Timeline

Lick of paint

Had a marvellous weekend with some bezzies over. Duncan came armed with a second chainsaw and Suzanne got a crash (no she didn’t!) course in how to handle a JCB!

Yesterday morning before a nice long walk along the river to give Kushi a run out, they set to painting the fence one side of the main gateway. I finished the other side this morning and both need a second coat, but looking really good already. It brings them to the attention a little more from the road, and sets them off against the dark green of the shed building.

All the silver birch trees just behind the fence have taken, some ahead of the others but leaves appearing all round, which I am very pleased about. The small Lonicera shrubs along the front will bring some added colour eventually too.

The Kerridge Crew! 🙂

Posted on 7 May, 2013 at 7:35 pm Leave a Comment

This post is filed under General.

The Cress Bed Clean up #2

After a welcome visit from Duncan who helped take the remaining dead trees from the middle and far end of the Cress Bed Pond, my friend Emily who made her first visit to the site and I set to making a fire. Gathering most of the reduced and cut down deadwood, I then grabbed a good handful of sun dried and now fluffy bulrush head seed fibres, scrunched it up in my hand and used this to start the fire. Lit in two places, a few lung fulls of oxygen and some bone dry kindling, up it went.

I’m leaving a few log piles to rot and hopefully encourage all sorts of bugs and fungi. Logging the heavy stuff and the rest is going up in smoke.

The Cress Bed breathes again

Posted on 4 May, 2013 at 8:45 pm Leave a Comment

This post is filed under Cress Beds, Landscaping and tagged bulrushes, pond, watercress bed.

Feathered display

I’ve noticed over the past few weeks the resident male peacock, become much more vocal and territorial, with a lot of tail feather shaking. I keep forgetting to take my DSLR with me, but managed to capture him trying to woo a female with his magnificent and impressively colourful tail plumage.

Does she look impressed?

Posted on 4 May, 2013 at 8:32 pm Leave a Comment

This post is filed under General and tagged display, feathers, peacock.

Any old iron

It was good to finally get rid of a huge mountain of metal accumulated from various areas on the site this week.

The metal mountain

After a quick call to Sims Metal Management, who are going to recycle it all, they dropped a huge container sized roll off skip for me to fill.

One empty skip

Six and a half hours later – and admittedly with a bit of squishing down with the JCB I deemed it FULL!

Ta-Da! – One FULL skip

I’ve since found out that it weighed in at just 3.04 Tonnes, I lost a bet and believe me when I tell you it felt like twice that putting it in! 😉

Posted on 4 May, 2013 at 8:26 pm 1 Comment

This post is filed under General and tagged recycling, sims, waste metal.

Through the pine trees

As the land has dried enough for me to get around comfortably on the JCB, I’ve managed to dig a little more out for the new roadway. It forms a large horseshoe loop around the top half of the side surrounding the ‘to-be’ pond and old cress bed.

Viewing west towards the top field.

Viewing east along the river

The top part of the loop sweeps along side the river through a couple of pine trees and passed the bee hive. I really like this section of the site; it’s out of the wind mostly and you can occasionally hear kingfishers flying past. We found whilst clearing this section a few grass snakes too, docile and friendly mind you!

Posted on 28 April, 2013 at 8:57 pm Leave a Comment

This post is filed under Caravan Park, Landscaping and tagged bees, kingfishers, riverside, roadway, snakes.

Small Things

‘Mule’ Engineering at its best…

When you’re dealing with such a huge project, it is easy to push the seemingly insignificant minor details to the background. With so much still to do on the Cresslands site, before we open up for touring caravans to park and settle in for the night, making headway with the main roadway and continuing the site clearance has held top priority. Although it still does, it was a small thing, but yet a huge milestone, to finally place a securing plate onto the now 1 year old tarmac entrance to hold the gate firmly in place. Sam (bro-in-law) set to work last week and engineered the plate, but I must say it’s made a huge difference to how I get in and out of the site, which from a Feng Shui perspective is a GOOD thing.

More cosmetic and polishing touches planned for the next few weeks.. 🙂

Posted on 28 April, 2013 at 7:48 pm Leave a Comment

This post is filed under General.

Aerial Photo

Here’s an aerial shot of the Cresslands Ltd. site. The A15 running north towards Bourne on the left. I would say the photo is around 5-7 years old, but you can clearly see where the old cress beds are marked by the long strips of concrete forming walkways between the beds.

Aerial Photo of the Cresslands site, approx 5 to 7 years ago.

Posted on 23 April, 2013 at 5:30 pm Leave a Comment

This post is filed under General and tagged aerial photo, cress beds, Kate's Bridge, map.

The Cress Bed Clean up

Having never seen a working cress bed, it’s hard to tell exactly how it was all pieced together. The obvious necessary element to the farm was a constant supply of fresh, mineral laced water. There are two bore holes on the site, one capped and working, the other rusted and as far as I can tell – LEAKING! Water from the bores was carried along side channels with holes in the side wall every metre or so, this flooded the bed and filtered along to the other end and eventually into the central ditch running down the centre of the site. (I am guessing mind you!)

Today I spent a few hours carrying on the wet and muddy job of clearing one of the remaining cress beds which I want to turn into a feature of the Cresslands site. It has a couple of patches of bullrushes which I am keeping but intend on clearing ALL of the rest and possibly digging into the bed to create some depth enough for fish.

There are a few waterlogged and dead trees to take out as yet, but the area is already proving fertile in life, with caddis fly larvae, pond skaters and snails, as well as a regular duck visitor.

The only relatively untouched cress bed getting cleared

Posted on 20 April, 2013 at 7:50 pm Leave a Comment

This post is filed under Cress Beds, Landscaping and tagged pondlife, watercress bed.

Silver Birch

We’ve planted 6 small silver birch trees just behind the entrance gateway. Hoping with recent rain they have taken and will in time flourish. I plan to keep all planting as native and locally sourced as possible. Plans for hazel, willow and edible plants throughout the site. 🙂

Six Silver Birch trees at entrance.

Posted on 13 April, 2013 at 5:06 pm Leave a Comment

This post is filed under Landscaping and tagged landscaping, trees.

Kushi – site branch manager!

Kushi – Site – ‘Branch’ Manager!

Posted on 13 April, 2013 at 4:57 pm Leave a Comment

This image is filed under General.