Green Woodworking Day and Speckled Wood Official Opening

On Saturday July 28th here at Swan Barn Farm we will be holding our annual Green Woodworking Event. As we have now finnished our new building, this year it will also include the official opening of Speckled Wood.

The event is open to everyone and is aimed at all the family. We will have a variety of different craft stalls showing off all manner of woodland skills and produce. Refreshments and a hog roast will be available for hungry visitors and there will even be a bouncy castle for the kids.

There will be pole lathing, charcoal making, blacksmithing, spinning and dyeing, beam hewing, whistle and stool making, carving and all sorts of other skills on display along with the chance for kids (big and small) to have a look around some of the tractors, land rovers, machinery and livestock that we use whilst managing the local woodlands, meadows, orchards and heaths. You will get chance to try your hand at some of the crafts as well as soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the green open spaces that are right on the towns doorstep.

Last year it was great fun, we hope to build on that and have even more for people to see and get involved with this year.

In the picture above you can see in the background the frame of the Speckled Wood building. We have come a long way since then, and this years event will include our official opening ceremony at 3pm. There will be opportunities to take a tour around and inside the building throughout the day, as well as to speak to the people who built it.

The building has been put up to accomodate our long term volunteers, and although we welcome people coming to look around the site there are only limited opportunites to get a proper look inside. It will be a really good chance to have a snoop around for those who are interested. I know I’m biased, but I reckon its well worth a look.

We were really lucky that so many people were willing to get involved and help with the building, especially the shingle roof, which is looking fantastic. If you were one of those people I hope you will come along and take a look at what we have all achieved together, its quite something.

Hopefully I will see you all on the 28th.

 

Some treats from the orchard

It seems like ages ago now, but towards the end of last summer we were busy in the orchard at Swan Barn Farm picking the apples.

Our volunteers worked with us to process them through our scratter and press to extract the apple juice.

We also held a community apple pressing day at which we pressed well over a tonne of apples from around the town. All in all quite a number of people left Swan Barn Farm last year with quite a lot of apple juice. Some of it was no doubt kept in the fridge and consumed over the next few days, but we also provided people with instructions for how to turn the murky looking (but delicious) juice into cider. If you were one of those people, I hope your cider turned out well. Most of ours is still sat in Speckled Wood waiting to be bottled, it fermented quite slowly as it was out in the cold, but I took a couple of demijohns home and fermented them out in the kitchen where it is warmer and the process works faster. I bottled it around christmas time, and figured today might be a good time to try it (In case you are wondering it is after midday and I have the day off!).

It has cleared really well, and because I put a tiny bit of sugar in each bottle is lightly sparkling. Now, I’m not claiming it is going to win any awards, but, it is definitely not completely awfull, which friends will know is where the bar is set for my home brewed efforts, and therefore I have decided to pronounce it a success and entirely drinkable! I hope yours turned out well too. If you missed out last year look out for our apple pressing and cider days later in the year at Swan Barn Farm.

Last year I also tried out something new with the products of the orchard. Towards the back of a cuboard I discovered a 2 litle bottle of undiscovered cider that had been pressed in 2010. Aha I thought, what about making some cider vinegar! In fact I had been saving the dregs of a couple of bottles of unpastuerised cider vinegar for just such an occurance, they had gone slightly cloudy and as such I knew contained the perfect starter culture to make some vinegar of my own. I’m no expert, but the following is my (probably pretty basic) understanding of the process and how to try it our for yourself.

Yeast turns sugar into alchohol, thats how apple juice is fermented into cider. At a certain alchohol strength the yeast dies, this allows the cider to clear and at that point it needs bottling and protecting from the air to prevent bacteria spoiling it. Some of these bacteria can be useful though. Acetobacteria live off alchohol and turn it into acetic acid thereby turning the liquid to vinegar. Fermenting and vinegar making are, as I see it, the processes of allowing these natural organisms to go about their business in a controlled manner. Here’s how I did it.

I took a plastic demijohn and put my cider in it, adding the dregs from the old vinegar bottles. I only put enough in so it could be safely stored on its side.

The lid has a hole in it where you would ordinarily put an airlock. For making vinegar I just put a bit of cotton wool in it. This kept flies and other nasties out while allowing plenty of air in. Keeping it on its side let the air reach the maximum possible surface area of the cider giving the bacteria the best chance of working well. I then stuck it on top of a cuboard and forgot about it for a couple of months.

Over this time the bacteria had done their job. They had turned the cider into vinegar (one smell made that obvious) and in the process had formed (as expected) a bacterial mass, otherwise known as the mother, which was floating in the vinegar. The mother of vinegar has been known about for centuries, the bacteria form a mass in the liquid which looks like a sort of strange jellyfish. The idea is that you save the mother and then use it to start your next batch of vinegar with. I put it into a jam jar to take a photo, not sure when I am going to need more vinegar, and I know I can always start it from the remains of the last batch, but if I need it I know it will last a while at least.

The rest of the vinegar was simply passed through a muslin filter into a couple of bottles I had been saving to store it in.

I am pretty chuffed, it tastes great, and I have already been searching the internet for some culinery ideas to start using it. I am also told that it is prized by many people as a health tonic for poultry. Apparently a small amount added to their drinking water once a month is supposed to be very beneficial for their digestive system, so it looks like my chickens have a treat coming their way.

We will be pruning the orchards soon (ok I know we a re a couple of weeks late, but its been so hectic here) and just the thought of that has started me thinking about spring. The orchard behind the High Street in Haslemere is such a treat at blossom time, if you live locally I couldn’t recomend more highly a walk through it when the blossom starts to come out. The air will be alive with the sound of the bee’s and the scents from the trees. It really is quite a special place, putting something on the dinner table which came from there is always a real treat.

Its that time of year again

I have always really liked the jobs that mark the turning of the year. They help me keep track with the passing of the seasons, and measure time. One of my favourite of these sort of jobs is putting up the Christmas tree in Haslemere Town Centre. We donate one every year, I think it is a really nice way of placing a demonstration of our management of the woods on public display, its also a nice way of giving a little bit back to our local supporters and community.

This years one came from Valewood, less than a mile from the town centre. We use it as a method of gradually thinning our plantations of Norway Spruce. This thinning of the trees allows more light to reach the woodland floor. It encourages the remaining trees to grow to their full potential and encourages a more diverse ground flora within the wood.

Unfortunately we ran out of suitably sized trees some years ago and are now using the top half of a much larger tree. Must get around to planting some more sometime soon. I haven’t planted many non native softwoods in my time, its not normally what we do these days, I am sure we will be able to find a space for some future christmas tree’s though.

We do get some funny looks driving it down into the town. When I first started doing it years ago we used to put it up on a Sunday morning using lots of ropes (and not a little swearing), the tractor mounted crane has made life a lot easier for us though, it usually works out in the woods, but gets pressed into service in the town centre once a year.

There is a ready prepared concreted hole hidden under a manhole in the grass next to the War Memorial. Unfortunately being a person of little brain power most years I manage to forget exactly what size the hole is. Some years ago I sought to remedy this by writing down its size and putting it in the files in the office. All I need to do now is remember to take it back out of the files on the appropriate day and we will be sorted! Until then it will continue to be a case of using a chainsaw to carve the base of the tree to fit on the green in front of the town hall.

Putting up the tree in front of an audiance of passers by is always a bit high pressure, but it all went smoothly (this year anyway!) I reckon this years one looks quite pretty, especially with its covering of cones.

Happy Christmas Haslemere, hope you like your tree!

Weaving on the gallery

The woven barrier at the edge of the gallery in the Speckled Wood building was completed last week. The southern end of the building is open all the way up to the eaves. The other end of the building has a first floor where two of the bedrooms are, to get to the bedrooms the stairs lead up onto a gallery which looks out over the open end of the building. We had to create a barrier at the edge of the gallery so it was a safe space, there had been a few ideas about how to do this using the locally produced materials we had to hand. In the end we decided to use some of our hand cleaved chestnut laths. Most of the laths are going to hidden under our earth plaster, so having some on display fealt like the right thing to do.

One sharp whack with the mallet on a nice sharp chisel was the quickest way of cutting them to length.

They were then woven into position.

Piece by piece they built up to make a woven panel, not dissimilar to weaving a hurdle in the coppice. It took a little bit of head scratching to get the weave to work in a pleasing pattern on the spindles, due to the laths being much shorter than the width of the gallery. But I think it went ok in the end.

What I really like is that they create a solid barrier, but because of the way they are woven they also let the light shine through. When the sun shone in through the big glazed sections in the gable end it created some really pretty patterns across the floor and walls.

We had another working holiday on the building project last week as well. The guys did a fantastic job on lathing partition walls, earth plastering and painting, you could really see the progress being made. Thanks very much to all of you.

 

The Staircase

Our Spiral Staircase got its finishing touches last week, Dylan did most of the work on it, with some help from Andy, and made a fantastic job of it.

The newel post for it went in back when the building was just an empty timber frame. Below you can see the guys winching the post into place. The post was made of larch, we felled it back in the spring in Valewood when we were fetching the ridge pole and wall plates.

The post was tied in to the roof structure at the top, and onto one of the underfloor oak beams at the bottom.

For a couple of months the post sat within the building as floors, ceilings and walls were built around it. There was barely any time to think about stairs, but, eventually attention was turned back to the staircase and what it was to be built of. We needed air dryed timber to ensure the wood wouldn’t warp over time. Our woodshed provided most of the elm, beech and oak. Ben’s provided a bit of extra beech for a couple of treads we couldn’t find enough properly dry timber for. Every one of the treads has a story behind where the wood came from, especialy the elm. Its a staircase with connections to some of the people that have worked here over the years, as well as the local woodlands.

It is also a staircase of many colours. The newel is larch, the first and last three treads are elm, the supporting frame for the first couple of steps is oak, the treads in the middle are all beech, the spindles and handrail are chestnut. I even managed to find a shapely piece of rhododendron we used as a hand hold by the side of the first two steps, an amusing irony really putting a bit of rhodi in the building as we spend a great deal of our time trying to eradicate this particular problem species. It sounds like it could be a complete mess of different types of wood, but somehow it really works. It is definitely one of my favourite parts of the building.

The stair treads are securely morticed into the newel post and wind around it like turbine blades.

Large coppiced chestnut spindles then bind the treads together and provide the main support for the handrail.

We wanted to find a piece of naturaly twisted wood to use for the handrail, in the end it had to be made out of two twists jointed together in the middle. For most of the building we were hunting for nice straight pieces of timber, looking for one growing in a nice graceful curve was a different challenge alltogether.

Chase Woods on the edge of Black Down provided the answer though, on one edge of the wood there were some coppice stools whose shoots had been twisted by the direction of the light and the slope of the hill.

Smaller spindles then filled in the gaps to make it safe for anyone to use. It is on full view in the heart of the main living space in the building, displaying the products of the woodlands around Haslemere.

Last week the Roundwood Timber Framing Company came to the end of the main works under their contract and Ben’s team finished up on the site. There is still lots of work to do, but its now down to the Black Down countryside team and our volunteers to finish off the rest of the project. Its been kind of strange not having the team here, they have been a real pleasure to work with and over the summer became very much part of life at Swan Barn Farm. Thanks very much to Ben, Dylan, Chris, Sam, Andy, Rudy, Barney, Adam, Nick, Kris,Ian, Georgie, Dave, and Rich. I hope you will all get chance to come back at some stage and see how the building progresses.

There is still plenty of the story of Speckled Wood to unfold and tell and I am looking forward to that. But in the last week or two it has started to feel like the end might be somewhere in sight. The thing I like best about this building is that when I look at it, not only can I remember the woods and trees where the materials for it came, but I can also remember the many people who have come together to build it.

The sponsored shingles

Over the past few days we have been putting the sponsored shingles on the roof of the Speckled Wood building.

Transition Town Haslemere have been doing a fantastic job at the local farmers market and other events raising awareness of the project and getting shingles sponsored at £5 a time. In return for their sponsorship money people have been putting their name, or a simple message on the back of the shingle. Its been a great introduction for people to what we are trying to achieve, and has been a really valuable fund raising source for the project.

Its been fascinating seeing some of the messages and names on the shingles. There have been a number of names I have recognised, as well as lots I haven’t. Some of them have been really funny, and a number of them have been very touching. Below is a picture of one of my favourites. The artist did sign it but I can’t make out the signiture, I especially like the way they used the grain of the wood to create the lines of waves in the sea.

If you were one of our sponsors, thank you very much. If you would like to know where your shingles ended up, they are in a band a few courses thick running just above the roof light on the western (high street) side of the building.

Transition Town Haslemere are holding a Sustainable Harvest Picnic this saturday night from 5-8pm at Imbhams Farm. This is the farm next door to Swan Barn Farm, and is a beautiful place. The picnic is going to be in their medieval barn, a unique opportunity to have a look at a fascinating timber frame. The idea is to get together to celebrate the fruits of the year and take along something locally produced for everyone to share. I went last year and it was great fun, I am hoping to make it again this year. You can find out more by clicking here.

Meanwhile on the roof we are reaching for the top. The shingles having been going on a treat and progress has been great.

The weather has really helped, but not as much as the extra help that has been coming in, both in terms of our volunteer groups, and the countryside teams from Slindon and South Downs East.

The building has really felt like it is coming together over the past fortnight, a number of tasks in it have started to be completed, when the roof is on I think we will all breath a sigh of relief. Meanwhile, the view from the top is fantastic.

The return of the floorboards

Yesterday our floorboards came back. Some of you may remember the journey they have been on.

The oak trees were felled as part of our coppice management work here at Swan Barn Farm back in the winter.

They were then taken just down the road to Wests to be processed and kiln dried. I was really looking forward to them coming back, hoping they were going to look as good as I had imagined.

They came back all neatly bundled and wrapped up.

You couldn’t see the boards through the wrapping, so we had to unload them before getting chance to get a decent look. They were put straight into the building, construction of the floor is underway, and they will be starting to go down pretty soon.

I am not sure a photo really does them justice, but they looked pretty great to me. In these days of fake wooden flooring a solid oak floor is something you don’t see very often, certainly it hasn’t been cheap, but by using our own timber we made a considerable saving, and it should last for a very long time. It will also look pretty special in the building and will be a major part of the way the building reflects the character of the woods from which it came.

Having had a 20 mile round trip these are the furthest traveled pieces of wood in the whole building, most of the timber has travelled less than 2 or 3 miles, something we are very proud of. They will end up being used 3 fields away from where they grew.

Oak from this part of the world has always had a reputation for being of the best quality you can get, the timber produced at Swan Barn Farm is certainly right up there. The climate and soils in the Weald of England provide ideal growth conditions and the woodlands we have are cabable of sustainably producing timber without the resource being depleted.

The boards will go down soon as the edges of the floor form part of the support for the straw bale walls. They will have a protective covering put over them while the rest of the building is completed, I will definitely be taking a peek to see them in place before they are covered over.

 

Swan Barn Farm Orchard

You might remember earlier in the year us pruning the orchard just behind Haslemere High Street. I though it might be nice to show you what it is looking like now spring has sprung.

Pretty spectacular I think!

The blossom on the cherries, plums and pears is pretty much at its peak right now, well worth going to see. The apples will follow on next with their blossom, over the next couple of weeks. The orchard is less than a minutes walk from Haslemere High Street. Head through the gaps either behind Collingwood Batchelor or the CAB and you will go through the town walk and right past the orchard.

Its particularly nice to see the trees we planted six years ago starting to do well. I remember very well the day we planted the new trees, there were only five old trees left at the time, and now there is an entire vibrant new orchard springing up on the towns doorstep. I reckon looking at the way the trees are developing that this year could be the first of our decent sized crops. Look out later on this year, we are planning on holding an apple pressing event where we will invite people to come down to the farm bringing whatever apples they can lend their hands on. We will then run them through our historic scratter (a sort of apple crusher) and press and send you home with the juice plus a set of instructions for how to turn it into your own delicious cider.

This was the blossom on one of the old pear tree’s, last year it provided me with a batch of surprisingly nice perry. Old orchard tree’s are a fantastic wildlife resource, we plan to look after these keep them as long as possible, yesterday they were alive with the buzz of the local bee’s making the most of the nectar and pollen.

A day in the orchard

Yesterday we spent the day working in one of our orchards. Its just behind Haslemere High Street so is really easy to go and visit.

Its a lovely peaceful place, and in a few weeks time will be full of blossom. Yesterdays task was to prune the apple and pear trees, as well as repairing some of the tree guards.

About five years ago this orchard only have five or six trees left, we put together an application for some funding and got together the money to restore it. Since then we have planted 30 or so apple, pear, plum, cherry, damson and gage trees. They are all old fashined traditional varieites. We planted them on traditional rootstocks which will allow them to gow up to 20-25 feet high, much taller than a modern orchard, but it will mean they will provide a really usefull space for the local wildlife.

The trees are just starting to come into their own now, and last year we got our first decent crop of apples. Of course as they get taller they also take longer to prune! what used to take an hour or two now takes all day. We are also training some of the branches downwards to make the fruit easier to pick, just in case you come by and wonder why the branches are tied down with string. Over time these branches will adapt to the shape we are training them into and the string will be removed.

We also spent some time repairing our tree gaurds and making sure all of the trees are property protected. This pear tree is much bigger than the sort of thing we would usually put a gaurd on, but the sheep were having a bit of a nibble at its bark so we thought we would give it a bit of protection.

Not to sure what the sheep thought about that.

We run apple pressing days in the autumn with our volunteers where we teach them how to make apple juice and cider with the fruits of our orchard, we are hoping for a bumper crop this year.

We restored an old apple press and scratter to use on these days. The press is one which has been in use in Sussex for years, there is a picture on the wall of a local pub of our press being used in the 1800′s. This is it being used last year.

The scratter was kindly donated by John Simpson, who does a lot of work for us on Black Down. Prior to coming to us it had a plant growing out of the top of it.

They were both restored using oak from our coppice woodland.

We are saving the best (hopefully!) of last years cider for a party on the day we raise the main frame of the new building. If you are here helping out be carefull, its strong stuff!