April 5, 2025

What’s happened to England to make the weather this consistently good? No sign of it turning yet. Who needs a summer holiday in France or Spain with this weather? I went to my field first thing on Monday before the jet lag had time to react. The garlic is about 20cm tall, half of the fruit trees are starting to blossom and the hedges are starting to leaf.

Willow leafing

I arrived at two new piles of woodchips so I got to work on the first one and spread it out on any trees that still needed it. I did notice a few already-mulched trees were not successfully suppressing the grass underneath. I would need at least a 10cm layer of woodchip to kill the grass underneath, and even then… it needs more.

So it has been confirmed, by experimentation, that the best strategy is to put a layer of cardboard down and then woodchip on top. The cardboard helps the most with suppression, and the woodchip keeps the cardboard in place and makes it not look so ugly. This way, I can get away with just a 2-5cm layer of woodchip, which is the more valuable resource. That’ll be my strategy from now on. 

I collected a bunch of cardboard from my sister’s clothing shop (thanks!), which is a good back up to have if I can’t collect enough myself. 

Wood CHOPPING had another round of attempts. I did SUCCESSFULLY chop one piece of wood; it was a larger / wider block and I used the two-handed axe. The trick with the two-handed is mainly just power. I worked my way up in power as I practised my swing technique. It can feel a bit dangerous to swing an axe as hard as you can, so I wanted to make sure I was doing it safely. After about 10-15 hits of amping up, it split all at once. The trick seems to be a good striking placement and a lot of swing power.

However… I did not manage to split the longer, thinner logs with the smaller axe. The YouTube video I watched didn’t quite help. Maybe it’s the wood. Maybe it’s me. But I’ve decided to give up on that for now. Time to move on.

After chasing the jet leg on day one, I crashed on day two. I occasionally have “night terrors?” or “hallucinations?” and it happened three times that night. And again once a few nights later. My partner wasn’t particularly happy with the constant wakings; so I took it easy with the jet lag for the rest of the week. 

On Thursday, another order of plants arrived. Specialty ones, like kiwi and passion flower, so I planted them in. Also a bunch of rhubarb.

With the unusual lack of rain, I’ve been thinking about having an insurance policy for this summer… Water access is my weak point… and maybe I should try to collect some rainwater, in the event it is a hot summer and some trees might need a bit of help to survive. Next week’s plan is to install some rudimentary system to catch and store rainwater. 

Ok ok enough about the field. I’ve been finishing the towel rag project. It took a few iterations to figure out how to neatly sew up a mitered corner border around the towels. I finally landed on the neatest method which is, iron the folds of the border first, machine sew the first edge to the towel, and then hand stitch the second edge. Although hand stitching is slow, it’s the neatest way. I’ve tried to show the steps in the pictures below.

I’m still waiting for my Merino sheep fleece to arrive. That’ll bring in a bunch of spinning work. And I found a bit more wool in my stash, some beige-coloured wool and mohair, enough for a small jumper or blouse. I need to find a pattern to go with it, but that’ll be my next knitting project. I’m all about getting my stash down to zero! 

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