Forest Products
Pop Up Cafe at Heydon Hill
In the East Wood
Jily 4th 10.00 to 4.00
We had a brilliant pop up on 13th of June, which was really well supported by lots of local people.
They were served home made sourdough cheese toasties, cooked on our barbecue charcoal, delicious homemade cakes and scones.
All off grid with a minimum impact or carbon footprint.
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I know it’s called a blue bell, but is that colour really blue?
I know when you see a swathe of bluebells it appears as an almost purpley, bluey colour, and incidently the smell is heavenly, but what colour is the flower really?
I guess it doesn’t really matter what name we give it’s colour, it is intrinsically, and of itself a blue bell and all that conjures up in the collective psyche of us all, town or rural dweller.
When I lived abroad, on the shores of the Mediterranean, I used to have such a nostalgia for May and the bluebells, despite the fact that I had lived in the middle of cities in England for 20 years where, in the main,the only blue bells you saw, weren’t actually blue at all, but that pale mauve colour of the impostor, the Spanish bluebell.
There you go, I’m getting all nationalistic in defence of our indigenous blue bell, when I wouldn’t dream about harbouring the same sentiments about anything else.
The bluebell, somehow is really special to us on this little island, and represents so much more than just a natural, spring wild flower. It conjures up an imagined spring time of the past, when life was a rural idyll, and there were woodlands everywhere full of bluebells, and probably happy milk maids and jolly ploughmen too.
If only it were thus.
Still, a bluebell wood is a marvelous place to be, if you are lucky enough to get to be in one, and regardless of it’s colour a bluebell is a beautiful portent of good things to come.
This year Spring seemed to be a long time coming and so did our lambs. But eventually come they did, to find themselves arrived in a cold, wet May Bank Holiday weekend.
However, there is still one ewe to lamb, and we hope that it won’t be too long now.
I was terrified of the whole lambing process and and the more advice I sought the more nervous I became. I insisted that we buy every product and device known to modern shepherding recommended to us by other people and the books I was pouring over. We spent a fortune. Why I felt that the ewes wouldn’t know how to get on with such a natural thing for them, I’m not sure.
We had prepared the lovely pole barn (see InTheWilds/Events page) at the bottom of the fields and filed it with fresh straw and lots of lovely hay to eat, thinking it was the perfect, clean, safe and warm place for them to lamb in. By the next morning all three ewes had manged to escape and were happily back in the fields, nonchalantly munching grass, without a care in the world, and that’s where they chose to give birth.
I was visiting the field first thing in the morning and twice more throughout the day for a week….and yes of course, they gave birth all by themselves, problem free, the one morning someone else offered to check them for me.
They did all the things that needed to be done for the new born lambs and their mothers and I got to see them later that day all iodined sprayed and used to the world.
And of course, they are the cutest, prettiest lambs in Somerset. Now they will probably spend the rest of their lives finding ways to get through the fence into the other fields, and forget how to reverse their escape, causing me and their mothers endless hours of anxiety……I am smitten………..
Welcome to our new addition to Heydon Hill Wood. Three lovely four month old female (gilts) saddlebacks.
They are a joy to have in the wood ( so far, sas they have yet to escape). They have really lovely natures. I guess it’s got something to do with them being reared by a sweet fifteen year old girl called Vicky. She took over her grandpa’s pigs and has been breeding for a couple of years. The pigs dance with joy when they hear you coming with their feed.
I wasn’t all that keen on getting any more pigs, as it breaks my heart when we have to send them to be killed. This time, as they are such wonderful specimens we will keep one back and attempt to breed some more pigs ourselves.
Piglets Yay! (Lambs from our Jacob sheep due mid April Lambs Yay!)
I don’t feel so bad now. Small recompense to the two we say goodbye to though. Until then I am going to enjoy them and their tippy toe dancing.
They have a dual use too. They are clearing and fertilizing the area where we are going to start a forest garden.
Very excited about this as it is something that I have been talking about wanting to do since we first bought the wood, eons ago now, it seems. One good thing to come out of lock down is that my sister has a lot of time on her hands and has started to make herself an expert in all things forest garden. Fantastic for me, as time is the one thing that is at such a premium always. Fantastic for her, as she has started to research and get excited about the possibilities of the project.
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The more food stuff that we can grow ourselves here the better, especially as we will catering to the public, this summer, with pop up cafes and feast nights in the woods. We will also be feeding all the people participating on our courses and workshops at In The Wilds.
Favourite spring time job, cleaning the outside of the polytunnel.
The past week had been glorious up here, but still chilly.
I won’t go on about bird song, snowdrops, catkins etc., etc. Blah, blah, blah. Enough on Instagram, and it’s ilk. We all know when the sun comes out and the sky is blue after a grim old lockdown winter it’s lovely and joyous and up lifting so…
I’m going to write about slime, green slime, clear slime, slime.
Fist slime to be dealt with this week has been the horrid green variety attached to the woodland side of the polytunnel
That kind of slime.
We have spent a lot of time and effort building new shelving in preparation for a mammoth seed sowing session, starting next week.
I sent this photo above to my sister, proudly showing the work in progress, and she rightly pointed out that the slime rather let the side down.
Shamed into action I spent a day with the hose pipe, step ladder and stiff brush, washing the disgusting stuff off.
And…
Ta da, clean polytunnel.
Can’t believe how much lighter it is. Duh!
So, yeah, living the Dream, cleaning slimey polytunnel.
The second lot of slime was a happier task.
There is so much frogspawn in the mud and puddles along the tracks in the wood.
Last year they were all dried out by April and the spawn was left high and dry.
This week I went round with buckets trying to gather as much as I could to put in out teeny, tiny pond. Hoping they have more of a chance to survive. Like trying to gather jelly up. It has the most extraordinary consistency, and is almost impossible to move. Slips through fingers, off trowels, won’t slimey slide where you want it too. Not sur how much I eventually managed to gather. Much of it will have to fend for itself in the mud I fear.
The biggest danger in the teeny pond is the cat who likes to drink from it, especially when there is frogspawn in it.
Like I said. Living the dream…. depends what youdream about, I guess….. Slime and sick chickens?
So, we have sheep. Six sheep in fact, three Jacobs and three cute little white ones.
Just by that description it is pretty obvious that I am not an experienced shepherd. I know the Jacobs are Jacobs because of their distinct markings and their horns, and because the friends we bought them from told us they were.
I don’t know what the cute little white ones are, because the friends we bought them from couldn’t remember what breeds they were crossed from.
We keep our sheep on our friends Helen and Tim’s land, Nuttin, about 1 mile as the crow flies, and about 2 1/2 miles in the car, and about 1 1/2 hours walk down and up some very steep west Somerset valleys.
Helen, incidently is the other half of In The Wilds, and Nuttin is the other site where ( once we are able to again) we run courses, pop up cafes and fire feasts.
So, the sheep. I’ve always had a bit of a thing about sheep, and really liked the idea of having some. However, sheep aren’t really woodland dwellers so we have had to take them down the hill, to lower pastures ( just like a Somerset version Heidi ).
We have had much fun and games over the past few months with our mini flock, and as I said I am not a natural shepherd, and everything I read, and all the people I spoke to reassured me that sheep are really easy to look after.( Other than their prime reason for existing is to either escape, get ill or die, in any combination at any time). I believed them, and much to my shame, naively didn’t really do much research or spend time educating myself on sheep care.
I have been learning.
Rule number one, as long as you have a bucket of sheep nuts you can get them to do virtually anything, which is just as well, when they are somehow on the wrong side of what seemed an impreganable fence, or the little young ones have to be kept apart from the borrowed Jacob ram, but they want to stay in the same field as the Jacobs despite the fact that the Jacobs are at best aloof towards them and at worst bullies.
I have learnt that when you borrow a fine ram to service your ewes you need to mark him somehow so you know if the deed has actually been done.
I remember finding out what a raddle was a few years ago, and realised it was a useful tool in knowing if you could expect your ewes to be in lamb or not. Failing that then at least a spray tin of marker. We failed to attach a raddle or buy a spray. Now I have to learn what the signs are of a pregnant ewe I guess, and fingers crossed they are pregnant. It’s meant to be the beginning of a Jacobs flock for us.
Despite Ned being a Collie and bought up n a farm, he is not a sheep dog, which is a shamebecuase he would love to be.
Unfortunately, he has his own ideas of what a sheep dog should do, and needless to say we are not entering him into any One Man His Dog competitions
Spring project for Ned and I maybe. Shepherding classes, and to always remember that there is very little romance in live stock keeping, but a lot of mud, frustration and work. And some joy and fun hopefully with some lambs !!
We have been really busy here, weather permitting, and have almost sold out of all the cell grown trees that I’ve been growing for the past eighteen months. Very gratifying, and a big thanks to those lovely volunteers and sisters who helped out so much this summer, and no thanks to the cat who allowed us to lose so many oak and hazel in their early stages of life!
Also been really busy with my colleague and friend Helen organising and promoting the 2021 programme of events and courses for our new venture In The Wilds. http://www.inthewilds.net
Click on In The Wilds on Homepage side bar for the programme.
See below for our first course of the year. Back by popular demand. However, we have had to change the dates, due to the extended Covid 19 restrictions. it is now on April 15/16/17
The Jacob sheep had a ram come and visit over Christmas, and he was a very fine beast, fingers crossed we will have a few Jacob lambs in April t grow our flock. watch this space.
Heydon Hill Tree Nursery