Winter 23/24
It has been a long, wet Winter, which hasn’t been ideal considering we are waiting for the Lodge to dry out. Nevertheless, it’s going pretty much to plan which has been a relief so far.
Outside the Lodge has been a little bit more exciting, as we have had a local sheep flock on-site to help us manage the landscaping. This has been a trail for future on-site sheep, that has yielded great information and largely positive results.
The open trenches across the site have finally all been filled; leaving behind just a long, brown scar that will (hopefully) grow over with fresh grass in the next 12 months.
We had a delivery of solar panels, generator and greenhouse in anticipation of being able to move forward in Spring.
And I moved into a caravan 5 minutes down the road so that I can be closer to the site whilst it dries out… An interesting few months!
Lodge Drying-out Progress
The drying-out of the Lodge has been gong fairly well. I have been going to site on most days, to periodically run an electric heater and open the doors / windows for air flow. I can do 2 full cycles of this, over about 90minutes, with a single full charge of the new Ecoflow.
Doing this twice per day out of a caravan in Winter is not the most fun, but it seems to be helping. The breeze blocks are mostly dried out and no more mould has emerged.
2023 Sheep Trials
We have had a local flock of around 40 sheep on-site over Winter; moving them between the various grassland areas of the site every few days.
Results
The addition of the sheep proved incredibly effective at maintaining the quality of the existing grass, reducing weeds and preventing overgrowth:
40 sheep were able to reduce the previous 6-12 months of grass growth, inducing weeds and invasives, back to ground-level, across the site, in around 4 weeks.
After this initial stage, the flock required external feed inputs for maintenance.
Previously, all of this maintenance has been done manually; with mowers, tractors, landscaping equipment, etc, requiring hundreds of hours of labour throughout the year, using petrol-based machinery.
The size of this flock, in combination with the extended wet weather period over winter, ultimately resulted in the areas of the site where the sheep were housed becoming too muddy. Some of these areas required time to recover after such heavy use.
Conclusion
The short time with the Sheep led us to the conclusion that incorporating the addition of a small flock into the overall site plan makes a lot of sense from a land management perspective. Also who doesn’t love hanging around with a few friendly sheep.
Moving closer to site
Since mid-October I have been living in a static caravan, on a nice little park just 5 minutes from the fishery.
I initially made this move so that I could easily travel to / from the site on a daily basis, to get on with the drying out and clean-up. Before this I was living around an hour away from the site and having to make a very tedious commute.
This move has made it much easier to get to the site and get the necessary shit done.
Before now, we have only travelled to the site and spent a few days at a time in the area. Waking up here, surrounded by the hills, every day, has been a different experience. Since making this move, the boundary between myself and the rest of reality has felt particularly thin.
Part of me wishes that I had made this move sooner, but this option only just became available; at exactly the right time. I had been looking for rentals for the entire year before this and nothing had come up. Sometimes things seem to happen just at the right time and flow in such a specific way. From the point of view of the experiencer it feels almost like a narrative playing itself out.
‘…Hopefully the next step involves like, a big barn conversion with a beautiful kitchen or something.’
