In an unsurprising turn of events, I once again find myself adjusting my plans for this rewilding project. My original intention was to buy 1 hectare of land for a rewilding pilot programme, however I’m now looking at a minimum of 5 hectares. The main reason is that to qualify for government grants you need at least – you guessed it – 5 hectares of land.
I’m going to set a target of £10,000 and use the jam proceeds (as well as any other methods I can think of) to earn the money and hopefully buy a little patch of land somewhere.
The gift of forgotten acorns
When wrestling with this latest obstacle I found much-needed inspiration in the most unlikely of places.
A couple of years ago I noticed a cluster of mysterious plants growing in an old herb garden outside my mum’s front door. After the leaves unfurled, they revealed themselves to be oak saplings – I assume planted and forgotten by an industrious squirrel.
Last year I took it upon myself to split up the cluster and proceeded to forget about them completely. Fast forward to this spring and they all seem to be doing quite well!
Without even trying I now had the perfect name for our small-scale rewilding experiment – the six oaks nature reserve.
Final thoughts
My immediate goal is to secure a permanent home these oak saplings. A huge part of that is the hedgerow jam, which has a new and improved recipe that I’m waiting to test out on some unsuspecting pedestrians – pending local council approval. If you can get arrested for protesting then I’d hate to think what fate would await me if I tried to feed people jam without prior permission.
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Thanks for reading.
Cheers, Andrew