I spent all morning trying to remember whether I had locked her up last night, or whether I let her out this morning. I thought I did but I was not 100%. To my knowledge the chickens had not ventured more than about five metres from their house. I must have looked inside, behind and underneath the house a dozen times. One of our first eggs... I then worried all morning - the joys of surrogacy! But, after lunch I looked out of the window and she was back. I'll be asking her later where she has been, and in future could she at least leave a note or send me a text. Youngsters these days... Otherwise, it is the normal funny farm here. Sheep suddenly appeared on the bottom paddock; I have been out carefully checking the walnut buds. Not sure whether they have been nibbled or not. About 4cm of snow lies on the ground, and the temperature is about 1C during the day and -1C at night. It means that digging ...

The settled if cold weather means I have been busy in the garden. The foraging hedge is advancing a metre a day (2 sessions!) now that I have sourced some more manure (it is too wet to access Eva's heap). I texted a local horse-rider, and she delivered 30 bags within half an hour. Apparently she has been desperate to get rid of some, and we have arranged a weekly delivery. Who wants a weekly veg box when you can have manure instead? I have built a 4th compost bin to house it. The bantams are now pulling their weight - they started laying (2 eggs) on Wednesday and delivered 2 more today. Funny how excited we are about it. I am now designing nesting boxes for their house  to encourage greater production. Sorry no pics, but blogger has gone temperamental on me. My fix-it-woman will be home soon, so hopefully this situation is only temporary.

From Cop to Coppicer After suffering a breakdown at work, a Moss Side Detective Inspector replaces violent crime and suspicious deaths with rhubarb, permaculture and two turkeys. Synopsis A Cop has a breakdown, and attempts to recover by developing a smallholding. It starts with why he chose the police as a career, some of its highlights and the increasing disconnects with his life. It then examines his collapse and he is brutally honest both in its account and the reasons for it. He searches for meaning in his life, and how – even if – he can go forward. Finally, it explores his attempt at recovery when he moves to a house with potential to be a smallholding. It describes how he develops an orchard, coppice woodland, and a vegetable garden, taking on his first animals and his efforts to be less reliant on non-renewable energy. In one sense it is a memoir, but it is more than that – it is a book about making choices, career and life choices, and addresses the fundam...

My second plan is a basic beekeeping course. I have booked it (this dream has a timescale!) and my 10 weeks of evening classes starts next week. Hopefully, the bees will have survived the Winter and with all my new skills and knowledge I will be able to coax them into providing us with some honey.

Now that we have not all fallen off the fiscal cliff, we can all start concentrating on 2013. New Year's Resolutions are one approach but seem to have an inbuilt expectation of failure, the only unknown being a question of when. I prefer plans, or alternatively, dreams with a timescale. I have 3 mapped out for 2013. The first is a foraging hedge . The idea is for a mixed hedge made up largely of trees that are a source of edible nuts, fruits, berries and flowers. Either for human consumption or for use by our bees. The hedge will be 50m long and run along the river side of the lawn (and connect with the hazel hedge, some of which some of you will remember was subjected to a grafting experiment). I am about to order 100 trees to be planted in a double row - hazel and blackthorn (for sloes, and an early source of nectar) at the back, and crab apple, wild pear, elder (for berries and flowers), willow (an early source of pollen), sea buckthorn, and dogrose (for some Summer co...