another of those 'before and after' posts you've learned to love!

When we took over the Cordwood site, there was a buried orchard that had not been seen for around twenty years.

The apple and cherry trees had been engulfed and we began the long road of restoration in April of 2011.

It took us until November 2011 to clear away the majority of nettles, brambles, suckered blackthorn & cherry and vigorous seedling oaks.

We decided to split this section of the site into two - an apple orchard and a vegetable garden separated by lines of cordoned apples.

It had been our hope to bring pigs onto this part of the site to clear out the determined network of tangled roots, but this never happened. So, it's all been manual labour ..... but here's evidence that the good guys are winning.

Today, Roger got the mower working and cut the grass beneath the apple trees that had established itself since the sunshine had reached the soil. It's coarse and thin and the ground resembled The Somme in parts. But it's looking good!

And Jan, mum and dad and Andrea & Poppy were there too, to see the progress we are slowly making in creating a vegetable garden.

Much, much more work to do, but one of those days when all the months of hard work seem to come together like magic.