Treasure grove

After eight months of hard graft we have had a slight change of tack work-wise to take advantage of the improving weather and approaching summer. 

It started with an improvement to the approach to Grove Farm  itself  - a new cast aluminium sign. A symbolic and visual improvement of the entrance to our driveway , giving a sense that things will be changing for the better with the investment of effort and attention to details.

It was only when it was up that I thought it looked just a little bit "National Trust"-ish which is no bad thing I suppose.

 (The reflection in sign corner is Dalhousie castle  )

An email from the manufacturer said they "liked the quality pillar" which sort of summed up what I was trying to achieve in a strangely amusing way.

More importantly it now means delivery drivers can find us  !

The woodland to the right side of the pillar was originally marked on maps as "Fancy Grove Woods" . Since the 1950's , about two hectares of woodland had been removed to create fields more than halving the woodland in size . Not only that, but many of the larger more mature trees within the surviving woodland have either died or been cut down. Unfortunately there has been no obvious recent planned replanting so there is little in the way of the "Fancy" left. The woods nearer the castle certainly contain a more impressive selection of different trees and we intend to plant some new stock at some point in the next few years.

The lack of recent woodland management has meant that the rhododendrons are quickly monopolising the area. Although this is proving very beautiful, (at the moment they are all coming into flower),  their beauty hides the fact that the woodland is effectively dying underneath them. The rhodo's crowd out the native plants light , absorb their nutrients and effectively 'poison' the soil to all but other rhodo's.

I'm not sure of the variant names but there appear to be at least three distinct colours - this lurid reddish pink type; the standard purple R~ Ponticum and a white variety as well.

As soon as we had finished rebuilding the end of the big shed I was keen that we did some woodland work to re-invigorate our  enthusiasm for what was "the grove" rather than "the farm" part of "Grove Farm".

So first the barn... (being re-built - not  further dismantled !)

then starting to recover the soil next to it...

April has now planted sunflowers and a pumpkin and squash patch on the above spot.

The topsoil had been buried for many decades under the old silo shed and concrete so we're not expecting much from it this year. The wall in the lower corner of above photo is probably part of an  original building from 1807 that we uncovered and will retain.

Remember it used to look like this ...

The pumpkin patch would be immediately behind this shed where the grain silos once stood. The newly discovered wall was under that concrete slab wall in the above photo !

The great pile of manure has been supplied by "the beasts" that are helping in their own way to revitalise the place in a sustainable way. I suspect theres been many hundreds of tonnes of manure shovelled by former inhabitants here over two centuries so it is starting to feel more like a walled garden than a derelict scrapyard.

The mules have also been giving Willow some entertainment although she has already upgraded her aspirations by discussing with our neighbours six year old daughter on going half shares on the pony !

(Maybe I'll fill the fields up with trees instead ! Quickly !)

 

Another interesting discovery was this white glass bottle I found lying in plain view under a rhodo bush in the wood.

Some internet sleuthing  revealed it is an Edwardian tooth powder container , design registered in 1884 so certainly over 100 years old. This was quite exciting , until I found another for sale on eBay for £3.25 ! It sort of lost its  "treasure" aura after that !

Another found gem in the woods is the most mature rhododendron tree by the entrance from walled field into the woodland track to the castle. I'm intending chopping down all the purple rhodo's over the next few years since they are classed as an invasive non-native plant and there is some modest funding available to help remove it. It will be no mean task I suspect and my funding (if I get it) will be spent on sharp tools,  beer and food to supply a hungry volunteer workforce.

Is that enough to encourage you down for a days hacking on a sunny day ?

Yes, you !

Originally the walk through the door above into the woods was almost impassable. With a few days work (to get a sense of the difficulties that may lay ahead) we have cleared a small area of the rhodo's and cherry laurels which had grown into an impressive impenetrable mess. The last one in that area is about to meet the chainsaw in photo below !

It now looks like this ... (CTRL+ click to enlarge further in new window)

This has opened  a completely new area for the kids to play and I've been busily distracting myself entertaining the kids using my Boy Scout knowledge of camps, pioneering and knot tying !

I almost impressed myself with my creativity... give that ex-Scout a badge Skip !

In fact this recent "work" has been perhaps the most enjoyable part of being at Grove Farm so far.  I suspect its because it truly fits with the real reason that we moved here.

The building work can be satisfying and the restoration work is important from a historical perspective, but most importantly it is becoming a fantastic place for the kids to grow up and supply a wealth of positive memories for us all in the years to come.

So it turns out there really is treasure in the woods ,

"these are my jewels"...

and it looks like the pirates have found them !

Going green

"I love spring ,
I love spring,
I love the way the flowers grow ,
Tulips and daffodils all in a row,
I love spring !"

Well ,it arrived at last, and Willow's nursery song just about sums up the excitement of everything coming back to life after the harshest winter in years. Welcome back Spring !

The recent digging, although still turning parts of the farm into a brown dustbowl, has now been surrounded by lush green. It is our first Spring at Grove Farm it is wonderful to be greeted every day by something entirely new to us. The photo above shows the first time this doorway has been opened for many decades. It had been ivy-bound, partly buried, nailed and jammed shut with a large rock.  It felt quite symbolic for a new family to be stepping through it, as many must have done in the last 200 years.

 The valley opposite turned into a many-hued wall of green with generous daubings of white blossom from the  wild cherry trees. All the trees mean we have become almost entirely invisible to other houses again, just a few distant street lights can be seen at night.  The farm was described to me by as being like  "an oasis" and it is certainly starting to feel like that in the recent hot weather ! The brick walls were designed to catch the heat - its already topped 30 degrees Celcius in the conservatory (with the doors wide open !)

The cats are gorging themselves (and puking up) on  mice and shrews; the pigeons were eating the neighbouring cornfield  and then being eaten themselves by hawks and hunters. The swallows have returned to live in the old low barns and Dad thinks he saw an otter in the river. Several pheasants have been strutting around comically and some holidaying ponies have joined the mules to munch the verdant looking field. A rather idyllic pastoral scene indeed.

All sorts of things have been springing up. Not sure what this is but theres quite a lot of it !
(I have now bee told its...Equisetum arvense, commonly known as the Field Horsetail or Common Horsetail)

First up, of course, are the weeds. A small stand of Japanese Knotweed , the terror of land managers and developers everywhere, has been earmarked for imminent herbicide poisoning but before doing that I found out online you can make both 'fool' and tea from it.
Mmmm, healthy ,rhubarb flavoured tea... (Itadora tea in Japan)

Better known is making stuff from nettles of which we now have LOTS- think an acre or two !

Being busy I decided to make use of the local labour force to pick some choice nettle tips...

 

which quickly went from this... (thats only half the nettles I used !)

into this...

...my first attempt at homebrewed booze. Recipe here if you want to try it.

40 pints of nettle ale at over 5% alcohol. It needs to sit for a week or so yet to settle, so I dont know whether the effort was worth picking another load. Not so sure the local kids will be prepared to pick those stinging nettles again  though ! "Mum, I've stung myself AGAIN!"

One thing the kids have enjoyed is picking stuff from our small "test" veg patch. This is the very first thing that came from it - a radish ! (Or a "wee MacGregor" if you watch Mr Blooms nursery on CBeebies) It felt somewhat triumphant (even as an adult!) to have grown something after recent "building" work

Plenty more where that came from, the glasshouse is starting to be put to good use as well. These are  April's latest seeds underway. At the other end Dad has a variety of things underway as well. 

Strawberries, courgettes ,melons, parsnips, radish, lettuce, onions, garlic, carrots, peppers,salad, sweetcorn, six types of potato, cabbage, peas, beans, six types of tomatoes, sunflowers en masse and probably more besides . There were about 20 pumpkin plants as well (honest!) but the frost killed them, so we still have lots to learn.(Although that has saved me spending a week carving them all at Hallowe'en!)

The vines are coming back to life thankfully- amazing after the hacking I gave them to get them back under control ! They really are a symbol of rebirth if ever there was one. Just HOW do those wizzened old sticks turn into such explosive growth and then grapes and wine !?. Just a joy to behold the transformative power of the new season.

Plenty of other hacking has been going on. Any excuse to burn yet another big pile of wood  !

The cedar tree winter damage is now all sawn up for next winters logs or burnt. Very pleasant it was too , having a fire down by the river. Smile if you agree ! 

The fields and woods have come alive in succession with snowdrops, daffodils and narcicuss, primrose, bluebells, sorrel, wild garlic, wood anemone ,gorse, broom,violets, wild strawberry and so much more beside I've just bought a spotters guide to wildflowers - I must be going green myself !

Our latest diversion (from real 'work') has been grafting (for 'fun') at clearing the entrance to woods from the walled field. Its a jungle in there ! When we first visited it was actually impassable  - I have now almost finished opening the track up to tractor-width through the whole woods, so we can extract some winter fuel and start manageing the horrendous rhododendron sprawl. The rhododendrons were the first to meet yet another power tool in my hands !

No, not the chainsaw - I'd hardly started with that before my green stick-like glasses went winging their way into the green stick-like undergrowth. Lucky I had just been given a metal detector the week before  (funny how these things happen !) Would you have spotted them before blindly treading on them?

It been a real pleasure having this as a weekend diversion because it is an area which has become derelict (in human terms) through the incessant power of Nature and not through the casual untidyness of previous owners. Having said that, both the rhododendrons and cherry laurel were planted deliberately during the gardens heyday- this was obvious when they were hacked hard to the ground - all neatly spaced and ironically showing signs that a previous owner had also hacked them right to the ground at some point - and even set fire to them. Whether they're still there for future owners to vent their destructive weekend energy on remains to be seen ! It was also good because April can equally assist in clearing the fallen branches while the kids learn to play in the woods. (No photos to prove that , sorry !)

One job did come to a sort of final conclusion, the big caravan is now plumbed and powered up and we had my brothers family (which is also  April's sisters family!) come and stay for a weekend. So if you're in need of a caravan break and dont mind chopping, digging, sunbathing, gardening or just being here then get in touch !

Still in the yard, much of the last month entailed digging up the seemingly endless layers of demolished sheds to try and find some soil underneath. There were at least three distinct layers of buildings in the area that originally held the big metal silos (see earlier blog posts). They comprised  two layers of concrete slabbed sheds and then a cinder pathed original building of brick and sandstone - of which just three courses of foundation brick and a long stone wall remained. We'll keep the stone wall intact ,the bricks and tonnes of earthy "hardcore" are now up the hill on the massive pile. The ground level has dropped over two feet in places !

And below all that ... soil ! A pH and soil test today reveals it is "Depleted" of everything so we're not done yet. But at least the heavy lifting is done for a while, it was getting ridiculous !

The digger had to go back to its owner , many thanks for its generous loan Martin ! Hopefully it will come back to play again in the future - theres still plenty to do.  

Green is good but red diesel power is better !

Drain on resources

The last blog post was pretty much about digging - three weeks later I'm still digging ! What started off as a casual " I'll move the LPG (gas) tank to the top of the hill" has now taken up four weeks in total and is still not entirely complete !

I have finished the main gas pipe trench though, with some relief it must be said - here's the last bit that needed dug !

Was I happy about that ? Oh yes !

Its not because I've been hanging about either ! A quick check of my diary revealed that of the thirty one days in March, five were spent at work for alien rock, twenty five days were spent working  on this project and two half days were spent  "having a rest" (but itching to get working !). February revealed just  two full days "off" and several days being ill with the dreaded winter lurgy.

I've actually quite enjoyed  this a "project within a project" despite the mundane apparent reality of it all and occasional moments of self imposed stress. There have been  a few new skills and techniques to learn and challenges to overcome and I suppose this is the very essence of what I enjoy about the whole self-building/ restoration path- it just never lets up !

This "tank move" project is also perfect example of how time, energy and costs can quickly slip away on a self build. Even with the best intentions, when its being done for yourself ,you always try to think too far ahead to future possible plans and to "do the right thing" .All the extra  plumbing and drainage materials have probably come to about £1000 yet none of it was budgeted for or will ever get seen ! All that will be seen for a months effort will be: the water appearing in the right place ; the rain magically disappearing into the ground ; the building staying dry; no gas tank inside the walled yard/ garden

The sixty meter gas pipeline replacement  expanded to include a mains water pipeline after I damaged a small section (below) and then decided to complete re-run sixty meters of it alongside  the gas pipe.

 

Rather than just backfill the trench with the mud I dug out as originally envisaged, it has now become: a geo-textile lined, recycled glass filled, plastic tubed land-drain (which splits into two directions and will have added an extra twenty meters very soon. It has  also expanded sideways (about ten meters) to become a mains water supply to the fields as well  !

The size of the job can be seen in the next two photos (I havent moved).In the top photo the new tank is on the right, about level with the tractor. In  bottom photo, the trench splits and carries on to the left (for the drain) around the high wall ; and also goes to the right (for the water pipe),  past the house, into the yard to where the house shadow finishes  !.

.

 

All this digging then got me in the mood to sort out both the water supply to the caravan (In above photo, behind the curved doorway about ten meters ) and an ongoing damp problem that the house suffers from. This led to digging a further fifteen meters of trench alongside the house to connect to the ducts I installed six weeks ago. About a meter down, I uncovered an original 200 year old hand-made clay pipe land-drain which was  blocked (unsurpisingly) as well as a soil pipe/ drain outlet  which was  allowing water back onto the house foundations. It had been "sealed" with mud from when the house was converted internally at some point- probably decades ago.

Because the trench has been refilled with a 15 tonne lorryload of glass "cullet" (made from ground up, recycled, glass bottles ) that meant an equivalent volume of mud has to be taken, one tractor bucket at a time ,back up the hill to be dumped. Slow, slow ,slow. (If anyone has a dumper truck I need a loan of one !).Thats not quite finished !

I  need to order another 15 tonne lorryload to finish the job as well - it comes from the local Viridor glass recycling site about 400m away where the old Dalhousie stables are. I did think it ironic that  to be buying  back all the broken glass, bottles, windscreen etc that had been laboriously dug up just a few weeks ago, taken to the Viridor site, only to be burying them again in almost the same place ! Oh well !

Back inside the house, the living room floor needed to come up (again!) so the "plumber" could connect the new gas pipes. I'd have done that myself but it's probably not allowed  ;-)

It was all finished with about four hours to spare before the real Gas engineers arrived to exchange the original  LPG tank in yard with the new one at the top of the hill.

So thats one less unsightly thing to look at in the "garden".

For some diversion (after the gas was leak tested!) I set the field on fire.

 

Much of this had actually been done by our neighbours Chris and Milly who have been helping clear some of our field  for their mules. Don't know why I never thought of it beforehand - it was only after seeing some local kids torching the grass on other side of river that I thought "What  a great idea , I'll do that as well!" 

You are probably not allowed to burn fields now either, I'll just say Chris started it ! ;-)

The improving weather also brought out some old tools...   ;-)

...this one being a Bulb planter. Dad is trialing the "retired persons method of planting  potatoes with minimum effort in digging". This small  bit of ground was first cleared with the digger - it took a whole day - there was so much rubbish, brick, scrap metal and asbestos cement mixed in with it. 

On the other side of that wall, we dug up nineteen large bags of rubbish , all of which was buried beneath the surface.

- taking two days for me to sift through it all with the digger - its only about fifty square meters as well. The soil is lovely though, a rich loam nearly two feet deep in places which is why its worth clearing properly.

In the glasshouse April has been entertaining the kids by: making mud ; catching worms; digging up nettles and planting seeds. The fruits( and veg) of their labours will appear in next blog I suspect)

.

Its been a slow grind recently but the water, gas and drainage all seems to work now as intended. The piles of mud will soon be gone as well, hopefully before the tractor needs an complete engine rebuild- its started smoking badly and struggles to start now.

If it breaks down I'll be stuck...

Or will I ?

 

 I suppose that when you "dig in"  you do eventually get somewhere, even if it is slowly !

Digging

Hi Ho ! Hi Ho ! its off to work we go!  The last few weeks have been all about digging. For once everyone was able to help as well since its not a technical job. Start them young , even if they cant walk all the way to work!

The road crew set to work filling some potholes on the track, using a 7 tonne pile of tarmac scrapings that got donated by contractors after  resurfacing the local Dalhousie bridge. Unfortunately they didnt donate their heavy roller so wellies had to suffice in flattening the piles

  

 The kids were not really up to the main job for the week, digging about 80 metres of trench around 2 feet / 700mm deep, to run a new LPG  pipeline. The heating gas tank needs to be replaced and I have decided to completely remove the existing tank from the yard to restore the view of the original stone buildings. My current plan is to eventually remove all of the modern buildings and paraphernalia and restore something like the original look of the place. Even with the digger I knew this would be a little mentally challenging since the ground is heavy clay with rocks near the road. The trench runs to the right side of the track up the hill.

Two days later I got to the bottom of the hill, by the  yard entrance and it was all looking a little muddier thanks to some heavy rain which of course kept filling the trench up as I went.

  
Despite the obvious road cones warning me (and passing footpath users) of the big wooden posts, I managed to impale the hydraulics on one just after temporarily removing the footpath sign to avoid damaging the digger. Doh !

Last time I did something like this (the infamous lampost removing incident on TV), the Council came round straight away. Due to Council cuts in Midlothian, it was only some young buck that came for a nosey this time.(That was a stag-geringly bad pun!)

After getting the digger fixed , I started on the opposite side, immediately uncovering a hidden drain, which promptly collapsed and filled up with loose earth blocking the kitchen drains.
 

 For some strange reason the manhole was made smaller at the top than inside - making it only clearable by a thin person of height 5' 10" or smaller. Which meant I could not delegate the job to April since I just fitted ! (I did consider asking Willow, but its probably illegal to let your kids clean sewers)

Starting the trench again, I was immediately grateful I'd unblocked that drain - since I dug into and burst the mains water suppling the house !. Luckily its not really high pressure, but it soon filled up the new trench - and then poured into the drain I'd unearthed. I was not amused !


The drains are bizarre ! They leave the kitchen and go right around the house, meeting up with various downpipes and toilets, take a detour to the middle of yard then come back ! 360 degrees all the way around the house before ending up about 10 meters from where it started ! Not something you want to jam with earth!

I managed to solder the leak closed  and then decided to finish the top of trench while the flood waters subsided. Within an hour, I'd dug through the mains pipe again ! !  I didnt have the tools to fix this bit, but it was mainly just flattened and mangled so didnt leak too much. At this point I decided that I will re run a new water main as well while I've got the trench open.

The previous owner dug the mains all the way across the field (below) to the nearest  supply on his own apparently - it must be 800m away and I bet he didnt use a mini digger either in  the 1955. Having said that he probably had a better shovel than the kids used for the road !

Who would have guessed digging was so much fun !