OPEN MEADOW MORNING Saturday 22nd June ~ Dydd Sadwrn Mehefin 22ain BORE DOL AGORED Join us for a tour of our glorious traditional wildflower meadows. Ymunwch â ni am daith o amgylch y dolydd blodau gwyllt traddodiadol. Learn about the diversity of species in the meadows and how we manage them for biodiversity and
Category: Permaculture
A Late Bracken Harvest
What to do if you’re running low on animal bedding? Go out and harvest more! The bracken on our farm needs controlling, but it is also an incredibly useful resource. Amongst other things, we use it for cattle bedding. When the autumn harvest began to run out, Phil and I
The Austrian Scythe – a versatile tool
People buy a scythe for lots of reasons – for managing everything from a smallholding to the edges of a heritage railway line. Looking at our site at this time of year it can appear that our scythe use is restricted to the hay meadow, but this is far from
Peening to Keep Mowing
Whilst mowing this morning both Phil and I were sharpening more frequently than usual to keep our blades mowing well – time for a peen. Here is Phil working on my 75cm Profisense ready for tomorrow morning’s mowing. Permaculture Magazine are featuring an article by us on peening in their
Spring time in the Garden – Mulched Potatoes
For the last few years we have built an outdoor haystack. This serves as an emergency backup for the indoor stacks should we need additional animal feed in a really severe winter. Its primary purpose is to “store” mulch material for use in the garden in the spring, as there
Autumn Harvest – Bracken
In autumn the scythe moves from harvesting grass to bracken, a task to which it is well suited. We harvest the bracken both to control it in the fields and to use it as a resource on the farm and garden. These two posts about the 2014 bracken harvest and
Mowing at Midday
We have a grass track running through the Trust. We maintain parts of it with a scythe, usually using the clippings to mulch the vegetable gardens. The edges to the tracks are left to grow longer and bramble tries to creep out from the hedges. Periodically the edges need managing