Girl on the Plot

November 2012.

By now, if it wasn't for the chickens and having to go to the allotment every day for them, I would have probably given up on the venture.  I can honestly say I hated the place.  If I could have taken the chickens to live it at home then I would have done happily, but I couldn't - so I had to suck it up!

The weather wasn't at all pleasant by this point and the clock change meant that the nights were longer.  By the time I was finishing work it was nearly dark and the chickens were having a brief amount of time out of their pen each day - and still not laying.

January 2013.

Yes I've skipped December but if you re-read November you'll get the idea!  The New Year brought a sense of inspiration (for want of a better word), and I begun the task of digging all the trenches in for drainage system.  Because the main trench was full of water and I was still unable to drain down to the woods.  I had to dig the trenching in the rest of the plot leaving a foot at the end of each one so the the main trench didn't seep into the new trenches and vice versa.  I also decided to make the shed more pleasant to be in, so that when I was there at least I had a bit of sanctuary around all the mud:

I also 'built' a make shift path to the shed out of various bits of wood, i found myself jumping from piece to piece more often than not misjudging and ending up in the mud into my knees and elbows! 

February 2013.

With all the new trenching in (67 metres of it all together) the ground was drying out.  you could see a big difference even though it wasn't draining anywhere - and so began the task of drainage down to the woods.  Now as I explained to get to the woods I had to go through the other plot, which was done by using a piece of drain pipe:

The drain pipe had to be fed under the fencing through the mud because I didn't want to dig up around the fencing and weaken the barriers from foxes.

When it was finally put in place, I put a piece of plastic under the drain hole to help guide the water out.  And then, I dug the existing trench into the new pipe.