As mentioned on 5th February, John Christopher wrote a rather frightening book called ‘The Death of Grass’ which this week we once again recalled as we sadly learned about a disease affecting our local sweet chestnut trees. They have been found to be infected with P. ramorum pathogen, necessitating removal of the trees and an exclusion zone of five kilometres regarding the removal of timber. We do hope that this problem does not become more widespread (I would not recommend reading the Forestry Commission website regarding this – depressing). Towards this end, as mentioned on 6th Feb, we are ‘doing our bit’ by growing trees for hedging and landscaping around the smallholding and for basket making. The photos show some of these tree seedlings in their early stages of growth – and this afternoon our ‘double fence’ in the top four acre field had 23 willow sticks added to the ones planted in January - there are seven different types of willow in this latest bunch which will hopefully give us seven different colours of withies for basket making. (These were sourced from Gillian at South Yeo Farm East near Okehampton - thanks Gillian.) As well as the willow we are growing sweet chestnut, ash, oak and a few ‘unknowns’ from a packet of tree seeds – we await the development of our arboricultural efforts.