Archive for December, 2011
First planting of forest garden
The second, and probably the most important stage, of the development of our forest garden is now underway. The pigs were the first stage – brought in to help clear the ground (although being as lazy as they were this wasn’t done as well as we had hoped!). The second stage is the planting of the trees that will form the canopy layer of the forest garden. For those unfamiliar with forest gardens (although it does seem to be all the rage now) an overview can be found here. It is one of a number of ways to incorporate permaculture design into the garden, and one I’ve been most looking forward to setting up. It’s been in the planning stage for a few years now, and was initially going to incorporate the whole field, but due to budget constraints (fruit trees are expensive), time, and bad drainage at the bottom of the field, we’ve scaled this back to just one-third of the field. Nevertheless this has meant buying and planting 18 fruit trees… which is only the start. Read the rest of this entry »
Whiskey & Ginger sunbathing
It seems the fears we had that we would end up with a run full of elderly non egg-laying chickens aren’t going to materialise. In the last week or so the last two of our original four hens both flew up to chicken heaven. Read the rest of this entry »