Bog Myrtle & Peat

Low Airie, Glenkens – 17/4/20

Restoring the long-defunct boundaries at Low Airie is a big piece of work. And being totally frank, it’s a far bigger piece of work than I ever could’ve reckoned when I began.

In recent days, the problem has not so much been the legwork of fencing, but rather the rediscovery of the fenceline itself. Large sections of the old fence have been swallowed up and consumed by trees, and the wreckage is so dense that it takes hours to cut it back with a chainsaw. It’s testament to old fashioned wood treatment techniques that almost all of the fenceposts are fit to be reused – they’ve stood in place since the 1960s, and aside from a few which have snapped or withered, ninety nine percent simply need to be nudged back into position. The old plain wire has not fared so well, and it takes a good deal of labour to cut this into sections so that it can be dumped and disposed of.

But for all the exhausting labour of the job, I’m quite proud to have done all this work entirely unaided. I had a list of family and friends who were willing to lend a hand when I set out in the middle of March, but the current lockdown has meant that it has fallen to me alone. At first I was downcast by this isolation and the enormity of the challenge ahead of me. It seemed like I had been absurdly over-ambitious, but as I passed the halfway mark, I began to feel oddly protective of the job. Even if help was available now, I would probably turn it down because I feel a perverse sense of pleasure at having done something on my own which most people would have said required a team.

But there is “mony a slip twixt cup and lip” – perhaps I am speaking too soon, and with four hundred yards of fenceline left to build, I am certainly not out of the woods yet. I live in constant fear that the next bend will reveal some hidden obstacle or challenge which scuppers the entire job…