Rainbows everywhere

Beech & spindle

What do you do with the wood that gets blown down or is part of the ongoing HLS or forestry work? One bit of waste (well it may be waste for most people, but for a few it’s anything you want it to be) was used when Andy Marczewski fashioned a bowl out of the beech that fell down in the northern belts a few months ago- it was spalted, hence the dark and light coloured wood. The spoon was made out of wood from the hedgerow coppiced at Valley Farm – this was one little, tiny bit of wood scavenged from the hedge! Blimey, you could make a million spoons from  just that one hedge BUT… plastic has driven this art, and in fact most other wooden ( treen)  items, firmly into the past; shame really as it’s all biodegradable and replenishable with just a bit of soil, water, sunlight and carbon dioxide. By the way, it’s a spindle wood spoon- spindle used to be used for making spindles for spinning wool; not sure if it had any other uses.

The Flintstones’ club!!!!!!!

Sunday, and the Wimpole pole lather’s were in action again … had a bit of hornbeam to play with which proved a little harder than some woods to cleave as it doesn’t have a clear grain. However it is very easy wood to spoke shave and pleasant to use when green.

Bodgers at work

Hornbeam is a very heavy, white wood that has a short grain unlike ash. It weighs almost the same as beech, maybe slightly heavier. The timber is a very pale, creamy white with an attractive flecked grain. It is extremely hard and strong and, when finished, it is very smooth; it is sometimes compared to ivory. Because of its hardness the wood is difficult to work so today hornbeam is mainly used for furniture, carving boards, flooring or in turnery to make tool handles. In the past it was used to make ox-yokes (a wooden beam which fitted across the shoulders of oxen to allow them to pull heavy carts or ploughs) and cogs for windmills and water mills. Hornbeam is a very dense timber and so produces excellent firewood and charcoal.

Items made since last meeting

Historically it has been coppiced or pollarded for a regular crop of poles. The name hornbeam comes from the hardness of its timber: ‘horn’ meaning ‘hard’, and ‘beam’ was the name for a tree in old English. However those damn grey squirrels will strip the bark clean off younger speciens.

I turned some pie moulds and two rolling pins and dabbled in the dark art of bashing willow through the heart. Even the dragonfly made an appearance. Paul made a dibber, Jim made some popular (a tree silly-poplar) spatulas and some other items I have forgotten about. Andy brought along his heart and arrow, bowl, cup and croc’. Tony was making the parts too! (Blast! I’ve forgotten what he was making) Same goes for David… oooops sorry 😦

John’s front room- how DOES he get away with it?!!!!!

Lastly a photo to show that some of us get away with blue murder- John has the luxury of green wood working in his living room ( not too far to chuck the shavings!)

John the Trekpaard in Cobb’s Wood

Monday and we were back coppicing the ash in Cobb’s Wood as it had been reasonably dry over the weekend (which reminds me that I managed to get the oats, barley and wheat sown; just have a little bit more to sow and, hopefully, we’ll have a good crop in the late summer).

Jim logging

Try that with a tractor!

Always a pleasure to hand the reins over… literally! Jim had a go at logging with John the horse (not John with the shaving horse in the living room 😉 ). One thing we can do that a tractor can’t is to go through a small passage so that we, or should I say Paul, can then stack the 3m poles more easily. John the horse had worked hard enough for the day so went back to the stables at lunchtime while we finished off the day by cutting and planting willow.

Tuesday was wet but pretty

The first rainbow of the week.

Moving the horse-drawn potato spinner

There was a re-organisation down on the Farm and the horse-drawn potato spinner had to be taken up to Cobb’s Wood Farm- might be able to use it this year I hope.

Biomachinery maintenance

The frog!

Time to do some maintenance on the biomachine aka John  the horse- his hooves had grown somewhat and were in need of a trim; so were his frogs (no silly, not slippery green frogs, the ones under the sole of his hooves) -they are the soft tissue in the centre of his hoof and apparently act as a blood pump to assist with getting the blood back up to the heart (hope that’s correct? Yes it is- says so on wiki here). I have never shoed John as he doesn’t work on the road- no point spending loads of money when you don’t have to. However, a foot trim is needed on occasions; it’s a tough job with this sort of horse, bit of a battle actually, it’s like going eight rounds in a boxing ring and the hoof is really hard and an inch thick.

Long straw bedding

Neil added some oat long straw to the horse’s bed- last year we used the modern wheat straw and, one has to say, it’s pretty useless as it is short and brittle and doesn’t last long. The heritage wheat, oat and barley straw is cut much greener, and is also much longer, making it the best stuff for bedding as we have found out; it also lasts much longer. Odd really that we’ve forgotten how useful long straw was because modern farming has almost done away with it and we have had to make do with a much inferior product- might be a market for long straw in regard to livestock bedding.

The Woodyard will have a new roof

This week the scaffolders have been erecting, yes you’ve guessed it, scaffolding around the Woodyard in preparation for re-roofing it. Big job this, and it might get a bit bigger if the timber in the roof void is too rotten… we’ll have to wait and see what it’s condition is.

Willow

We carried on cutting the willow and took advantage of this to cut out those bits with catkins on at the same time so that we could try to sell them in the shop as, in the supermarkets, bunches of pussy willow go for £5 a bunch and our red willow with its silver catkins is far more striking.

Decoration

In the shop

These catkins will grow to over one inch long, possibly two. I think we should have cut them a week or two ago as I had one bunch in the House when the catkins had just started to bud, after two weeks indoors they had grown nearly two inches long and looked very handsome. So now there are bunches decorating the Stables and some for sale; we will also collect some of the wild goat willow as this has heaps of catkins on it. Interestingly the bees love this early source of nectar and pollen and it is a very important food source after the winter period. This leads me on to the honey bees I have- to my great surprise, instead of losing a few hives (which I thought I had), I found out that there are eight active hives… might be a good year for honey.

Willow rods

We cut all three varieties of willow and were especially keen to plant the willow basketry one ( I think the red one is just for decoration). All you do is cut rods between 12-24 inches long and then push them into the soil.

Setting the willow rods

Like this. Neil and Paul put a load more rows in and we are hoping that the rods (just a stick really) will root and grow. We will have to hoe the ground to keep the weeds at bay and hopefully will see some results of our hard work. The little willow (osier) bed is behind the rabbit fence as otherwise the blighters would eat the young shoots… as would the deer.

Willow dragonfly and rat

The dragonfly and rat were made from some of the long, thin willow rods- actually it’s just like making corn dollies, well worth the effort.

Short-tailed vole

At some point when we were cleaning up at Cobb’s Wood we came across this short-tailed vole- lucky for him/her we saw it before the dogs did… so it was released into a nearby hedge.

Somebody would have liked that vole!

Wishful thinking.

Wow!

Here’s another rainbow- what a week for them.

Collecting the last of the guards to replace the wooden ones.

These are the last of the guards from Andy Klose Engineering- they will replace the older wooden ones which are failing. The trees are still too small to withstand the attentions of the Farm’s livestock so we’ll put these guards around them. It’ll also make the Park tidier and uniform. One thing that’s changed has been the making of stillage- that is to say, a containerised system that protects the tree guards when in transit; it also allows the guards to be stacked, so saving space. That’ll make next year’s planting much easier.

Brash- piles of it

Clearing up

Wednesday was the only dry day of the week; as there was the hedge laying course on Saturday we needed to clear up the brash from the hedge laying competition held in February. It was going to be quicker to pile up the brash and burn it. Just as well we still had the winch on the MF390 tractor.

Finishing off

One or two parts of the competition hedge had a little makeover and tidy up to make them match with the rest. We also piled up the wood that was cut from the brash which amounted to a ton’s worth- it’ll either make some deadwood habitat or we’ll sell it for firewood.

View over the Rhee Valley

The finished article overlooking the massive Rhee Valley.

Fire 🙂

John the shaving horse (I have to make the distinction as, when I shouted commands to John the horse, John the shaving horse would leap out of his skin thinking I was barking at him when logging in Cobb’s Wood!)  was rather taken by the fire and it wasn’t long before the massive heap of brash was reduced to ashes.

Up goes the tawny owl box

One little extra job, requested by Wimpole’s wildlife reporter- namely Graham, was to re-hang the tawny owl box in the Gloucester’s where we have heard a couple of them hooting even in the middle of the day. Graham hopes that they’ll use it allowing him to try and get some photos and video footage.

All bow to Sir John

All hail to John the shave horse who gets away with using it in the living room! Seriously though, Paul wasn’t feeling too well- actually he was picking up twigs as, when the Farm come to drill (sow) their corn, they could jam up the seed drill. What a job eh?!

Clearing up the hedge laying brash

Nice hot fire at the end of the day

After the tawny owl box job we carried on burning up those odd bits left lying around- all were soon rounded up and put on the fire. We also managed to make a pile of brash on the other side of the fence which will have to be burnt at a later date. Just the stakes and binders to put out for the hedge laying course at the weekend and a bit of mowing next to the hedge to be laid so as to make life easier for the course participants.

Another rainbow

Well- here’s another one.

In flower

Spring is definitely here now… just hope we don’t get a really cold snap.

And another one!

Blimey! We have had a whole heap of rainbows at Wimpole.

Getting ready for the hedge laying course

Friday was wet- just as well we had some indoor maintenance to do on the hand tools we were going to use for the hedge laying course. Sarah was making some rags to protect the axes and bill hooks once sharpened- hopefully Graham will make us some more permanent leather protectors for the axes soon.

Oh boy, who’s been cutting wire with my loppers?!!!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately quite a few of the hand tools had suffered during the winter’s work. These loppers looked as though some one had tried cutting fencing wire with them; some axes were also fairly well dented. Time to get them sharp again as these would not do.

A lovely grinding stone- just the ticket to put an edge on the axes

The Wimpole lather’s have been given/loaned a very nice sharpening stone wheel-  it just needs some TLC and it’ll make a wonderful addition to the sharpening equipment. The modern electric grinders tend to be too aggressive unless you buy some of the very expensive ones with variable speeds; we do have hand abrasives and stones but this is a stone wheel which turns in a pool of water so is a wet stone. It can be made to run on a tractor or stationary engine but also has a handle for manual turning. It’ll be very useful for sharpening the scythe blades but today we used it to sharpen the axes as it was less aggressive than our electric grinding wheels. Will need to replace the bit of iron that was supposed to hold the water ‘tho- it’s rusted away so won’t hold water. We just poured water onto it as required for now. By lunchtime all the hand tools were razor-sharp- hope they will last the day on Saturday.

Anne planting her tree

Victoria planting hers

Last job of the week was to plant the last six trees in trees in the Park which have been left for the staff at Wimpole. It rained all day and wasn’t going to stop- there was mud everywhere and the holes were still full of water.

Hattie at it too

Jess planting her hornbeam

But not before she had to bale out the stinky hole

Anne bashing in the stakes

How many does it take to plant a tree?

Don’t miss it Victoria!

Oh no, that was Jess’s pink laundry tub – oooops!

Three hornbeam and one horse chestnut were planted by the girls, not one man turned up to help- shame on you. The last two walnut trees are going to be planted on Monday by Catherine.

19 hares- pretty impressive

Although all the organic land at Wimpole was ploughed in the autumn and left with the earth fallow, the tenanted land was sown with autumn conventional wheat and now has a green veil of emerging wheat. Now it’s March ( well almost) the hares are up to their usual antics and, up by Valley Farm, there were 19 hares running here and there- boxing as they went. Even conventional farming has benefits- roll on the mad March hare!