Work on the land during confinement

Strimming, mowing and chain sawing feels to be never ending at this time of year!

We are trying to push back the boundary of what we have ‘control’ of as well as keeping the bits that are theoretically ‘under control’ actually mowed/strimmed and generally cleared. In addition we had a lot of fallen trees from this winter to tidy up, along with the ones we had cut from near the house for safety reasons (it was very expensive to have them do the tidy up).

We are trying to improve the appearance and usefulness of the bits of land directly around the house, it depresses us when we go outside to be confronted with brambles and nettles as we can’t leave the house without having it impressed on us how much work needs doing! We would also like to be able to use some of it better for growing fruit trees (at the moment the poor things are so swamped with bracken, bramble and long grass they just give up) and for the sheep.

This is the area round the house, barn and stables.

Red - Orchard 1

Yellow - Orchard 2

Green - Orchard 3

Blue - Chicken/stables area

Purple - Garden and around the house

Orange - Potager (veg garden)

During confinement and since we have spent a lot of time on these areas.

Orchard 1

Before we started there was a big bramble and tree thicket just below the house

and an ugly metal fence

For this first part pushing in to the thicket a bit we had help from Isaac. Recommend him if you need someone to do something in the garden!

Still a lot of work for us burning all the stuff that came out. Here you can see Doug’s transport device and mine ;)

Once the horrible fence was gone it was easier to get the sheep on it to get the grass down a bit

Once they had done that the evil bracken had started to grow

So Doug got at it with the strimmer

There was then the rest of the thicket to be dealt with. Lots of strimming, sawing and then burning of stuff

Once that side of the drive was looking so much better it was time to mow the bank above it (below the house). Mowing the middle of the drive needs doing every week (or ideally more!) in the height of the growing season, it would be nice if we could do this bank that often, but just not feasible. We are trying to come up with a plan for it that will outwit the nettles somehow... I would love it if we could make a rock bank/leaning wall here (if you can understand what I mean), but just toooo much work. The bank is so steep it is difficult to imagine growing something successfully on it - whatever it is needs to out compete nettles too!

and also neaten up one of the trees that was broken in one of the winter storms so bits didn’t fall on the drive

Doug also cut a number of trees, an ash that was not doing anything useful, a cherry that had a lot of cherries but they were small and the birds always got them all as the tree was too large to protect, an apple that never had any apples and a self seeded walnut that was too close to the drive.

It now looks more like an orchard than a thicket. There is still plenty of work needed though, the bracken will need strimming a few times a year to keep it down and hopefully eventually get rid of it and we plan on planting some more fruit trees and pruning the birch at the bottom by the drive.

We can also now see in to the field at the bottom from the house which is nice - see a passing cow or horse or whichever animal or ours is in there...

Orchard 2 

We haven’t done much to this yet except Doug has cut the bracken above the bee hives where he strimmed last year to try to maintain that gain against the brambles. The rest of it has been engulfed and it will be next year probably before we deal with it. If the weather would get better at least the brambles are very close to the bees for them to get out and collect nectar from!

Orchard 3 

This area wasn’t too bad, but Doug gave it a good strim and we have had the sheep on it a few times and I have strimmed nettles to tidy up after the sheep as they won’t eat them.

We also mostly cleared up the tree that fell in this area and Doug gave the hawthorn a sever haircut. We may take it down altogether, but it is a bit useful for giving the sheep some shade and for blossom for the bees.

A few scrappy trees that were left after the storm damage also got the chop

I mentioned this one that fell in another post. You can see the nettle issue...

The sheep leave it looking a bit scrappy, but a strim sorts it out.

Round the chickens/stables

Most work round here has been stacking loads of wood from all the other tree wood. We need to paint the stables with wood preservative and there are some trees that need to come down over here as well. The rabbits used to keep the grass down, mowing is probably not more work than looking after them and it looks neater!

Wood delivery!

Lots of wood!

Mowing mowing

Just as we had some of the fallen trees vaguely under control some more decided they couldn’t stay upright any longer. There were blocking the way to the woodpile so had to be dealt with!

There is still a lot of wood (with more arriving!) waiting to be cut to size and stacked. Some of this comes from in the woods where we have also done a bit of clearing of the paths.

Round the house

The lawn needs mowing approx every 10 mins.

The whole back of the house needs trees cutting and de-brambling. Doug made a start on this.

Before

After

There still needs to be more trees cut and strimming of brambles, but this was the worst bit threatening the roof of the house - with leaves falling in the gutter as well as the danger of branches falling on the roof. The other trees are smaller (Doug cut the quite drastically last year).

We also cleared up the trees cut by professionals. All this and more!

It has made lots of wood for the fire

... but also lots of branches and twigs that just need clearing up. So much work lugging it all to somewhere we can burn it all. We have several spots for fires now to reduce the lugging around!

The roses are looking nice and generally the front of the house looks much better than it has, we have tried to keep the lawn mowed, but the bank in front often gets out of control sending nettles up in to our view. Aaaargh!

View from the outdoor kitchen is much nicer with the thicket being gone and with the bank mowed. Much more relaxing when we can sit and not think about all the things that need doing!

Potager

I’ll cover this in a separate post as this one is very long already!

Other animals

As well as all the hatching of ducks and chicks we of course keep an eye on the other animals. 

The sheep are up the top and think they need new grass - we keep telling them they should see what other peoples sheep have to put up with!

Speck, the tiny Ouessant lamb born quite a bit after the others is doing well, she is still very small but has grown a lot

What a cutie

Cleanish hoof, hard with all the mud ;)

The calves are growing big, but it is still over a year until we will send Dorne and Wellington to the abattoir, it takes a long time to grow beef!

Here is Nathalie (the white and brown one) and Dorne. We are keeping Nathalie (she is a Normande) and hope she may be big and mature enough to have artificially inseminated this year, though it may realistically be next year before she is. We like them to have the calves at the end of Spring, after the ski season ends but before the flies get too bad and she may not be ready on that timescale, so either a later calf or next year for insemination.

Poppy is as energetic as ever (well maybe slowing slightly). She is 8 now and should be a mature sensible dog, but fortunately isn’t!

The cat is still busy catching things. She needs to take on more moles and voles though as the moles make a mess everywhere and the voles keep eating veg in the potager!

La Mongie walk

You may get bored of hearing about them, but we never get bored of walks in La Mongie. We go there quite often to prepare the flat for guests. Poppy loves running around, whatever the weather.

We moved our cows in to a new field on the way out. There was plenty of grass still in the other one, but they seemed excited about the new lush grass.

Less sunny up in the mountains than at home

Azalia. There are loads of them in flower up there at the moment

Unknown orchid

Poppy admiring the view

Butterfly. Dramatic colouring.

We had yummy veal with chips, mangetoutes and kale. The chips were home made but not homegrown.

Rainbow

Really dramatic lighting as the sun set - with some rain too

We rushed out to look for the rainbow. Couldn’t see it, couldn’t see it... then there it was!

Raspberry Jam

Only the 2nd year we have had enough raspberries to make jam so still very exciting (it may never get boring as it is so yummy and goes with peanut butter soooo well).

It takes some effort to protect them from the birds!

But worth it for all this yummyness

We have also had some strawberries but not so many

More chicken eggs in incubator

It is a bit addictive! I am thinking of selling some of the female chicks so we decided it wouldn’t do any harm to have some more. I also fixed the other incubator (it needed a new fan) so wanted to try it out. This one controls humidity itself (the other one I just pour water in the bottom when I decide it needs to be more humid - this one has a pump and adds drips of water until the humidity it measures is the one you set). I still check it is the right humidity by weighing the eggs and calculating the weight loss (aiming to lose 30% over the 18 days until the eggs stop being turned and have the humidity boosted for hatching on day 21.

Obviously I weighed the incubator before filling with eggs (well actually I forgot and had to remove all the eggs to do it!)

I may give ducks a go, I am nervous to because people say they are horrific to raise as if you think chicken poo smells you should try duck poo!