Artist in Residence News - Rosemary Pavey

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.

BUSINESS AS USUAL!

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!

Farmhouse Journal March 2012

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 ...

'New Face at Stoneywish'...

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!

Farmhouse Journal February 2012

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!

News from the Farmhouse September

The tawny owls have started calling again. I am not sure whether they have a lull in their nocturnal communications, or whether they go off somewhere else in the summer, but for the past two nights they have been very vocal and it is lovely to hear them once more beyond the trees. Under bright stars yesterday, the sense of near and far was accentuated by the silvery chirr of crickets in the garden. This side of the field, summer still. Out there, reminders of an autumn tide that is flooding in on the darkening mornings.

This is what the campers say they love - a chance to hear and notice the quiet things that city life blocks out. Blackberry pickers skirt the hedgerows. The sudden abundance of country fruit certainly seems overwhelming and the blackbirds are no longer interested in stealing the chickens' corn, when there are elderberries, shiny haws, bullace plums and windfall apples to be had in the Reserve. One of my earliest childhood memories is of household tables being upturned to hold muslins full of the stewed fruit that would go into the annual jelly-making jamboree! The whole house reeked of the tang of autumn: piquant damsons and pink crab apples and heady vinegars for chutney ... and wasps clamouring to get in at every window! At Stoneywish, the harvest, (the most spectacular I have seen for years), belongs to wildlife and the thorn trees are full of high-throated, sleek, greeny-buff birds so tame they will almost hop onto your shoulder if you stay still and quiet.

The top meadows have been hayed and the geese stay far out, grazing the new shoots and seeming happy that the long grass is gone. Now they can scan the whole field for approaching foxes. But some find safety in seclusion. Michael comes back from breakfast each day to report on his pheasants. One hen bird has, exceptionally, reared two families of young simultaneously in the wild, and has so far cheated the usual predators into the bargain. She waits in the Smallholding with her broods, one set a good deal older than the other, until Michael arrives with his wheelbarrow in the morning and throws them some handfuls of corn. Tummies full, they all then disappear to the safety of the long grass for the day.

At long last we have rain and the ponds are filling up again. A windy, cloudy August fooled us into thinking we had had a wet summer, but the water table here has been so low the top ponds have dried up completely and the Black Swan Pond has been reduced to a kind of spinach-soup sludge. In consequence the poor geese have had a week without a swim and, deprived of their water-refuge, have huddled together for safety during the day in a close flock. We set up a paddling pool for them in the field and carried them water for drinking and they soon learned to queue up for a bath, beating the water, which we had so laboriously carted, out of the tub with a few flaps of their wings! Now, after two days of heavy rain they look like new birds, hungry and quarrelsome again - so it is truly an ill wind that blows nobody any good!

Meanwhile the leaves are beginning to change colour. This rain should bring us autumn fungi. A time for happy jam-making, or jam-eating, or simply savouring the season.

Farmhouse Journal August 2011

Today, a windless, sweltering day, of the sort you remember from childhood summers: white clouds adrift in azure overhead, the whirr of grasshoppers, gorse pods popping, I set out on an insect safari through the Reserve, to see what I can find in a leisurely hour, walking and stopping for photographs. My sightiongs follow the contours of meadow and woodland, with the greatest concentration of species, as always, in the open, sunny grassland of the Bog Pond.

Where insect numbers are highest there will be the greatest choice of food for predators, so these numbers matter for us and the national statistics, which show a widespread, dramatic decline in insect populations, carry grave consequences for British wildlife as a whole. After all, though it is gratifying for us to help garden birds through the winter on offerings of nigella seeds and dried meal worms from China, we cannot pretend that this is truly a sustainable solution. We are told that cuckoos are dying out for lack of moths to eat. How many of us know which plants are good for moths? I admit to real ignorance here, hoping that the big oak trees, the birches, willows and poplars at Stoneywish give enough scope for a range of species, but these invisible lacunae in the food web, may prove to be just as critical as the more recognised problems of pollution or predator imbalance.

Butterfly numbers for us seem to be down on last year. Perhaps the cold early spring affected them, but I find gatekeepers, common blues, the last of the skippers and meadow browns in the long grass, where over 20 species of wild flowers are immediately visible. Red admirals and commas are beginning to appear in the apple orchard, while speckled wood have been abundant, under the trees, since March. Early dragonflies are about too. And the flowers with far and away the most insect guests? Apart from the herbs in the herb garden, they are dreaded hogweed, thistle, blackberry, teasel and the greeny-white, waxy stars of white bryony, all with clouds of eager hover flies! Gold finches are busy already amongst the thistledown.

Perhaps a few stinging nettles, as a token gesture to conservation, are just not enough. We need to recognise that all these plants deserve a place near us if we want birds in our world. The goldfinches will move on to teasel seeds as they ripen in turn. Who will eat the great biscuit-like fruit of the hogweed? Or the poison-bright berries of the bryony and cuckoo pint, which bejewel the woodland floor?

Seeing nature whole, brings such staggering rewards. And you don't need infra-red equipment or a team of photographers from the BBC. It is cheaper and much more fun than weedkiller. We just need to slow down enough to look. Our children have everything to teach us here. We devise captivating entertainments for them, but they can access levels of pleasure to which, as adults, we have grown all but blind.

At the end of my safari I followed a family along a path to the Play Area. Two little boys, four or five years old, were trailing behind their mothers, recalling the highlights of their trip last summer. Ice cream? Swings? Friendly pigs? Not a mention! This is what I heard instead: "Yeah, this is the place with the Doctor Who plants. I remember." "Yeah, the Dr. Who plants." Do they mean the giant himalayan balsam, which can catapult its seeds 6 feet when the pods explode? Another weed loathed by all, though punch-drunk bumble-bees think they have found paradise when they reach the blossoms. "Yeah, this is where the grasshoppers are!" "Yeah! The grasshoppers!!! .." Ah, those summer days of childhood ... Forget the latest stress-busting courses. All you need to do is step out of time and get down on your hands and knees!