Having completed moving my nascent slash piles I have now two pumpkin farms for next year.
I have named them Silbury Hillet and The Long Barrow. (Silbury Hill - blog post here)
Having taken me a mere two days and having had the benefit of a wheelbarrow, I have now a well developed respect for those ancients who built a real hill armed (we think) with deer antlers and leather buckets.
At the same time I have to call into question their sanity. I mean why? England isn't short on hills and at least mine will turn into a compost heap and grow me some pumpkins.
As for the Long Barrow it developed that shape because it is built over a pile of 10-12 foot long gorse and broom bushes that didn't get chopped up by the mechanical mulching machine that ran over the place in December. I expect they will aid good air circulation into my compost heap.
Long Barrows (for those living in countries where you don't encounter them) are also ancient. See here for one explanation.
This one has no bones (or flint scrapers) that I am aware of. Yet.
I'm not sure about gorse in compost heaps!! Rather prickly.
ReplyDeleteBetter than having it all over the place
The evidence suggests it will be fine once it rots down - nitrogen rich so good in compost.
DeleteYour inner Bronze Age self is showing!
ReplyDeleteOops! (Glances down at zippers)
DeleteHari OM
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's it, start your own part of history for future Time Teams to pore over!!! Perhaps there could be a stray trowel or a lost jandal (if you wear them...) YAM xx
There is a post coming on what I have found (archaeologically speaking) so far.
DeleteGiggling at the above exchange.
ReplyDeleteyou just might be the only person I have ever known that names their compost heaps. ha ha. it will look good to with the vines over it. that is what our stumps do here, it is really a lot of money to get a stump removed and we pay to get the tree gone and the stump does what it would do in a wooded area un touched my human hands
ReplyDeleteYou would make some good firewood from the Gorse. Years ago in County Galway they grew fields of it and sold it in bunches for kindling and firewood. Wood ash is very beneficial to the garden. Onions love it.
ReplyDeleteOh yeah.. in the house we will be installing a Marshall water heater - it is like the water storage built around a firebox and flue. They say I can boil 100 cans of water in 20 minutes on one firebox full of gorse. Gorse is the scourge of this community and it seems I'm the only person interested in not wasting it. Tee hee
DeleteThat's 100 gallons - what is wrong with AI knowing better than I do what I wanted to type?
DeleteNice! I think that's what I need to do, I planted pumpkin seeds a bit late last year, in November but it should've been earlier.
ReplyDelete