February has seen some huge developments at the farm! Heritage and Sons construction came to the farm to install several new water troughs in the fields and to provide water to our vegetable beds so that during the summer months we don’t have to find miles and miles of hose pipes! The project workers loved watching the digger do all of the hard work and as the weather was so dry you would hardly know any work has been done at all!
Keeping bio diversity and productivity in mind, the woodland has now reached semi maturity and the canopy has closed over, so we have started a 6/7 year coppice rotation and at the same time will be developing the understorey (shrub and herb layers) and edges. Also as the woodland borders the orchard we have decided to coppice some of the large willows along this boundary first ( see picture below). We have already started to enhance the understory as last October we planted native bluebells, wild garlic and some wood anemones. Touch wood they all start appearing in the warmer spring weather!
Our new pig area is coming on fantastically and is now in the process of being wired! Pigs can be even better escape artists than sheep so we are making sure that it is super secure before we look to get some new additions in mid spring!
Once the pig pen is completed work can then begin on developing our small animal area! By the end of the summer we are hoping to have our chickens and rabbits moved into the new field shelter and to look at getting some more small animals to join us at the farm!
