Wwooffers - Yani and Marie Pierre

Yani and Marie Pierre from Quebec, Canada stayed for a couple of weeks this year in November.  They are travelling around Europe before starting university studies - Marie Pierre agriculture and environmental studies and Yani social work.  Thanks girls for your help ...

The Sheet Mulching Continues

The girls tirelessly sheet mulched large areas of the garden and forest garden in preparation for planting next Spring.  The first stage is taking off tape and staples from the cardboard, laying three layers of it over trampled vegetation.  Next comes the manure, collected from a local horseriding centre - followed by hay from the barn here and/or sawdust from local saw mills and finally a layer of leaves collected from the land and surrounding area.  This gives about a foot of material that will slowly break down and make great soil for growing.



Marie Pierre putting down a sheet mulch around
a newly planted lime tree (Tilia cordata) that will
be coppiced and its leaves used in salads ....  a guild
of fruit bushes, edible perennials, roots and climbers
will be planted in the Spring around it ................


A Landscape construction/renovation

The girls and I worked out a way of holding back the earth around a circular path that was constructed last year.  We used bamboo lengths collected from a friend's woodland to create an
attractive and useful barrier and then cleaned up the slate tiles (original old tiles from the house) for the path ............

Wow - it looks great!!  An attractive solution that cost
nothing in materials .... all recycled stuff from the land ...

Harvesting, preparing and cooking food from the land

Making a nasturtium pesto .... just in time before
a severe frost killed off all the plants in the garden.

Cracking walnuts harvested earlier in the month.

Harvesting yacon bulbs ... this is
the first year I have grown them
- a perennial bulb -  not frost hardy
so the bulbs need to be lifted and
stored in the winter. 

Peeling the yacon ..... it can be
eaten raw, roasted or boiled -
just like potatoes but its texture
is more crunchy.  An interesting
addition to the garden ......
 

We dug out 200 laurel (prunus lauroceracus) saplings and exchanged them for fruit bushes and trees at a local nursery

The Girls at Leisure

Marie Pierre used the workshop
to make a wooden gift for Yani
for xmas ...........

Yani sewing up a rather outsized washing bag supervised
by grey cat while Marie Pierre reads ..............



Another convert to the ideas of Pierre Rhabbi ...

Bon voyage and good luck with your studies ..............