Posts

Spring 2026 has arrived

-
Image
  Spring has arrived and it already feels like summer.  Our lovely wwoofers (www.wwoof.org.uk) are arriving at Ale Farm.  We have gone from wearing winter coats to walk through bluebell woods to looking for shade in full summer clothes! So far this year's wwoofers have come from France, Lithuania (via Germany), Lebanon (via London), the Netherlands, Belgium, London and Manchester. Maisie, our first returning wwoofer, took on the challenge of clearing an area at the bottom of the orchard.  She handed the baton onto several other wwoofers who have carried on her good work. French brothers Owen and Melvyn built a dead hedge in the cleared land and installed a proper gate into the Secret Garden. They also went on to dig our new wildlife pond. There'll be more about that in a later post. We're really enjoying hosting our wwoofers and the land at Ale Farm is showing great improvements already. We've had fun times away from the farm too - beach walks, town visits, country w...
Post a Comment
Read more

We love wwoofers!

-
Image
  We've had an amazing summer working hard with a lot of help from wwoofers.   For those who don't know the concept of wwoofing please see www.wwoof.org.uk.  It stands for Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms.  In exchange for free room and board at Ale Farm, people from all over the world have helped us on our land.  One example of the many projects we've worked on this summer is the edible meadow.  Last autumn we started three hugelkulture beds.  They needed a lot more work.  Daniel, from Germany and Cecilia, from Italy, made a start by first clearing the ragwort that had grown up.   See photo above.  Jean-Baptiste, from France, and Beate, from Germany carried on the work and Beate became expecially expert at building the beds.  We had, and still have, plenty of prunings and clippings to build the beds.  They'll be finished off with more compost and finally top soil. Natalie, from California, gave the edible mea...
Post a Comment
Read more