Eeeek ! Ive just moved house and its got 4 acres so I came here for help!!!!

[wizzbang]

Hello again. What a lovely warm welcome, thank you!
Pictures..... I can do pictures but it will have to be after I have set myself up at the new house. I should be moving in in about 3 or four weeks. The situation is that my daughter and her partner are moving into the main house and I am going into the coach house. They both work and i'm retired so I will be doing all the gardening but there will be an odd job man to help me if something is too much for me to handle on my own. Not a lot of the ground is set out as formal gardens as you will see when I post pics but there is plenty to keep me busy.
The paddock is a bit of a disappointment for me really because my daughers partner wants it nice and neatly mowed. He has bought a ride on mower especially for it! He is one of those nice, neat and tidy people whereas I like things less formal. Let battle commence lol. I had wanted it to become a meadow and it would be lovely if it did but I doubt it.
Regarding the composting. There are four compost stacks that I have seen so far. One is this massive pile of horse poo, It looks like solidifying crude oil.... ewwww im worried incase it turns out to be too potent to put straight onto areas where i'm going to be planting things to eat.
OK so that's the horse poo one.
Then there are two which look to be totally leaf mould. I haven't had chance to look at the bottom layers of it but I know the top two feet of the mounds, each of them is about ten feet by ten feet and they are enclosed by chicken wire, are totally leaf and nothing else. So that's the two leaf mould piles.
Then there is one 'mound' of what looks like it might be nice compost that has been taken out of one of the chicken wire piles and just left and that has morphed into a man sized mound about 18 foot long and 10 foot wide and man height at the highest point petering out to the ground like a massive earthy splat! Unfortunately this has nettles growing out of it looking a bit like an american's crew cut. So i'm not going to be spreading that anywhere just yet! I am thinking of having four large compost enclosures built with some of the wood from the chopped down conifers and painstakingly transferring the present composts contents into the new ones so I can see the state of what is in them.
Sorry for the complicated post but its a complicated mess of muck lol.
I have managed to get about 20 barrows full of nice compost that I found under carpet onto the kitchen garden. I loosened the soil in one of the 'pie' pieces yesterday and i've raked the compost thickly over the tops to give the worms a nice snack when they wake up in the next couple of weeks. I noticed that there are some worms already surfacing and active which was nice to see.
Blimy, look at the length of this post!!
Ill do a bit more after all you warm and welcoming people have had a chance to read this composting quandary.
Lynne x

[Feral007]

Haha - you should send your son in law out here to me for a month whizzbang! He'd be so shellshocked by the 'untidy' appeal of the Feral Farm that he'd be more than happy to let you have a wildflower meadow!

I'd be inclined to set him the task of keeping the meadow tidy while you do the rest.....bet he'd get over tidy pretty darn quick!

Best of luck. Mind you don't put your address down on here.......all that manure and leaf mould, you wouldn't be safe!

[gardenpassion]

I love driving a ride-on, but the novelty would soon wear off. I'd think I'd rather keep tethered goats, or geese as lawnmowers (in my tiny suburban garden I use guineapigs)

Hi and welcome to a great forum. The advice I have recieved here is second to none, and its all so friendly. Yes, I vote for guniea pigs too, you could have a g. pig rescue in an acre, and it would keep down the grass. or even better, why not adopt 2 donkeys from Sidmouth Donkey Sanctury to keep on top of the acre, and you could use their manure for your vege plot , (Now that's recycling).

I would say, dont panic or feel overwhelmed, you have the gardens we all dream of, so maybe plant some easy stuff that wont take huge amounts of time in the vege plot and spend the first year making a diary of what needs doing when. Then next year you can go for it with a bit more zest.
Enjoy it all, (am utterly envious). good luck.

[taff]

Hiya

I wouldn't do anyhting but keep on top of it for a while until you decide what to do with what bit. If you jump in straightaway with various schemes, you might completely change your mind by next year and that's a years work wasted.
Have a think about how much space to devote to each thing, how much time you can devote to each thing in each space and how much cash you realitically have to work with, bearing in mind that things like trees are quite expensive, and so is landscaping and paying someone to work for you. You will probably chsnge your mind at some point so it's best not to do permanent things like hard landscaping until you're sure or it's beyond a doubt, like a driveway or something
Think about what style of gardening you prefer, whether it'll have to be all neat and perfect, a bit blowsy, a mixture, whether you want to dig your vegetable garden or go with no dig, polyutunnel or greenhouse, or neither, water collection, seeds, growing them or buying them.
Honestly, I'd probably got to the library and spend a while reading about different things before I'd commit to anything permanent.

[wizzbang]

Thanks for all the fab advice everybody.
Shall I put the pictures I mentioned here in this thread? there will only be a few. For example, the greenhouse, the kitchen garden, the cold frames, the composts etc, so I cant really post them individually on separate threads, I know it would confuse me lol.
So is here ok?
Ive got somebody here to help me post a few tonight.
Lynne x

[veggiechicken]

Yes, put them in here Lynne. We'll know where to find you then

[wizzbang]

We tried and tried, and then saw the little tick box next to where the download is and it said the pic was too big. Only when I had a fiddle with my computer did I realise that I didn't have any progs on my new lappy to resize my pics. My brother who has worked with computers since they were first invented by archamedes or somebody is coming tomorrow to sort me out!
I tried putting picassa on my lap top but it said 'downloaded' but I cant for the life of me find it anywhere.
Sometimes I really get on my own wick being a numpty about technical stuff.
Lynne x
PS I don't think I'm going to get much sleep tonight because of the attempted break in.
I'm all ears and doe eyes coz im on pins.
Lynne x

[veggiechicken]

Sorry to hear about your anxiety Lynne - I understand completely - but I'm sure he won't be back now that he knows you're in the house.
I have Windows 7 and save all my pics to the laptop. Then, select them as images to upload on here. I don't need to resize them.
If you can't sleep tonight, there's often someone on here to chat too - especially Feral who's in Australia. She'll cheer you up

[wizzbang]

I made it through the night........... bursts into song, Frank Sinatra I think but he was way before my time.... ahem.
Anyway, it was a peaceful night and the shed is as I left it.
Lynne x

[veggiechicken]

Good morning Lynne - Happy Thursday.. Hope the sun is shining for you!

[Linzy]

Leave your manure heap. There is one at my dads farm and its not nice this time of year, very wet and sloshy but my end of march its more user friendly and then you can use it around your garden.

Lucky you i would love 4acres. Hell i could keep some chickens on 4acres

[Hugsville]

welcome ... friend!!! CAn i come and build a small house in the corner of 1 acre and use it for my use??? lol

[wizzbang]

is this working?
these are the cold frames.

Im sorry, these aren't the cold frames at all lol, this is the kitchen garden with the quadrant pies that I mentioned. I WILL get the hang of my new computer and my new forum soon, I promise!
Lynne x

[veggiechicken]

Yes its working but its 4 triangular beds!! Getting closer though

[wizzbang]

This is the kitchen garden and one of the greenhouses. The greenhouse has been cleaned and all that terrible green lichen encouraging yukky stuff has been taken off. Broken glass replaced and its all empty and ready to start growing in.
I know they aren't very good pictures but they were taken for reference before we moved. (I still haven't gone, two or three weeks before I go)
In the background of the second picture is the potting shed where we found underneath three big slabs of concrete a very, very deep well, built out of brick with ladders down the side and all sorts of exciting 'bloke' things. My son in law was very excited about it.
Lynne x