Woodland Wonderment

We spent a wonderful day today at the Woodland Workshop day at Bore Place, a local organic dairy farm. We've been to two of their open days before and they always deliver wonderful things.

I chose to do a morning workshop making besom brooms. These photos show the broom making in progress:





and here is the finished product:



I'm delighted with it because I've wanted an outdoor broom for ages and this will do just the trick. Now that I know how to make them I can also mend this broom if it loses bristles, which will be ever so useful.

Matt spent the morning building a woodland shelter and proudly told me that his team won the best shelter award (I don't have photos because I had the camera).

We then had an absolutely delicious lunch in the paddock. Wild boar sausages, jacket potatoes and tomato soup cooked over a camp fire. All local and organic, deeeeelicious!

We also took some time during lunch to watch the heavy horses at work, shifting logs in the wood. The horses were magnificent:




We also had a look around the craft displays which were there and both had a go on the lathe. Here's Matt in action:



We bought a lovely wooden dibber (which you can see in the broom photo above) from this chap, which will be perfect for the 100 free allium bulbs that arrived today!

We joined forces in the afternoon for some willow weaving and were delighted to see that one of our allotment group was also doing it. We made bugs, which was great fun. Here we are mid-bug:




(no comments about how much more photogenic Matt is than me please!)

...and here is the finished article (this is my one, which we both agree is the best!):



We haven't decided what to do with them yet but they'll be displayed pride of place somewhere!

At home today I also harvested some of our garden produce. We had yet more raspberries (although I think they're coming to an end) and a lovely little handful of red chillis:



There are quite a few green ones that I'll leave a bit longer to ripen so hopefully, once dried, these should last us a few months like last year.

My final job of the day was to make the long awaited needle purse. I re-read my last blog and realised that I hadn't made it, which is very lazy of me, so I've just finished. I'm so pleased with it, and it only cost £1.45 to make (£5 Cath Kidston? No thank you!):




I now have to wake up a snoozing Matthew because we have to head into London for our third 30th birthday celebration of the month. Tis the season to be 30 it seems!