Where To Start?

Having bought our plot, appointed an architect and started designing our house, our thoughts started turning to the actual plot. While some areas of the plot had been regularly maintained and needed very little work, others had seen little attention and nature had started to take over. The big question though, where do we start with such a large area?
After completing the purchase we visited the site one glorious spring day and walked around all the fences with a measuring wheel.

During all the discussions around the title deeds for the land and the hours spent looking at maps we felt it would be good to actually look at the entire boundry, measure the fences and get an idea of their state of repair. The results were mixed with some fencing in a good state and some in need of replacement. Another consideration was the amount of fence with barbed wire as this could be a problem for horses.

Once completed, our quick survey revealed a total of 1.6km of fence that we were now responsible for! Gulp





While walking around we started identifying areas that needed attention. One of the main areas was close to the intended house location where a lot of hawthorn or blackthorn bushes had self seeded from within a fenced area to cover a large area. We felt that leaving this area would simply result in more spread toward the house plot, so immediate action was needed.


A couple of days later we started removing the bushes, though with only basic hand tools we couldn't remove the roots. Initial estimates of the number of bushes proved to be on the low side and eventually we removed in the region of 200 bushes - varying in size from spindly to large and bushy. We collected the bushes into large piles to burn them later.



It took a couple of days for us to clear the entire area, but the difference was apparent.


At the same time we started moving a lot of the farm equipment that was scattered around the plot to one area to make it easier for the farmer that sold us the land to collect, making the plot feel somehow larger.