November - drizzle and snowshine

It was a month with record low sunshine. 29 hours, according to the statisticians. One hour per day. The rest of the time it was gray, and quite a few of those long, drizzling rain days.

We did get started on some outdoor projects. The most important of which was to build a steel mesh fence around the whole property, except the driveway. We want to keep hungry rabbits out and exclude water voles.

Unfortunately, we already have a few of those tree-root-eating marauding water voles inside, so we will also need to trap those. They eat the roots of our chestnut and hazel trees.

We finally made a rodent-proof enclosure around the nut tree nursery area.

Farm Shop

We also started the farm stand tree shop. Every Saturday in November and March, we have open farm stand tree shop. So far it has been good and the people who come by to pick up some nut trees are great. I am so grateful for meeting these wonderful people who want to contribute to a better future by planting nut trees.

Some ordinary citizens who plant in their garden, some are farmers who try out different nut trees to see what works well in their contect.

Farm stand shop, with a frost-free indoor sandbox for all-winter pickup.

My good friend Marc came by to help to dig out some walnut trees before the first open day.

Chestnut eating time

We bought a new chestnut shelling machine, one size bigger and better than the last one. The new one is made of stainless steel, so that we can use it for food-grade production later.

In half a minute, it peels half a kilo of chestnuts.

Chestnut peeling machine - appropriate technology for 5-500 kg harvest.

Last day of the nut cultivation course at Holma. Anna made chestnut baklava and we planted a tree.

Winter preparations

We pack the fig trees in our hoop house to help them survive the winter.

Other observations

An interesting apple tree in the garden of one of the neighbours of my mum and dad is a late bearing tree. The fruit hangs on to the tree into the winter and they are deliciously crisp, even when the weather is freezing. Natural anti-freeze?

We went to a place outside Halmstad to look at a composting toilet called "Sunshine Loo". During next year we will make a couple of solid composting toilets and urinals to make it easier for guests and visitors to deliver a gift during the visit.

We brought in a 40m3 load of woodchips, from deciduous trees. Our goal is to improve water retention on our soils, so we will use the wood chips to cover walkways and to cover the soil where we plant new rows of trees.

As you see in the picture, we had some snow and a whole week of below-zero temperatures.