Foraging in early April

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Morag

Beautiful Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa) carpet but not much to eat

Earlier in the year, when we agreed to hold a forage walk here with friends, we had no idea that spring was going to be so late. I have to admit to being a little nervous as I looked around our land a week before the walk. I was struggling to find more than hairy bittercress, nettles, pennywort and sorrel to eat. Even the chickweed and goosegrass hadn’t dare show their leaves.

Time to check the books and increase my knowledge. We bought “Wild Food” by Roger Philips many years ago from a second-hand book shop (I’m not sure that it’s even in print now). It quickly gave a few more ideas for things to look out for and I kept the pocket-sized Collins gem “Food for Free” on me at all times.

Foraged additions to our salad

As always with gatherings my understanding about what can be eaten from the wild grew enormously on the day as everyone added their knowledge. By the end of the morning we had added to base salad with:

(very young) bramble leaves (Rubus fruticosa),
dandelion leaves (Taraxacum officinale) – some people added,
gorse flowers (Ulex europaeus),
hairy bittercress (Cardamine hirsuta),
hawthorn leaves (Crataegus monogyna),

Navelwort (Umbilicus rupestris)

navelwort (Umbilicus rupestris) – it’s abundant in the woods, and
sorrel leaves (Rumex acetosa),

and experimented with making gorse flower tea and cleaver (Galium aparine) tea. So, maybe not up to Fergus the Forager standards yet but it’s a step. We were very lucky that Alison had made wild garlic quiche and nettle soup to further set our wild taste buds racing.

Although one of our group had heard that celandine flowers could be eaten, none of our books covered Lesser Celandine (Ranunculus ficaria), so we didn’t pick it. However is in “Culpeper’s Complete Herbal” as a cure for the eyes, piles and many other things… I’ll do a little more research before I try it …

The road of faeries, sprites and goblins …

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Morag

If you go down to our woods today, or any day, you can be sure it will be full of magic and mystery!

Sian Bowi (professional photographer and friend) visited in early March and captured some wonderful images. I am very lucky to be able to share Sian’s photographs with you.

The first picture, according to another friend, Gil …

“… be the road of faeries, sprites and goblins and the portal to ancient myths, legends and times forgot, but, be warned, ’tis also the domain of the Dark Weinci. Pass at thou’st peril. (‘weinci is Welsh for weasel)”

We are sure he is right and that if we find the time to linger long enough we could find dragons here or be transported back to the time of the Mabinogion …

The road of faeries, sprites and goblins

Further along the road you find our Ent. We are almost certain this is where the faeries, sprites, goblins and young dragons play and where Moomins come for holidays …

Canghennau Cwm Tŷ Hen © COPYRIGHT NOTICE All rights of my work are reserved to © Siân Bowi 2013 and may not be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my written permission.

To see more of Sian’s beautiful work check out Sian Bowi’s flickr photostream or her website www.ffotosianbowi.co.uk

Thank you Sian for allowing us to share these photos here. xx

Willow coppice

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Morag

Bowles Hybrid Willow before coppicing

It seems counterintuitive to coppice our willow (Salix spp.) in it’s first year of growing, but coppice it we must! Cutting it back at the end of the first year will encourage multiple shoots to form at the base. Which means that in years to come we will have a denser screen and more willow biomass. That’s the theory at least.

We planted the 500 cm lengths of Bowles Hybrid willow back in December 2011 for a couple of reasons. Firstly to hide the very ugly farm buildings just behind our home, and also as a biomass crop to keep us self-sufficient in wood for heating in later years.

The willow around the farm buildings grew at a tremendous rate, we were really impressed, reaching over 2.5 meters in their first year! The willow in the field did less well. Mainly because we didn’t keep the grass around the small stems down. We think the root competition combined with the grass shading out the young plants were the main causes.

Bowles Hybrid Willow harvest

Now we have a lot of willow cuttings. We are going to use them in several ways;

to fill in any gaps where the original willow failed to take,
to extend our biomass plot,
to make a rooting hormone liquid,
to experiment with making artists charcoal, and if I have time
to practice basketry making with.

Nice! Don’t you just love willow!

Half-welly walk

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Morag

Coppicing willow at the National Botanic Garden Wales in late January

We spent a lovely day in late January volunteering at the National Botanic Garden in Wales. We were helping to coppice the willow in the Education area near the Science building. It was a lovely fun if rather wet day (particularly nice as the Food Fair was on in their giant greenhouse – The Parsnipship vegatarian food for the 21st century was by far the best stall), but the whole day left us wanting more! Luckily for us there is a lot of work we need to do to get our woodland into some kind of managed state.

Half-welly walk - a more accessible section (before)

Half-welly walk is a wide track that takes you down to part of the wood. Or at least it would if it wasn’t for the fallen trees, brambles and general overgrown junglyness in the way.

That’s the first job decided.

Half-welly walk is such a wonderful micro-habitat. Standing in one spot I counted seven native trees around me. If I’m right in my winter identification of trees, this could make it a species-rich hedgerow, and possibly an ancient hedgerow – more research needed. Wonderful responsibilities to have.

Bluebells emerging

Two weekends later and half-welly walk is walkable. Good timing too as the bluebells are just poking through the earth. Now we will be able to see them easily on our trips down to the river.

Looks like we’ve got a lot research to do about the species lining this walk and the implications … not least perhaps a more respectful name if it is such an ancient hedgerow …

Proper snow

Gallery

Posted on January 26, 2013 by Morag

This gallery contains 8 photos.

Our first lot of proper snow on the land. Okay so it snowed last January too, but that snow didn’t hang around for ages. This January we’ve been snowed in for seven days! a whole week!! Apart from missing a … Continue reading →

Long cold stratification

Posted on January 14, 2013 by Morag

There was a time when the salad compartments in my refrigerator did hold things to eat. Nowadays they are more likely to contain small cloth bags filled with sand and seed mixtures bound tightly at the top with cotton threaded with a seed label attached. I’ve been stratifying seeds. Tree seeds to be specific and most recently Small leaved lime (Tila cordata) , Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus) and Witch-hazel (Hamamelis virginiana).

straight from the fridge. Note the roots through the canvas - whoops

The thing is they have been in the fridge since June and July last year (2012) and I’d not so much forgotten about them, but wasn’t expecting to see anything until Spring so hadn’t checked. When I went looking for some onions yesterday I was surprised to see many small roots poking their way out the canvas bags.

My first thoughts were “wow that’s so good”. Then I was annoyed that I’d picked them up so clumsily and worried that I may have damaged some of the roots, then concern as I looked at the roots forcing their way through the woven cloth as I wondered how I was going to remove them from the bags to plant them out.

Craig inspecting the small-leaved lime seeds

Well, that was last night. Today we found out just how many had started to germinate we’d be able to free from their fake winter climate when we sowed them in their root-trainers. 540 seeds sown! Small-leaved lime and Hornbeam. The Witch-hazel has gone back in the fridge as it was showing no signs of growing yet.

Out of mice reach?

Last year the mice took quite a few of our larger and medium sized seeds out of the root trainer pots as they were all on the ground. So a cunning plan was needed. We’re trying hanging the root trainers from the polytunnel crop-bars.

I hope it works.

Celtic rainforest

Posted on December 29, 2012 by Morag

Here is a sneak preview of a short digital story Craig put together for a local project…

… and here is the transcript.

Most people have heard of the tropical rainforests that, despite decades of logging, still cover vast swaths of the earth. Fewer people have heard of the much rarer coniferous and broadleaf temperate rainforests that only occur in coastal oceanic-moist climates with an annual precipitation of over 1400mm and a mean annual temperature is between 4 and 12 °C.

A subset of the temperate rainforest is the even rarer celtic rainforest specific to the celtic nations of the Atlantic seaboard area of Europe, and of which Wales has some of the best examples.

It is in remnant form because most of Wales has been farmed for millennium. While we lament, and rightly so, the destruction of the tropical rainforests we must remember that the picturesque patchwork landscape of sheep and cattle farms, hay meadows and coniferous woodland in our beautiful corner of the world is man-made and left to its own devices would revert to the same oak forest ecosystem that colonised the land after the end of the last ice age.

Today the celtic rainforest is found in the land that is too difficult to farm – at the bottom of the deep steep valleys surrounding river tributaries. The welsh for valley – Cwm – is reflected in place names such as Cwm Morgan and here good examples of celtic rainforest can be found. Writing in ‘The Living Landscape‘ author Patrick Whitefield captures the ambiance of these woodlands:

“These valley woods are often dense and jungly. Few sounds from the outside world reach you when you are walking in them and all you can see is woodland. Civilisation can feel far away. Even though you are you know there’s a bare, ordered fieldscape above you on all sides, somehow it feels a bit improbable.”

Our tree Ent by the river in the Celtic Rainforest

Indeed it does. Mosses, liverworts, lichens and filmy ferns abound in the celtic rainforest – signs of clean, unpolluted, moisture laden air. Before the industrial revolution, most old welsh trees would have grown to look like one of Tolkien’s Ents and as we leave the hydrocarbon age behind, maybe, they will again.

Recovering the polytunnel

Posted on October 28, 2012 by Morag

(in more steps than I ever thought possible …)

Polytunnel before (shade-tunnel)

My camera doesn’t lie, so it must have been back in March (2012) that we first began to think that it would be a really good idea to turn the shade-tunnel into a polytunnel. I can only think that the previous owners kept animals in there over winter or perhaps to keep a close eye on new born lambs and their mothers. We however are keener on growing plants so it was a dark and flappy waste of space for us. Taking one cover off and replacing it with another would be a quick and easy task.

Polytunnel after-ish (partially covered)

On a bright sunny morning in March we decided to take the layers of covers off to get a better look at the frame.

Then one sunny afternoon in October (2012) we were putting the replacement cover back on.

Obviously I’ve cut a very long story short!

Many thanks to Dunja, Steve, Sue and Mac for all your help. Only the doors to put on now before the winter and we can start growing.

Meet the Arthurs

Posted on September 30, 2012 by Morag

Khaki Campbell Ducks on slug patrol

We didn’t have a slug problem, we had a deficiency of ducks! After a lot of research we decided to get Khaki Campbell ducks. These ducks love to eat slugs. Our good friend Chris Dixon who has kept them for over 20 years describes them as “slug devourers par excellence”!

One minute everyone is happy drinking water and preening ...

After trying various methods to stop the slugs from eating our veggies and very young trees (including the old favourites – egg shells and sunken jars of beer in strategic places) all to no avail. It was decided we couldn’t wait for the eco-system to naturally work itself out. We have plenty of habitats that hedgehogs would absolutely love, they just don’t seems to know about them yet. We HAD to get something in to eat the little slimmers now. Ducks!

We bought four young female ducks, one young male and three very cute two week old females from a separate breeder back in July (the peak of slug activity).

.. the next, someone has decided the water bowl is a bath!

Wow do these ducks love to eat slugs! Afraid that they might also eat my young vegetables, for the first weeks while they got used to their new home, I gathered slugs and put them in one of the water bowls for the ducks to devour – my what a racket! Larger slugs for the older ducks, smaller for the younger. I gave a three short whistles each time I approached with food and in no time the younger ducks were eating out my hands (a bit disgusting – slug slim yuck! – but brilliant too). The older ducks were at that time being all timid and afraid, only approaching the water bowl when I was out of sight.

A few months on, all the ducks are walking around the land in one big slug patrol gang. They take their job seriously! They forage for slugs all the time that they are not sleeping or playing in the water. The Sillies (the three younger ducks) still come to my whistled call and eat freshly found slugs from my hands The older ducks, envious of the younger ducks getting all my slugs now race towards me too.

Originally we were going to give all the ducks names. Arthur (the only male) was the first and easiest to name. We only had to think of one boys name, and he is very easy to identify. The seven other females, well we couldn’t think of enough names (let alone find differing features to identify them with), so they all ended up being called Arthur.

Giant Leopard slug (Limax maximus)

Summer update

Posted on August 5, 2012 by Morag

<3 these tree leaves

So much has happened over the last couple of months it’s difficult to know where to start. Here is a quick list to get you up to speed.

The planning team have okayed our plans to put up a polytunnel and we don’t need to apply for planning permission (complicated planning system rules).
We have many new workers on the farm – meet the forest garden team here!
At the last count we’ve successfully germinated over 6,000 trees. We are looking forward to planting them out later in the year.

New potato harvest

Our veggie patch is looking good for its first year. We had to harvest the potatoes early because of blight, but some neighbours didn’t get a potato harvest at all. Surprisingly (given the lack of early slug patrols) we have had home-grown organic salads most days.
All three baby swallows have grown up and successfully left their nest.
Many friends have visited which has been wonderful.

Totally different, totally yummy cupcakes

I’ve pretty much mastered baking vegan Chocolate and Chai latte cupcakes
Morland has had two bouts of being broody, we may need to think seriously about getting her some fertilised eggs to sit on …

Dolphins in Cardigan Bay

On a rare day off we went dolphin watching in New Quay – wonderful!

Cutting hay with an Austrian scythe

Oh and, Craig has been on a scything course, bought and Austrian Scythe and been practising by cutting hay on our fields.

the Forest Garden

abundant beyond organic local food

Category Archives: Back to the land