A Visit to Bealtaine Cottage

Of course we are by no means the only 'bloggers' describing their small-holdering and gardening exploits on 'here' and as well as following Mentor Anne's fun and games with chickens, ducks and now a cute new kitten, we catch all the posts too by nearby 'one man band' lady, Colette O'N at her "Bealtaine Cottage" site not far north of Boyle. Her website and blog are at

http://bealtainecottage.com/2013/05/31/a-walk-through-the-permaculture-gardens-of-bealtaine-cottage-on-the-last-day-of-bealtaine/

Her stories always carry a host of pictures, but she also allows a controlled succession of visitors to be shown around and we signed up for one such tour this morning. I did not take a camera but I hope I can do the place justice. In 3 acres from a very unpromising start - fields like ours, all cattle-poached, over grazed and full of rushes, she has, over the course of 9 years, created a superb wooded garden which is threaded with narrow, interwoven paths and small clearings. She has planted around 900 trees over the years (a couple every weekend, she joked) from self-seeds, cuttings, gifts, purchases of bare rooted saplings or 2-3 year old 'feathers'.

They are mainly indigenous species, all be it many are 'not supposed to grow in a bog' - beech and copper beech for example. There are alder, mountain ash, birches, ash, elders and buddlieas, no end of willows including many woven and pleached into archways and living hedges. There are many fruit trees too, both in the woodland and in a clearer 'orchard' area. Most of the trees are less than the 9 years old, though there are some fine gnarly old beasts which pre-date Colette and one which may mark an old grave site from some poor unfortunate who would not have been allowed to be buried in a Christian grave-yard. The over whelming feel is as of a proper mature broad-leaved woodland with its canopy layer (the trees), it's under-storey (plenty of currant bushes, flowering currant (Ribes)) and dogwoods and then a lush herb layer full of buttercup, grasses, docks, vetches, primroses and no end of surprises, but all seemingly in balance with no one 'thug' dominating. The main driving force of plant choices is to provide year round food for the bees, from the earliest flowering Ribes, through to late autumn Sedums.

By digging out a winding channel through a low point she has managed to create a beautiful little stream which flows as clear as gin through a few small dammed silt-ponds, a bigger silt pond and then a bigger pond which was buzzing and wriggling with life - tadpoles, newts, boatmen, whirligig beetles and much more. This has also part drained the surrounding land so that it is no longer the boggy, poached mess she 'inherited'.

There is also an 'edible area' (edible for herself and for the birds) packed with fruit, currants (Colette thinks she'll get 200 lbs of blackcurrants this year) and the poly tunnel which I have admired since seeing it one of her blog-posts; it has straw paths and stone path edges, and its bronze fennel. As well as a good range of herbs, this carries plants for which she is keeping seed, including a 'perennial' purple sprouting broccoli which still gives sprouts for eating and carries viable seed although it is 3 years old. I also noticed a ruby chard being allowed to run away to seed. She sends quite a bit of seed away, especially to Americans who are always hungry for flowering plants 'from home'.

The 'permaculture' thing comes into focus on the original and on-going efforts to create and improve soil, from the thin, boggy, rush infested, cattle-abused stuff inherited to the the rich, deeper, leaf-mulched, compost enriched growing medium Colette has now. She showed us one of the new bits, an orchard. She lays cardboard down on the existing surface without digging it over, to exclude light. She has a decent shredder and actually grows fast growing plants like laurel and dogwood in among the trees to provide for shredded material. The cardboard is covered with shreddings, with straw from the poly tunnel paths, with compost and with clippings, bits of bramble and nettle and anything else which is bio degradable. This gets a soil, of sorts, going. It is then a fast track to getting trees established so that the trees can drop leaves and the whole cycle starts to build up a momentum of its own. The Ribes plants which will create the under-storey were already parked among the new fruit trees 'in waiting' (as it were) and there was even the start of a willow arbor for when the permaculture crept over that far and Colette could sit and look back at the orchard.

It was a very enjoyable and inspirational visit. Thank you very much, Colette, for that. As with all these garden visits, you don't come away wanting to copy every last thing and produce a Bealtaine 'clone' but you note the ideas down and keep them in your back pocket to add to other ideas you have seen at other gardens, and translate them into your own site. We do not need to do the soil-creation so much - we have 18" of pretty good stuff. But we did bring away the '3 layers woodland' idea and the notion that you can have currant bushes and a herb-rich layer under your fruit trees. We love that creeping buttercup is perfectly good as a herb in a mixture and doesn't need mowing, rooting out or eradicating where ever it appears. We love that you can save seed, so keep a few chard or broccoli plants and some bronze fennel. We love the idea of doing a few trees each weekend and always having some seedlings or cuttings on the go. We liked the hot and cold composting. We loved the idea of scrabbling up straw from the poly tunnel beds to add mulch to another bed. We particularly liked that this is a long term thing. Gardens, like Rome, are not built in a day and we can now look forward to 9 years and more of consolidation and improvement.

Thank you, Colette, for a brilliant day and a rake of good ideas to bring home.

White Phase

We already said, a few posts ago, that 99% of the fallow deer in Challock Forest are the very dark colouration known as "black phase", Well here is the other end of the spectrum, a "white phase" doe. Also, just emerging from the bushes behind Mum, a fawn nearly as pale. You can see that this doe is not albino - double click the image to make it expand to full screen, and you'll see she has dark eyes.

Oddly, the Challock population does not seem to have any of the in-between , normal text-book fallow deer, Bambi coloured pale brown with cute white spots. It's believed that the black phase ones are a Dutch population, imported when the Royal hunting forest was set up, and the white ones are from a few escaped white bucks which had been kept in the walled Eastwell Estate nearby.

My other pic today is (Thank You Scott-the-Bees) a jar of Kentish honey. Bit of a blend apparently, and not entirely 100% from Dad's allotments, but close enough, and gives Mum and Dad a real buzz, if you'll allow the bee-centric pun. We were up at the allotments today picking borlotti beans, and met up with Scott and our own bee-keeper-in-training, Pete. They are building the fencing that will go around the new bee-plot, and tell me that our colonies will be back "home" imminently, hopefully before the first frost.

Deefski

Remission

We take our evening walk along the path to the north of the allotments and back through them. It's about an hour these days at Meggie speed, and just about at her limit. She gets home OK but shortly afterwards, is lame, favouring her front left foot. Dad bathes her in salty water and nibbles very gently around with the scissors, but can find no sign of grass darts or other injury.

At the allotments, Scott-the-bees has relented and decided to bring back the bees, but as long as he can site them slightly differently, in a disused, brambly bit more off the main pathway and out of the sight of the herberts who kicked over the hives last time. Practically speaking, you can't just move a hive 30 feet to the side. The rules of thumb say move hives either less than three feet, or more than 3 miles.

Bees have a strong homing instinct and build up a good visual map of their patch as they fly to and from from the hive, and their territory can be 3 miles or so in radius. So if you move them less than 3 miles, they will come across bits of the "map" they recognise and fly back to the old location, milling around uselessly confused till they either swarm and are carried off, or they just fade away and die. 3 feet, they can cope with because as they fly back in to land at the old site, they spot the new location.

So moving a hive 30' has to be accomplished by moving them 3 miles out, then keeping them there about a week, while they forget the old map, then moving them back to 30' from the start point, where-upon they fly about as if they never knew the old map anyway. Also, of course, individual bees don't live very long, and you'll get a good % turn-over, so many bees now foraging are young and never knew the old map anyway. Clever stuff. So we currently have no bees, while they're on their holidays at Scott's house.

Meanwhile, good news from the Diamond camp, as the single word "Remission" is flying about in texts and emails. We can not be sure (nobody can) what this means in terms of final outcomes for the poor patient, but it has a much nicer ring than "Complete renal failure" and "hospice" which were the story a few weekends ago. Hang in there, Diamond.

Rumour has it she's well enough to be allowed out at the weekend, and is dreaming up foods she's going to have that she'd not been allowed (fish fingers, Diamond? ... are you sure? She says it's like soul food, the food of your childhood, like Campbell's Cream of Tomato Soup, or Salad Cream. Mind you, it's Mum she's sending out to buy the fish fingers because she knows Mum will head for Marks and Sparks - she doesn't want any "chav fish fingers!").

There is also talk of a possible trip to her beloved Poros Island (Greece). That would be quite a "home-coming" to see. Diamond has been going to the same place in Poros since she went with her Mum as a teenager, she knows everone, and quite a few of the guys who are now cafe owners, she bounced on her knee in nappies when their Dads owned the cafe. They have been kept in touch and up to date on Diamond's progress, of course, and the Jungle Drums are thundering. Half the village will fall on her neck as she arrives.

Happy Days
Deefer

...or not to bee...

Only one more "sleep" till my birthday, and I get a nice run around on the Rec tonight chasing ball with Sis' Ellie (whose Birthday is also tomorrow, of course, along with Brother Archie). Dad's not mentionned anything yet about a joint walk, but you never know. We also meet a brown, almost tortoise-shell looking Lhasa Abso called "Cosmo". He's only 3 months old. Cosmo was, coincidentally, the name of one of Mum and Dad's Mississippi Westie-owning chums' Westies, but this Cosmo was named after a fairy in some kiddies' TV show, and was named by one of the lady's children.

Disturbing news from Dad's allotments, where some herberts have broken in and knocked over the main bee-hive. Everyone is very upset, as you can imagine, none more so than Scott-the-Bees, our bee-keeper, who has (for now at least) taken the hives away with him. He says that if they had got any rain water in while lying on their sides, we could have lost the whole colony.

They had been doing really well, too, apparently, with a promise of plenty of honey this autumn, and we'd been looking forward to a jar with the allotments own logo on the label. We don't suppose Scott will be too inclined to do that any more. Dad will be lucky, they think, to get him back in the Spring.

One small silver lining on the cloud. Inspired by Scott's efforts and success, one of the allotment holders had decided to start a hive of our own, funded by the allotments but worked by himself, and he had built the hive (He's a bit of a woodworker), and persuaded Scott to take him under his wing as an apprentice bee-keeper. Scott has agreed to keep going with this, even though his own hive was damaged by the hooligans, and our man will keep his hive there, with its very small "nucleus" colony of bees, getting set up to go through the winter.

Why do the kids need to do this? We have no idea.

Shame
Deefer

Scott the Bees

Another bees pic for you, this one of the couple who came to deliver, and now return to tend to, the allotments hive. That's Scott on the left, and his wife, Jed (we think???) on the right.

They've been down here, too, with an eye to installing a hive in our garden which you can see from the middle pic, is at its most floristic and bee-attractive phase just now. Now, he might have been winding me up, but he said he was worried that we dogs might have problems with the bees - it's the fur thing, he said, making the bees think we were bears. Bears and bees, he said, don't mix, and anything that sets off bear insticts in bees is a BAD THING. He made me promise to not even think about being a bear while close to the bees.

Finally, a pic of the SB Cambria as she is now, in May 2009. This from the starboard bow looking aft, showing progress on the new deck beams and showing the access walkway that the boys now use as a public viewing gallery. Dad met Janie's mum and Dad here before they tootled off down to the barge in their 2CVs, both with their roofs rolled back in the sunshine.

They brought Janie (brindled greyhound, you'll recall) into the garden where we made her welcome (and laughed at her when she briefly fell into the pond before spronging out again on those long legs of hers. Shook herself "at" people, of course, but being a short haired greyhound, the spraying effect was nothing like you'd get from a good wet labrador or a westie.

Hope your weekend is going as well as ours.

Deefer

Of Bees and Bad things

Our game of footie in the Rec early this morning is frustrated by a complete Police Cordon around the whole Rec. It seems (although the 12-year-old policeman (Dad's words) was not saying anything) that there has been a fatal stabbing in the middle of the Rec. By this afternoon word is out that it's two herberts fighting over a woman.

We have names but this is probably not the place! The victim died in William Harvey Hospital, our "local" A+E. Bad things anyway. Mum comes back in the afternoon, and comments that the feds have been guarding the Rec all day, and fair play to them, nobody's stolen it.

Meanwhile, some pics of our allotment bees coming and going happily in the warm afternoon sunshine. Main pic shows the location of the main hive in a miniature hazel-spinney. The other shows the entrance. There is now, in addition, a smaller swarm housed in a "Nuke" (Nucleus box). We don't know much about bees yet but if I know Dad he will be buying books and reading the subject up. Scott the bee guy is also talking about us maybe having a hive here in the garden, so we need to check with the neighbours that they have no objections.

Enjoy the hot weather.

Deefski