Over the past week we have been harvesting the willow. The willow is budding early this year so we had to be fast...
Rewilding
by Bianca Harris
A word now in my vocabulary and that of others too.
It seems I've been born into a life, a body, a family, a town, a country, a world.
A world, a life that as I sit here listening to the wind roaring, shaking the oak trees as it tears past... Feels very wild.
Nature just doing its thing.
However often I look around me and it feels far and out of sight.
In my cosy cabin I sit under artificial light.
The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings. Masanobu Fukuoka, The One Straw Revolution
Over the past week we have been harvesting the willow. The willow is budding early this year so we had to be fast. Some has been chipped to add to the ground as a rich compost and some stored in the freezer for use later in the year for a willow weaving course. The willow is part of the first pond in our Wetland Ecological Treatment System and an important part of the ecosystem which has to be carefully managed to ensure the efficient running of this incredible process.
We have previously added an organic hay mulch to the ridge and furrows in the Ancient Meadow to feed the soil.
We have to be constantly in tune with nature to align with the rhythms. The next harvest will be the blackthorn which is coming out in the hedgerows now. Blackthorn is one of the key ingredients in Clarity.
