'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!

Farmhouse Journal July 2011

The cherry tree outside our door is laden with ripening fruit and a blackbird has taken up residence bang in the middle of it. When he is not positively gorging himself, he stands guard to ward off approaches from all others, especially humans. Now I am more than happy to share, but the blackbird considers the fruit to be exclusively his and becomes extremely agitated if he sees us steal any. which gives a touching insight into our place in the order of things. According to the bats, foxes, squirrels, moles, rabbits and toads who rightly think the nature reserve is theirs, we must be little more than trespassers with annoying habits!

The young creatures here are growing up very fast while the world around them signals the arrival of high summer. Long grass in the pinetum resounds to the churr-churr of innumerable grasshoppers, and the bog pond is dappled with butterflies: skippers, meadow browns and marbled whites. Overhead, comes the screech of swifts as they hunt for flies, and today,a flash of blue indicating a kingfisher on the black swan pond. Every honey bee for miles seems to have found its way to the great lime tree near the old farm yard, which is now in bloom. We should harvest some blossoms too, for fresh lime flower tea is one of the treats of summer and a soothing tonic for the nerves. Everybody seems to know about elderflower spritzers, but linden-blossom tea remains a delicious secret. In fact it is hard to keep up with the successive harvests of the season: sorrel for soup: chive flowers, marigolds and nasturtiums to enliven a salad; blue borage flowers for summer drinks (delightful frozen into ice cubes); and rose petals in sandwiches! All have beneficial herbal properties too! Other seasonal plants inspire different uses: astringent southernwood to drive away clothes moths, and tutsan, a member of the st. john's wort family, whose leaves were traditionally pressed into Bibles as fragrant bookmarks. All can be found in the Reserve at this time of year.

These summer mornings Michael rises at 5 or five thirty and goes out for a few hours, cutting docks and thistles with his swaphook before breakfast. Apparently haymakers traditionally worked early, partly to avoid the heat of the day, but also because, as the dew dries, grasses become tougher to cut, and the same is true of weeds. The trick is to catch your them just before they flower, for then all the energy of the plants is concentrated in the leaves and they will be less likely to come back in strength. Working by hand is laborious, but this way he can trim round the meadow plants he wants to conserve and this year we have a wonderful profusion of wildflowers: meadowsweet and birds-foot trefoil, hardheads, clovers, vetches and in the Bog Pond, drifts of lady's bedstraw, agrimony and sticky mouse-ear. His cutting blade is honed to a lethal edge and regularly re-sharpened and this particular tool is now wafer thin, but Michael insists the vintage steel is better than anything you can buy new.

Hand cutting also spares most of the creatures living in the grass. We aspire to recreate the abundance of grassland insects that was commonplace at the beginning of the last century. Michael remembers assisting bug-hunters and beetle-collectors in his boyhood and our Bog Pond now gives an idea of what the countryside at large must have been like. This area, which is left virtually to manage itself, teams with insect life in a way altogether different from the rest of the reserve. Perhaps the proximity of water helps. Soon there will be dragonflies and damselflies and the red-spotted burnet moths which fly by day. At any rate there should be enough critters about this summer to keep naturalists, young or old, happy this summer!

Camping at Stoneywish

Here are some details about camping at Stoneywish. If you would like to make a reservation, please telephone our ticket office during opening hours (Fri-Mon 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. during school term time and every day 10. a.m. - 5 p.m. during school holidays March to October inclusive). You can also book through www.grasshoppers-uk.com

The Camping Field
is situated next to the Car Park and Visitor Centre and is a large meadow adjoining the village recreation ground, surrounded by mature hedgerows and with footpath access to the village with its post office, pubs and cafes. Campers with tents and small caravans/camper vans are all welcome. Please park next to your tent in the field.

Cost
Camping costs £5.00 per person per night. Babies under 1 year old are free.

Dogs
are welcome provided you keep them on the lead and any clear up any poo! Please note dogs cannot go into the Nature Reserve.

Rubbish
Please take all rubbish home with you.

Music
We ask you not to play music as people come here for the peace and quiet. The wildlife here needs to be peaceful too!

Fires and BBQs
are permitted if you can make sure you do not burn the grass. There are one or two designated camp fire areas at the edge of the field. Logs can be purchased at the Visitor Centre or from Michael's grandson direct at www.grasshoppers-uk.com. (Young Mike also offers local gardening services from this site.)

Facilities
This is basic camping so we provide a tap for drinking water and use of the Visitor Toilets which have small hand-washing basins and baby-changing/disabled facilities.

Access to the Nature Reserve
is during Reserve opening times only. Camping fees do not include entrance to the reserve. Tickets can be bought at the Ticket Office.

Bookings.
Please telephone in advance during opening hours to make your reservation. If you arrive late, you can pay when the Reserve opens in the morning. Payments can be made by card or cash at the Ticket Office. Camping is still available on days when the Reserve is closed.

Group Bookings
are welcome, but please telephone to make your reservation in advance.

We hope you will enjoy your stay here! There is much to see and enjoy.

Farmhouse Journal June 2011

That country saying about not casting clouts in May has certainly proved wise advice this year. (Gardeners and farmers know that frosts here, even in the south, can catch early strawberries, so I reject the recent reading of 'May' as whitethorn blossom. No one would surely think of shedding their vest at the beginning of the month!) The sheep at Stoneywish have only just lost theirs and, since the shearer came, look like funny little sacks on stilts. The fleeces, carefully rolled, are waiting for the Steiner School to come and collect them for craft lessons. But at least today is warmer for naked tummies!

The last few weeks have seen a mass fledging of baby birds in the Reserve. The vegetation resounds all day long with their high-pitched 'tseet-tseet-tseet' and we have been lucky enough to see little flocks of blue tits and great tits venturing from tree to tree and still fluttering their wings for gifts of grubs from their parents. The collar doves, which nested above our front door, have successfully reared two young and we have blackbirds and wrens busy guarding nests nearby. The dense tangle of undergrowth here gives them a chance against marauding magpies, though it is not always easy to explain this when Chelsea still sets the model for gardening! A visiting maintenance engineer recently popped his head over the fence and stared in wonder at the long grass and rampant rambler roses: "What's this then, 'The Darling Buds of May'?" We took it as a compliment for, honestly, it is such a joy to step out into a Baby Bird Garden, I feel certain we could convert even the diehards of the RHS! Yesterday, on my way to feed the chickens, I heard more high-pitched juvenile voices and spotted 10 or more goldcrests in a pine tree, hopping about like jumping beans and making the same fluttering petitions for food. And other babies abound here too, rabbits and squirrels and fox cubs, harder to see.

Wild roses and foxgloves are now in bloom in the Reserve; the Apothecary's Roses in the Herb Garden merit a visit for their heavenly scent, and everywhere still looks remarkably lush, despite two months of drought. The Austrian scientist and naturalist Victor Schauberger, claimed that trees could create water, deep underground, through the chemical action of their roots, and considering how much water a single willow transpires in a day, I can think of no other reason for them surviving so well. We are so often burdened with a sense of responsibility for maintaining everything in the world, I like the idea of such invisible processes which sustain us without fuss or fee.

As for the goslings, they are now great lumping adolescents, difficult to distinguish from their parents at a glance, but still rather downy and squeaky on closer inspection. The ducklings too have gained their feathers, just as all the big birds are losing theirs, for the great summer goose moult is now on and every morning finds a new crop of flight feathers on the grass by the ponds. Anyone who wants to make their own Warrior's Headdress to wear at the Wild West Fort in the Play Area, should hurry here while stocks last!!

Good hunting!