On the Brink of Winter

Full Moon in January

After the dry and rather hot summer of 2018 we had hoped for less heat and more rain during 2019. Obviously 2019 was different from 2018, but it was another dry year at least over some periods. However, there was more rain in total. From August onwards we did have more rain than average, in October it was almost twice as much. Add to this: 2019 was not as hot as 2018. This, plus the cloud cover we had, meant we had less evaporation. Over the past few weeks the soil has been moist on the surface almost permanently, either by rain or from dew, fog or the odd white frost.

Early in the year our barn kept us busy. All the old straw and hey had to go. In early March the last load left on a trailer, leaving us with clearing out the rest. Right on the bottom of it all was a layer that could be rolled up like a large carpet. This was all to go on to our compost heap.

8 April 2019

April looked quite promising. The daffodils are going strong and the meadow looks green again, at least in places. Even though: much of the green is in fact moss covering the places that burnt blank during last years heat. And then there was some late snow in mid April enchanting the garden.

13 April 2019
13 April 2019

Luckily it did not do any harm to our pear trees that were in bloom already.

May colored the rhododendrons and the irises joined in.

And then along came June. It gifted us with a wealth of poppies, cornflowers and corn campions. We bathed in seas of red and blue and purple.

7 June 2019
7 June 2019
7 June 2019

A wall of foxgloves stood out in the back between all the rhododendrons radiating in all the colours they could think of.

7 June 2019

Let me introduce you to Jacquelin du Pre. She is a beauty in her own right and a rose dearly loved by hover flies.

24 June 2019

With the sun getting strong some plants needed a bit more shade. During the past three years I had been to basket weaving workshops at Kerstin’s. All my baskets were meant to go in the garden for shading plants in need. And they did a really good job. The one I made this year reminded me somewhat of the Sorting Hat at Hogwarts.

24 June 2019

The rye we had put out the year before was going strong this year. It was almost 2 metres high and it got itself infested with ergot. They, too, grew impressively strong.

21 July 2019

We do have a number of fruit trees in our garden, but we had been fancying a mirabelle tree for quite a while. And this year we came across one we felt wanted to be part of our orchard. We planted it in spring and it grew well. It came with a couple of wee little green fruits. To our great surprise they took another route than we had expected:

21 July 2019

We rang the nursery to ask whether there was any chance that there is a blue variety. But they said no. So, now we have a plum tree with no name. We decided to keep it.

21 July 2019

We thought the old balcony pots might look nice mounted on what used to be a stable door. The nasturtiums quite liked it there.

8 September 2019

These are our climbing beans prior to the root voles having a go at them. We still did harvest some of them and they were nice and tasty – the beans, even though I would like to get rid of all the root voles, I do not fancy having them for dinner.

20 September 2019

In late September we checked all the nest boxes. One pair of blue tits had their own ideas as to nesting. They chose to nest behind this old little door. During the times pigs were kept in that stable, this door was used for mucking out. We walled it up from the inside to keep unwanted rodents out. But, to some there is room in the smallest chamber. See you next spring, lads.

21 October 2019

As I write this the mole is working eagerly its way through all of our meadow doing its job regarding the grubs. There are mole hills all over the place. The bird feeders are crowded, which makes us hope some of those little ones will be there in spring for the nest boxes again. It is still mild, which leaves the soils open for the rain to trickle away and go down to fill up the store of water in the depth.

A barn filled with straw

A proper farm needs a barn and when we moved in at our farm in spring 2016 the barn was filled with straw. The stuff must have been sitting there for decades. It was mixed with hey from meadows long gone. Some of the straw was in bales, some bales had disintegrated from the weight of the bales piled on top of them, some straw was loose and long, some had been finely chopped. All of it was a fire hazard and it blocked the space almost completely. So it had to go. Somehow.
This is the story of how a barn full of straw became a barn with space for stories. Countless loads had to go and it would take three years to get the deed done.

January 2016

First of all we needed to clear the way in and out. The plan was to use this space as a temporary storage for the type cabinets that were to be brought in before winter come. Here it was mostly bales, some of which had been crushed. By autumn the space was free. We were lucky in that a farmer in a village nearby would use the straw as bedding. He kept coming in with his trailer to get the stuff – all the way through until March 2019, when the last load went.

August 2016

In late October 2016 the type cabinets and presses arrived, all neatly packed on palettes. The forklift truck sorted them one by one in to the now free space in the barn. They were supposed to sit there until the pressroom was ready to be furnished. Unfortunately we got minus 9 degrees for a number of days in November. It would be mid January when we were able to get the cabinets out of the barn and into the pressroom.

October 2016

Next we tried to tackle the bales in the middle part of the barn. This could be done by picking them up with a fork and tossing them in the trailer. The trailer would fill up quickly. But underneath the bales the loose straw emerged. Partly this was long and tangled and broken baler twine was mixed in with it. Work became arduous.

January 2019
January 2019

Every now and then the odd bale turned up within the mass of loose straw. Once the huge pile in the middle had shrunk loading the trailer became even more cumbersome , as the material had to be lifted up to be tossed into the trailer.

January 2019
January 2019

The crushed straw was the worst to get loaded. We needed a special gripper device mounted on to the tractor. It looked like the jaws of a lion made from steel. Together with the farmer Albert we devoured, so to speak, our way through the mass of crushed straw.

January 2019

At some point we lost track on the number of loads we had got out. When a trailer was loaded we looked at what was still there and estimated how many more loads it would be. We never got it right.

April 2019

And then, all of a sudden, the straw seemed to give in. In early March 2019 the last load rolled out through the barn door. And it became apparent that this space was really beautiful. It had potential. What was left was the stuff right at the bottom. This went on to our compost heap. In places it could be rolled up like a carpet. Buried underneath the huge pile of straw was the cavern that was used to store potatoes and field mangels to feed the pigs. The ceiling of this pit had given up in places and had broken in. In normal years there would be some half metre of water standing down there. After two dry summers it was of course dry. As we had no notion to keep pigs any time soon, we decided to fill the pit with sand.

May 2019

To have the pit filled evenly took us a few loads of sand and a couple of weeks time. Some of the sand was wet and sticky, some was nice and dry. Generously our neighbours stepped in to help. Thank you, mates!

July 2019

Here the deed is almost done. The sand could be filled in only from one side and had to be worked to the other side with shovel, rake and wheel barrow.

July 2019

We had kept some of the straw to fill old coffee sacks. 2019 was the year of the studio’s 20th anniversary. To have the barn free of straw came in handy: we could have readings from my artist’s books in this space. And we would have those straw filled sacks to sit on. Now it was just the lamps and sockets that wanted to be fixed.

August 2019

Here we are: A barn to be filled with stories.

August 2019