The dreaded ‘dose’ arrived in our house this December. Coughing and tired, we had to put harvesting on hold. Unfortunately, we’re only at the tail end of it now, which means that our beds are still untouched.
Not to worry though, the willow is in no rush, and we have a couple of months to gather and store it before the buds of new leaves start to poke through. The hope was to chop away, bit by bit over the weekends (evenings are still too dark to head into the field after work) and keep the affair nice and slow. Last year we were caught unaware by one or two of the varieties which started to bud by mid-February, so we had to panic harvest taking turns over a weekend. Hard work after a full week's work at a desk, but so satisfying when you see the final result; bundles of brightly coloured rods, stacked against the shed, before being put away in a dark space to dry.
With the weather not looking great, it will probably be another couple of weeks before we can get stuck in, so in the meantime we’ll be doing some planning. We were lucky enough to buy a house with a good few outbuildings and sheds, so storage isn’t an issue, however organisation is. So, over the next few weeks, we will have to decide on things that need to be moved and decide which shed will be a permanent space for which things. Which I suspect will be a bigger undertaking than we realise, but then, isn’t that the way with most things in life? But the meandering roads we end up wandering down are often the ones where secretly adventure lives.
Stay warm,
Aelis