ilultham

 I was walking with the children on one of our Lockdown walks the other day, and the route goes through a commercial cider orchard. Very different to what we have, the trees are planted at different spaces, they're pruned and harvested differently, but we could see that the work they do in these places is a constantly evolving space.  New Tree planted to fill a gap They had young trees filling in gaps in the rows and some older trees that had been ripped out. it looked like they had started pruning as well - must be quite a daunting task with these fields being about 10 acres or more!  Older tree removed for some reason - maybe disease  But it gets me thinking about my own orchard and trees. We constantly plant new trees and queeze them into different places but also maintain the trees we have. This last summer I ahd a coupl edie for no reason (or not one I could see). They need to be replaced.  One is in the main orchard (pictured above the nearest tree) it was...

 The children are a t a lovely age where play is life. Yesterday we managed to take them sledging. Quite a walk to our chosen spot though! about a 5km round walk in total!  Just pictures today - not many words needed! 

 I've not missed a year on pruning these trees, and they're shaping up nicely. Although I still want to alter the shape of some of them massively, I love that pruning trees like this is a constantly evolving project and no tree can ever be perfect, and changes each year.  Before After - Lower branch removed to slowly raise the canopy to help with field maintenance. Other lower to be removed either next year or the year after. lots of the straight upright growth removed. Interlocking branches removed to open it up more.  Tree 2 Before After - Just thinned this one out with some of the higher growth (which we can't reach to pick the fruit) removed. Branches shading each other removed.  Tree 3 - Before. This is a younger tree, planted to replace one that was run over!  After - lots of the upright whippy "water shoots" removed. It seems that this variety, Winter Banana, has quite an upright growing habit so it's good to try to encourage branches lower down. The lo...

Last week we had two birthdays in the house - The eldest turned 9 and the youngest turned 5!  So that means more birthday cakes to make! I have a little help now as I can't bake without my middle child taking control. I basically leave her to it to make the sponges now!  The Boy asked for a dolphin cake - It was funny as all day I'd made out I'd misunderstood him and I'd ordered a dead dolphin off the internet, the whole day they were looking out for delivery drivers!  I think I almost prefer the dolphin before the icing! Looks like something off a greenpeace advert!  The second cake our eldest just asked for one with as much chocolate as possible! I didn't have much to do with this cake at all. The middle one took charge again, even decorating it as well!   She really didn't ask to do much on her birthday (with lockdown it's hard), except to go play at the stream in the village and burgers for tea topped off by watching a Star Wars film. A lovely few days!...

 My little girl turned 9 this week. I honestly can't believe I've been a dad for 9 years now!  She is a wonderful human being - full of kindness with a wicked streak of humour.  Having birthdays so close to Christmas it's always tricky to know what to get them, but she is always helping or undertaking some task on her own (last year she took apart a chest of drawers all on her own as she wanted them out of her room and got fed up of waiting for me) So we thought she might like some tools of her own, she had already talked about a draw knife that she could use on the shave horse (mine is huge), so I ran with the idea and decided to make her a tool box as well.  Of course having a carpenter as a father has some knock on effects, that's why the tool box is hand made and carved with a Victorian design on both sides! If you go over to my other blog you can see the carving process and my challenge I've set myself to carve or turn something every week this year - 52 weeks...

Just before Christmas I got asked by Rosemary Jameson, who runs the preserving website, Loves Jars, to see if I'd like to write a piece for her free Bi monthly magazine " Simply Preserved ". I said yes, as it's great practice for my writing and I had a free reign of what I could write about so long as it was linked to preserving! I wrote about how much preserving is a part of our life and about my first garden club talk where I spoke about preserving to a room of seasoned veterans!     Here's a link to the magazine with the full article in it . I think I will become a regular reader as it's right up my street and has loads of information in there and I do love the meet the artisan section (although I'd never call myself one)! When looking for what style I should write in I went back and read most of the issues.   Let me know what you think to the article and to the simply preserved magazine - great to have something free to read! 

I'm never going to be great at homeschooling. I'm used to spending my days on my own these days rather than having someone (or three people) constantly asking me questions or saying me my name as they think it's gone too quiet.... But I have landed on a good idea, after lunch we have a half quiet reading time now the girls can read in their heads. The boy can either play or I'll read to him one of his animal reference books, but it's been a great bit of our day.  Here I'm reading an old book "The Wheel Wrights Shop", my eldest is reading about different breeds of chickens and my middlest is reading Secret Seven.  Bliss! 

So as a nation we find ourselves in lockdown again. My plans for work in the workshop or for anyone else have been shelved while I take over childcare and "home-schooling" again.  This has also put a stop to my regular exercise routine where I run 5km every other day, which I've been doing from September - I figure now is the most important time to keep yourself in shape really.  So I've been taking the kids for a long walk each afternoon this week (and will while the weather holds) and exploring the footpaths around here again.   The children are just as keen as me to get out there and leave the smallholding - think we'll all start to go a bit mad eventually otherwise! And every time it reminds us of what a beautiful place we live.  Who else is adding walks to their regular daily routine?

Just before Christmas my neighbour (and good friend) rang me up to say about a soft spot on our shared drive. He suggested that we sort it out, saves getting anyone in and saves a load of money. There's 4 pipes down there so it was a role of the dice as to who it was.  He got a few fittings in but we decided to leave it until after the Christmas holidays were over so if we needed anything specialist we could buy it easily. We set a date for the 4th of January to get it sorted.  My neighbour is now 79 so to help with the digging he got his son Paul to come and help. He is a fencer by trade and as so an excellent digger! Once we unearthed the pipes (with lots of bailing of water) I then managed to start the digger (easy start) and dig us a larger patch so we could get down to work on it.  As I was the youngest of the three and still had good knees it was decided that I should go down the hole to make the connection! I can tell you I was soaked and frozen by then end, even t...

With the avian flu poultry lockdown my ducks proved tricky to keep happy in confined spaces. Used to having the whole smallholding I decided the kindest thing would be to house them in the polytunnel. This gives them plenty of space and with the old sheep footbath as their pond.  But keeping them in there doesn't protect them at night. And a recent fox attack of a friends ducks hammers this home as he lost all but one of his ducks (which now lives with ours for the time being).  So time to build them a coop.  There are certain conventions we follow when it comes to poultry housing. People either buy or make what everyone else, has because it works. But my mobile chicken coops have worked so well over the last 3 years it makes me look at things a little differently.  I want my coops to be easy to move, easy to repair and easy to clean. Having wooden shiplap boards looks amazing and does keep them weather proof but using my coops for the last 3 years has shown me that...

Happy New Year everyone!  I will do my usual set of round up blog post for 2020 and plans for 2021 soon, as I find it good to take stock of everything and set some goals!   Here's to 2021! Let's hope things run a bit more smoothly!