Easter Visit

We arrived on site a week after Ric had been obliged to head south for a fortnight. We agreed a shortlist of priorities for the following weeks: Start capping what is left of the walls with mortar and blockwork, to protect them from another winter of rain and ice; pull down the north-east gable-end wall (the one with half the foundations missing); finish the surface water drain including filling the soakaway with rubble; clean out the concrete tank; screen spoil, distribute it and level up the courtyard; prepare for the floor slab. Too much to do in the time we have, but we will see how we get on.

Caravan: We planned to stay in the caravan most of the time, with twice-a-week visits to Bucksburn. We brought a 3KW electric heater up with us, swapped our empty gas bottle and got hold of a third one. The first night we were freezing, we went to a supermarket the next day and bought second duvets as well as missing utensils. Once we mastered the art of putting the heating on at the right time, we were very comfortable and quickly benefited from the extra time not spent driving to and from Aberdeen. The water heater was wonderful, good hot showers, reasonable flow rates.

Mobile Coverage: I have changed my mobile service provider from EE to Tesco Mobile. I can usually get two bars of 4G in the caravan and because I can use all my data for tethering, I have better connectivity than in Bucksburn.

Jill is on Vodafone, which also has decent reception. This got tested out for real whilst we were there. Jill’s sister, Vicki, and family were on holiday in Iceland. One of them ended up in hospital and needed a scanned image of their EHIC card. We persuaded Jill’s mum, Lesley, to find the card then to get one of her friends to take the photograph and email it to us. Jill forwarded it using MMS to our niece, Lucy, at the hospital in Reykjavic. Job done. We can use our caravan in north-east Aberdeenshire as a global communications hub!

Misty: Our blue merle collie cross was suspicious for a day or so, but got to appreciate being able to get out of the cold and wet. She spent all day being excited by anything and everything going on. As last year, it took its toll – she got so exhausted she was reduced to lying in her basket to eat her food. We supplemented her diet with extra dog meat.

Caravan: We sorted the longstanding niggle about the caravan sloping to one side. We bought a 4-tonne bottle jack and I cut some plywood shims. I crawled underneath the caravan to where we had put the frame on concrete blocks last year, I jacked up the low side and pushed the shims in. It pushed the side up about 3cm and that was enough to sort out the tilt. I also greased the jacking points, which were getting quite rusty and difficult to turn.

Garden: It is a great time to be in the area, with spring springing. Jill had planted daffodils and snowdrops last year in what we had hoped was a safe area, they were in bloom.

Hedging: She gave all our hedging a good spring clean. She removed the tree tubes, cleared debris and weeds away and pruned them. A remarkably small number had died. Most were bursting into life and had not yet been cut back to tree-tube height by rabbits/hares. The latter may have plenty of other food at the moment, hopefully the hedging will get big enough to simply out-grow pests. We used a tray of hedging plants that Jill’s mum had been bringing on, to replace those that had not survived.

Orchard: We extended our future orchard in the south east corner. Jill had found another end-of-season bargain online and ordered four new bare-rooted fruit trees – apple ‘Falstaff’, apple ‘James Grieve’, apple ‘Ashmeads Kernel’ and plum ‘Victoria’. Driving up, we had stopped at Morrisons in Berwick-upon-Tweed and bought one each of cherry ‘Morello’ and cherry ‘Stella’. They are now safely planted.

Broken Glass: We did another sweep of the grounds removing broken glass that had surfaced since the last clean-up – we are still filling a bucket or two over the course of a year.

Japanese Knotweed: Had not broken the surface yet!

Rhubarb: We cropped it for the first time and stewed it!

We added a second lot of fruit trees to our orchard.

Raised drainage mound: We took time out from our more physical tasks to pin down where we would build the raised drainage mound that will take effluent from our septic tank and allow it to soak away through our otherwise not-very-permeable and high-water-table grounds. There was not a lot of choice, we found a 10m x 7m area where the concrete ramp had been, a safe distance from our boundaries and soakaway, avoiding our area of new fruit trees and the established ash/sycamore trees. Ric worked out that we could minimise the visual impact by flattening the area uphill of where the mound will be, by dumping screened spoil and levelling it. The mound will either line up with the levelled area, or will stick up a bit, but not much. What we are not sure about is whether it needs to be separated from the levelled area by a trench, or could just be an extension of it. I will check with the architect at some point.

Grounds: Hedging prep & other things

We do not want to wait five years to move into the steading and then stare at devastated ex-building site for the following years whilst a garden establishes itself. We will mix building with gardening. For example, our relatively short winter visits will be good times to prepare for planting and for landscaping. In the summer months we will do what we can to keep the grass, nettles and perennial weeds under control.

Hedging: The small Rowan trees we planted back in the early summer are thriving after their months of neglect – the tree tubes have done their stuff and the ground is clearly suitable.

So we plan to start a full hedge along the northern boundary and part of the eastern boundary, around 65m total. We want to get it in the ground in November. Hopefully this will be starting to look hedge-like and sheltering us from the north-west thru north-east by the time we move in.

We want the hedge to be nature-friendly, with season-round interest – we will not keep it closely manicured. It also needs to be not poisonous to the cattle and sheep down our eastern boundary. We have our eyes on a ‘Saxon Mix’ from Hattens Farm Nursery, Fressingfield, Suffolk. This is 50% Hawthorn mixed with Hornbeam, Field Maple, Bird Cherry, Cherry Plum, Spindle, Blackthorn, Common Dogwood, Common Privet, Alder Buckthorn, Common Buckthorn, Wild Pear, Holly, Dog Rose, Guelder Rose, Wayfaring, Hazel, Amelanchier Lamarckii, Crab Apple and Oak. We might look at less of the Hawthorn and more of the others, plus we do have some of our own cuttings of different species.

Finding Hattens was serendipitous, we came across an online catalogue of theirs by chance, they may be local to us but we did not know about them. Their prices are very reasonable. They import their stock from the continent starting end-October and have delivered orders to north-east Scotland.

As preparation, we had bought two 50mx2m rolls of weed membrane (‘heavy-duty woven weed control ground mulch landscape fabric’). One was enough to do the whole northern boundary and extend round the corner. We later used part of the second roll to carry on down the east side until we ran into a pile of granite rubble (the remains of the demolished steading internal walls). We strimmed the grass down a bit, then laid the membrane as close to the fencing as possible. We weighted the edges and middle with a selection of our ex-roof timbers.

We look forward with interest to seeing whether it has knocked back the grass by the time we get to plant the hedging. We did not have the time or materials to actually mulch the membrane – something we will probably want to do once we have it planted up.

A burning question: How long will it take to plant the 350 or so bare-rooted plants? We are hoping to take a long weekend in November, flying up on a Thursday evening & back on the Sunday evening, with three days solid on the ground.

Rhubard: Our Rhubarb is looking quite happy, still nestling in the two old tyres that we figured would protect it from the wind and undergrowth.

Rabbits & Hares: Earlier in the year we had a rabbit that looked as though it had been crossed with a domesticated bunny – it had interesting dark patches on it’s fur. No sign of this, I expect it was predated. We did, however, have a very tame hare & rabbit that kept a close eye on what we were doing throughout the fortnight. This rapid turnover of rabbits and hares is very typical of the area – we simply do not have a systematic problem with them. I expect this will change once we start providing them with cover, but we are expecting to protect our veg plots from rabbits and wind. We will also make sure we use tree guards on our hedging.

Geese: The geese appear to be year-round, flying pretty much daily between the Ythan estuary, Meikle Loch and Strathbeg.

Japanese Knotweed: The Knotweed had grown a lot from our May visit, but was not more than 3 feet high where it did not get sprayed the year before (because it was too tall). This was around 30 square metres. Where we did spray, there were a small number of small re-growths.

We left it a week and sprayed it just as it started flowering. It did drizzle and rain a bit later in the day, we will find out next time we are up whether it had long enough to soak in and do its stuff.

Japanese Knotweed – Decline, but not Fall

I know it is early days, but our Japanese Knotweed infestation looks to be a shadow of its former self.

The copious amounts of brushwood-strength glyphosate we sprayed last September look to have hit it hard. This despite not being able to attack much of the middle of the area because it was above our heads. We now have a large circle of absolutely bare ground – no perennial or annual weeds – with a moderate scattering of rather sickly looking new growth. I think the glyphosate must indeed have worked its way well through the rhizome system, even into the area I cut back.

It is early in the season, and towards the middle of the patch it is already a metre high, but it is nowhere near as scary as we were expecting. We will spray again in September, but meantime we broke the new growth off at ground level, being careful not to leave the broken ends in contact with the ground – we will see if this weakens it, but still allows enough new growth to treat in the Autumn.

It does make me wonder if the plant may have been bigged-up by the Knotweed-killing industry, for their own purposes – heaven forbid.

Taming the Wilderness

The land attached to the East Byreleask Steading is former farmyard, slightly over 3/4 acres, 0.3 hectares. There is very little in the way of farm buildings remaining, but it is still a challenge.

Concrete: We have quite a bit of concrete…

1. The concrete bases of former farm buildings, hardstanding and the floor of the silage clamp amount to about 700 square metres of concrete. Assuming it is 10cm thick on average, that is 70 cubic metres or 170 tonnes.
2. There is around 80 metres of concrete wall that is 50cm thick and 2 metres high. This is an additional 80 cubic metres or 190 tonnes.
3. The floors of the steading amount to about 210 square metres. Assuming it is 10cm thick on average, that is 21 cubic metres or 50 tonnes.

Whilst concrete is just as typical of traditional Scottish farming as granite steadings, there is mercifully no planning requirement to preserve it as part of the built environment! I hope the walls can be knocked down by our digger man. I will buy a concrete breaker to get the concrete slab into handle-able chunks. What do we do with 400+ tonnes of broken concrete? We will hire a crusher and break it to hardcore. We can use it within the steading floors and to build up the shared track – all 470 metres of it, probably. The alternative would be pay to remove the waste, then pay again to get the hardcore we need for the building works.

Whilst the cleared areas around the steading will be building site for a few years, we will want to get the rest of it restored to garden. Given this will take years, we need to start sooner not later. We have yet to find a source of manure of other organic waste, but have started our first compost heap.

Track: The ground between the steading proper and our out-building is a well established farm track and runs across much of the plot. Assuming we will also want to convert this to viable garden, we will probably need to dig it out, remove the hardcore and start to build up the fertility.

Jungle: On our visits to the site before we owned it, we could not see from one end of the plot to the other. There are a number of mature ash and sycamore trees but everything around and between them is overgrown with smaller trees and perennial weeds, especially nettles. There is a good deal of concrete and stone scattered around. A strip down the eastern side is rough grass.

During our September visit, we found time to clear a small area. We removed some smaller trees, mostly sick-looking elder. We cut branches from two of the mature trees to above head height. The effect was immediate – a much more open wooded area that we could access. We will need to tackle the perennial weeds over several seasons – we have asked for a petrol strimmer for Christmas.

Japanese Knotweed: During our September visit, we came upon a patch of not un-attractive bamboo-like fronds, with somewhat heart-shaped leaves. It meant nothing to me, but Jill was suspicious. Back at her parents house, she confirmed that we had Japanese Knotweed on site. Reading up about it, it is a real nuisance. It is invasive and the roots can break concrete. It grows rhizomes out and down for several metres and small fragments of broken rhizome will quickly grow into new plants. Whilst it is not notifiable, we are required to make sure it does not invade anyone-else’s property and must not sell the property without informing the buyer. It is a headache for commercial builders, where time is of the essence. If you only have months to work on a site and sell it, you more or less have to excavate several metres down, sieve root material out and burn it. We have more leeway. By regularly using glyphosate on the foliage, over at least three years, it should eventually weaken and die.

Fortunately, this was the best time of year to treat it, whilst it is flowering. We bought weedkiller and sprayed the patch we had uncovered. We delved further and found more. Then more. Then more. We ran out of weedkiller, bought more and carried on. Much of it was too tall to spray, I cut it at ground level and we later burnt it. A month later, most of the sprayed foliage had died and there was some regrowth, this should not survive winter. We did read that the new growth can be cut, steamed and eaten. We will be working on destroying it for the next few years.

In November 2014 this headline, from the Independent, was typical of a minor feeding frenzy – “Japanese Knotweed: Government to issue Asbos (Anti-social behaviour orders) to those who fail to deal with invasive plant“. Here is the article in full…

“People who fail to control the growth of Britain’s most invasive and pernicious alien plant species could be issued with anti-social behaviour orders (Asbos), the Home Office has said.
The Government has named Japanese knotweed as one of the “non-native” plants which “have the ability to spread and pose serious threats to biodiversity, the economy and human health”.
As a result, new rules have been introduced in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 that could see people and organisations served with notices for “not controlling Japanese knotweed [when they] could be reasonably expected to do so”.
“Failure to act” is defined specifically as a form of anti-social “conduct”, according to a Home Office document, and individuals could be fined up to £2,500. Companies who allow the weed to get out of control could face a fine up to £20,000.
Japanese knotweed was brought to Britain in the 19th century as Fallopia japonica, a medal-winning ornamental plant.
But it has become a botanical menace, capable of ripping through concrete and brickwork and causing £170 million of damage a year.
Just a few millimetres of its underground root or rhizome is sufficient to spawn a new plant, making its removal from soil time-consuming and expensive – getting rid of it from 10 acres of the London Olympics site reportedly cost more than £70 million.
The new powers come after trials have raised hopes that psyllids could prey naturally on the plant, and in doing so diminish its ability to spread so vigorously. The targeted introduction of the specially-bred insects for trials was the first time the release of an alien insect species had been authorised in the EU.”