I have wanted to work with living willow for some time now. I have done a couple of basket making courses in the past which I enjoyed but I felt that creating something from living willow that was useful as well as decorative would be fun. So we have been out and about on the sally hunt, we have found three different colours so hopefully we should have a colourful creation as well as a useful one. My first attempt was to make a willow igloo for the hens, this should give them some interest as well as providing shelter for them. Although willows are deciduous, the frame work should still provide wind cover for them in the winter months. It's a fairly quick job to create an igloo, the time is taken up in finding suitable canes. The local councils do a very good job now days of keeping hedgerows trimmed back, making it far harder to find long canes. We will go for a further forage this week as I wish do also make domes for the ducks, the sap is now rising in the willows as it has been such a mild winter, Xmas day was 14c. The daffodils that we have planted are well in leaf now and quite a few are already showing flower buds, lets hope we don't get any sudden hard frosts.
This mild weather prompted me to get our seed potatoes ordered, I found an online catalogue with both Jersey Royal and pink Fir apple seed, these will be planted in the tunnel, for the main crop I have again ordered Sarpo, these are a totally blight resistant variety, good as a new potato and keep very well, in fact we never got round to lifting the ones we planted last year and they are still fine despite all the rain we have had.
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