Its a long story, pull up a chair!
We moved to this house nearly 40 years ago. It had a normal sized back garden backing onto an old orchard that was used for grazing horses. I always wanted that orchard even though the trees were in need of care, falling over, top heavy, unpruned for decades and chewed by horses - but all I could do was watch, as the trees fell and the brambles grew and the horses pushed the falling trees over.
25 years ago (1995) we both had the chance of voluntary redundancy with pensions paid early. After much thought (about 10 minutes) we decided to stop working for others, pay off the mortgage with our redundancy payouts and live more frugally on a much lower income.(not that we did!).
I'd always wanted to keep chickens, my OH wanted bees, so we decided to ask the landowner if he would rent us a bit of the orchard so that we could fulfil our dreams. To our surprise he agreed to a 12 month lease to a bit of land behind our garden with the proviso that he could redeem it at any time. This doubled the size of the garden, gave us a few old fruit trees and along came the chickens and 4 hives.
For 10 years we tended that land, surreptitiously planting a few more fruit trees and hoping that the owner wouldn't notice and object.
Then, in 2005 everything changed. My OH was diagnosed with cancer and we were given an option to buy the orchard and another piece of land beyond it. I knew I had to buy it so, whilst I cared for my OH I was also negotiating the land purchase. I lost my OH a few weeks before I bought the land. This isn't a sob story, and I'm not looking for sympathy - its a long time ago now. The point of telling you this is that, suddenly, my garden had tripled in size and I was the only one around to care for it.
As you can imagine, I couldn't and a lot of it was reclaimed by nature. Freed from the horses's mouths and hooves , the wild flowers returned, including the "ugly" daffodils that grew here many years before.
The hedgerow was full of birds, saplings sprouted, the brambles threatened world domination and it was a struggle to reach the end of the garden.
Now, 15 years later, with the help of a lot of friends and some tree surgeons, its becoming my sort of garden. It'll never be neat and tidy, no straight rows and many people wouldn't even see a garden, just a wilderness. My neighbours' have lawns and grow grass, I grow food for humans and wildlife and a lot of contentment. I wouldn't swap with them, ever!
The End.
Photos to follow.
We moved to this house nearly 40 years ago. It had a normal sized back garden backing onto an old orchard that was used for grazing horses. I always wanted that orchard even though the trees were in need of care, falling over, top heavy, unpruned for decades and chewed by horses - but all I could do was watch, as the trees fell and the brambles grew and the horses pushed the falling trees over.
25 years ago (1995) we both had the chance of voluntary redundancy with pensions paid early. After much thought (about 10 minutes) we decided to stop working for others, pay off the mortgage with our redundancy payouts and live more frugally on a much lower income.(not that we did!).
I'd always wanted to keep chickens, my OH wanted bees, so we decided to ask the landowner if he would rent us a bit of the orchard so that we could fulfil our dreams. To our surprise he agreed to a 12 month lease to a bit of land behind our garden with the proviso that he could redeem it at any time. This doubled the size of the garden, gave us a few old fruit trees and along came the chickens and 4 hives.
For 10 years we tended that land, surreptitiously planting a few more fruit trees and hoping that the owner wouldn't notice and object.
Then, in 2005 everything changed. My OH was diagnosed with cancer and we were given an option to buy the orchard and another piece of land beyond it. I knew I had to buy it so, whilst I cared for my OH I was also negotiating the land purchase. I lost my OH a few weeks before I bought the land. This isn't a sob story, and I'm not looking for sympathy - its a long time ago now. The point of telling you this is that, suddenly, my garden had tripled in size and I was the only one around to care for it.
As you can imagine, I couldn't and a lot of it was reclaimed by nature. Freed from the horses's mouths and hooves , the wild flowers returned, including the "ugly" daffodils that grew here many years before.
The hedgerow was full of birds, saplings sprouted, the brambles threatened world domination and it was a struggle to reach the end of the garden.
Now, 15 years later, with the help of a lot of friends and some tree surgeons, its becoming my sort of garden. It'll never be neat and tidy, no straight rows and many people wouldn't even see a garden, just a wilderness. My neighbours' have lawns and grow grass, I grow food for humans and wildlife and a lot of contentment. I wouldn't swap with them, ever!
The End.
Photos to follow.
The Moneyless Chicken says:-
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.
Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without.
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