Summer 2013 - September Part 1 - The Wood

So The Wood is the name of my farm in Maesbrook (nr Oswestry), Shropshire. It's a gorgeous late 18th Century farm house with a lot of land, but isn't maintained very well. This means that whenever I go home, there are plenty of jobs to keep me busy in the garden, barns and house.

My main job for the next week was to clear the old vegetable patch in preparation for turning it into an orchard. It had been left for a year or two and so was totally overgrown with nettles, brambles, bind weed, long grass and other weeds. The bind weed made it impossible to strim through, so the next 3 days were spent hacking away with a bill hook, loppers, secateurs and my hands!

Day 1 - 

 

Managed to clear a path from one gate to the other

Still a lot to do!

 Day 2-

Discovered a Blackcurrant bush
hidden under all the weeds

As I delved further into the overgrown wildness, I was shocked to find there were already several fruit trees planted. Remarkably all of them had relatively decent crops of fruit, despite being totally covered in weeds. I found a Blackcurrant bush laden with fruit, an apple tree and a pear tree.

Blackcurrant bush and apple tree successfully excavated

 Day 3 - 

Finished excavating all the fruit trees and harvested the crop!

Beautiful apple tree - variety not known

Blackcurrant bush laden with fruit.
I left a fair amount of fruit on the
tree so the wildlife can benefit too

Lots of pears that weren't yet ripe

1 and a half pounds of blackcurrants plus
many apples. Not bad for a lazy gardener

So after 3 days of hard graft, multiple blisters, one large pile of raked up weeds and a lovely apple and blackcurrant crumble, it was time to move on to project 2. This time it was clearing out all of the hideous old furniture that had been stored in the barns, shortly after we moved in. Most of it had been sitting in there for 6 years and was beyond the point of repair/sale. Mum and I decided the best thing for it was just to burn the whole lot!! Much, much fun was had :D

Goodbye disgusting old sofa

Mummy very happy to finally be getting rid of all this stuff

Don't think I'd fancy that hot seat

Doors to hell !

Things got so warm that even
the wood got its sweat on

Of course not all of the old stuff got burnt. We found a few treasures that are now "features" in our yard, until we can figure out what to do with them.

This old mangle should clean up nicely.
It took a lot of effort to move out though.

Evenings were spent relaxing, catching up with friends and getting on with Chris' birthday card.

 

Chris' birthday card. Inspired by a joke about
someone misidentifying a rabbit as a barn owl