In 2009 my family bought a 2 acre bracken and bramble patch. The plan is to plant a range of trees and restore wildflower meadow where it is retreiveable underneath the bracken.

So far we've uncovered some surviving wildflower meadow, planted some trees and a section of hedge.

Slashing back brambles and bracken has turned out to be my favorite exercise since chopping logs, and (you might think I ought to get out more) I am genuinely excited to see whether anything we grow survives the deer, squirrels, voles, wild boar, and weather.

Autumn 2010, the trees we planted survived their first year, the grass has reclaimed the areas where we knocked back the bracken and brambles surprisingly easily. We've discovered the joy of scything, even better than slashing, I've gone off slashing now - last years sport.

Autumn 2011, deer have been scoffing a lot of our trees so we've had to explore taller tree guards and leaving bracken to hide the trees. Potatoes grew well, too cold for my tobacco plants, made some good chairs out of an ash tree, found some grass snakes. Wildflower meadow section spreading nicely with a scattering of new apple trees. Still into scything but I'm getting more in tune with my chainsaw.

It's hopefully a solution to the problems of, a pension and education fund which doesn't involve banks, skilling us up in woodland craftwork, meaningful exercise, logs for the stove, aiding bio-diversity, and working on our carbon footprint.

I'll update this page every now and then as to how progress goes.