Relaxed Farming - our farm in your classroom

Back on the 10th we wrote about how we use the willow on our land, firstly as food for the goats and then once they have eaten the leaves and stripped the bark, as kindling for our fire. The photos show the whole process, beginning with a shot of the trees in the summer (first photo) through to the wonderful sight of a roaring fire in the last photo. In photo number two Curds is stripping the green bark: you can see how efficient she has been, tearing the bark off in strips and leaving nothing behind; the branches do end up totally bare.
David is chopping them into small pieces in photo number three and very cleverly has set up the 'loppers' so that the work required from him is as little as possible: the loppers themselves are securely clamped to the work bench so all David has to do is raise one handle, place the branch between the blades and then lower to cut. The resulting piece of branch falls into a green basket which when full, is then stacked (photo four). The boxes are left in a shed and this time next year will be dry enough to use as kindling for our fire. There is a general rule that for each 2.5cms diameter of wood, a year is needed for it to totally dry for burning. Many of our willow branches are less than this and a few are a little more. Think of much larger tree trunks though - wood from these can take several years to dry out as their diameter will be a lot wider.
Chopping wood has been a good part of our day, not so good is that we have lost Apple, our white Muscovy duck - to the fox!!! In keeping with her adventurous and independent character, she wandered way down into the main paddock and was no longer protected by the alpacas. We are incredibly upset by her loss and of course wish we had done more to protect her. She is going to be missed a huge amount!!
Our Talk Topic for today