Anglesey Smallholder

I’m currently drowning under a tidal wave of bills: house & contents insurance, car tax, service and MOT, water, oil… I’m living from paycheque to paycheque and barely managing.  Hopefully once this round of bills is paid there will be some respite, and I’m also awaiting payment for a job I did a few months ago – when that comes through, it will really ease the situation.

The other thing threatening to swamp me is the sedge.  After being cut by the farmer last year, it has all grown back.  I can’t for shame ask the farmer back (his giant flail mower was badly damaged last year after hitting a telegraph pole dumped at the edge of the field), so I have been tackling it myself.  I tried to cut the bottom field with the strimmer last year and didn’t get very far.  This year I’m trying to cut the top field with the lawnmower.  The only way I can do this is to take the box off and drag the mower backwards over the clumps of sedge, while lifting it slightly so that it doesn’t get stuck and cut out.  It’s at times like this I wish I’d been born a shire horse, but I am making some slow progress.  I’ve spent a few hours and I’m probably not even a quarter way through yet, but if the weather holds then I will try to do a little every night and I’ll get through it eventually.  I hate the sedge – the grass won’t grown, and animals won’t eat it.  I was told that if it’s cut repeatedly then it will eventually die (although it is tough as hell – I had a bonfire on top of a patch and it just grew right back up through the ashes).  I also dug up a few sedge plants near the septic tank, so Victoria’s paddock is now sedge free!