Spring storms

The weather has been out of sorts the last couple of days - blustering, grey, some needed tears and the occasional ray of sunshine.

A Wwoof-er has arrived to help out for a week.  Morgane from France.

A bona fide beret, malheuresement no hooped shirt or necklace of onions!

The WWOOF network links farmers with people who want to volunteer on organic farms.  I did it on and off for a couple of years which helped me to decide what I wanted to do here and to a certain extent how to do it.  Most of the Wwoofers I've had however are more motivated by wanting to learn the language and by the chance to see a different part of the world.  Morgane attended an English language school in Wales, which explains why the conversation is not quite fluent!  But I have been very lucky with the volunteers who have come here so far this year who have been bons oeufs without exception.

In the wet weather yesterday I put Morgane in the winery to touch up the walls where the paint was flaking off.  I think this will need to be an annual job due to damp.  Non-peeling, easily washable walls was one of a long list of requirements laid down by the environmental 'elf team.  The less said about these the better if relations between me and West Ox District council are to remain cordial.

                                                             SATISFIED!?

Nodded off in the shepel this afternoon or "fell into the arms of Morpheus" as my grandmother had it.  It is her old armchair that I have in the shepel and the experience of some head lolling shut-eye while wedged between its stubby arms fully justifies her poetic description.

The shepel is watched over by a trio of silver birches

As you can see two of these are being seriously scaled by ivy - the sap sucking alien.

Before

I decide to completely clear a patch around both trunks.  I hope this will kill off the stuff that has climbed higher but am not convinced that it will.

After

The liberated bark has a rather beautiful snake skin print appearance.  "This is my birch bark jacket.  It's an expression of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom".  A bottle of liqueur to the follower who can place which cult early 90s film this is an adapted quote from...?

And finally..

a precocious primrose that has decided to seed itself next to one of the rows of autuman fruiting raspberries.  The cardboard is there as a weed suppresant (or mulch) and will also acidify the soil slightly when it rots down, which is good for the fruit as it prefers a pH of about 6 whereas the soil here is very alkali, around 8.

Three thousand Italian bottles

Witnessed some first-class rural tooth sucking on Friday when two pallets of bottles were delivered but the lorry they came on couldn't get through the gate into the yard - 'sorry mate but if you'd advised you were limited access I would have brought the seven and a half tonner'.  Being identified as 'limited access' fits ok with my self-concept, but at the time was displeasing as he threatened to leave the bottles by the side of the road.  In the end we dragged them on his pallet trolley into the farm shed but couldn't get them the extra twenty metres over the gravel into the winery.  I need to find a friendly neighbour with a forklift in the next few weeks!

I cracked into this new haul to make some mock up bottles.  I'm hoping to launch in the summer with a raspberry and blackcurrant liqueur.

Paul at Agenda Design has done a lovely job on the labels and has been very patient with all the changes required by the Soil Association and Trading Standards.  The last decisions to make are whether to go for a signifying colour at the base of the label ie blackcurranty or raspberryee, or a more subtle grey.

And then whether to stick with the gold capsule (bit that goes round the cork at the top of the bottle) for the blackurrant or try to source some sort of purple capsule, this could look rather Imperial (Blackcurrantus Organicus) or a bit naff.  Watch this space...

HOOOAAAA!!  Check out the blossom on this wild plum tree!



You can keep your daffodils and your lambs, for me, this is the ultimate emblem of spring.  And if you don't agree, gentle reader, then you are a plum!   The bee bottom centre is clearly on message.





Moonshine in the sun - 24th March 2011

Day Woon (Geordie accent) in the shepel* from where I will be making most of my posts.  The intensity of the bird song coming through the thin wooden walls is as if I'm sitting in a small garden beneath a tree full of nightingales rather than on the edge of a 15 acre field.  Good work blackbirds, finches and assorted unidentified others!  (Must swot up on my ornithology).

This is my favourite time - the sun's descent well under way and the stillness a blank but vivid canvas for the aforementioned twittering and fluting of my winged companions.

Spring was leapfrogged today and we were straight into summer.  We've not had rain here for a while so I decided to water and weed this year's currant and elder cuttings.  I have three new rows of currants directly in front of the shepel.

This is a rather hazy view of them from my armchair.  They've all been planted in my 'Lazy Boy' style: rows rotavated, mulch mat laid over them and hardwood cuttings taken from existing plants and slotted straight through the mat at one leap's spacing.  Conventional practice is to nurture your hardwood cuttings in well tended beds, dig them up the following year once they've rooted and then plant out where you want them.  All too much of a pavlova IMO and I've had success with my Lazy Boy style in the past.

The row closest to the shepel is something of vanity project - Currant Tricolore, in which I have planted alternate black, red and white currants.  Favouring this row I make sure that the holes in the mulch matting are big enough not to pull against the stem of the cuttings.  Flaps of matting created by increasing the hole sizes are carefully weighed down with stones so as not to leave room for weeds.

Surprisingly, elder cuttings have proved to be a bit less robust than blackcurrant ones and where these have died off in the rows I replaced them this winter.  I go round watering these.

Here is one of the little blighters, just a few months old.

FYI here is a cousin, two and a bit years old. 
More about wine less about plants in the next post, but now the shepel is calling to be known...

* Shepel: Half shed/half chapel on the northwest boundary of the field where the fruit is grown.

Peeping shepel

INT shepel