It's all about trees

This next month has gone by quickly, but it now feels like we've lived here for ages!
We've been busy with a number of things, as well as all the every day jobs. One of the biggest things has been ordering some new trees for our land.

We wanted trees for a number of reasons;

1. Firewood
2. Windbreak for our future vegetables (it's very flat and windy here)
3. Habitat and food for birds and insects
4. Produce for us to turn into jams and cordials

We contacted the Woodland Trust and they were excited about putting trees here, so instead of a few trees we've somehow ended up with 800! (Well 600 trees and 200 shrubs, but still, that's a lot!)

We've got a good mixture of native species, some fast growing which we can coppice for firewood and some slow growing, such as oak which will benefit future generations. We also have crab apples and elder trees which will be nice when they start producing fruit. :)

The Woodland Trust do a scheme where they subsidise the cost of the trees, so we only had to pay 30% of the cost which is very nice. Lets hope they all grow now!

We have a lot of lovely friends, and we arranged for some of them to come and help plant our trees, with my parents coming afterwards. Being quite close to Christmas, this was especially lovely of everyone, we do feel so lucky to know such nice people. :)

Getting our trees wasn't as straightforward as we first assumed. When our delivery date came round, they turned up on a very big lorry and decided it was too big to come down our track. We were waiting in all day for the trees, not knowing they'd arrived and gone away again! Frustratingly, no-body was answering when we rang, we later found out they were all out at a Christmas dinner. This was also a Friday, so we couldn't find out until Monday where our trees had got to.

We let everybody know we had no trees yet, very kindly, 2 of our friends came anyway and helped us with other jobs, and my parents still came up too, so we got a lot done, even if it wasn't planting trees!

Ella, Iain and Jenny clearing weeds from what will be the orchard

We finally heard from the tree people and found out about the big lorry problem, so we re-arranged delivery for the Tuesday with the trees coming on a smaller truck. They then rang on Monday to say they were on their way...luckily we were in, otherwise that would have been a wasted journey for them.

The smaller lorry arrived...but didn't quite make it... He decided to take the short cut to the track from the road and promptly got stuck in the mud! We brought some planks of wood up the track to help him out, but he was well and truly stuck so he called for help. An hour later help came and he was pulled free, hooray!

I walked down the track ahead of him to show him where to go, but he stopped halfway and started reversing. At first I thought he was skirting an overhanging branch, but he just kept going and then disappeared back onto the road...I couldn't believe it! We're still not entirely sure why he left, it was very random, and to add insult to injury, he also took our planks of wood with him! No trees, no wood and no clue why. :(

So Christmas came and went, New year came and went (Happy 2017 everyone!), and we busied ourselves with other jobs.

We chopped down more trees (these ones were in danger of falling during high winds, but we'll make good use of the wood), we built a 3 bin compost heap and I also built a sort of log store out of breeze blocks and a plank of wood, with long branches stuck into the breeze blocks to keep the logs in place.

Messy looking meshing, but hopefully will be a functional compost heap

New log store filled up, with a second about to be started

We've now also upgraded our single pane window to double glazed, and fixed a couple of misted windows, and we've installed lovely radiators to keep us warm. They are connected to the kitchen stove, so we light a fire in there and, using a low powered pump, it heats the whole house, very neat. :)

Lovely new radiators, it's almost like a normal house!

Finally, just after New Year, our trees came! This driver was lovely and had no trouble bringing them to us, a bit of milder weather was forecast too, so the timing worked out pretty well. :)
After checking them off, it turns out they forgot 25 field maples! Oh dear...not the most organised of companies we're sensing! We told them we have enough trees if they want to refund the difference, so that's what they did, only 775 trees to plant then!
Iain and I planted 10 token trees to mark the delivery, and to see how easy it is getting them in the ground. We're pretty lucky here and the ground is nice and soft, so digging wasn't a problem on the whole. I then felt confident to plant more on my own and my parents also visited and helped plant more, we've now planted 137 trees. :) My Mum helped me trench the rest, as cold weather was forecast (and has now arrived!), and we'll plant them as and when there are good weather days through the rest of Winter.

My parents planting cherry trees

Stanley the dog wanted to help too!

So a busy month is ahead of us with many other jobs as well as just a few more trees to plant...a mere 638 more! You can almost watch the muscles grow!