Good turn out down at the mill

We had a great day yesterday at the Worsbrough Mill Country Fair, the first to be held for nearly 20 years. We were invited to demonstrate our traditional woodland craft skills by Barnsley Council (who own and run the 16th century watermill and surrounding country park) alongside other attractions which included a craft fair, food stalls, entertainment acts and even free funfair rides for the children.

Many thanks to everyone who visited and chatted with us on the day. Special thanks to those who bought some of our woodland wares which included woven willow hearts, bug apartments, hazel plant labels and our new range of "paint it yourself" turned wooden figures. Don't forget, if you bought a figure to paint at home; send us a picture when you've done it and we'll put all the photos in a special online gallery, coming soon!

Our stall and demonstration area at the 2013 Worsbrough Country Fair

Our demonstration focused on pole-lathe turning where we showed people the process of turning a sycamore log from the woodland into our new wooden figures. We even got some helping hands (well feet actually) from some of the younger members of the audience who had a go at powering the lathe, which gave Gareth's leg a welcome rest!!

The other star attraction was the swallow's nest in the cartshed behind our stall, which we did our best to show to everyone who passed. Hopefully seeing these fantastic birds at such close quarters, and talking about their amazing annual journey to and from their wintering grounds in Africa, will inspire a new generation of nature lovers!

All in all a very enjoyable day and a successful revival of this local event. Long may it continue.

If you're organising a country fair, village fete or other public event and would like more information about what we can do for you then please get in touch.

Busy keeping trim

Earlier this week we were both pleased to pass our Lantra Trimmer and Brushcutter training course at TKF near Holmfirth.

We'll soon be putting our newfound skills to good use, undertaking some habitat management on two local wildlife sites on behalf of the Garganey Trust. Both sites are predominantly grassland/wildflower meadows which haven't been actively managed or in cultivation for many years. We'll be posting more about this work in the next few weeks when we get started.



Six-spot burnet (Zygaena filipendulae). One of hundreds enjoying the sunshine at Denby Delf.

 

On the ecology front we've been undertaking a lot of water vole surveys recently which are yielding some very positive results;



These water voles made good use of a piece of polystyrene which had blown into their ditch!

The surveys are part of a monitoring program following ditch management works and the results of our surveys will be used to assess whether the works have benefitted water vole in these previously unmanaged ditches.