Planning for fence removal at the orchard

A couple of years ago we had a hedging professional on the orchard site re-laying the boundary hedge between our plot and the adjoining field. Previous owners had neglected the hedge over the years and had allowed the Blackthorn to run wild. At 11 GBP per metre it was not an insignificant investment. We needed to protect hedge from hungry sheep in its early stages of regrowing. We also needed to fill in some gaps to keep marauding sheep away from the young fruit trees. There was a real risk of damage by sheep to both the fruit trees and the relaid hedge as an earlier Blog post can attest. 

To provide this protection we installed a semi-permanent electric fence just inside in the boundary of the neighbouring field. It had driven wooden fence posts, with insulators screwed into them. The fence part was constructed with four strands of high tensile electric fence wire. The top strand was polypropylene rope with stainless steel strands interwoven. There's almost one kilometre of wiring.

The electric fence has worked out well and the hedge no longer needs any protection. The fruit trees could be damaged by the sheep, but the regrown hedge, plus some wire stockfence, is now providing an effective barrier.

The time has come to remove the electric fence. This should be a simple task were it not for the high tensile fence wire. The wire is very springy and easily tangles if not managed carefully. When delivered it was just a coil of wire contained by some soft iron wire wrapped around the coils. We had to carefully unwind the coils to avoid tangles as we laid the fence.

To help manage the recovery of the fence wire we've been busy in the workshop fabricating wooden drums/bobbins to receive the recovered fence wire. They are about one foot (30 cm) in diameter and about six inches (15 cm) wide. We've recently taken delivery of a large bandsaw in the workshop. This machine made the process of cutting circular disks of plywood for the bobbins an easy task. Air powered nail guns improved the accuracy and speed of nailing the bits together. While it is possible to buy old used plastic cable bobbins or use some old electric power cable cardboard bobbins it is quite satisfying to just build them from scrap bits of wood. It certainly is much more fun than commuting to a city office and spending the time doing boring paperwork and tedious phone conferences.

Soon we'll be drawing back the wire from the electric fences. We'll recover the gripples we used to tension the wire. The fence posts will be lifted and reused for wooden fence building further down in the orchard in the part we've yet to recover from the scrub land. The fence insulators will be recovered and stored for later use.

One lesson from all of this is that if you are considering buying a plot of land for an orchard be sure to check the state of the boundary fences. Estimate the cost of restoring the fences, hedges and walls to a good condition. It takes time and money to fix them. Sometimes your neighbours will show no interest in funding long term fixes for the fences.

Local angling club pays a visit

I was hard at work cutting down overgrown grass and thistles in the orchard site yesterday when the officials of the local angling club paid a visit. We'd spoken on the phone before but it was good to meet them in person. They were spending some time cutting down Himalayan Balsam while awaiting delivery of 200 young grayling fish. They are re-introducing the grayling into the River Ecclesbourne. The young fish had been raised in a local fish farm using grayling parents borrowed from the nearby River Derwent. I was leaving for some well earned lunch just as the car arrived carrying two large plastic bags containing water and fish. The release of fish was supervised by the local nature conservancy organisation.

We are really pleased with the progress of the hedges which we'd had relaid earlier this year. There are some gaps in the hedge we'll need to deal with, but overall it has been very successful. Even though it seemed expensive at £11/metre compared with wire stock fence at £4/metre the results are worth the extra expenditure. 

Ash shoots in relaid hedge

We particularly pleased that the ash trees which were extensively damaged by sheep during the winter have pulled through and are successfully sprouting after pleaching and laying of the restored hedgerow. The hungry sheep had almost completely ring-barked the trees. In the picture below you can see the see the same tree/sapling after the sheep damage (it is the thicker light brown trunk).

We're still waiting for a quote from a local fencing contractor to provide a stock fence to protect the hedge from grazing animals. It's only been three months delay so far! This chap was recommended by our neighbouring farmer, but it is stretching our patience a bit, so we'll probably go back to the contractor we used for the roadside stock fence. 

Last autumn we experimentally felled three Ash trees to evaluate how well they'd respond to coppicing. During the past couple of days we've noticed there is some lively regrowth around the base of the felled tree.  This is important as we want to make sure the trees on the embankment slopes continue to live after coppicing. If they die away it could be bad for soil stability.

We're not completely mowing the field. We're leaving some stands of grass and natural plants we'll allow to grow to full height. This will help to improve diversity while not allowing the weeds to rampage.

Hedge laying almost complete

The hedge laying at the orchard site is is now almost complete with the final section of hedge by the road gateway. The hedges are thin, thanks to the neglect by previous owners, but they should fill out soon, though in some parts we'll have to plant new shrubs.

We've been left with about a dozen large piles of thorn bush for us to build bonfires and burn.

Thorn bush piles left to burn.

Overall the field side hedge looks much better, but the next stage will be to install a wire stock fence to provide security and to protect the newly laid hedge from sheep/cows for a couple of years. You can see the laying is typical Derbyshire style with no binding rods between the posts. I'm more used to the Midlands style.

There are clear signs of spring with daffodils growing in random places in the field. These are almost certainly relics of the earlier dumping of waste soil and rubble during previous ownership.

Fixing the hedges

Now the leaves have dropped at the the autumn (fall) frosts we are able to the see the extent of the neglect of the hedges by the previous owner(s). It is outside of our abilities to quickly repair the fences so we've asked a couple of fencing contractors to quote for installing a stock wire fence next to the roadside hedge. It will provide some security and also prevent animals straying.

We've accepted a quote from Adrian Rochford to have the field side hedge (between and the adjoining fields) restored and layed in a traditional Derbyshire/Stafford style. Work should start in a couple of weeks.

We've also taken delivery of the first trees for the orchard. We'll be planting them soon, but first we'll need to patch a couple of gaps in the fence. Currently sheep are straying into the area and would no doubt do some damage to the young trees.

Last week's storm did some damage and snapped some of the dead trees. I'll be visiting with the chainsaw to tidy the mess. Some of it will have to be winched from the place it overhangs the River Ecclesbourne. More timber for the firewood pile.

We've placed a small notice on the gate post providing brief details of the project and a link to this site.

The Orchard - We've started clearance work.

Yesterday we started the process of clearing the plot in preparation for planning the orchard. The picture below is the strip of land next to the River Ecclesbourne. One of the local farmers has a right of access to his fields through this strip. We managed to to clear back about 80% over the undergrowth in the available time.

Given the uncertainty of what is hidden under the grass and brush we only using hand held tools to clear the ground during this first pass. We were using a Kawasaki KBH27 brush cutter and managed to burn through two tanks full of petrol in the clearing process. We're raking up the felled vegetation and will be hot composting it later. The brush was mostly grass, nettles and some Himalayan Balsam. The Himalayan Balsam is an invasive species and will take a few years of repeated strimming to eradicate.  Given the proximity of the river spraying with chemicals is not an option.

We'll be relaying the hedge on the left hand side of the picture at some point soon. It looks like there's been no proper hedge maintenance for a good few years.  I was pleased to note there is some healthy looking English Elm saplings forming part of the old hedge. We'll do what we can to preserve this species of tree. The question is should we lay Derbyshire Style or Midlands style, I was raised in Buckinghamshire so I prefer the Midlands or Southern Style hedging. 

We also need to have a missing gate post installed in the entrance to the main field to enable us to rehang the steel gate which we found laying on the ground.