More is explained in the next post, but the essence of the Easter weekend task list was to level the step from the paddock field to the acre field. Suz and I are going to have a gate put in and need it level, and Gary and Liz are going to have a vegetable plot spanning the change in height which is about 2′ at the moment. The downside is also that it happens to be a rather natty water trap in that it sits so low on the paddock side, so the plan is to move the higher headland from the field-side to the lower ditch on the paddock side. Much spade work methinks.<\/p>\n
Suz’s dad, Colin, came along to help out – not sure he knew we were planning on digging but it just so happened that we had a spare spade. How lucky.<\/p>\n
We needed to remove all the turf from both sides, to resuse once we’d shifted the soil. Then we had to move the soil from one area to another, and replace the turf. The big ‘but’ was that once the turf was removed from the paddock side, we dug a further 2 feet down to below the surface water level (you can see the water lying in the dug trench), to produce a long trench\u00c2\u00a0 running along the boundary between the two fields. We’ll fill this with the flint pebbles we’ve griddled from both of our allotment patches – we have buckets of thin things!\n\t\t