Pilcot update – Easter 2014
A quick post to summarise what most of you know from emails and give you the latest update:
Following the Picot tenants meeting, the farmers treated the allotment area with Roundup, then on 7th April attempted to plough the area - unfortunately the plough got stuck in the mud and had to be pulled out by another tractor and so the operation was abandoned. As you may remember we again had some had some heavy rainfalls that week, and the farmers advised that we may need to leave it a couple more weeks for it to dry out a bit and hope for better weather.
The committee discussed various alternative options such as hiring rotivators to dig the land, however this has been put aside for now on the advice of the farmers, and the experience of some of the committee members, as this is a lot of hard work and will not be effective in getting deep enough down to get to the roots (if we don’t get down deep this could store up problems for us later).
Members of the committee met with the farmers to inspect the site on Saturday 12th April. The good news was that the Roundup application had obviously worked as the marked area is now yellow, however the field is obviously not plough-able at present – we saw where the ploughing tractor got bogged down and had to be pulled out. Phil was most apologetic about the delays but we all agreed after the wettest winter for 100 years its not surprising the ground is waterlogged. To help with draining the field Phil arranged to clear the ditches around 2 sides the field using a digger, and to unblock the ends of the land drains that run from under the field into the ditches. Some/most of these drain ends have got blocked over the years by cattle going into the ditches. This ditch and drain clearance will help drainage of the field and the clearing was planned to take place last week (the week before Easter).
There has since been further rainfall and we are awaiting an update on the success of the ditch clearing – it’s certain the ground will eventually dry out enough for ploughing, but the no-one can put a date on it yet as its weather dependant. We are all pretty disappointed in this news, but don’t really see any alternative but to stick it out and hope for some dry weather. We’ll keep you all posted as we know more.