Today, I was standing at the roadside gate to the orchard, facing inwards, as a "white van" drove past on the A517. The passenger in the van thought it would be hilarous to throw his MacDonald's cup of coffee at my back and shout insults as they drove past me.
I don't supposed they'd noticed that I was engaged in filming a video on my GoPro camera at the time. The video caught the image of the coffee cup just missing me, though some of the coffee splashed me. I swung the camera in time to catch an excellent 4K video image of the rear of the van, including its registration plate as it drove on to Turnditch. A copy of the video, including GPS data and timestamp, complete with the offending coffee cup in a protective clear plastic bag, has been passed to the police with a complaint of assault.
In an earlier post I mentioned the letter from the Derbyshire County Council, requiring us to trim back the vegetation on the roadside path. For pedestrians the vegetation had to be at least 2.4 metres above the footpath. For the road traffic there has to be at least 5.2 metres (16ft) clear of overhanging branches.
Clearing the pedestrian level vegetation was relatively easy with a petrol powered extended-reach pole hedge trimmer. Other than wearing PPE clothing and local traffic cones, no special precautions were required.
The high-level work was made more complicated by having to allow for passing traffic (Ashbourne Road, A517) and pedestrians. The blind spot caused the railway bridge meant we had to have mobile traffic control in operation. We wanted to minimise overall traffic disruption so we didn't have a traffic light system in place. Temporary traffic lights for the hedge work would have caused a traffic back-up right to the Railway Inn crossroad junction traffic lights. The A517 is a busy road, and the 40 mph speed limit means that drivers have to be given good advance warning of the risks of falling branches.
We lined the side of the road with traffic cones, and when we were performing active works we moved the cones temporarily to close off one side of the road at the site of work. There were also large "Tree Felling" roadside warning signs posted at either end of the works. As soon as the operations to cut a high level branch were complete, we moved the traffic cones back to the side of the road to allow free traffic flow. We tidied up each branch immediately after cutting to reduce disruption to traffic. We found that that simply cutting the branch and allowing it to fall to the road, even with warning traffic cones in place, was too risky. We modified our activity to ensure that cut branches were lowered, using ropes, to the ground in a controlled manner. The work involved in fixing the ropes and pulleys at high level for each branch to be cut, significantly increased the manhours needed to complete the work. We performed the rope work using a 24 foot extendible pole to position the ropes at high-level. We could have used a "cherry picker" truck for high-level access, but that would have caused traffic congestion, and would have be no faster than using the extendible pole. We used a separate pole marked at 5.2 metres to check the height of overhanging branches.
Some of the larger branches, mostly Ash and some Hawthorn, weighed in excess of 30kg and up to 12 cm diameter at the thickest point. All of the sawing work at high level was performed using a manual 6.3m Silky Polesaw (Hayauchi). When the branches were lowered to the roadside, we used a folding Silky handsaw and Fiskars XA23 brush hook to trim smaller branches from the main limb in preparation to chucking them on a log pile for later processing.
As the work approached the crest of the rail bridge, we had to have a look-out person deployed to warn of on-coming road traffic. All of us were equipped with walkie-talkie radios to faciitate communication above the traffic noise. Cutting and rope work would be paused until the vehicle traffic had safely passed by the site of work. In all, there was about 60 man-hours of roadside work to trim back the 150 metres of vegetation. Using a tractor mounted flail was not possible given the presence of a roadside wire mesh stock fence adjacent to the footpath.
I'd been planning to record some of the work on video, but given the council deadline, I was too short on time to set up the cameras. Here's an after the event video:
I was hard at work today trimming the roadside hedge of the Orchard. The Derbyshire Country Council had sent me a letter to trim it back so that it didn't encroach on to the footpath. Sure enough it had become overgrown and was narrowing the footpath. I'm presuming that someone local had made a complaint.
Trimming 150 metres of hedge to a height 3.5 metres is hot hard work. I was about one third of the way through the work, so I took a coffee break. I was sitting on the bridge parapet wall drinking coffee and a builder's wagon pulled up alongside me. I thought he was going to offer to complete the trimming work for a price. It turned out that he's seriously interested in buying the land and wanted to know if I was interested in selling. After the Council letter and half a day's hard work cutting hedges I said "yes". He'll be calling back later after I've discussed it with my wife.
We were able to get back on the orchard on Bank Holiday Monday after staying away due to Covid-19 Lockdown. I suppose this was about a 15 month gap. The grass and weeds have grown high, but the field trimmer will make short work of them.
We've purchased a new trimmer because our original Hyundai Field Trimmer never really recovered from being underwater in the Autumn floods a couple of years ago. The new one if a Chinese copy of the Hyundai, almost bolt for bolt, but it seems to work well enough.
In these days of Covid-19 we are keeping close to home to avoid the risk of infection. We've not put a lot of work into the orchard, but we have been keeping an eye on it. The grass has been allowed to grow long, but the fruit trees are sufficiently mature that it does not greatly affect them.
A couple of weeks ago we had a good crop of Russet apples on the Egremont tree. I don't normally pick them until late October/Early November as they are a late apple and the delay enhances their flavour. Today (27th October ) I decided to harvest the crop. However on arrival, I found not a single apple on the tree and none on the ground below.
It looks like we've had the crop stolen.
It takes quite a lot of work to maintain the orchard, and it is very disappointing to not reap the benefits. In my current frame of mind I'm tempted to apply for planning permission on the site, which is outside of greenbelt, with good road access. I know the authorities are looking for locations to provide and fund social housing for migrants. There's a handy bus route nearby and all of the necessary utility services are available. It would certainly give us a healthy profit while also being a benefit to society.
Given the Covid-19 Lockdown regulations and the need for our own protective self-isolation we've not put much time into maintaining the orchard over the past few months.
We did manage to undertake a brief visit and found a lot of damage to the fruit and nut trees. Over-winter floods and late spring frosts have wreaked extensive damage. I also noticed some "die-back" disease in some of the Ash trees. While we've not abandoned the project, it is almost like we'll have to start again from the beginning.
We finally managed to get on the Orchard today, though the ground was still a bit boggy after the floods. We had a bare roots Egremont Russet apple tree to plant. Currently it is a single whip about three years old grafted on to another root stock. The soil was pretty sticky, but after some work we planted it, though I forgot to install a support post. We already have one Egremont in the orchard, but I couldn't resist adding another, I love the flavour of those apples. This was probably the last weekend this Spring that we could safely plant a bare roots fruit tree. As our dogs enjoyed charging around, and finding muddy puddles, my wife pruned the other fruit tree.
