The owner of the place we are buying has very kindly let us move some stuff into the outbuildings so I helped my father-in-law move some bits from his shed. It's mostly scrap timber so not of great value to would be thieves.
Anyway, she had expressed an interest in meeting the dogs so I took them round. After a few minutes, where she expressed her delight at them, we let her get back to work and headed up into the 10 acres of paddocks that come with the property.
It's certainly going to keep us busy - very boggy and lots of different species aside from grass. It's been recently topped but there is a load of bracken already and a fair amount of dock coming up too. Plenty of young brambles are creeping out from the hedgerows too although they'll have to compete with the rushes that frankly dominate. The owner did admit the land could do with better drainage. I'm planning on getting someone in to dig the ditches out but I'll be planting a lot of willow and alder which should thrive there. In the years to come, I'd like to divert the ditches into a lake as there's already a patch of standing water. I'll dig this out a bit once we move in to see if it fills up before investing in some heavy machinery to excavate several thousand tonnes of soil!
Pleased to note the new oak trees that have self seeded. I'll put some guards around these, I think to stop them getting eaten/mown down. A few new birch coming up too but it's mainly grey willow around the edges, but with some nice oak standards and large birch.
Dogs were like pigs in poo, diving into the undergrowth. Lots of rabbit burrows to sniff so they'll need some management. Molehills aplenty abound but we won't be cropping hay so not too worried. At least the soil looks good (to my untrained eye!)
Can't wait to move in for real in a fortnight!!
Topic: Had a good wander round the new place (Read 7173 times)
