30/1/24 - Ship The Chip
I've had bonus day on the plot during the week this week. An unexpected start the to working week meant that I had time in the bank to take back. And then the call came. "We'll be with you in about half hour" It was woodchip delivery time! Fortunately, I didn't have anything in work diary for Thursday, so I managed to talk it off at short notice.
Awake and on the plot before 8am, and the order of the day was all about the woodchip. A fantastic delivery of relatively fine oak chip had be dropped off for me the afternoon before, and I was fully intent on shifting every bit that I needed up onto the plot.
It was fair to say that it was a stunning day weather wise. Clear blue sky, slightly frosty early on and not a breath of wind. In my book, great weather for shovelling and getting out the wheelbarrow. First job was to fill the trailer which I towed up to the plot with me. I wanted to take some of the chip home to mulch our home flower beds. That took a fair bit of shifting in it's own right!
With the trailer full and seemingly hardly a dent made in the pile, next on the priority list was to put down membrane in and around the polytunnel. I wanted around 3 to 4 inches deep all around, which I've managed to do, although a little bit shallower around by the door area. I started outside in the corner an started bring up barrow after barrow.
After I'd laid all the woodchip inside the tunnel, the smell was amazing! Especially as the sun started to rise above the hill and warm the tunnel up. That was about all I intended to do originally. But on such a great day, with so much of this fantastic resource to hand, my brain went somewhat into overdrive.
One area of the new part of the plot that I have been meaning to come back to since the earliest days of starting to clear it was the first 10 feet as you walk onto it. I've put the pond in the corner, but I had just left a folded up parge sheet of membrane over the ground in the meantime. Ever since then, I've been meaning to go back and cut the membrane to size and put in the last bed covers. Also, since picking up the new half plot, we've been on the hunt for unwanted paving slabs but they have proved to be rather elusive. Where we do have slabs down to make paths between the beds, we also have membrane down too. So with the abundance of woodchip, I decided to lift all the slabs that we had managed to source off some of the paths, and instead, try putting woodchip paths down instead.
Soon all the paths on that part of the plot had been chipped. But why stop there? I turned to the original full plot and carried on on those paths too. I removed all the existing slabs and put them between the front 3 beds, so now we have 2 full paths of slabs, and 4 paths that could also be chipped.
Truth be told, I wasn't entirely prepared to get the amount of chip that was delivered, but this was probably going to be a one off. I like the beds to be tidy, but now we've got woodchip paths, I'm thinking of adding some additional edging along the path sides.
What a productive 3 hours! And let me tell you, I ached by the end of it. From filling the trailer, to all the barrow word and the slab lifting just made me want to sleep! But before I finished, I wanted to do one more job, again, not one that I had fully intended to do on the day. While working in the polytunnel, I kept hitting my head on the strawberry baskets I temporarily hung from the crop bars so the final job for the day before I headed home for lunch was to bring in a couple of the poles I cut out from the Heras fencing a couple of weeks ago, and use them to provide extra hanging space down the sides of the tunnel. Tidy Job :-)
Not bad for an unplanned shift. With February here, the workload is going to start ramping up very quickly, and I look forward to it. 😀 By the way, I never did use all the delivered chip. So, I've left it for other plot holders to use as they see fit. If there is still some left in a week or two, I'll move it into some builders bulk bags and hold onto it until I need more myself.
