Hedge # 1 - Design

I love a hedge, and I've been thinking a lot about them recently!  There are several ancient hedges at Tymawr-Farm in a poor state (sometimes only evidenced by a few knarly old thorn trees every 4 or 5 metres), and also several post-and-rail fences with no adjacent hedge at all.  Long term I would like to rehabilitate the former and create a great new hedge in the latter.

A hedge is a wonderful thing, a great example of how everything on the farm should be in due course:

• Permanent: with minimal maintenance.
• Intensive: creating a large amount and diversity of products in a small space. Eventually I need to make £5,000 per acre net profit and I can't afford for fences just to be barriers!
• Multi-purpose: providing a stock-proof barrier, berries and nuts, firewood, timber, wildlife, bee and game habitat, a windbreak and hopefully longer term truffles (see later).
• Metal-free: in the medium and long term metal will be too valuable to be used for any applications other than tools and machines.  We plan to get used to inevitabilities sooner rather than later!  (We understand that we'll have to temporarily fence using stock fence and barbed wire, but that can be recycled longer term!)

(As you can see I love PIMMs!)

My first project is a 100m fence running North-South, currently post-and-rail.  The land slopes gently from East to West.  The cross-section will look like this (modelled on Sepp Holzer's raised beds):

Hedge 'mound' cross-section

The plant species must fulfil the 'hedge' function of being stock-proof, but also provide the multi-purpose functionality that I need.  My intial thoughts are:

Hawthorn
Blackthorn
Elder
Hazel
Holly
Oak (every 20 metres or so)

I would like the Hazel and Oak to be 'infected' (if that's the right description) with Summer Truffle, and hopefully look forward to a delicious and productive crop as well as high quality charcoal, beanpoles and timber!  I've been following the fortunes of www.plantationsystems.com/home for a while since I saw an article on them in the Telegraph a few years ago.  A clever system and a nice chap seemingly.

Pigs # 23 - Update

28 weeks old, and on the weigh in this week the tape measure is showing:

Pig 1: 72.2kg
Pig 2: 70.6kg

My 'customers' (workmates) are currently requesting:

1. Lots of sausages
2. Back bacon, unsmoked, thick slices
3. Hams (the kind you boil, smear with mustard etc and bake)
4. Roasting joints

Surprisingly (to me anyway) chops and ribs are really unpopular.

Although we still have quite a lot of frozen pork, we still buy smokey, streaky bacon, so it would be great to be able to create some of this.  We had a delicious cooked breakfast last weekend at Usk Garden Centre ( www.uskgardencentre.co.uk/ - highly recommended, nice people) which came with black-pudding, which to my shame I hadn't actually eaten before.  It was DELICIOUS, and I would love to get some of this made from these pigs too!

I can imagine plenty of people buying the 'full Welsh' breakfast pack on a Friday - smoked or back bacon, sausage, black pudding and free-range eggs!  That will be our next promotion I think!

Pigs # 22 - Update

The pigs are 26 weeks old, and I finally managed to get a tape-measure to them on Friday morning.  The bigger they get, generally the more docile they are, and they were fairly happy to be measured during their lunch!  Their vital statistics are:

Pig 1: Chest 37", Back of ears to base of tail 42"
Pig 2: Chest 37", Back of ears to base of tail 40"

Using the tried and tested formula, that gives:

Pig 1: 65.33kg liveweight
Pig 2: 62.22kg liveweight

My growth charts are on my other computer so I can't compare directly (update later this week), but from memory they're about the same as the Saddlebacks at this stage.  I'd like to get them to about 30 weeks, or 75 to 80kgs in weight before they 'go'.

I popped in to see James & Richard at Morris Free Range Meats & Horticulture in Coedypaen today and saw some new-born piglets, which must have been only a few kgs in weight each.  What amazingly productive animals pigs are!