New Years Eve

Despite the rain and wind we had a little party in the barn at lunchtime on 31st December to welcome in the the New Year with friends and neighbours. We kept cosy and dry with an oil drum brazier in the barn, which also kept the soup and mulled wine warm, and warming.

It was a good way to say goodbye to the old year, with children and dogs running around and throwing and chasing sticks for each other. Not sure which way round this was happening  most of the time..

We also had some beautiful live music courtesy of Alfie and Ben, who just happened to bring along their violin and double bass, as you do to a wood, in the rain.Fantastic playing and singing.

It’s really important to us that we can share the wood with other people and use it as  space to do things in with them,alongside the  more traditional activities one associates with woodland.i.e getting tractors stuck in mud, chopping and thinning trees, cutting fire wood,making fires, building barns and having carved four poster beds hidden in the middle of the trees.

Thank you every one for coming and making it a special last day of 2012

Rain,rain and more rain. Tractor continually getting stuck in the quagmire of the forest floor,and extraction at a standstill (again).
Very frustrating times for the forester this autumn, but has given us plenty of time to dream up even more exciting projects for next spring. Been clearing the felled larch (ahhh poor larch)and getting the firewood stock together gradually.
Keep having visions of a cold, crisp winter evenings with lots of lovely light and sound installations in the wood. Where are all the cool installation artists when you need them?
The beautiful bed is still there, settling nicely into the ground and it’s woody environment. Lovely place to sit or indeed lie and look,when the rains not actually raining.

Welcome to heydon Hill West Wood

Decided that it was time to start a blog, though I can’t promise that I will be posting regularly. It really should be Paul writing these posts,as he spends so much more time up there than I do nowadays. Paul has been working really hard, chopping trees, to sell the wood,to drill the bore hole, to finish the barn,to make a home for us in the woods. So no pressure then. Please look at the photos, the wood framed barn is a joy to behold, some lovely joints, though you will probably notice that it is only half clad and has no roof. Time is at a premium, but we hope to have all that done by the Spring with the goodwill of friends and more trees being chopped.At the moment our friend Jane Mowatt has a beautifully carved wooden bed there under the trees where people have been coming and lying on it to gaze at the stars through the trees, hear story tellers, music and poetry.It’s all part of Somerset Art Weeks, and has been quuite magical. There are also wonderful giant nests to be discovered as you walk through. Unfortunatly it will all end on Sunday, the last day of SAW.