March 8, 2025

I was back in business this week. Sickness is gone, energy is back, and I made three visits to the field.

The garlic is now about 10cm high, and the onions are sprouting. I should mulch around the garlic to protect them a bit.

I’ve been working through the large pile of woodchips from the arborist, spreading it around every tree. As of yesterday, the pile is almost gone. I bought a wheelbarrow, which has been a game changer in transporting the mulch from the pile to the trees. The wheelbarrow requires much less effort to fill up and walk around with than the big trolley I’ve been using. Even just pulling the empty trolley over the field is a reasonable effort, so this wheelbarrow has been extremely useful. It doesn’t speed up the process, but it requires so much less effort. WIN. 

On Wednesday, I went to the garden centre and bought one of every kind of berry plant I could find. Five different types of raspberries (including white raspberries), black, red, pink and white currants, gooseberries, logan berries, japaense wineberries, and black and white grapes. I have one plant of each, except the raspberries, which came in pots of five. All of them are now in the ground, interplanted between the fruit trees.

Apparently, fruit trees start to blossom in mid-April to May, so I have just over a month until everything starts to grow.

I’ve been pruning away my bramble border, which has been creating large, messy piles of cut brambles. Initially, I thought I might try to dethorn them and weave baskets, but that proof of concept failed. De-thorning took way too long to make it worth it. I may be able to make a basket, but the messy pile wouldn’t reduce that way. So option two was to use the brambles to make a fence… I decided to put in some stakes in the middle of the field in a semi-circle shape facing the sun, and wove the thorny brambles around it. And it works! All I need to do is trim off the side shoots of the canes so I have long straight sticks, and use that to weave in and out of the stakes. In a few hours, I had reduced all the big messy piles. I’m only using the thickest and longest canes. I’ll try to cut up the smaller canes and let them dry out as mulch. The half circle fence will be another seating area, which will be a bit sheltered from the wind. Love it. 

Finally, I used up the remaining logs I had from the arborist and marked out the sewage path I have running down the field. This makes the path more visible and more deliberate. My next plan is to split the logs lengthways so I can lay out double the distance and have the logs sit more snugly on the ground. The next tool to buy is a log-splitting axe. 

Moving on… I spun some yarn this week so I could also continue knitting the jumper. It looks like I’m going to run out of wool soon. I don’t think I’ll even be able to start the second sleeve, and maybe only just finish the collar. I’ll probably need to pause the project when I run out until the Belgian sheep are shorn again, which won’t be until June, I believe. Other than that, I’ve finished the first sleeve and am starting the collar.

In the sewing space, I had cut up an old towel last week to turn into rags. I wanted to sew a fabric border around each rag to keep the ends from fraying. I started it, and it was turning out very messy. Not neat at all. So I paused out of disappointment. I’m going to retry next week with some different methods to make it look better. It shouldn’t be so difficult, I think I just wasn’t being thorough and detailed enough with my process. 

I have one more week in London before I’m away for two weeks again. I plan to bring yarn from my leftover stash and work on some new projects. There’s not much point in bringing the jumper as I don’t have enough yarn, and it’s quite bulky to transport.

Some field current pictures of the field

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