We’ve cut more hazel in Bottoms’ Corner this winter than ever before and that means there are vast amounts of pea sticks to be bundled and sold. Good news for us because we are receiving orders for large numbers from commercial gardens. It seems that word is getting around the gardening world about hazel as a top stick […]
I seem to have developed another obsession to add to a few others I have collected over the years. It’s a man thing I think or perhaps men are more obvious about it. I’m not too bad compared to some blokes I’ve come across in the past. I don’t spend weeks away sailing, or long […]
We spend hours and hours carefully selecting hazel and tying bundles to make faggots for a river bank restoration job in Leighton Buzzard, and Greensand Trust Ranger, Matt, quite without any thought for how delicate these faggots might be, puts them in place by a none-too-delicate application of his size elevens. Fortunately, they fall into […]
Black Adder came to mind this afternoon whilst driving home from a job in Ware. More particularly, Lord Percy, played by the excellent Tim McInnerny, in Black Adder the Second (I’m prepared to be corrected on that), during a wonderful exchange in which he announces that he has “discovered pure green“. What prompted such pondering was the […]
It’s been raining a lot today. So we stayed inside all morning, toying with paper and the PC. Rainy days are useful sometimes. We get office stuff done in daylight and that should rescue me from evenings in front of a screen. There was a brief pause in the dampness around lunch time and I zoomed […]
Having left my part time job at Christmas we’ve survived two months now without that regular and comforting clang of money arriving in the bank. We’ve both been working on the farm in the meantime and this is the beginning of what we hope will be our busiest time 0f year, when gardeners and plenty of others […]
On my own, working in the woods, I’ll have a Thermos of tea with me and drink it through the day, even down to the cool, tarry brew that lurks there around 3.30. If Jane’s with me, we’ll boil the Kelly kettle frequently, there being a slight competition for the duty of firing it up; […]
On Thursday Jane and I took a trip to Suffolk to visit a chap called Graham who I had found posting on a forum populated by all sorts of interesting woody types, but mainly arborists comparing notes on chainsaws, forwarders and other exciting machinery. These of course are of great interest to me, but it […]
We’ve just delivered sixty, metre-long staves and sixty pairs of claves – all from hazel – to a very well known environmental charity. They are apparently destined to be given to children at a school in North London. A lovely present I thought – I can’t recall anything even vaguely similar happening to us when I […]
Ah the bluebell – that beauty of our ancient woodlands, that brilliant woodland welcomer of spring. They are flowering right now in our tiny bit of ancient woodland and they look gorgeous in the fragile April sunshine. So welcome in a sea of vivid green, after months of grey and damp. As we all know, […]