Selling off the family silver

I knew that the new Con-Dem government would be looking for ANYTHING to hatchet to raise cash but it never even occurred to me that they'd consider selling off UK habitat. Now it transpires they intend to sell around half of the 748,000 hectares of woodland overseen by the Forestry Commission - which includes a lot of not-forest but instead a lot of much loved moorland, heath and brownfield sites - This is scheduled for doing by 2020, apparently.


 Access to Forestry Commission land by us, the ordinary members of the public, has legal backing. What worries me and lots of others like me is that if the land no longer belongs to the Forestry Commision this will no longer be the case. Who knows what will then happen to the land? Golf courses, hotel developments, well anything becomes possible.

I am also really concerned about this because  the FC is a partner in an organisation called the Forest Education Inititive, which amongst other functions promotes and organises Forest School networks across the country. I am lucky, I have my own woodland to run my Forest School events in but many schools rely on the use of local FC woodland to participate in FS sessions. What will happen if these woods are sold off? Will there still be access? Who knows?

This is a bad case of "selling off the family silver" for a very short term gain, but  without thinking of the long term effects.

So please, if you, too dislike the idea of no longer being able to visit your local FC woodland or heathland to walk, play, take part in events or just know it is there if you ever wanted to visit,.sign this petition

This is serious. It needs to be stopped.

Fri. It was very wet today.....

So work was mainly undercover, inside the house or inside the shelter of the polytunnel.

I cleared and tidied the "lean to" which is our 3 and 3/4 sided work area/barn/food store/log store (it is quite big!) and made some more work space to do stuff in...

CM was then working  in the lean to, cutting up lots of timber to make the frame for the new walk in Mega Hen Pen. It is going to be made of of identical wood framed, mesh panels, and will be fixed together so it can be dismantled and moved, if needed.


I also spent several hours washing the inside and the outside of the polytunnel, thus letting in lots more light...a timely reminder to all of you to do the same in your undercover growing area, if you have not already....

I got very wet, though....as I have never mastered the art of squirting water overhead without getting water running down my arm....

Finally, I rearranged the inside of the polytunnel and than sowed more seeds ( brassicas and celeriac) and potted on another batch of various tomato plants. These went from their seed modules into individual 3 inch pots.

Later on inside the house I did some tidying up of the study and bedrooms, and a bit of college work.

Finally, some random photos of the wood, garden and hens...

 Vanilla (right)  and Custard the Cream legbars. Sadly, Custard was taken by a fox last week....

Flowers in the wood

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Pruning the apple trees...












The front garden 10 days ago, all these have gone, now!

A day out with fellow composters....and a really good talk!

Back from a lovely day out at a social gathering of Herefordshire and Worcestershire Master Composters held at Worcester Woods Country Park. We had a fabulous talk from a member of the Countryside Services, Senior Greenspace Officer Wade Muggleton, on his amazing recycled garden

Wade is a local award winning gardener and writer. His talk was titled "Gardening like a Womble! a talk on permaculture and gardening"

Wade has travelled extensively in New Zealand & Australia, visiting and working on organic farms and permaculture projects. He “walks the talk”, having spend the last 7 years developing his own small garden into an intensive food producing plot that contains more than 23 kinds of fruit and about 20 types of vegetables. “Grow It” magazine awarded him their coveted “plot of the year” award in 2009 and he writes for Permaculture magazine.

It was a really good talk, as Wade said, “if we use small garden plots and allotments we reduce carbon emissions, waste, transport and pollution.” He is the most amazing skip diver, vegetables and fruits were flourishing in an amazing variety of containers and raised beds. As you might expect from an audience of Master Composters, we then had a lively question and answer session .

We had some lovely lunch, followed by a workshop, again headed up by Wade, on making willow structures such as obelisks and hurdles. We all had a really good time and, as always ,I came away enthused and energised by these gatherings with like minded folk.

Wade demonstrating how to make a willow obelisk

Also no hens were killed today and it was lovely weather.

So all in all a good day!.

Master Composters cutting willow.

Finally, if anyone reading this lives in Herefordshire or Worcestershire, the Waste Management team are looking for some more people to train as Master Composters? So, if you are interested, give me an email and I can give you more details?

Me and my lovely willow obelisk.

Sunshine and twiggery

Its been a lovely day here today,

My day started well, with a meeting in my "office" ...a walk around the wood with a prospective client (grin)

I then spent a pleasant hour walking around Ledbury taking photos and thinking up clues for a trail I have been commisioned to write.....so got to have a wander around a historic market town, in the sunshine and get paid for it...my kind of work...!

Then had lunch out in pub with Cm.

This afternoon I have been making twig hearts and stars and writing a lesson plan and tutorial sheet on how to make them, for a class I am teaching next week.

Also let the hens out to have a wander in the sunshine, I stayed close by and kept an eye open for the Fox. The feathery ladies seemed very pleased to be out of the runs!

Day in my life - June

Time for my June post in this series. Well actually I wrote this a week ago but have only just got around to tidying it up to post (oops - sorry!)

This is actually describing an exceptionally busy day for me even by MY standards, its a very busy time at Compost Mansions at the moment! I am out teaching or doing a Forest School/Environmental Education/Eco club/composting/gardening session somewhere most days in these last few weeks of the Summer term, on top of my normal schedule of tending animals, veg patch, polytunnel, house, family etc..AND the house is covered in scaffolding and we have people re-doing our roof at the moment..and Compostman is up on the scaffold painting or repairing wood work or doing other stuff...so its even more chaos here than usual!

So...a (very busy) day in my life in June 2009

Got up early (before 5 am!), had a shower and dressed in manky clothes to go and do stuff in the wood and with the livestock. I was expecting a party of 30 school children arriving with their teachers at 9 30 am for a session in the Wood, so it was going to be a very busy day.



This is the sound I listened to as I went outside....



As I was up well before anyone else, I made some tea just for me and drank it whilst in the wood to check on the log circle, the perimeter rope and the general area to make sure it was all still as in my risk assessment of the previous week. I ticked off items on my pre session checklist as I checked them. I also started to take things down to the Wood ( buckets, trowels, tool bags etc)



At about 7 am I opened up the polytunnel for the day and went to let out the hens. It was a very quick session with them this morning as I was very pushed for time, however I was rewarded with some lovely eggs from 2 of the girls.

I said hello to Compostman who had now got up, we made tea and toast, I did morning stuff with Compostgirl ( hair, book bag, check homework etc...), I got changed into my Forest School clothes ( slightly tidier versions of the manky ones) steel toecap walking boots, rucksack with emergency kit, consent forms, risk assessments, other paperwork, waterproofs etc then I greeted my friend T, a fellow Forest School Leader, who was going to join me in the Wood doing the morning session with the party of schoolchildren we were expecting.

The builders arrived and Compostman took Compostgirl to school, while T and I used the wheelbarrow to take first aid kit, water, towels, loo roll, wash basin, soap, tool bag, craft items, buckets, clay from the wood, and other assorted stuff down to the wood to set up for the morning. I came back to the house and quickly ate toast and had a second cuppa, then breakfast stuff cleared away I went to gather up the last of the required stuff for the Forest School session I was about to embark on. The 2 other practitioners involved with the morning arrived and were greeted and then we all went down to the log circle site.

The children arrived at about 9.30 by coach, along with at least 7 members of staff plus a parent and the next 3 hours were spent with all of us having huge fun in the Wood, playing games, exploring, making dens, finding treasures, running around exploring, having a campfire and making popcorn.







The children went back to school by coach at 12.30 with their teachers and the rest of us sat round the fire and I made a hot drink. We discussed the morning, reflected on how it had gone and relaxed a bit around the fire.



Everybody left, I had a quick lunch with Compostman and then spent the next hour or so tidying up, which involved delights such as emptying and cleaning out the toilet (its just a commode type, so I can tip the contents down the loo as we have a septic tank so I really didn't want to use a chemical toilet!) taking everything back to the house, cleaning and checking tools, first aid kit etc. In the long term I will build a composting toilet and a low impact building but for now I make do with a tarpaulin shelter and a toilet tent.

At about 3 pm I sat down for 10 mins with a mug of tea, having made a round of drinks for the roofers and builders, and did a catch up with my emails.



Then Compostgirl came home, very excited and tired from a long hot day at school. She wanted to go down to the wood to see what had been going on, so after a drink, snack and a change of clothes we wandered into the coolness of the wood. We made some mud monsters and I made the Green Man and Summer Lady to honour the Solstice the next day.



The builders went away for the day and we all had tea, then I did some work in the garden (weeding and planting out more beans, digging potatoes) and polytunnel (watering, taking off side shoots from tomato plants, planting more salad stuff)

By 8 pm I was very tired, so I did bedtime with Compostgirl, got the hens back in the Orchard early and then had a shower. Compostman had been doing stuff on the roof and in the loft and workshop all this time and came soon came to have a shower as well. We watched HIGNFY on BBC1 and the News and then not surprisingly I went to bed! And not surprisingly Compostman wasn't long behind me as he is working very hard doing stuff with the loft and the roof as well and has been putting in some very long, hot days of work. I slept very well that night, I can tell you!

So, a long day but a very satisfying day, the Forest School activities at my site went smoothly, I got good feedback for the site, the teaching staff and children really loved what we all did and all in all it was a good day. The building work is also going well and Compostman is very tired but happy with the progress of stuff.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about my day, I have certainly enjoyed doing it

Solstice tree spirits

Some tree spirits I have made in the wood, to honour the Solstice




The Green Man



The Summer Lady.

I had fun making these in the wood. They are made from our own clay, squidged by my own hands and they are up in trees at shoulder height, facing each other, as you enter the log circle.

I hope they last for a while...

Fun and games at Compost Mansions, pt 2

What we got up to today...well, just a sample....!





Oh the children DID have fun...! ( and so did all the grown ups....)

Fun and games at Compost Mansions...pt 1

The view from my (upstairs) office window at the moment!

The people doing the bits and pieces on the roof are really good at what they do, and work amazingly hard.

I feel tired just watching what they do in a day...

It has been a bit of a challenge to organise the stuff I need to organise to do the Eco club contract I am currently working on, and to sort out the final details for the first of my Forest School sessions in the Wood, with all this going on around me at the house....but...

I managed it all! and the session in the woodland today went very well and the children really enjoyed themselves...which is what it was all about!

Its a Cat thing.......

I seem to have become able to grow cats in pots in the polytunnel now...



fortunately (for Tabitha Twitchett and Tom Kitten!) the pots only contained growing medium...I hadn't actually planted them up yet!



Compostgirl has been making a very palatial den in the sitting room and has made it very comfy, with lots of cushions on the floor...so guess who decided it would be a good place to snooze away a rainy day?....yep, you got it, Tom, Tabitha and Sid!



And finally...we were down in the Wood a few evenings ago, making adjustments to our log circle in the pouring rain ( as you do..) It was getting late and Sid came down to say "hello" to us....and spent about 20 mins sitting on Compostgirl .....purring and talking to her...






And then walked all around the log circle, on top of the logs, jumping over the gaps, as if to inspect what we had been doing. Then he walked back up to the house with us, chatting away all the time, announcing our return to the other animals.

He was SOAKING when we got back to the house (as were we) but he really doesn't to mind being wet at all.

Woodland wonderland in pictures

Here are some pictures of our woodland. It is looking particularly beautiful at the moment :-)



Cowslips and Bluebells



More Bluebells



An Early Purple Orchid in the wood.



Yet more Bluebells! They have been spreading throughout the wood year on year as we thin the trees, coppice and generally manage the woodland for maximum wildlife and nature benefit. It also means we get wood in return, which is what a sustainable managed wood is all about, to my mind!


I LOVE this time of year, I am soooooo busy and it is a mad time, what with planting and sowing seeds and tending the veg plot and garden and mowing and compost digging...and also doing much the same at school with the childen....

but I LOVE it all:-)

A wonderful snowy tuesday moment.

We woke up to more snow here today, it was very quiet and still. I went to let the chickens out into the orchard and all I could hear was a Robin singing and some Jays screeching at each other ...



I went into the wood paddock, just a little way in by the compost bins,and saw a whole expanse of white, untouched and untrodden except by birds and small animals...and then I saw the Hare. We name her Serena although what SHE calls herself we don't know!



and I was tempted to walk into the wood after her, on that expanse of snowy whiteness, to try to capture her on my camera....

but I didn't :-)

I left Serena the Hare, the other animals and all the birds to enjoy the snow.



At times like this my heart sings with the sheer joy of living where I do.

it is beautiful, simply beautiful...

Spring Greetings!

Spring Greetings!




Today is Imbolc, the first day of the Celtic spring, and truly it IS springlike here! it has been very cold but sunny and the grass is green, the snowdrops are bravely nodding their heads in the cold breeze and I, well I feel the first stirrings of growth in my heart, a need to plant seeds and get into the garden and tend and sow and dig and weed...

I went out this morning and looked, I mean REALLY looked at all the wonderful signs of new life. I was, of course, followed by chickens......






It is too cold and too wet to dig the soil, but I have planted some seeds and potted some strawberry runners up and raked a few beds clear of debris, to allow the emerging daffodils space and light and air...

I picked some flowers in honour of the day...I tend to leave flowers growing, I like them better in the ground! But I felt the need to bring some Spring inside my home today....so catkins, snowdrops, all flowering when everything else is still dormant....a promise of what will be, in the months to come...




I am, as you may know, very fond of the work of illustrator Wendy Andrew, I have several of her wonderful prints in my home, indeed her "Goddess Wheel of the Year" is a favourite of mine! It features in this photo of my seasonal offerings corner, with the flowers I picked today to honour the new Spring.





I shall leave you with her thoughts on this day

Feel Me now as Maiden.
I am the initiator.
I am the twinkle of an idea.
I am the spark that activates and inspires.
I am the light that illuminates manifestation.
I bring the energy that encourages the sleeping Winter world to begin to stir.
Feel My presence.
I am the spark of life in all things.

©Wendy Andrew
The Spring.

Musings inspried by Leaf Mould and a ( hopefully?) last mowing

I managed to cut the grass yesterday! I have still not recovered from the shingles and I did too much last week with various work related stuff, so have had a few days of doing very little ( well by my standards, anyway!)and resting and reading. But I felt a bit perkier, so I cut the grass.

I am very relieved by this as it has been such wet weather that I haven't been able to cut it for ages. We have lots of naturalised bulbs under the grass and they are beginning to emerge from the soil so I needed to get the grass cut NOW, or risk cuttting the tips of the plants off...also it helps to show off the flowers next spring , if the grass is tidy now.


I also went a gathering leaves to make leaf mould. Here is a path in the wood before I went down it....



And here is the path after!







And here are all the leaves in a huge pile, waiting for me to rearrange various part-full compost bins and use the finished compost and leaf mould from last year into pots and onto beds, so I can refill the bins with these lovely leaves to make more leaf mould, to use for next winter! ( but before that happens I expect we will jump in the pile a few times ;-) )

Its the same old things here, year after year, I have blogged about doing this job before and I expect I shall write about it again next year! But I delight in the cyclic nature of our life here, it is a thing which gives me great joy and is a source of strength, in some indefinable way.

I love this time of year, I wrap up warm and do my chores outside, I feed the hens and collect the eggs (or Compostman collects the eggs for me) this is the time for us to gather leaves and clear the beds and fork them over,to empty compost bins and spread the wonderful rich compost on to the veg patch, to refill them with all the stuff cleared from the various beds and boarders, leaving enough wild patches so insects and animals and birds can feed and shelter of course!

We get time, now, to do some of the jobs that never get done in the spring and summer, because we are just too busy! So... tidy up sheds and oil and sharpen tools and sweep up in the Polytunnel and have a clear out of things.

And also to fill the log basket during daylight (!) so as to have it ready to light the woodburner at dusk, to have the hens shut in the Orchard well before dark so they can be safe whilst they make up their minds who is going to sleep in which hen house tonight and with whom......with chuntering and grumbling and muted henny sounds of argument...they DO make me laugh!



Then, when it gets dark, to retire inside our house, coming in from outside with cold hands and cheeks is a delight, as the warmth from the kitchen is blissful! It is a warm and cosy place, where we then drink hot tea and make bread and hearty casseroles and stews and soups made from veg we have grown ourselves.

I get time to make candles and soap and creams, to knit and sew and do all the things I like to do but have very little time for in the summer months. Time to read even more than I usually do! Time also for sitting in front of the woodburner in the dark, gazing into the flames...and dream of next year, of bulbs unfurling in the spring sunshine, seeds, and flowers and summer again.

All this musing, just because today I gathered leaves.......

:-))