We braved the wind and the cold to venture out to Hurstpierpoint to buy a second hoe so that I could have one for the plot and one for the garden – we are now a ‘two hoe family’. The place we went to seems to be a cavern of second hand bits and pieces, we arrived to find a bloke cleaning up a load of old cinema seats. I happened to spot a couple of sledge hammers too, I choose one of them to go with the hoe.

The weather was still bad when we got home but I braved the plot, I was the only one of the site. It wasn’t too bad, sheltered from the wind from the hill and warmed by just moving about. I decided to make a start on prepping the ground for a blackberry plant that I have temporarily loosely planted at home while I sort a proper place on the plot. This is going to go at the end of the plot where there is currently a falling down wire fence. I started to rip part of that out, dig over the ground to get rid of any obvious bindweed. I’ve lengthened the plot by about half a metre, I’m sure no-one will mind.

It took no time at all to put the first steak in the ground, using the newly purchased sledge hammer making it the simplest and quickest bit of hammering I’ve done. I wish I had brought the actual blackberry plant too but I thought it would take me a lot longer than it actually did.

The site has had another delivery of woodchip and so I collected a wheelbarrow load and covered the new bit of ground. Next to where the blackberry will go I have created a new entrance to the plot. There is more to do as I need to remove the next bit of old wire fence and put in at least another two steaks and then wire them up so that the blackberry will grow along the wires. We’ve had the wooden steaks for years, it’s been good to finally use them.

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