Game For A Laugh

Our "Edible Table" with a Comedy Festival tent

This weekend Machynlleth will be invaded by hundreds of (mostly) young and (on the whole) trendy people. They are coming from all over the UK to be entertained, but thankfully not by me. Whatever the collective noun is for stand-up comedians (a heckle?) is arriving to do the entertaining. Yes it's Machynlleth Comedy Festival once again and the town will be buzzing.

I will be there anyway, partly as a punter - I have a ticket for someone called Lolly Adefope - and partly as a promoter of local food in the form of our weekly veg bag scheme and Edible Mach. A few of us will have a stall somewhere central to ply people with smiles, flyers and possibly cakes. Obviously we'll have to sort the locals from the out-of-towners, the latter being less obviously our target market.

Chives

This week I led my first volunteer session for Edible Mach to smarten up the “Crop Circles” veg beds near the main focus of the Comedy Festival, the big tents put up by the Town Hall. It was a cool but sunny afternoon and about 6 or 7 of us spent a happy couple of hours weeding, removing old bolted plants and replacing them with blackcurrant bushes, strawberry runners and broad beans, all donated for free by local growers.

The "Crop Circles"

It used to be that leaders of these sessions were paid but unfortunately the funding for that ran out so now we're transitioning into getting people to do it for free, on a rota basis. I've put my name down for a couple of sessions as I want to see the Edible Mach veg beds continue looking great. Without these targeted gardening sessions they would quickly become a mass of weeds and thirsty or dead plants.

At least Edible Mach does have funding for running workshops, of which we have several coming up on all manner of things - fermentation, soil, bread making, sowing, building raised beds and compost to name a few. And they're all free to attend! If you're a local and you're reading this, do check them out as I'm sure there's something of interest for everyone.

Enough tapping on this keyboard now - I'm off out to my garden to plant loads of beetroot!

We sowed some wheat as well!

Woods Ancient And Modern

A young foal and its mother nearby 

Immersing oneself in the austere and dramatic beauty of the Welsh countryside can have a profound effect on people. For many, a strenuous hike across the verdant mountains here will bring a chance to reflect on what's really important and perhaps offer a new sense of perspective on our daily troubles. For our Prime Minister, however, it brought about a decision to call a snap General Election. Yes, you can blame Wales for that too.

But this post isn't about the General Election, you may be relieved to discover. It's about the Welsh countryside.

The view from the window here as I look out is of the hills northwards across the winding Dyfi river. They recede into the distance, and today the mist hangs low over them. They slope sharply down to the river, partly covered in conifers and partly sheep pasture, but young broadleaved trees are in the near distance, framing the view and coming quietly into verdant leaf.

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There are pockets of ancient woodland around Wales. I attended a fascinating talk by Adam Thorogood of the Woodland Trust on Wednesday. His job is to locate woodlands which he suspects are (or were) ancient and sweet-talk the landowner into letting him do a survey for them, which will suggest ways of managing the woodland to help restore it.

Ancient in this context means covered in trees since at least 1600 when decent maps start to become available. It doesn't mean untouched as human activity reaches everywhere, so the phrase “ancient semi-natural” is used. They are precious because of the unique wildlife habitats, flora and fauna, that they offer, as well as the trees themselves of course. 

Other classifications of ancient woodland are “Plantations on Ancient Woodland Sites” (PAWS) where ancient woods have been felled and replanted with timber trees, and “Restored Ancient Woodland Sites” (RAWS) which are PAWS that have or are being sensitively restored. It is mainly these types of woodlands that Adam Thorogood is surveying.

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Wales' Ancient Woodlands Inventory from 2011 is available online here to browse to your heart's content. It shows that part of my land contains ancient woodland, that on the slope down from the road, but not apparently the big trees that line the river.

I've also been delving into old tithe maps from the 1850's which have now been digitised and are available on the National Library of Wales site here (http://cynefin.archiveswales.org.uk/). There are no trees indicated for my land or the surrounding area on these maps. But I have learned that it was owned by a Thomas Hartley Esq as part of a larger land parcel, and that Mr Ellis Williams who lived in the house up the road and presumably farmed the land had to pay 13 shillings a year to the Rector. Glad I don't have to do that!

Tree Cheers

A pea shoot reaches for the sun

As you can tell from many of the photos on this blog, my plot of land has more than its fair share of big trees. In fact it's probably more woodland than open land. All along the high bank of the river there are oaks, birch, hazel, ash, small-leaved lime, hawthorn, rowan and crab apple, their roots keeping them precariously clinging to the rocky ground, their branches stretching out and upwards, the better to catch the sunlight.

Along by the roadside and the steep slope down below it are planted stands of large firs and spruce, several of them fallen over the years and leaning at crazy angles, caught by their neighbours. There are a lot of big larch trees at the western end, as well as semi-natural broadleaved woodland - beech, elder, blackthorn, hawthorn, oak, birch and so on. Big Christmas trees dot the level area, left over from a previous landowner's attempt to grow them for cash.

Serried rows of broad beans

I have a few less trees now though, ever since Storm Doris hurtled through in March. It has torn down four big trees, the worst devastation I've seen on my land in the years I've been here. Two of them unfortunately fell across the boundary stream I share with my neighbours. The huge ivy-covered ash was uprooted near where the stream reaches the river, and caused no damage other than ripping a couple of big branches off one of the trees on the other side. But the oak tree was further upstream and landed inches above my neighbour's water pump unit.

This was a bit concerning to both of us to say the least. It was a lucky thing that it hadn't smashed it to bits, rendering their house entirely without water. So we got a tree surgeon to have a look and within a few days he and a mate came and sorted it. They brought their jeep down the steep slope and used the winch at the back to drag the tree sideways out of harms way. The chap with the big chainsaw could then get down into the stream, saw it into pieces and haul them up to the side of the bank. They were done and dusted within two hours.

The ash tree he'll deal with another time - he had to rush off to deal with the lambing. And I am dealing with the branches, dragging them off back onto my land to burn them. All the firewood I'll be sharing with my neighbours, which is the silver lining of this particular stormcloud.

Tea In The Sahara

A pea seedling in a module in the polytunnel, basking in the sunshine

Right now Wales seems to think it's the Sahara and is wildly oscillating between hot days and freezing nights. Last night the temperature on my land was 0.8 degrees C and there was a ground frost. This afternoon I got a suntan as I planted out my first lettuce seedlings into the soil, the sun blazing down in a wide blue sky, the temperature rocketing up to over 16 degrees C. (OK, not exactly the Sahara then.)

Keeping all my baby vegetable plants happy in these conditions is not easy. The polytunnel, where most of them are kept in their plastic modules, can get much hotter than outside, especially if both ends were closed. But during the freezing night the temperature plummets in the tunnel too so closing the doors an hour before sunset does help a bit to keep the heat in.

A very young chard seedling

If I happen to be away even for a day when the weather's doing this and leave the polytunnel closed, the plants would get stressed, their compost dries out and they may never recover. So I'm doing my best to ensure I'm there every morning to open it up, and then in the evening around 6pm everything gets a good dowsing of water and I close it up again.

Having a “hot bed” in there, a large crate full of fresh manure, must retain a bit of the day's heat as the icy darkness descends, but only the seedlings on top of it will benefit. I have a few transparent hard plastic covers that when placed over a module tray offer a little bit of extra protection.

Those tadpoles are encouraging the frogspawn to emerge. Or they're eating it, hard to tell 

Yet even so the broad bean plants in the tunnel seem to have suffered from the cold night - the tips of some of them have gone a little bit black. The 34 tomato seedlings are thankfully still safe and sound at Anna's house, growing a bit “leggy” by the window sill but not suffering the biting cold of night. 

Let's hope Wales figures out soon it isn't a big African desert but a damp, cloudy and temperate northern country. (Rain forecast on Sunday so I'm sure it'll be service as usual again!)

Insects are out now. This one checks out the pollen of my flowering kale plants