We had a smaller volume of tasks to achieve this year, and one good solid day with a handful of volunteers has seen all the jobs we identified needing to be done finished. Hurrah!
We felled only a small number of the Ash trees in one particular area this year, and along with some bramble bashing with scythes, a gate post put in, tracks mulched with woodchip, and general tidying and smartening up this should help to continue to make the woodland a lovely place to walk this coming year.
So, it’s the time for balance – well it’s good to have something to aspire to!! Day and night are of equal length. It’s the time to celebrate the harvest and to ooze gratitude. Becoming aware of the changing season gives us another chance to look at things anew. The seeds of ideas and hopes that we plant now will re-emerge in the Spring, strengthened and consolidated by their time in the dark and stabilized by their strong roots.
As always, there are plenty of ideas being bounced around at Pentiddy. But very much like our garden this year, we have fertile ground, we just need to decide what to plant and then try and find space to fit it all in!! To help with figuring that out, we take September off from having volunteers on site. Elowen has also now officially left home and is at college in Bristol and Adeon is back to school so there’s opportunity for some deep breaths and dreaming.
It’s the time of year for apple sponge puddings, evening craft activities, reading and the lighting the first of the indoor fires. A time for appreciation of the harvest and abundance of food. IT’s been a great year for growing (apart from the lack of water at times). We’ve had bumper crops of sun-loving crops including corn, tomatoes, squashes and beans.
Bright Fire
Adeon (meaning ‘Bright Fire) had a big moment during the Summer when he succeeded in making fire by friction on his own for the first time. So, following on from Elowen’s Menarchy ceremony last year, we feel it’s the right time to start looking at designing Adeon’s rite of passage to take place next year. Jeremy Thres, whom we know though our 8 shields involvement, has come on board to help us. With his 20 years of study and experience in the field of Initiation and Vision Quests, we feel more confident about creating something to support Adeon in becoming more of who he is at the heart.
Funding Success!
We were delighted to find out last week that we’ve been successful in our application to Natural England for a hedge and boundary grant. We have been awarded £10,000 towards work over the next 2 years repairing and restoring some of our beautiful stone hedges and laying some of the lengths of over-stood trees and shrubs on the tops. It will be really good experience for the team and it will be great to be able to pay them for their time on it. The result will be even better wildlife corridors and effective livestock-proof hedging. Congratulations to Hannan for his hard work with Ele on the application – the funders don’t make it easy!
Firewood for sale
Yes- we still have some firewood available though sales are going well. There are Ash and Alder available, or a mix. A trailer load (about 3/4 cubic metre) is £90 and we can deliver it for free in the local area. Most of this cost is fed back into the Community Woodland Charity, so purchasing it supports the continued running and management of this lovely open-access woodland.
Community Woodland AGM
In order for the Community Woodland Charity to function, it requires active community involvement which takes many forms. One of these is to join us for the AGM and have your say in the management and running of the woodland- you may even enjoy the trustees company enough to join them! The meeting will take the form of a walk around followed by tea and cake in the roundhouse. It will take place on the 7th October, 4pm-530pm. It would be lovely to see you there!
The Roundhouse
Roundhouse with new Lime walls.
Much of the Summer has been spent refurbishing the Roundhouse. After 10 years of temporary walls it now has wattle and lime walls using the surplus poles from last year’s Hazel coppice cut and some of our neighbours’ excess lime plaster. It looks gorgeous and we’re looking forward to seeing the array of events that it’ll be used for in the next year, including a family wedding!
A big thank you goes to our extra volunteers who came along to help out numerous times and especially to Lee for providing the most beautiful hand-crafted breads and other goodies to help keep us smiling.
Where next?
Our 3 full-time Interns will be starting on October the 1st for 9 months. We will ask them to introduce themselves in the next newsletter. We have plenty of interesting work for them to take part in over the coming seasons. The masonry stove will DEFINITELY be happening, as will the creation of the wildflower meadow on the new burial site, a Dying Matters open day in May and of course the coppice season. This year we will be doing our first cut of the Chestnut in the Community Coppice.
We’ve attended a number of meetings recently to help us clarify our ideas regarding social enterprise possibilities here and the idea of leasing the community coppice to a coppice worker/woodlander/social forester. Watch this space for progress….!
Stool making Course
Elm bark stool
The dates have changed for the woven bark seat post and rung stool making course. It is now set for the 3rd and 4th of November. There are only a couple of places left so have a look at the events page for details…..
A beautiful and accessible project and a lovely piece of furniture to take home…
8 shields mosaic
8 shields mosaic
We’ll leave you with a photo of the mosaic that Hannan and Ele created during the Summer. It is hanging above the outdoor kitchen sink and serves as a very beautiful reminder of the 8 shields model used in the Nature Culture Regeneration work we’re becoming more involved with. Click the image to see a bigger version. To read more about Nature Culture Regeneration, the Art of Mentoring and the 8 Shields model visit http://8shields.org/
From snow blizzards to heat-waves, we’ve had it all since our last posting. The energy is high and new ideas are rapidly unfurling at Pentiddy. We were anticipating sitting back and enjoying the feeling of having completed the coppicing for the year but the land here had other ideas….and plenty of them!
So, yes, the Hazel coupe is all cut. Considering it was a first cut we weren’t sure what we’d get out of it but we’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much we’ve managed to sell and use. A wide variety of products have been extracted including hedging stakes and binders, pea sticks, bean poles, bale spikes for 2 straw bale houses and weavers for fencing. The rest will go for firewood and charcoal and the tops are being converted to biochar in Tim’s Oregon kiln or being chipped for use on paths and on beds in the forest garden. Duchy of Cornwall Nurseries and Goldenbank Nursery have been very keen to buy our local products to sell in their shops but sales will depend on the mark-up they put on them. Today we were making up sample batches of liggers, gads and spars to take up to the Guild of Master Thatchers to see if we can persuade them to use UK grown material instead of cheaper Polish imports.
Roundhouse.
The remaining weavers that we didn’t manage to sell are going towards re-building the walls of the roundhouse to replace the planks which were only ever intended to be temporary but have been in place for 10 years! The new walls will be wattle and lime. We will be opening this up as a community project from the 7th to the 11th of May. 11am – 5pm (sorry for the short notice!) Materials are being paid for by donations we’ve collected from people who have used the roundhouse over the last few years. If you would like to get involved please let us know so we can arrange tools etc. Please bring lunch to share. We hope to have a BBQ on the Saturday evening.
Hedgelaying.
Hedgelaying at Pentiddy
We managed to fit in some lengths of hedge-laying before the season ended. We laid West-country style on top of the hedge banks and South of England style on the new hedge by the house. Hannan and Ele have worked up a £10,000 grant application for work on re-building, repairing and laying lengths of hedge all round Pentiddy. If successful there will be plenty of opportunities for anyone wanting to come along and learn the skills involved.
Burials.
Sheep grazing the new burial area
It’s been a really busy start to the year in the burial site with some beautiful ceremonies and, with a bit of encouragement, an increasing number of families willing to take on more themselves rather than handing everything over to funeral directors. The wild-flower burial area is finally fenced and the sheep have been busy grazing in there. We are now ready to start looking at the rest of the process. The top soil that was removed from the area years ago is needing to find a new home. If you are interested in a large quantity of top soil then please get in touch so we can discuss logistics.
Sheep.
The sheep have been sheared mostly by Tim this year following on from a blade shearing day we attended at Fernhill Farm near Bristol. There’s a lot to it and it will take quite a bit of practice to get it down to 3 minutes per sheep but Tim’s determined. I now have some more fleeces ready for shroud making. Our first lamb was born on Easter day but no more yet so we’re not sure what’s happening there.
Scything.
Freshly Peened blade
From one sharp tool to another, the scything has begun! Kevin Austin of Skygrove hosted a peening day to help us all to get our blades hammered out and sharpened up ready for hay-making. We picked up plenty of tips from the expert. We will be working with him and others as a mowing team over the Summer so if you have fields that need mowing let us know! If you’re interested in getting involved at hay-making time then get in touch and we’ll keep you posted- or keep an eye on our events calendar.
Community Woodland.
The Community Woodland work days were staggeringly well attended this year. Many thanks to all of you who leant a hand and a good vibe to the days. There are large quantities of top quality firewood available and more to come over the next few years as Ash Die-back has well-and-truly hit. We have purchased a new trailer for the car so we can now deliver 1m³ loads for £120.
Networking.
The last few weekends have seen us attending 3 really interesting meetings relating to getting more happening in Cornwall regarding sustainable land use and community building. The first was the Land Workers Alliance’s first South West regional meeting. This was a very well attended and inspiring weekend with some very good networking amongst other land workers and policy makers. It also included the opportunity to look around the various projects based on the Dartington Estate of which there are many from forest gardens to CSA schemes and field-scale permaculture designs. We have returned with renewed enthusiasm for my budding forest garden which is really starting to come together. We’re now thinking of setting up a Liskeard area land workers group – watch this space!
Coppice cut at Devichoys Woods
We also attended the Cornwall Coppice Group meeting at Devichoys Woods where Tom Kemp has been coppicing. He and Nick Jarvis have started a community supported firewood project which also encourages volunteers to get involved in sustainable woodland management. This was on the same weekend as the Cornwall ‘Village building’ Art of Mentoring event designed to connect together those wanting to look at ways to create more holistic communities throughout Cornwall and sharing ideas on how to achieve this. We’re following this up by going along to the Nature Culture Regeneration weekend in May on Dartmoor. We’ll report back…….
Volunteers.
We are set for a great season with a solid team; Tim, Hannan, Esme with Tom as a new addition this week. We are also currently interviewing for the Internship for October and have some very promising candidates.
Tim is taking on increasing levels of responsibility and we’re trying to balance that by offering him the management of areas of coppice and mature woodland for him to try out some of his many masterplans. Since putting him through his chainsaw training last year, the weight of all the felling and processing of timber has been lifted from Anthony who is enjoying returning at last to crafting and teaching. The second Hazel chair course took place earlier this month and produced some great furniture. More courses will be offered in the Autumn to include post and rung stools and a full chair-making course.
For sale:
We have the following products for sale- please contact us if you are interested in anything listed below;
Firewood– 1m³ – £120 – green ash, alder or mix- ringed/split – buy now and it will be ready for the winter… delivery free within a 10mile radius. Charcoal – sustainable top quality locally produced hardwood barbecue charcoal – 5kg bag – £7.50 Biochar – 40l bag £20 Top soil – call us do discuss…
Just to let everyone know that due to two very well attended workdays in January and February we do not need the planned one in March. We have therefore CANCELLED this work day.
Thank you to all who attended in January and February- we really appreciate your support. After such a fruitful couple of days we have quite large volumes of wood to extract once the ground is dry. This will then be processed and available as firewood for next season- we are taking orders now if you have space to stack/season this yourself (we are running low on storage here at Pentiddy). Call Anthony on 07765 103504
We are able to deliver free within a five mile radius and a half load* is £60.00 (*approx. half m³)
Unless otherwise specified logs will be ringed to around 9″ long and where necessary split- a mix of sizes will be included in the load from 1½” Ø upwards.
Firewood Purchases will help to support the Community Woodland (Charity no. 1094857).
A diverse Permaculture project in South East Cornwall, UK
