On Sunday we spent a a happy couple of hours wheelbarrowing woodchip for the orchard. We are blessed with huge piles of woodchip at Oakbrook Farm, cheerfully donated by local tree surgeons who are grateful to be able to off load what to them is a waste product.
We barrowed backwards and forwards all afternoon, delivering one full barrow load to each of our 22 trees. As snow swirled around us and failed to settle, the trees started to look quite cosy in their thick woodchip blankets.
More prosaically, the woodchips have multiple practical benefits. They help to suppress weeds, retain moisture, feed the soil and create an environment to nurture the beneficial fungal connections trees need to thrive.
While we worked, we turned over plans for the orchard. Community Supported Agriculture. Crowd funding. Website. Logo. Daffodils. Legal structures. The words swirled around us like the snow, but still we barrowed woodchip, grounded in the reality of mud, shovel and just two more trees to go now.
We went home happy. Woodchip therapy for trees and people.