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Diary Articles For Oak Tree Farm |
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More Wellington Field Allotments Hixon Gardening
Tips
Unusual
& Old
Unusual Environmental Issues And Going Green.
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Diary Article 8 . The
next week after the Christmas Sale it was back to normal with more
ordinary duties to be done. Taking my usual stroll around the site on my
arrival to see what had been going on during the week, I noticed that
the pig was missing from his little stable pen. The chap who looks after
the animals told me he had gone to a better place! My immediate
re-action was – OH! I know what that means, but I was wrong as he had
been taken to a smallholding somewhere in Shropshire and he was to live
outside in the fresh air and be used for breeding, hopefully, if he is
up to it. In other words he really had definitely gone to a better
place! The
recent winds had fetched all the remaining leaves off the Willow arch
walkway and consequently many of the branches had sprung free as I
feared they might. Being a lovely, sunny and dry, but cool morning, I
got out a ball of soft twine from my car and within half an hour I had
the loose branches pretty well tied down again. When I first worked on
the arch I tried not to use too much string on the grounds that if it
was not cut and re-tied every so many years it would strangle the
branches. However, it is obviously needed to hold them in place and the
argument is that it will need tying in again every Autumn so the strings
can be cut and re-tied then. A
great pile of conifer branches had been cut with a smaller pile, of
finer branches, heaped a few feet away that had been trimmed ready to be
used to make wreaths etc. David told me trim some more and then burn the
thicker waste material. Armed with a pair of secateurs from my car I
soon had a pile of course branches ready to burn. With my mixed success
at getting a speedy fire lit I made some paper fire lighters the old
fashioned way by pulling out individual sheets and rolling them tightly
between my fingers into a very long cigarette shape before twisting and
tying them into knots. I had learnt this method of making slow burning
paper fire lighters as a child some 45 years ago, but don’t get much
chance to practice it these days! It took a little while to make the
firelighters, but they say preparation is everything and within minutes
the fire was roaring away. In all honesty though, that may not have just
been due to my skills as a fire starter, because all I had to burn was
conifer! At
11 o’clock it was time for my ham sandwich with mustard, on brown
bread, and a lovely mug of piping hot, hot chocolate to wash it down. Suitably
refreshed I returned to the fire that had nearly burnt its heart out and
pushed the remains together, before seeking some other jobs to do. |
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