Good Fences/ Ode to Bill

For the longest time we have been aware that a good sturdy wind break is absolutely necessary on our Field. Recently this problem has been compounded by the cutting down of all the hedges around the fields, I know in the long run they will thicken up and on top of that there were lots of baby saplings put into the existing hedgerows. But it will take quite a while for this to make any real impact.

So, to come to the point; we have surrounded our 24a plot in wind permeable membrane. To start with we took a trip to Gleno, a little village North of Carrick (frequently, inaccurately written as Glenoe - there's no E damn it). There, there is a fabulous farmers shop that sells everything, and I mean pretty much everything! You can get farming equipment, timber, clothes, any DIY stuff you need, gifts for the home, food and the papers etc. Fabulous. We only needed tree stakes for our fence, but we stayed for much longer, just looking.

So back on the plot Andrew hammered in the stakes around the two long sides of the plot and then we were super duper lucky enough to get the aforementioned mesh off Bill. He has a friend he could buy it off wholesale and boy did it make a heck of a difference in price! He was able to give us more than we needed for hardly anything, when it was £2/3 per metre everywhere else (which sure adds up when you need 18 odd metres!) it was a godsend.

It took a couple of days to get it all finished and battened down top and bottom, to make sure it stays in place. The wind really can be that bad ~ last week a shed was turned on it's head in our field by the storms. It was really sad to see but it's fixed now. Just goes to show you the power of the gusts down the Lotties.

Then, on top of all that Bill give us the gift of a lovely kidney bean shaped bench. There were 4 of them going to go the rubbish heap at the house of a man he was doing a job for! Okay it had 2 missing legs but Bill had 2 new ones sawn up in a jiffy and it's perfectly good again. Ours is going on 14b and will have pride of place and a lick of paint (once we get it sorted out over there) looking over at the flowers. I'm hoping I can get Andrew to build a little arch for it too and then we can grow another rose or some such thing up and over it.

Here is the man himself - Bill. I hope you have a handy, generous friend to help you out on your plots too, it such a lovely feeling to get and share things with others.