Owlshire Year 2

[annofowlshire]

In November 2020, my family and I moved from London to a former equestrian property/woodland in the Forest of Dean looking to create a smallholding (which I’d done before) and do woodland management (which my partner had done before).

The 2021 growing year was a disaster. Most of my vegetables were devastated by the local pigeon and pheasant population (not to mention cabbage moths, and things I probably don’t even know about), the deer decimated the baby fruit trees my husband planted, the new chicken coop/run ended up being far more complicated than we expected and was postponed… and remember we’d done things like this before!

There were more unknowns: we knew that the garden had been neglected but it was beyond our wildest expectations, and the property is south facing but the garden gets a lot more shade from nearby trees than we could have known…

I also had gone in thinking I’d not be working the first year or two until my little one started school and would get a lot established before returning to the working world, and shortly after we moved in a great (full time) career opportunity practically landed on my lap (and it wasn’t likely to show up again when it was more convenient). So after much discussion I took it (and I’m still glad I did), but we had a lot less time on our hands!

So we didn’t get our chickens, the fruit trees mostly survived but were set back at least a year, and my flower and vegetable gardens were pretty much a total failure.

Bring on year two. A bit wiser, a bit more prepared, a bit more understanding of how much we can realistically take on.



This year, all of the garden vegetables have mesh covering. All of them. I’m not doing flowers this year, because I needed to prioritize and I prefer edibles.

Look at all those weeds. 😂

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