What a lovely morning
Last Saturday and a very early walk to catch the splendour of Wimpole in the mist from up on high. Here is a poem from Bethany Davis which I found on the web:
Overlooking Rectory Farm
Dappled light
What beauty shines in dappled light,
In misty morning air?
What beauty’s cloaked in foggy mist,
Waiting to be shone?
The light it changes endlessly,
No view is ever twice,
Sun and rain and mist and fog,
The ever changing light.
The hills they roll in endless clefts,
Another view of Rectory Farm
Valleys and ridges roll,
Endless land that ever goes,
From dawn way out to dusk.
A home it is this peaceful place,
If only for a time,
The comfort of the love here found,
That makes a house a home.
Horses graze to their delight,
The moisture fine with them.
Sky blue
The rabbits hope, the birds all sing,
The magpie glides around.
Few have seen the morning light,
Out shining through the mist,
Few there are that know delight,
Of ranch’s peacefulness.
Here I sit in morning light,
The peace it fills my soul.
Refreshing rain and my delight,
Out here far from home.
What beauty shines in dappled light,
Cobbs Wood in the mist
In misty morning air?
What beauty’s cloaked in foggy mist,
Waiting to be shone?
The light it changes endlessly,
No view is ever twice,
Sun and rain and mist and fog,
The ever changing light.
~Dappled Light by Bethany Davis, June 7, 2014
WGW sunday and the rocket log
Cory keeping warm
The Wimple Green Woodworkers were at Cobbs Wood Farm on Sunday; being a bit cold we got the rocket log going and had a morning fry up while lunch consisted of braised venison medallions.
Some venison for the frying pan (this is all from one muntjac)
Medallions of muntjac
Never one to waste meat the two muntjac deer we had culled on Friday had been skinned and jointed. Muntjac are quite small and most people don’t bother but, if you take your time, you will get some very fine venison indeed. I have never ever had a bad one but they are particularly hard to skin which is one of the reasons why game dealers don’t want them.
Carnivorous Spangled Hamburgs
Nothing is ever wasted, even the scraps are eaten- usually by the dogs but today the chickens seemed to be enjoying the protein scraps, little dinosaurs.
The group is getting larger
Clearing the ditch
So, what happened to the competition? I for one made so much before Christmas that I had felt burnt out with all that stool making (alas I never made the stool with stretchers). However, others had kept going and, if my memory serves me well, it was David who won (I forgot to take some pictures). What to do for the next meeting? Something small! (but anything you like). The group seems to be increasing in size what with new members asking to come along – it’s a real delight to get people involved with some of these traditional skills. We’ll have to investigate some more green woodworking skills to try out as we’re running out of shave horses and pole lathes.
Monday started cold and it was the day of the interviews for the new Folly Ranger so that was my day taken up; meanwhile Jim and Paul finished clearing out the ditch next to the hedge earmarked for the hedge laying competition on the 7th February. This was the hedge that Shane decided to write about (see ‘Brash’ ) and it was those brambles that tore his face asunder- well, really only an incy wincy scratch.
Off with the weld mesh guards
Last week was definitely one of those weeks- so much forestry work to do but a 20′ container was due to arrive on Tuesday. We had to clear out the shed so that it could be fitted in next to the other two. Having cleared out the shed and moved quite a bit of STUFF to other sheds in the Cobbs Wood Farm complex it was time to get some other work done. This had all taken a lot more time than I envisaged- boy did we really keep all those things?! Having made room for the container we just had to wait until it arrived- that was supposed to be Tuesday… but it never came, then Wednesday… that was a no show too, perhaps it would arrive on Thursday? … So, a few more jobs near Cobbs Wood Farm would have to be done while we waited…
They did work
Darn voles
First on the list was a job in Cobbs Wood- last year we placed short, leftover weld mesh guards over the coppiced ash stools: they worked a treat- stopped the rabbits and deer but, hell, those blasted voles had stripped the bark ( blimey it’s a constant battle against the wildlife!). Must have been one of those vole explosion years, lets just hope some of the ash stools recover.
Now ready for the next coppice area
When we put the weld mesh guards around the ash stools we took the precaution of only attaching the mesh with two nylon zip ties. Made it a lot easier to flat pack and transport the mesh back to the shed ready for the next coppice area…
We don’t sit about
With that done, and absolutely no sight of the container yet, we carried on working around Cobbs Wood Farm tidying up some old farm feeding equipment that had been left in the field. It was very rusty and was consigned to the skip as well as quite a few old metal gates (too far gone to save).
Scrap metal into the recycling skip
Well, the container never arrived (again) and it looked a little shaky for Friday (darn, with all the forestry work to do we could have done without hanging around Cobbs Wood Farm. Mind you we did have a really good clear out and the metal skip was emptied and the contents have gone for recycling; not only that we now have a waste recycling Biffa bin too. We are going to get a rain water tank as well and recycle the rain water.
Clearing up the cord wood
“Honest, the container will be at Wimpole around midday on Friday”. “I’ll believe that when I see it.” With a hard frost the night before we took the tractor and trailer across the land to pick up the cord wood and transported it back to Cobbs Wood Farm .
Plenty of teasels here
Then the longer wood was picked up with the crane while I was at another meeting. Typical, the container turned up just before lunch! Why does that always happen? Needless to say Paul and John had it sorted- the container was lifted off the lorry and placed at the entrance of the shed with some of it on the concrete so that we could slide it in later.
Finally the container arrives late Friday
Getting a container into the shed was a lot harder than you might think- no lifting gear to help and quite a bit of manoeuvering required. Just as well we used a bit of knowhow! (Old techniques in moving objects of great weight using levers and rollers). A twenty-foot container weighs two and a quarter tons when empty but only a few men are needed to move it. Once in the shed and in the right position we brought in the MF390 to shift it into place alongside the others (could have done this by hand but it was POETS day so we didn’t want to be late finishing!) The job still wasn’t quite finished as the security beams had to be moved before the final installation the following week.
During the last part of the week Setup Scenery (they make the scenery for theatres and the like) had asked to take a mould from one of the ancient oak trees in the Park. First some clay slip was painted onto the bark then the rubber was added (pink) and this had to dry before being removed. What was it for? Well, apparently it was for an upcoming production at the Royal Opera House (Guillaume Tell – Rossini’s final opera). I had a look on Wiki about William Tell and found out that he was Swiss, see below, very interesting:
William Tell
“There are several accounts of the Tell legend. The earliest sources give an account of the apple-shot, Tell’s escape and the ensuing rebellion. The assassination of Gessler is not mentioned in the Tellenlied, but is already present in the White Book of Sarnen account.
The legend as told by Tschudi (ca. 1570) goes as follows: William Tell, who originally came from Burglen, was known as a strong man, mountain climber, and an expert shot with the crossbow. In his time, the Habsburg emperors of Austria were seeking to dominate Uri. Albrecht (or Hermann) Gessler, the newly appointed Austrian Vogt of Altdorf, raised a pole in the village’s central square, hung his hat on top of it, and demanded that all the townsfolk bow before the hat.
On 18 November 1307, Tell visited Altdorf with his young son and passed by the hat, publicly refusing to bow to it, and so was arrested. Gessler—intrigued by Tell’s famed marksmanship, yet resentful of his defiance—devised a cruel punishment: Tell and his son would be executed, but he could redeem his life by shooting an apple off the head of his son, Walter, in a single attempt. Tell split the apple with a Bolt from his crossbow.
But Gessler noticed that Tell had removed two crossbow bolts from his quiver, not one. Before releasing Tell, he asked why. Tell replied that if he had killed his son, he would have used the second bolt on Gessler himself. Gessler was angered, and had Tell bound.
Tell was brought to Gessler’s ship to be taken to his castle at Kussnacht to spend his newly won life in a dungeon. But, as a storm broke on Lake Lucerne, the soldiers were afraid that their boat would founder, and unbound Tell to steer with all his famed strength. Tell made use of the opportunity to escape, leaping from the boat at the rocky site now known as the Tellsplatte (“Tell’s slab”) and memorialized by the Tellskapelle.
Tell ran cross-country to Küssnacht. As Gessler arrived, Tell assassinated him with the second crossbow bolt along a stretch of the road cut through the rock between Immensee and Küssnacht, now known as the Hohle Gasse. Tell’s blow for liberty sparked a rebellion, in which he played a leading part. That fed the impetus for the nascent Swiss Confederation.
Tell fought again against Austria in the 1315 Battle of Morgarten. Tschudi also has an account of Tell’s death in 1354, according to which he was killed trying to save a child from drowning in the Schachenbach river in Uri.”
djobaldrickowen
Sadeik
