New Developments

Beginning in the spring of 2020 I began planting grapevines, with the hope of producing, at least in a good summer, small quantities of red wine. Initially I planted 24 Pinot Noir Précoce (an early maturing clone of Pinot Noir) vines, and the next year 24 Cabernet Cortis (a modern Cabernet hybrid). Excitingly, we have produced about half a bottle of rather nice tasting red wine from the first harvest of these grapes. There are plans to plant a lot more of these varieties and also the old variety of Cabernet Franc, which does well a few degrees of latitude further south in the Loire Valley…

In early November 2022, just before the winter rains, Shaun Utting of Homestead Farm, Bungay, with a workmate, brought two diggers by way of a concrete drive across Shipmeadow Common and around field edges to gain access to my pond at the top of the orchard. Within a few hours they had excavated decades of decomposed leaf fall and silt and dug down to the original clay base of the pond.

I had been informed without any notice that they would be going ahead that day, but unfortunately Jill and I had cycled into Norwich. I was so excited that I immediately left and was proceeding recklessly down Newmarket Road and making a swerve onto the cycle path when I slipped sideways on some wet leaves and went down heavily on my right side. I lay there for a while assessing the situation, during which a couple of women motorists stopped to enquire how I was. After some minutes I thought that I probably hadn’t broken anything, but was limping badly. However, I found I could cycle reasonably well and got back home and into the car to drive to the orchard and be there for the final stages of the pond digging.

The scene was of a huge hole where the pond had been and one of the diggers sitting in the bottom of it; also a gigantic sea of mud being spread across the neighbouring field by the other digger (for which I had been granted permission by the farmer, Paul Bellinger). However, amongst the black mud were embedded lumps of concrete, broken panes of glass, rusted remains of domestic appliances, a smashed Belfast sink, bits of furniture, ancient oak posts and other tree branches, tangles of wire and metal, and countless pieces of old glass bottles as well as occasional whole specimens. I thought to fulfil my side of the agreement I ought to remove as much of this detritus as I could, so over the next few visits to the orchard we barrowed load after load off the field.

The pond is a typical ‘common edge’ pond with a gentle slope on the common side, but a steep one on my side, creating a deep hollow; the bank at the top of the orchard dropping away to the surface of the water and then perhaps 2-2.5 metres to the deepest part. Perhaps due to being sunk deep in the landscape and with shading from the branches of a large oak tree hanging over from the west side, recovery of plant and insect life in and around the water appears to have been slow, or at least not obvious.

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