Deer fencing and croft planning

It’s traditional on these cold, wet days of January to put your feet up with a cup of tea and a seed catalogue and plan your growing for the year.

As the wind howls around the house and the rain lashes the windows, at least the weather has obscured the view. That view is responsible for me getting nothing done for vast tracts of time over the past week. I’ve sat here with my garden planner and done very little beyond stare across the Sound of Sleat.

The deer fencing of a half-acre patch at the top of the croft is now happily complete. We are the proud owners of a large, agricultural metal gate and an enclosure surrounded by two metre high fencing.

It’s far from pretty but it should mean that the deer will stay away from our croft beds. I have been warned that red deer can clear even a 2m fence, but let’s see how we get along.

I stopped tending the outdoor beds completely last year, despondent that the deer had eaten everything down to the ground. I didn’t plant any winter crops or do anything with them. There really seemed little point.

But this year will be different.

We have plans to flatten out the ground here and add more raised beds for vegetable production. I’d like to put in water butts for rainwater collection and build some proper paths between the beds to make it easier to move about. We will need to move tonnes of soil and compost to refill the existing beds and build more, along with tonnes of gravel and woodchip for the paths. It’s a quagmire here when it rains.

All of this will need to be done in addition to setting up the polycrub growing space. It’s going to be a huge amount of work, but I can’t wait to get started again as soon as the weather eases up.

And later in the year once the build of the terrace is complete and we can get rid of the building debris scattered across the croft at the front of the house, I’ve also got the planting at the front of the house to plan. Heather beds, sea buckthorn, bog myrtle – shrubs that can take the blast of the salt laden winds here – it all needs thought, design, sourcing, purchase and digging in.

Then we have the caravan removal, exterior water and sewerage pipes removal, re-surfacing of the drive, move of the pallet city that’s grown up by the caravan (we’ll keep those) and general re-landscaping of the access to the house. At the moment visitors have to negotiate a maze of pipes, building debris and wooden planks to reach our door!

Then there’s the planning of the orchard to be done so that we can start putting in trees .

It’s going to be another busy year. I’ve exhausted myself just writing it all down!

For now, I plan my seed purchases from the comfort of the sofa and sip my tea.

One job at a time. We will get there.