raised beds and clearing

For the most part, the weather has been incredibly kind here for outdoor work.  The evenings stay lighter that the UK too, so the days are longer.  I can easily be outside till six now, before the light is too poor to carry on.

I attacked the large mound of soil that was left after the drive earthworks.  The guys left far more soil than I had anticipated and some is rather poor compared to the rest.  The poorer part I have started to spread about to flatten the ground off a bit and just to loose it.  The better soil is lovely, the raised beds have had a good fill, along with more leaves and leafmound, gathered from around the village, before a blanket of straw to keep them snug for the winter.

mounded topsoil for new raised bed

the piles of earth are getting smaller

clearing the ruin.  This is where my new house is going to be

raised bed complete with salvaged wood sides and leafmould mulch

As I start to clear the ruin, there is plenty more wood, old beams and the like, which are put directly to work retaining more raised beds.  It’d be a shame not to use the good topsoil for another year and I’m going to need plenty of space for sowing seeds if the new seed catalogues have anything to do with it this winter. Long dark evenings are ideal for increasing the workload later in the season, it’s what gardeners dreams are made of.  The difficulty is in limiting the varieties that need to be bought, so they all have to be useful in some way.  Either for me, or the birds, bees or insects or a combination of all the above.

mini digging

Tomorrow has come and gone for nearly a month ( I change the blog dates so that they are just about accurate to when things happen) and I have a quick chance, once again, to catch up on blogging.

Simon and I have just spent two days playing with a mini digger, day 1, heavy rain showers and blustery rain, proper November weather, but we got on with the task in hand anyway.  You really can’t sit around, especially when there is a machine on hire that is costing a small fortune every day.

Day 2, as if summer was back, well nearly, blue skies and warm sunshine, just the ticket to lay pipes and backfill as many of the trenches as possible whilst the machine was with us.

We got just about everything finished, save all the joints and construction of an inspection chamber for the isolation valves which will go near the water meter.  The system is devised so that the garden sections can be turned off during the winter to lessen the chance of frozen pipes, whilst the (future) house and chalet can be supplied or isolated as necessary.  

At the same time we installed a pipe to transfer saved rainwater from the chalet to the garden, saving countless trips with a watering can or strimmed surface pipes hidden in the undergrowth in later years.  

Whilst digging it seemed sensible to lay a conduit for a phone line, directly to the chalet with the possibility of branching off towards the house when needed.  

The place is a bit of a mess superficially, but it’ll soon grow back and hopefully it’s the final time that this area of the property will need to be disturbed in such a manner.  The big disruption and earthworks is yet to come.......... next year with any luck.

trenching to the garden for water and phone cables

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the mini digger makes quick work of it

refilled as far as we could go

water to the door.  Thankfully the trench is now filled in

 I continue a month later with this same post........

And then I was hit by a virulent head cold.  A week after all the digging, I attempted to continue with the water works, feeling somewhat groggy in the head.  The first task was to dig out space for an inspection chamber near the water meter.  Easy I thought, ten minutes with a spade and it’ll be done.  Two minutes later with water spraying everywhere, I manage to slice through the last remaining length of active pipe much closer to the meter than I had planned.  Thankfully the water was easy to turn off.

Minutes later, whilst attempting to continue with the same task, I break the concrete surround by hitting it with said same spade.  Bad head, slight mal co-ordination, it’s obviously not the ideal time to be attempting even vaguely technical work.  I have a cup of tea and write myself a large note that has stayed on the table for nearly three weeks.  DO NOT ATTEMPT TECHNICAL TASKS UNTIL YOU’R HEAD IS BACK TO NORMAL. YOU’LL ONLY BREAK THINGS OR MUCK IT UP.

I listened to my advice and am still in the throws of finishing the last of the technical part of this task now, in mid December.  It’s been interesting even with a clear head and fully functioning brain.  Missing parts, difficult, drippy joints that needed redoing several times, cold, uncooperative pipework, all add to the challenge.  A good job done, something that will (should) last the duration, without having to be revisited during later stages of the build.

about one year since I discovered my plot and nothing much has changed to the buildings

photographic evidence

wholesome lunchtime salad, followed by bread and cheese and a good cup of tea 

washing up facilities have improved

earthworks by the drive are now settling nicely

the mustard and broad beans that I sowed have germinated well and the roots will bind
the soil together nicely before the winter sets in

starting to leaf mulch the vegetable patch to keep it snug for the winter.  the worms will
work most of those leaves into the ground and it'll be easier to work next year.

progress with the extended vegetable area.  three beds now dug and mulched
paths covered with cardboard to keep the weeds down till I can sow clover next spring

the piles of reclaimed items continues to grow

new drive II

Bertrand and Lionel returned as promised and laid a white carpet of felted geotextile membrane.  THis will stop the mud lifting through the stones and keep the stones from drifting downwards into the soil.  It looked almost too clean and neat to cover with stones but it disappeared soon enough with the first four cubic metres of stone.  They spread it with the digger whilst the lorry headed off for the second load.  Three hours later it was all done, or so they thought.  I was encouraged to get the van and give my new drive a go.

I rounded the corner, with slight apprehensiveness and started to climb.  The corner was tight but achievable, but I didn’t start with enough speed.  I stalled, then dropped back to give it another go, foot down, the wheels spun in the stones digging an impressive hole.  OOps. I dropped back again and realigned Percy managing to overcome the slope and get to the top without further problem.   After much gesticulating and tutting it was decided that the campervan was rather heavy and had a long wheelbase - yes, I could have told them that in the first place.  On top of that it’s turning circle (I forget the french for that) was rather pathetic.  Yes, I know that too.  So all was not good, they had a little discussion and came up with a proposition.  To acquire some tarmac and add a thin layer to the bottom of the drive, just enough to take in the worst of the corner and give traction till the wheels had time to straighten out again.  They’d head off and have a look on Monday, but it would cost another hundred or so euros.  I agreed and they went off home for the weekend.  

About twenty minutes later as I was busy with the terraces again, leveling the soil and positioning some plants to go in, Bertrand and Lionel come hurtling up the road in a pick up, overshoot and reverse straight back onto the drive.  They had come across a highway team, some of Lionel’s colleagues (from his real job) with just enough fresh warm tarmac to do the job and they were finishing for the day,  what an opportunity, not to be missed.  They got on with spreading it out and rolling in into the gravel sub-base just as promised.  The roller hadn’t yet been collected thankfully.   It looked rather smart and a bit over the top for a rural driveway, but if it does the trick I’ll be a happy man.

“Leave it a few days, and water it well” I was told.  It’s a new formulation with ‘eco’ oil products in it, whatever they are.  It was sticky and moved about under foot, so I vowed not to abuse it for a week and continue to do my turning round up the road just till it is right solid.  We had a beer to celebrate and they went away again, happier that they had completed the job in it’s entirety and confident that they’d done the best they could.  Fair play to a bit of later evening work on a Friday in the land or rules and can’t do’s.

it's going to change the landscape fast, that one 

before spoil

after spoil

overnight, with Percy in the background

it feels so bare and open

stabilizing in progress

new driveway

beautifully green, but steep and virtually inaccessible

not to be attempted in less than a 4x4

Earlier in the summer I got some quotes to improve the drive access to my property is it was rather steep and at an angle too tight to negotiate from one direction for even the nimblist of cars, I doubt even a London cab could have taken the turn.  Quote chosen, it was then suggested that I arrange for someone from the water company to come and mark where the mains pipes go so that they don’t get damaged during the excavations.  We’re talking 20 - 30 cubic metres of soil movement here.  That was easy, an engineer was on site by the time I’d returned from the offices via the market and he took several hours to be sure that he was marking the right place.  The pipes in question come straight from the reservoir on the hill and supply three or four neighbouring villages.  I would not have been popular if there had been any disruption to supply.  Thankfully the pipes are well out of the way and I asked that the company come to do the work.

They had suggested two days of work with digger, tractor and trailer, a couple of lorry loads of stone chippings and all would be done.  But when would they come to do it?  

By chance, on the Tuesday afternoon, hours after I had returned from two weeks away, they popped by to look at the pipe markings.  Happy with what they saw, we agreed that work would proceed on Thursday and Friday of that week and they went away.

All of a sudden I to decide what I could do in preparation as I knew they would just rip everything out with the bulldozer and I would be left with a couple of hundred metres of bare clayey soil.  All the plants, trees and shrubs would end up in a big pile with the disguarded earth and it would take ages for it to settle afterwards.  Much better to get rid or save as much all I could and leave them with a clear area to work with.

My other tasks went by the by as I hurriedly sawed down trees, by hand, that might serve as firewood, haul away old decaying branches and timber for compost, soil improvement and insect hotels.  I dug out crates of wild plants, wild strawberries, lungwort, ferns, geraniums, iris, violets, dead nettle and thirty or so smallish hedging plants and tucked them away in the shade for later.  I worked till dark that Tuesday and again all the next day, dismantling my newly erected letter box and getting everything as sorted as I could before the carnage began.

Sure enough at 07:15 on Thursday morning, just at first light, the digger arrived and I managed to squeeze Percy out before it was too late.  He spent two nights next door out of the way as the digger worked it’s magic and the tractor and trailer carted load after load of soil to the other side of the property.  Thankfully I had somewhere easy for it to be tipped and I made the most use of the earth moving opportunities with the big machinery on site.  Two loads of topsoil await spreading by the chalet to level off the ground and make it more usable in the long term.  A large mound, of topsoil again, to supplement raised beds in the veggie area and two large loads of the cleanest, crumbliest, clay we could get, put to one side in readiness for my wall renders.  There’s nothing like making the most of an opportunity, it can sit there, under it’s tarp for the next year or so and be ready to mix when it comes to constructing the house walls.  The rest of the spoil, tree stumps and all have gone over the bank at the back, roughly leveled with the giant machine then shoveled and raked by my own fair hand in readiness for sowing with seed.  I’m not sure how it’ll work as there’s little top soil to be seen, though I sprinkled on a good quantity of grass and clover seed to see what happens, then as an after thought, just to get it green again, a couple of packets of radish.  If they do well I’ll have plenty till the weather turns and then possibly even enough seed for resowing next year.  Too late really, I know, but it’s rather worth a chance.

In a day the heavy work was done.  It took several discussions and a bit of insistence to get almost exactly what I wanted, which wasn’t bad in my book after hearing some of the stories people tell.  I think it’ll stand me in good stead, to have used a french company, as the two guys know everyone in the neighbourhood and one of them is in charge of the team that looks after the road that goes passed the end of my drive.  

I was right, there were several hundred square metres of bare earth, much on a steep slope, with rain clouds threatening in the distance.  The guys stopped for the day and went home, gravel on order for delivery after lunch the following day.  I swung into action, with the aim of stabilizing the steepest of the slope before it was washed into the road by the threatening rain.  I hauled old beams and lintels from the other side of the garden, crafted pegs out of broken pallet pieces and set too creating a series of mini terraces.  By nightfall the most precipitous slope was secured at the most basic level.  The overnight rain was light and there were no major landslides so following morning I continued hauling timbers from about the site and pegging them to the slope until, by lunchtime, it started to resemble a grandstand at a sports field.  The first stage of stabilizing done.  

work in progress

an easier slope and a gentler corner 

the end of day one

that's going to wash away if it rains, for sure