Courses & Events Page Updated

Bitterly cold again outside. Which makes me think of warmer times and so I’ve spent some time updating the Courses & Events page on the website this morning whilst I huddle next to the woodburner and try to mentally prepare myself for going out and getting cold again.

On the rare occasion that the sun does pierce the snowladen grey clouds I have been treated to some very season displays of colour -  as here when I was preparing pea sticks from the cut stems on Lynchmere Common when the low angle of the sun lit the bronzed bracken against the Silver Birch stems and the grey skies behind.

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Where am I now?

 

Yes I know, my blog posts are starting to get like London Buses….. no posts for ages and then three come along together!

It’s an old joke and a poor excuse to post a picture of a great sunset. I’ve been in Wales for a few days with virtually no internet connection (so you can expect some more photos of Gower beaches soon) and on the way down I spent a day in Somerset with my Dad who is going on 92 and unfortunately suffers from Alzheimers. This sunset photo was taken from just in front of the window that used to be my bedroom thirty odd years ago. Just in case you don’t recognise the iconic shape it’s Glastonbury Tor.

Back to the woodwork soon enough with tales of the Weald Woodfair and the World Log to leg championships at the APF show amongst others still to come.

 

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On Retreat

I’ve been away on my annual beachcombing retreat on the Gower Peninsula. Not much in the way of internet connection, which may be a good thing, but it’s one excuse for not being able to post recently. Another is that at this time of year many of the tasks are not terribly photogenic – there are only so many photos of firewood, logs and birch trees that I can post. As soon as I am back and sorted out I will start to catch up on some posts that I really should have written before now. Yes, that’s a threat and not a promise!

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January means beanpoles and peasticks

I’ve been a little distracted of late and you will have noticed I’ve not been posting as much. Sadly my mother died suddenly just before Christmas and I’ve not had much time for posting on the blog as a result. Normal service will be resumed eventually and I will shortly post something appropriate, as if you ever received one of her hand crafted cards, you will know she was quite a talented caligrapher. Meanwhilst the seasons don’t wait and if I don’t get the birch cut soon it will be too late, particularly with the warm weather we’ve had.

On sunday we had a good sized group of Volunteers working on the commons and managed to clear through a patch of birch which yielded plenty of peasticks and few good beanpoles. I even managed to persuade our more enthusiastic burners not to burn them all.

We joined up with some of the Allotmenteers from the nearby Shottermill Ponds allotments so plenty of beanpoles and pea-sticks were taken away but there were still some left for me as well.

I particularly like this way of working on the heathland as it is a living landscape and this is the way it was created and has been managed as commonland for hundreds, if not thousands of years. Completely sustainable, it provides exercise and a sense of connection and continuity with the environment – and it might just have avoided the import of the odd bundle of bamboo or even worse, plastic poles. Not saved a shipload, or even a container load yet – but every little counts as they say!

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Looking back with Twelve at Eleven

I’ve been a little distracted whilst trying to put together this view of the year just past, but it’s better late than never I hope. It’s always hard trying to select just twelve photos which together capture something of the year and it’s not a short process always taking me a lot more time than I imagined it would do. I think I’ve managed it in a small way for me, you will have to make your own minds up!

January means low sun angles through the leafless skeletons of the birch trees on the commons, never rising high, always a cold light and quick to fall below the hillside opposite whilst I am still cutting the young birch for poles, flower stakes, peasticks and besom brooms before the buds swell.

But February chills to the bone, and it was a bitter freezing winter which seemed it would surely go on for ever, perhaps we’d never even make it to the Spring. You need a fire (with baked potatoes) just to make it through the end of each day as the cold seems to seep up through my feet and into my bones.

But just when it seemed least likely Spring did arrive, and in the Gower on my annual beachcombing holiday it was scented with Coconut from the gorse flowers.

Working outside in April is rarely that much of a pleasure but as Spring got a grip, the days lengthened and the evenings spread themselves we had some wonderful sunsets – and not a drop of rain.

From a late start Spring was indeed Sprung rushing headlong into an early Summer with endless blue skies and talk of drought – yes this is still England I am talking about. By May and the Beltain celebration at Butser Ancient Farm, you could have been forgiven for thinking it had been warm and sunny all year. But Winters over the summer show season starts here.

Sadly the sunny weather was interrupted by the usual annual rainfall for the 21st  Bodgers ball (held at lower Brockhampton, Herefordshire) and again at the West Country (underwater) scythe festival at Muchelney, but the heat returned late in June, if only for the Wimpole Hall, Scything and Smallholders weekend near Cambridge. Andy Coleman is leading Ded on the brushcutter on a blazing hot afternoon on the lawns in front of Wimpole. The less said about my own shambolic performance the better!

Something of a building theme emerging in these photos and closer to home things have been afoot all year at Swan Barn Farm the base for the the National Trust team in Haslemere. A new cruck framed timber building emerges next to the barn. Built almost entirely with materials from the farm itself or a within a few miles it’s the vision of Dave Elliott the head warden and his team and the first cruck is raised guided by Ben Law.

By August the charcoal burning season is at it’s peak, the logs are good and dry (we hope) and the burns go fast and well, but in the back of my mind I know that time is passing and that this is the time to be starting to try and get ahead with both the charcoal and firewood before it’s too late.

The summer season has been busy with woodfairs, shows, work in the woods and scything reaching a climax in September as the end of term party season gets into full swing – plenty of work to do as well on polelathe and shavehorse – but a definite sense of the seasons shifting, heavy dews in the mornings and a chill in the evenings.

Which brings us inexorably to October and the apple harvest. Not mine this one sadly, these Kingston Blacks are waiting to go into the mill at the New Forest Cider Farm, Burley, though I did manage to press about a third of a tonne of apples myself this year.  Autumn is my favourite season with all the colours changing and all the senses of colour, smell, feel and texture all heightened by the inevitable end coming. A bitter sweet time of year, sweet with the harvest but bitter with chill of approaching winter.

Of course it wouldn’t be a true reflection upon the year without at least one landrover making it into the list and this year it’s got to be Puff (the magic landrover) who passed his MOT in April after a fairly extensive restoration. But with plenty of blue smoke billowing from the exhaust something had to be done and in November I finally managed to complete an engine rebuild thanks to Garry and Richard with plenty of boring, honing, torquing and bedding in to get him on the road in time for winter. Now got 100 miles on the clock, so running in should only last about another year!

We’re back in December with the sun lower in the sky catching on one of the leaded glass windows at the Weald & Downland Museum. I spent a lot of time with friends at the museum this year, demonstrating, teaching (drinking the cider – thanks Julian!) and helping out – it’s something of a spiritual home for me. I’m looking forward to spending more time there in the coming year and the reflection of the sun in the glass brings me back around the cycle to looking forwards towards the coming season. I wish you all the very best for 2o12.

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Finding Fungi on a Walk in the Woods

I am certainly not a fungi expert but I can’t resist taking a good look and at this time of year there are loads of fungi to choose from. So if anyone has any identifications to offer please feel free to comment.  But yes,  you are right this is just an excuse to post some colourful pictures of the Lynchmere Commons.

Here a Fly Agaric has just appeared from it’s bed of moss. At least I think it’s a Fly Agaric as they are common in the birch woods, but there is no sign of a veil on this one, so I may be leading you astray already. Just shows how difficult it is to follow the identification books.

Very few of the woodland fungi are edible and you really do need to know what you are doing to pick them as a mistake can be highly dangerous. The Fly Agaric is well known for it’s toxic and hallucinogenic properties. It’s one of the Amanita family which include our most toxic fungi so one to beware of.

With a heavy dew the cobwebs glisten in the low angle sun light which seems to give everything deeper colour at this time of year.

These fungi were nestled on the old stump of a birch tree. They look quite similar to Honey Fungus, but then again…maybe not quite.

This one is suspiciously white and clean. I have to say that I don’t know what it is, but as the most toxic fungi in the UK, the Destroying Angel, is also white and clean I tend to leave anything similar well alone even though it’s very likely an innocent pretender (it’s deadly cousin the Death Cap is also similar in appearance though with a greenish tinge to the cap).

The Birch trees are now in their winter plummage and it’s already time to be thinking about harvesting the next crop of bean poles, pea sticks and broom heads.

No idea what these are and even after a quick look through a book I am non the wiser.

Likewise these very small, almost blue ones were just by a beech tree. Even though I couldn’t identify them I did find a Bay Boletus which we took home for tea, but forgot to photograph! Very similar to the Cep or Penny Bun which are also in the Boletus family the Bay Boletus has yellow pores instead of gills which stain blue when touched

Must be about time for a gratuitous Landrover photograph. Surely that’s far too shiny to be one of my Landrovers? Yes we took Puff out for a leisurely Sunday afternoon run as a part of the running in the new engine. The aim is to treat the engine very gently until all of the moving parts have had time to wear in.

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Walking on the Beaches looking at the…..flotsam and jetsam

Odd title if you’re too young (or old) to remember the Stranglers song “Peaches”, but the walk from Oxwich to Port Eynon along the Gower coastline is great for “Strolling along, minding your own business” and of course it’s a beachcombers paradise. But on this walk it’s low tide and there is little if any ‘wreck’ for the beachcomber to salvage so come with me, if you care, on a tour of the natural flotsam.

At high tide it’s a mass of jagged rocks which makes it a rock hopping adventure from one end to the other and you never quite know what will be around the next corner.

As the tide recedes it uncovers a host of rock pools. Other than the high tideline, always the most fascinating part of a beach for me.

Then there are the wide expanses of sandy beach which appear at low tide. This is Slade beach, normally a favourite with surfers, and of which there is no sign at high tide.

Today’s tide is 10 metres, thats around 33 feet from high to low. The Bristol Channel has one of the highest tidal ranges and as it’s around the autumn equinox it’s one of the highest spring tides to boot. Though why the low tide is still 3.7m above mean sea level according to the tide table is something I can’t quite work out?Perhaps someone can explain this quirk to me?

The good news is that the beach is extremely clean, bereft of the usual host of bottles, broken containers and odds and sods, much of which has actually been carelessly thrown away by rivers, estuaries and beaches rather than being actual flotsam or jetsam lost overboard from ships. The bad news is of course, that the beach is extremely clean so on this occasion there was little for me to scavange  though there is still plenty of natural flotsam and jetsam to examine. Even seaweed has its uses, particularly as a fertiliser, as finings in your beer (yes really!) and even in your icecream.

With the help of the Shell Book of Beachcombing (every good wrecker should have a copy, available on a forgotten shelf of your local secondhand book emporium) by Tony Soper (remember him ? You will need to remember back as far as the Stranglers for this) you should be able to find plenty to keep you distracted even without the rubbish on the tideline.

The picture on the cover of the book was probably taken in the Scilly Isles in the 1970′s and staged as well. Noticeable how the wooden crates, metal and glass containers have all been replaced with plastic today which unfortunately lasts much longer without being naturally recycled. A low tide line is always much sparser and Todays walk across the beach at Port Eynon yielded almost no plastic for a rare change with fresh cuttlefish bones alongside tiny sea shells on a perfect backdrop of golden sand. Just right to take off your boots and have a natural foot massage as you stroll along.

But watch out for the jellyfish. They can range in size from a large coin, this one was only a few inches across, upto giants a couple of feet in diameter.

This one is a little weird, and I’m not sure that we recognised it. Perhaps someone can help us out with a name?

And there is always the odd crab to nip your feet if you’re not looking where you are going.

I have a feeling, which may prove to be entirely unfounded, that there is more erosion on this beach than there used to be a couple of decades ago. Sand has gone uncovering rocks, and recently a petrified forest which in turn has been quickly eroded and vanished. Perhaps this is an entirely natural cycle, but you can’t help thinking that the massive sand dredging operations taking millions of tonnes from the banks just offshore are something to do with it. Ironic that I am told much of it ends up in concrete on the Dutch coast helping to keep the sea at bay, whilst nearer to home the sand is vanishing from the beaches.

All to quickly the sea returns and covers the sand with a fresh tide so the return trip is made along the coastpath rather than along the rockpools and sand of the beach. But Who knows what the new tide will bring? It’s this addiction to looking that has made me a beachcomber from a very early age. Maybe, just maybe, tomorrow will bring more Treasure!

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Seasons Change and Autumn Harvest

It’s the First of September! How did that happen? As my friend Richard told me yesterday  ‘Autumn’s here’. I was on the verge of disagreement when I realised I couldn’t really argue. September is not summer.

The still mornings are noticeably cooler, even if the days haven’t changed. The evenings are drawing in rapidly and the harvests are all coming in – especially the fruit in the hedgerows and orchards. The trees at the Weald and Downland Museum are bursting with fruit. I’ve been steadily picking apples and collecting the windfalls at home. I’ll be pressing them in a couple of weeks time.

This is without doubt my favourite time of year, it’s a few short weeks if we are lucky but I wish it could last for months. Walking around the  Museum last week I noticed how good the autumn harvest of fruit is and for me this is another welcome sign of autumn as the unrelenting green of summer gives way to an explosion of fruit colours. The haws on the hawthorn bushes weighing down the branches.

Rosehips on the tree next door.  Rosehips are packed with vitamin C and are a very healthy fruit, but they need to be cooked to be edible (I think).  I found a great website with a recipe for apple and rosehip jelly here - The cottage smallholder.

The next bush was a blackthorn loaded with sloes. The fruit were slightly soft and ready to be picked though it’s still quite early for sloes. Sloe gin (or vodka) is still a popular use for these fruit, at least with me.

No hedgerow would be complete without an elderberry bush weighed down by it’s lush sprays of small dark juicy fruit which make an excellent country wine. I’ve also found they make an excellent red wine vinegar if the wine is not to your taste.  It is slightly amazing that enough flowers escape being picked for elderflower cordial and champagne to become fruit.

I’ve tried a couple of very good elderflower champagnes this year and I’m  a little worried that elderberries could become harder to find! Most elderberry bushes in my area are in field hedgerows which get cut mechanically each year by flail – another good reason for letting the hedgerows grow.

Another sign of Autumn is the steady preparation of firewood for the winter. The museum is well prepared for another cold winter thanks to the work of Jon Roberts in working the coppice and cutting and stacking the firewood. Last year I was caught out, too late with the firewood and a very cold winter meant the stove ran colder than usual just when I needed to be hotter.

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Thistles, Oak Trees, Meadows, a River…..and Landrovers too

Working with a scythe is an enjoyable experience in its own right, but there are fringe benefits as well. One of these is that you tend to end in special places with a scythe, whereas with a strimmer you’ll be stuck on a verge somewhere.

The recent scything course I gave to the South Downs National Park Volunteer Ranger Service (bit of a mouthful that) was no exception. We started off in the workshop but soon adjourned to practice on some thistles in a nearby meadow, part of the Woolbeding estate.

The meadow is right by the river Rother near Midhurst. Looks more like a peaceful stream at this time of year, though the 10 foot drop from the meadow to the water level gives some idea of how it can flow during the winter.

I should have been taking lots of photos of the mowing, but on this improvers course the team had got the hang of it quite well in the main and I was captivated by the ancient parkland oak trees in the meadows. Large trees with the fabulous gnarly shapes and wide spreading canopies that come with growing out in the open.

Back to the mowing. With this many thistles the job should really be more topping than mowing as cutting the thistles is more important than cutting the grass. That’s normally the case with using scythes in conservation work. I started using a scythe on bracken (when I was 16) and I get to use them on bracken, brambles and weeds far more often than I get to mow a meadow for haymaking so it’s useful to look at different ways of working.

Oooh, now this will be the gratuitous Landrover photo then, dressed up to look like a serious comment on scything technique. Now how does that song go? After me…

….One man went to mow, went to mow a meadow, one man and his Land Rover went to mow a meadow.  Two men went to mow, went to mow a meadow, two men, one man, and his Land Rover, and his other Land Rover…went to mow a meadow…..got the picture yet?

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A Wander through the Trees

Sometime I am going to learn to publish shorter posts. But not yet, though at least this one will be long on images rather than text so you can always just scroll through the pictures. I’ve spent most of the last week at the New Forest Show which takes place in the heart of the New Forest between Brockenhurst and Lyndhurst. Having taken my bicycle and gone down early to sort out my pitch I was rewarded with some time and good weather to get some exercise in the forest.

The New Forest is a forest in the true sense of the word, in that it’s not all dense woodland, with lots of areas of  grazing, rough pasture, woodland pasture and open heathland in addition to the ancient woodlands, mixed woodlands and inevitable plantations. The mosaic of landscapes is part of what makes the area such a special place.

Mind you there are some big trees there. I had to put a car into this photo just to give a sense of the size of some of the big firs and pines along the Rhinefield ornamental drive.

Alongside the drive is a small arboretum. I was disappointed that it seemed full of such ‘exotic’ species as Norway Spruce and Douglas Fir. I even spotted a small Western Hemlock that seemed to have seeded itself from an adjoining plantation, but in between were some interesting trees. Any ideas about this one?

Passing through one woodland I couldn’t quite figure out what was wrong for a while until I realised that the whole oak wood had been defoliated, probably by a similar caterpillar attack to the ones we’ve had on the Lynchmere Commons for the last couple of years. At first the trees look completley bare, but a much closer inspection reveals the start of some lammas growth, that is a new flush of leaves. The lammas growth is certainly late but perhaps thats an intentional reaction by the tree to ensure that the caterpillars have all left the scene and avoid losing the regrowth as well?

Pedalling along the back road I was amazed by the size of this burr on a large birch tree. Almost the same size as my bicycle. Oooooh, Errrrr!

Ok the tree in the arboretum was unfair, though if anyone honestly said to themselves Cherry Birch, then they are welcome to a bottle of my Bodgers Gold when we next meet up. But whats this one ?

Here, just to make it nice and easy. First one to reply gets a bottle of my Bodgers Gold to be handed over at some convenient place.

I stopped off for a look at the Knightwood Oak, at least 600 years old and the largest oak tree in the Forest, despite having had a few limbs chopped off in recent years. Hard to get a perspective of the tree, but it’s about 25feet in girth.

It has its own special enclosure these days, but it’s still not easy to get a feel for the size of the tree and unlike many parkland oaks (Dave Elliott posted on a cracker recently – The Queen Elizabeth Oak – on his excellent Speckled Wood blog) it has grown upwards in the woodland so it has less of a spreading habit.

On the way back I stopped for a while to enjoy the atmosphere of the woodland. I couldn’t help thinking I was being watched……..

And just possibly I was….. I suspect that the tree spirit in this tree might be related to one of Robin Fawcett’s tribe from the Epping Forest?

Some interesting slabwood bench designs around. But unfortunately more on the looks than the comfort, I can’t really understand why the back is set so low and upright, a little more height and slant and it would have been a fine bench, but perhaps we’re not supposed to linger?

It’s hard to get such a large expanse of forest perfectly managed and there is always something that will be not to my taste. The amount of cordwood stacked and left to rot by the side of the rides was astounding and very annoying to a woodsman like myself.

I’m not against leaving wood – here is a great example – but failing to extract cordwood because it’s not a full lorry or forwarder load is wasteful and needs to better managed. The FC used to issue licences to extract the ‘brash’ as firewood but stopped the practice citing ‘insurance issues’ ie Health and Safety, as far as I remember. I think if we are to become more involved with our woodlands then this is a practice that should be reintroduced.

Anyway I had a really refreshing and enjoyable time cycling through the New Forest and a change is as good as a rest they say!

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