Repairing the drive.

Look at the misty morning, taken yesterday at 10am. It was nice to be a little cooler in the heatwave and the cows were certainly glad!

OH was determined that I noted his hard work over his week's holiday. The picture you see on the left is him on the roller and the neighbour on the digger. The picture on the right is the finished product, looking down to the house which is ours.

The drive has gradually been eroded over the last five years with the heavy down pours that we experience. It was left with a big bump in the middle and scattered debris on the two ruts. The men tackled it by digging out the hump and rollering it flat.

Now OH and I have motorbikes so it will be great to be able to use the drive without fearing for a tumble! We will just have to wait and see what it looks like after the next winter.

Ate our first broad beans last night and spinach tonight. Worth waiting for!

Down to the woods today.

Sadly, although I put the camera on to recharge, I forgot to take it, so no photos. What a fool. Also we took, a little stove, a tea bag (for me) and a sppon or two of coffe (for OH) and milk in a plastic bottle BUT FORGOT CUPS! Well, eating our picnic al fresco we decided to use the plastic box for the dried fruit for my tea and cut the top off the milk bottle for OH's coffee. All was saved.

We spent from 11.30am until 4.30pm in a variety of tasks,

clearing a path to the top of the wood using a spade to cut in steps (me, still unfinished)

clearing a lot of old wood and over-growth to make it easier for the undergrowth to develop (OH)

clearing spindly trees from above path (OH)

taking out millionbs of sycamore seedlings, branbles where they are are not needed and ragwort (me)

collecting the next harvest of wild strawberries (me)

eating above collection (both)

discovering a new path leading to a copse of silver birch (me) And what a delight to do this as we are worried about our silver birch at sandalfarm that are all dying.

watering new trees in (me)

clearing nettles etc to reach above trees (me)

So, a lovely day. What a wonderful place. Birds singing, flowers flowering and a cuckoo in the opposite wood across the valley.

Shame about the photos.

I must not forget the camera.

I must not forget the camera.

I must not forget the camera.

ps the photo is the foxgloves back at sandalfarm that perhaps I will plant up in the wood.

Preparing for Jet's final journey.

Now don't be sad. Remember that Jet has had 2 long happy years in idyllic setting, if a little wet and windy sometimes. He is a little bull and actually can be quite scarey as he thunders across the field to headbutt you playfully with his enormous head.

So, no more pictures of Jet.

Within 2 weeks he will be very used to going into his trailer for a bucketful of food. It all helps to make the unpleasant business of farming, a stress free as possible.

The trip takes about half an hour depending on traffic and only one of our animals has shown any stress. This was the last bullock who tried to climb out of the horse trailer in the middle of Bradford. OH got out of the truck and punched him on the nose and he settled down then. I was so shocked and scared that he could get out of the trailer that the rest of the journey was one of the worst of my life.

I am hoping that this episode was a one-off. I'll let you know.

CLEANING THE POND

Oh has been hard at it! Clearing the pond that is...and did it need it?

You can see the murky water, well that is nothing like it was. The dog got diaroaha (can't spell) from drinking out of it. They both came back orange coloured after diving into it!

We have a lot of frogs and toads that appear from under stones but the way the pond looked, it would never sustain any life in the future.

So the hours of standing in his waders (my Christmas present to him) have resulted in the island (right) which mat even give somewhere for the ducks to nest.

The piles of mud and weed have to be left for a few days for the pond life to crawl back into the water. But then we will have an idyll, believe me!

The garden is abundant with flowers and fauna, including the wagtail family who appeared last night, learning to fly the nest...

The spinach and broccoli and sprouts and leeks and parsnip and potatoes are all doing really well, keep watering every night is if a warm night or in the morning in overcast...

what a wonderful life.

Tomorrow I will tell you about the preparations for the bullock's departure.

First crop from the wood.

On Friday we went to the wood and spent five hours there. One of my jobs was to collect some of the ripe strawberries. They are wild, obviously, and the photo shows them next to my care keys...so that little picking fitted into the palm of my hand!

Still, they are very sweet and there are 1000s of plants so hopefully there will be more to come.

The jobs were divided according to tools. OH had the loppers so pruned dead and diseased branches for 5 hours. I had a spade so started to make steps up the side of the valley. It is very steep and although there is one twisting path, it doesn't actually have a start on the valley floor so a finish on the top.

After 2 hours I gave my back a rest and went to the clearing to pick the strawberries, then got stuck into clearing the brambles from this site. There is a thicket of them at the top in the sun and will provide a good crop of blackberries later on.

Then I collected piles of wood and made piles while circumnavigating the site taking out ragwort.

The dogs careered around until I tied them up with a pig's trotter each. That kept them quiet.

More of a feast than out strawberries will provide!!

Keeping Bees.

This cotoneaster bush is alive with bees when the sun is shining. Although my photographic skills are a bit lacking, you can easily see a flying bee in my snap!

OH went on a bee keeping course and was assured that it would not be possible to keep a hive up here on windy mountain. The bees get blown off course and can't find their way back apparently.

Poor little bees, they need all the help they can get (visit the co-operative campaign site for more information).

The routine watering was back in force yesterday but today there has been steady rain all day. This is how it should be of course. I can catch up on paper work for my jobs and tidy the house. Being an outdoors addict does have a "downside". The dogs seem content to lie around even though I have been out all day. Their 20 minute play in the rain was enough.

And no sign of a bee this afternoon.

Views.

People often come to Sandalfarm and say, "What a View!"

I don't really rate our view (not a great photo but it gives you some idea) as it is an industrial view, interupted by power lines and a city.

The city of Bradford lies five miles down the valley and it isn't a pretty view to overlook any city except perhaps Oxford with the dreaming spires or St Davids on the south west coast of Wales.

From Bradford it is a plateau that stretches to the east coast.

The most visible landmarks are the power stations at Ferrybridge, Eggborough, Drax and the other one (the name escapes me). Their plumes of untrapped steam identifies them easily from any high point in West Yorkshire.

There is also the Bradford University and the church at Thornton, the village unknown as being the birth place of the Brontes.

We moved in on Bonfire Night and it DID look spectacular then. All of Bradford were welcoming us to our new home and our new view. Now we see fireworks when there is a wedding or (so I am told) when the drugs arrive.

Pots of pansies.

A wonderful flower is the pansy! I bought a tray of tiny plants for £5 from our farm shop (not OUR farm shop, but the one near to us) and pootted them up and located them around the front door and yard. They flower and flower and later on, I'll let them run to seed and collect for growing next winter.

These pansies have put up with strong winds, drought and excessive rain in the last month. I think they should be a mainstay of every "low maintenance" garden.

It has been dry for the past few days so I am back to watering everything. I watch the weather to then make a decision on whether to spend the half hour to an hour that the watering takes...but the weather forecast is too unpredictable to be a reliable guide.

At a farm visit for the Co-operative (I am a committee meber) in Goole yesterday, I saw the dry baked soil of the this area and decided that although most farming for crops is in the east, there is a downside to this. Their soil looked like an African plain, arid and cracked. I despaired of the trees planted last weekend at Dale Wood.

Perhaps I should have planted the resiliant pansy!!

A Boundry Wall.

This is a photo of a corner of the Rushy field with a finished wall, well almost finished.

You can see the fence and wire that is still on the cow side of the wall. Everytime I go into the field, Jet comes for a nosy around. He is quite timid, not at all aggressive, but he does like to bump things with his head. It is fun and it may unearth some nice green grass.

I do NOT want to be bumped, however docilely so finishing this wall has been slow progress.

It is finished up to a point where I need to refence to keep the cattle in. My neighbours wanted a bit more land and this involves refencing. So I have decided to wait until the field is empty, well at least empty of Jet as he is the bumping sort of problem (as Pooh Bear would say).

My walls are rebuilds and are built for stability. To make a lovely finished edge, I need to spend more time chipping at edges, instead I get on with finishing the job. Except of course...finishing means waiting...

Nice weather for waiting though.

The Woodlanders.

Well, here we are in the sunny side of Yorkshire. We had the key delivered on Friday and on Saturday trundled off down the motorway to our woodland.

We drove straight past as it looked so different in full leaf! And what a wonderland or wild flowers and grasses, trees and even wild strawberries.

We had taken some fruit trees to plant so I got down to that while OH started snipping off dead wood. 3 and a half hours passes so quickly, it was only thirst and hunger that drove us home.

The view from the top is over our wood but you can look along the valley and see the Humber. It was glistening in sunlight at that time as the tide was out, just a brown streak yesterday.

Isn't it wonderful! I feel so priviledged to be able to have this little oasis of trees and birds as a retreat. There is a lot of work to do but none of it is urgent or day by day. A complete delight and better anyday than leaving money in a building society earning zilch.

Pylons

One reason our farm was cheap to buy is the location. It is on a hill overlooking the city of Bradford, which is not a popular city to live despite the proximity of the Dales, the Pennines, major cities and the Asian restaurants. If our post code had been HX for Halifax which is a step away then the price would have been more. The other price depressing factor was that our land also has the electricity wires running straight over the fields. We receive £9 a year for this priviledge from the National Grid.

I haven't become depressed since moving here as one friend informed me was inevitable, neither have I developed cancer (although it is early days yet having lived here for only 5 and a half years). The worst thing about them is the noise the wires make if the wind is blowing hard from the west. They howl and keep me awake. Kathy Earnshaw's howls fade into insignificance in comparison. In mist they spit and hiss.

I don't see them most of the time. But sometimes they provide interest like last week when men in little cradles were suspended above me as they checked their viability. And a man comes to see if our trees need to be lopped if they grow too close to them ... it will be an acheivement for us when this happens! The first visit from National Grid for this purpose made me laugh, as if our weedy little trees were anywhere near his lines! But the last visit, he said they were getting there and he'd have to monitor them more closely. Yippee!

Anyway, this picture was taken on Monday evening. Shows some beauty to the monsters that tramp across our view.

Buttercup Days

Have you noticed the sea of buttercups in every farmer's field? Last time there were this many was in 2003, the year we were trying to buy Sandal Farm. It didn't happen and we missed the warmest, sunniest summer since 1976. So, keep fingers crossed. I don't know of any "old wives' tale" that could confirm this, but why shouldn't I start my own.
It is too hot though. I am still suffering from the sunburn from Thursday/Friday and although it is blazing hot outside, here I am, indoors wishing there was a little more shade up here. I am dressed up from hat to shoes, preparing for another hour of sweaty strimming. Those buttercups have to go I am afraid!
Talking of shade, I have been in and paid for our 5 acre wood. The contracts are signed but I expect it will take a couple of days for the cheques to clear...and then we will be woodlanders as well as farmers. We will be escaping to the wood on windy days, during westerly rainfalls and on blazing hot days (and school holidays when the kids next door are at home day after day).