Our next series of History Talks begins in April 2014,
With an exciting line-up of speakers, we are looking forward to meeting old friends and new and sharing ideas and enthusiasms (not to mention coffee and cake)once again.
Further details will be posted here a little nearer the time. If you would like to receive a full brochure of talks please leave us a message on the Stoneywish answerphone (01273) 843498 and we will add you to our list.
All best wishes,until then.
Stoneywish Reserve is now closed until March 1st 2014, while we get on with all our repairs and winter jobs. But spring is not far away. In the mean time, if you are brave enough to want to camp, or would like to book a party at the Visitor Centre, you are very welcome. Please call us on 01273 843498. In any case we look forward to seeing you soon!
Just published on Amazon Kindle, but available for download on iPads and iPhones, The Beehive Cluster by Rosemary Pavey is a new novel to come out of Stoneywish this summer.
Rosemary worked on the book while juggling her other jobs as artist and publicity officer on the Reserve, feeding geese, maintaining the website and baking cakes for the 2012 season of History Mornings Many of the ideas and images which fill the pages have their origins in her work here. The story takes a maverick look at our increasing dependence on computer technology, through the eyes of a young girl.
When Trudi Larsson visits her grandfather in Sweden one Christmas, she receives a lesson in starlore and a warning.
Someone is hunting in the forest. The native creatures are disappearing, people are losing their memories... Before she knows it, Trudi herself is on the trail of the perpetrators, but she has taken on something beyond her understanding - something that threatens to destroy her entire world... For more information, and chance to read the opening, please visit www.paveypenandpaint.com.
Despite road works in Spatham Lane during July we are OPEN AS USUAL with access assured at all times. To visit us, please follow the diversion signs in the village and on Ditchling Common. We are open every day of the Summer Holidays from 16th July 10.00 a.m.-5.00 p.m. Come and see the new piglets!
After a month of ups and downs we are set to begin the new season in style. More new faces have arrived at Stoneywish, including eight lambs to date - a lovely motley gang - black ones, white ones and cream-and-tan, so far. The sheep are now grazing the bottom meadow and at dusk the lambs take off on their own, playing tag round the stone circle. With the warmer weather here, it is hard to recall that the first of
the flock were born in snow and had to be carried to shelter. Just a few days of sunshine have convinced us that spring has arrived. There are sweet violets and primroses dotted amongst the budding narcissi. The blackbirds are singing. Last week, two saddleback piglets moved into the pen beside the pot-belly pigs, and a handsome bronze turkey has taken up residence next door to the goats, so, with Pebbles the pony now settled in her own little paddock, the Smallholding is feeling quite populous!
Other news. A short while ago frustration reached boiling point on the Black Swan pond, with the cob and his mate, so desperate to begin their breeding and so resenting the presence of the second female, 
they became quite vicious towards her, and refused her access to the water. I would stand over her as she tried to feed, fending the aggressors off with a twig. 
But twice the attacks resulted in injury and we began planning how to catch and move her to safety before something terrible happened. The other ponds here are less secure. Some dry up regularly, or are exposed footpaths where dogs can roam. Being unpinioned, with both her beautiful white-tipped wings intact, she would be frowned upon at a bird sanctuary... During these days, she came to recognise me as her guardian and would greet me on my arrival with high-pitched welcome calls. But then one morning, just as my concerns were at their height, she disappeared. I hunted, called, scanned every bank and bush, fearful I should find her drowned or beheaded by the fox. No sign anywhere. We began to search wider afield in case she had somehow navigated the ditch and got out into the field. Again nothing. Then we opened the big gate into the Reserve. And there, in the wood, we found her - still limping - but free. She had somehow broken through two fences, but to this day we cannot work out how. She must have thought she had arrived in heaven, seeing a huge empty pond before her, with a grassy bank to graze on - and me still bringing her supplies of corn and swan food! Of course nothing is ever perfect. The 'emptiness' was an illusion and as soon as she took to the water, she had to fend off hordes of hungry geese and carp who tried to steal her breakfast, but she quickly discovered that she was top boss on this pond and has so far managed to outwit the fox. If I call her, she will still answer me and our bond of trust seems to endure, which is an unhoped for delight. 
As for the old cob and his mate - they have wasted no time in getting down to business - she, sitting on a new-made nest on the island, and he patrolling the water round her, putting all the ducks in their place. Everyone happy for the moment!
But just in case we should get complacent, Fate brings a new drama. A few days later, Michael wakes up at 4 a.m. feeling groggy and, thinking he will make himself a cup of tea, slides out of bed, finds his slippers, and creeps along the landing. At the top of the stairs he blacks out and tumbles down two un-carpeted flights to the bottom. I am woken by the crash and the groan as his head hits the wall. He is unconscious, then delirious. Believing the worst, I call an ambulance and we spend the next 8 hours at A & E while they X-ray every bone in his body. Miraculously, they find he has survived the fall with little more than a cut to his brow, which they mend with glue, presumably thinking his head must be made of wood! We are sent home with a leaflet about concussion: rest, relax, keep warm, rest, and take it easy ... On arrival at the house, Michael reaches for his axe and announces that he thinks he will just chop some kindling for the fire! When I remonstrate, he says: 'Oh all right then, I'll just fetch some logs - it's not lifting - it's only carrying!' He is quite put out to be banned from farm work for 4 days, but Mike, his grandson, has stepped valiantly into the breach, taking care of the animals and daily chores like a true chip off the old block. Hearts of oak!!
No more for now. It's time for a cuppa! Matron says the invalid can resume his responsibilities today ...
Meet Pebbles, the friendly Shetland pony who came to live at the Reserve this month.
Stoneywish re-opens to the public on 1st March so visitors will find Pebbles and the first lambs of the year already at home in the Shaker Smallholding!
Yesterday we woke to snow. The radio broadcasts are full of dire warnings of congestion and mayhem, but here the snow brings quiet and a sense of community. The birds have laid aside their spring posturings and squabblings and focus together on the more pressing business of staying alive. Even the black swans, whose territorial feelings have been running so high they could not tolerate one another on the pond, now strut together on the ice and feed almost amicably in the little open water that is left.
Out in the meadow, one of the ewes has given birth. Michael spots the lamb when he takes the sheep their barley before breakfast. Later I find the mother guarding a spot tucked under the hedge near the gypsy caravan and sneak a distant photo. We are anxious not to disturb her as all seems well. But when I inspect the photo more closely at home I can make out another tiny black form in the snow - she has twins! As the day warms, the snow begins to melt. 
I take out more barley and this time I come close enough to see that the lambs, though sturdy, are soaked with drippings from the branches overhead and the weaker one is trembling. Time to move them. Michael tucks one under each arm and, with the ewe trotting at our heels and bleating continuously, we begin the trek to the Shaker smallholding where they can take shelter in a hut filled with dry straw. The Jacobs ewe has been here before and as soon as she has her babies restored, settles in contentedly. So far so good. 
Heavy frost is forecast tonight, but if they can keep dry, the lambs will take their warmth from her. I am minded of the Spartans, who exposed their newborn infants on the mountainside overnight to see if they were fit for the harsh life that lay ahead. Those that survived would make good warriors! Well our little Spartans should be safe now. Let's hope they are soon strong enough to go back to their flock.
At the other end of the smallholding we have a new resident, a wee bonny Shetland pony, called Pebbles, who walked all the way here from her former home in Hassocks, with young Mike on Saturday! She has moved into the long pen where she has a good shelter from the north wind.
Until this sudden blast from Siberia, we had been enjoying the mildest winter we can remember, with primroses blooming since, November,and red campions, stragglers from last summer, flowering amidst 
the snowdrops and aconites! And despite the snow,the woodland bulbs are still visibly growing, and hazel catkins, capped with ice, are lengthening into proper 'lamb's tails', that waggle in the wind. I wonder what town children make of that folk-name if they hear it now. Some footpath walkers who stopped to chat the other day, were surprised to see our sheep 'undocked'. 
Their children did not know that they could have long and bushy tails. But you have to see a proper lamb's tail to appreciate how the hazel catkins mimic that distinctive kink at the end! When I was a child, I had a book called 'Lamb's Tales from Shakespeare', which caused me no end of confusion and I still cannot break the connection between catkins and the Bard! At any rate, spring seems unstoppable! And thank Heaven for that!
Stoneywish reopens on March 1st. Michael has been busy coppicing hazels in the Reserve and weaving new wattle fences out of the long poles for the herb garden beds. There's fencing still to do, and he and Mike have plans to re-build the tepee in the Play Area. And we have been busy putting together a programme of talks for the History Mornings, which begin again in April. First up, yours truly, with a History of the English Artisan Hand-Press: Puritan Pamphleteers to St. Dominic's Press here on the Common, via some rather famous and eccentric exponents of self-publishing, including William Blake, William Morris and a pirate-loving consumptive and his twelve-year-old stepson who set up their print-shop in a Swiss Hotel!
