Photographic Update

Okay, so I realise that I've been pretty slap-dash about updating what's what over the past few months. So here's some pictures describing the last two months of stuff that's been happening, late october-november's adventures not yet uploaded/ included. 

Cuthays Farm, near Axminster. Mary was interested in buying this dilapidated farmhouse and 28 acres of beautiful land. But it was falling down a little bit too much, and she wants more acres to plant her nut crops and forest garden. Still, it was very interesting to view it. The place wasn't connected into mains water, only having a well, it was all really well set up in an old fashioned and very sensible manner that we'd label permaculture nowadays, but then it was just good old normal common sense. 

Cuthays fields with plenty of wild food. 

Less wild food from Mr Kite's greenhouse, tomatoes grown by my fair hand.  Still cropping right into late October. 

Tay from Cherry Wood with puppy Kaia, ours for such a brief flash of time. 

Kaia's dad is Pippin, and her mum is Mooty of Cherry Wood. Perfect parentage! 

Kaia

Kaia lived with us for two lovely weeks before going on to a new home. We miss her! But I don't miss her mess. 

This is the cabin before Kaia came:

 And here it is during her stay. Very different:



My veg garden back in September. Love it!!




Walking near Mr Kite's place.

The River Stour. 

My allotment in september

Mary came to stay

Mary visited us. She helped out in my allotment (did most of the work), we fired up the cob oven for the first time, she designed the outdoor kitchen area (awesome drawing skills), and then we went bat detecting in the woods. We saw soprano pips, noctule, serotine (I think), and lots of daubenton's over the river on the way back.

Elderflower champagne I made a few weeks back

garden

The garden is looking pretty. We weren't going to plant anything this year, instead rest it because it's very low in nutrients. But I caved and planted stuff anyway.

The cabin

This is at the allotment a few weeks ago

Dorset Art Weeks and project days

This weekend we have a couple of project days scheduled at Mr Kite’s place. We’re going to be making an earth oven for our new outdoor kitchen area. Gabriel is making a yurt, so we’ll be doing some steambending for the lattice. We’ll be doing a charcoal burn with the help of our friend Adam who has recently switched from a messy career as a charcoal maker to the cleaner thatching trade. Gabriel and Mr Kite found a solar water heater at the local dump and promptly purchased it for all of £7. Perhaps we might see if anyone knows anything about how to get the thing working. At the moment it’s got a split pipe and one glass tube is smashed.

Mary and I will be making some Elderflower wine and I’ll make sure everyone is fed and watered. On Friday Mary and I plan to pick some of our own at Ansty PYO. Gooseberries are our target, and they will be turned into Elderflower and Gooseberry jam.

Here are some pictures of a project day preparation session that took place a couple of weekends ago. The boys got excited about how fast the solar panel managed to heat water, despite the smashed tube and leaking pipe. The three of us pondered about convection, efficiency, optimum angles etc. It was like a physics lesson at school, except relevant and exciting.

The guys experimented with steam bending some wood for the yurt in their ‘bespoke’ steamer.

I went around some of the Dorset Art Weeks studios. They were, on the most part, very inspiring. Here is a photo of Guy Mallinson’s woods. It was weird going there, seeing the similarities and differences between these woods and the woods that I often go to. I might talk about it some other time and put more photos of the place up. I might not. Wait and see, I guess.

I enjoyed Charlie Baird's paintings on display in Shaftesbury along with Peter Ursem's printmaking work. This image above was my favourite by Baird. The original was amazing to see. I liked Peter Ursem's work. The book of River Stour prints were especially interesting because there were two pages ripped out of it during a previous exhibition. Someone tried to steal these pages. They folded one of the pages up neatly so the image itself remained unspoilt. The pages were found and then put back into the book. I felt the art was in the story behind the imperfection of what had been a perfect book. This story became the art, because the story is more interesting than the art.

I have just been given the papers to sign for my new allotment. These are exciting times.