21 January 2012
Two traditions have been followed once again at Fullards Farm in recent weeks, both focusing on trees. First there was the post Christmas tree planting session where all family members and their dog who happened to be staying with us togged up and walked or were Land Rovered across to the Pole Field where a further 30 or so trees were planted. This latest planting added to the small woodland that we have been developing for a number of years now.
There were not too many failures from last year, in spite of the extreme cold followed by the incredibly dry summer but those that needed replacing were "beaten up" - replaced with a new bare rooted tree.
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| Mum, Dominic and Merlin tree planting |
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| Neil makes sure the weed mats stay put round a 2011 planting |
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| Paul "beats up" a casualty |
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| Neil and Annabel wrestle with a weed mat supervised by Merlin |
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| A well deserved afternoon snack |
A newer tradition at Fullards Farm is wassailing the orchard. This is a tradition of pagan origin which takes place on or around the 17th January. Having planted up a small orchard a few years ago we wassailed it in January 2011, a fantastic crop followed so we have just repeated this in 2012. Some friends joined us last weekend and we gathered around a fire pit, imbibed in some rather nice mulled cider and then wassailed the trees with some old wassailing verse before firing party poppers through the branches of the chief tree - a quince. The party poppers replace the more traditional action of firing a shotgun through the branches, which we decided not to do so as to not upset the sheep (or villagers). A cider soaked piece of toast is left in the branches and we now stand back and see what the trees will do for us at harvest this year.
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| Fire lit, candles in the trees, all ready to wassail |
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| The quince tree, the morning after the night before |
