HLF visit

All the many different Heritage Lottery Funded projects from around the UK came together in Wyre to see what the Grow With Wyre landscape partnership is achieving.

On their field visit they passed by the pigs to see the work they are doing clearing the bracken.

The rafters are up!

This is a view on the first floor looking to the south east with all the rafters in place. During this project I've had to learn a whole new vocabulary - so these are rafters and the horizontal beams they sit on are purlins. The one at the apex is known as the ridge purlin.

Next on will be sheets of birch plywood.

The woodland pigs - Midlands Today link

See the coverage on Midlands Today at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/8261972.stm

Pigs are TV stars!

PIGS RECRUITED TO HELP MANAGE WYRE FOREST

A trial project using pigs to help manage the Wyre Forest is being carried out by the Wyre Community Land Trust near Bewdley in Worcestershire, as part of the Grow with Wyre Landscape Partnership Scheme.

Grow With Wyre is led by the Forestry Commission and was set up to help restore the unique landscape of Wyre and celebrate its rich working history. This £4 million Scheme which is mainly funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and is made up from 18 projects, covering biodiversity, community involvement, access, local history, economic regeneration and education. Over the years, those involved in the management of the Wyre Forest have had a wide range of techniques and equipment available to them, such as small and large machinery and occasionally the use of chemical herbicides to control invasive plants.

A new small-scale pilot project is now using pigs as an environmentally friendly means to help manage the Wyre Forest. Wild pigs were once an integral part of the woodland landscape in which the natural flora we associate with woodlands evolved. Modern pig management can help maintain these habitats, reducing the need for herbicide and mechanical management and increasing floral diversity.

Mark Cleaver from the Wyre Community Land Trust, says: “We hope that the value of using pigs to aid woodland management can easily be demonstrated as part of this pilot project. If successful, the Land Trust will seek to carry out further short trials in other areas of the forest to enhance the forest flora and fauna.”

Following expert advice from Rosemary Winnall from the Wyre Forest Study Group, three pigs are now grazing in an enclosed area of woodland near Uncllys Farm, with permission from the landowners, the Guild of St George and Natural England. The site chosen was ideal, as it was dominated by bracken and bramble and had a relatively open tree canopy. The open canopy is an important factor as it allows light to reach the forest floor, creating better conditions for the re-establishment of a diverse range of plants. The pigs will remain in the wood until early winter with the timing of their removal dependent on their impact. They would then return if needed for a similar duration the following year.

Despite the reputation of pigs as destructive animals capable of destroying wood and farmland, managed carefully, they are now recognised in the conservation sector for their valuable contribution to woodland management. The behavioural characteristics of pigs are almost impossible to copy using any other form of management. The results of these trials will be fed into national discussions about the use of pigs in woodland and the value of the naturally-reared traditionally bred pork, which the Land Trust plans to sell in the near future.

The Wyre Forest Landscape Partnership Scheme – Grow With Wyre is being led by the Forestry Commission, with assistance from the Wyre Forest Study Group and a range of other partners, to ensure the long-term social, environmental and economic sustainability of the Wyre landscape. The Grow With Wyre Landscape Scheme partners, the local community and visitors are now taking an active role in restoring around 72 square kilometres of unique landscape through the delivery of its 18 projects. Each project will be designed to manage the landscape character, heritage and biodiversity that make the Wyre Forest Landscape special. A Heritage Lottery Fund grant of £2 million is helping to drive the Grow With Wyre Landscape Partnership Scheme forward. The Scheme is also being supported with other funding totalling £294,000 from GrantScape, specifically earmarked for rejuvenating the Wyre’s traditional orchards, special trees and ancient hedgerows. A further £74,000 comes from SITA Trust, and funding is also being provided by the Grow with Wyre partners.

The hay all gathered in

Here's the team that helped get all the hay in off the cherry orchard.

All done for another year!

Sally and Mark with the woodland pigs

Sally and Mark know how to handle the pigs - just the slightest stroke and scratch on their tummies and they collapse in bliss!

Haymaking

Baling the hay on a beautiful afternoon in the old cherry orchard - a delight with the baler behaving itself at last!

Haymaking at last!

After all the rain in July and August we finally managed to make hay in the orchard at Uncllys.

The other real pain has been the baler which John finally got working by extending the blade in the knotters using a piece of Stanley knife blade - worked perfectly ever since!

Lifting the last truss into place

On Tuesday 25th August the last truss was lifted into place and work now starts on lifting the purlins and then getting the rafters up before cladding the building with insulation and a slate roof.

Capturing the moment

Paul Bye has very kindly offered to capture the creation of the studio on DVD - here he is on his platform capturing the lifting of the trusses.

The film that will be produced will be linking the construction back to John Ruskin's ideas of housing his museum along the lane at St George's Farm - it never happened then - but we have the drawings and his ideas to go on.

the 'Cathedral' taking shape

We've started to call it the Cathedral - although the official title is the Ruskin Studio!

Here you can see three of the four main trusses now in place and held there by a clever use of acro props by the builder aned artisan Ron Clowes

The Big Lift

Last week saw the main trusses being lifted into place with a big crane

Getting ready for the big lift

We are ready for the next stage in the Studio project with all the oak timbers now back on site and jointed ready to be lifted into place next week.

All the joints are marked with traditional chisel marks to make sure they are put together in the right order.

So soon a crane will be coming to lift them into place, then the purlins will be fitted, the rafters and then the whole lot clad in birch plywood, a layer of insulation and then the slate roof.

Pigs in the woods - Sunday 16th July 2009

Here are the 3 Gloucester Old Spot pigs being visited by the group from the Wolverhampton Tabernacle Baptist Church today.

The pigs are doing a great job clearing bracken and brambles from this part of the forest in our experiment.

The group also saw the lambs, chickens and Large Black pigs as well as seeing the trees they planted in the orchard nearly 3 years ago.

Dowsing to find our water pipes 12th july 2009

Life is never dull at Uncllys and on Wednesday we had a visit from 2 folks from the Far Forest WI who had been learning to dowse.

Here they are at the gate sensing that our water pipe is just where they are standing.

From there we went on to search out for other peipes in the forest which will save me having to dig a lot of trenches!

Foot trimming July 28th 2009

Here is Gemma giving the older cows a trim of their hooves. This needs to be done about once a year so doing it while they are all back at the farm makes sense.

Gemma did a great job and trimmed 8 cattle on the day.

Time for the annual TB test - 28 July 2009

Here's Mark with Jon Miles and Sophie getting all the cattle back to Uncllys for their annnual TB test.

The test is in 2 parts - on the Tuesday the vet comes and injects them all in the neck with 2 types of TB - avian and bovine - and then she comes back on Friday to see if they reacted - by forming a lump on their neck.

This year we were all clear.

New Large Black Pigs arrive

After the success of the last pair (very tasty!) we decided to get another couple of Large Black pigs. They are actually quite small at the moment having just been weaned but they will soon put on weight.

They have arrived just in time to start eating the early windfalls from our apple tree.

Pigs in the woods

We've just started our experiment with Natural England to look at the effects of grazing the woodland adjacent to uncllys with pigs.

The objective is to reduce the amount of bracken and bramble and to see whether after the pigs have turned the ground over there will be a more diverse woodland flora.

In October we will be running a training course with Natural England to look at the Management of Pigs in Woodland as part of the national Grazing Animals Project.

The pigs will be there until the end of November when they should have fattened up nicely on acorns ready for Christmas. Our piggy banks!

Richard log splitting

As a by product from sawing loads of oak for the timber beams for the Ruskin studio project, we now have several tons or cordwood and slabwood to process. Richard jones has been doing a great job with the log splitter and we've puchased 50 specal ventilated bags so that the oak logs will season in the bag over the next year or so.

The bags will be ready to sell in September 2010 at a price of £80 plus VAT at 5%.

Loading the timber beams 18th June 2009

With the drains now done, now is the time to start on the construction of the beams to hold up the gallery floor and the roof.

Our home grown and home sawn timber was loaded up to take to a local sawmill and timber framer who will now cut all the mortice and tenon joints, peg and number them in their frames. There will be 4 frames - one at each gable and 2 in the middle. The middle ones sit on the biggest beams - 22ft long and 12" by 9" in size.

Concrete pour 16th June 2009

Another busy day at Uncllys as the concrete lorry arrived sharp at 8am to concrete in the drains, the last pic shows the finished product.

Grow with Wyre Community Board Members tour of grazing sites Friday June 12th 2009

As Grow with Wyre gains momentum, new Community Board Members, Godfrey and Georgina, along with Project Manager Bob Griffiths wanted to see the sites that the Community land Trust was already managing.

The first pic shows them talking with Land Trust manager Mark Cleaver, the second pic is at Bell Coppice meadows admiring the fantastic display of orchids and the last one is a dying dragonfly spotted at bell Coppice

Replacing a culvert on the track

Well we had a spare bit of time with the digger - so time to replace a broken/blocked culvert on the track at the side of the farm that will be used for timber extraction over the coming years.

The first picture shows the water flowing over the track, the second the digger clearing out the track ready to lay a new pipe and the third with the new pipe in place.

Now the ground is drying out and we'll have a better track for the future.

Putting in the new drains

Here's Ron with the digger helping to put in a new oil trap and soakaway for storm water running off the concrete area in front of the studio

Farm Open Sunday - 7th June 2009

Once a year, on Farm Open Sunday, farms open their doors (gates?) to thousands of people to show them where their food comes from and how it is grown.

This year we ran a fairly low profile event - just registering on the Open Farm Sunday website and then putting some posters up at the Hop Pole Inn at the end of the lane.

25 people came along - some from the Hop Pole and others who had been listening to the Archers and then checked out where their nearest farm was on the web.

During the visit we had a walk around the farm seeing lambs, pigs, hens and the cattle before enjoying tea and cakes back in the barn.

Once the Ruskin Studio is completed we plan to be able to host more visits and build relationships with our local schools.

Glasshouse College students on their D of E residential

During the first week of June we had 3 wonderful girls (a support worker and 2 students) from the college staying with us and helping out with lots of jobs - including clipping the wings of our 26 hens, log splitting, weeding and planting in the vegetable garden and mending the track.

We hope that this will be the start of a longer term relationship with the college and its students.

Studio progress 29th May 2009

View from my fixed point - a gatepost. Ron and his crew have been digging out for the drains to connect to the new shower and toilet in the studio.

They promise that soon there will be a digger!

Studio progress 29th May 2009

Front wall demolished, gables taken down and work about to start on the drains

Art Group visit 4th June 2009

Here's the Art Group from Bewdley Baptist Church taking inspiration for their creative work from the plants and pond at Uncllys.

The new Ruskin Studio will give groups like this a base to operate from and provide indoor facilities that will make their visit more enjoyable.

and its gone!

Lots of air and light and space with the roof gone. Now Ron can start to make the roof timbers and really get going on the build.

Cutting through the bolts....

Taking the roof off......

This is the 'before' photo as Mark and I get to work cutting the bolts that held the roof on

Sawing more timber

Here we are again sawing up yet more Guild oak trees to make the roof timbers, rafters and joists for the Studio.

We had a much better system this time with the Pasquali tractor (thank you Natural England) able to offload cut timbers. As ever Ian Carmichael did a brilliant job on the mill. Mark Cleaver was in charge of operations and Tim Lewis was a star busy sawing up all the slabwood.

Work starts on the Ruskin Studio

Here's the team that will be converting the small barn into the Ruskin Studio - on the left is Ron Clowes the builder, then Rob Taylor the Architect and one of Ron's workers. Today they have put up the scaffolding ready for Wind and Sun to take down the solar panels and relocate them.

We'll then be taking off the roof ready for the new timber frame roof construction - we'll keep updating as the project unfolds

Dancing in the barn to Bandemonium

Bandemonium

Hereford community band, Bandemonium, came and played and led the dancing in the barn

Vegetarian paella ready to be served in the barn

The Pig Roast

Here's Smokey Joes pig roast all ready to serve (not one of our pigs!) - really juicy and absolutely delicious!

Uncllys Party

Mark Cleaver who works at Uncllys for the Wyre Community Land Trust speaking about the ways in which pigs will be used to manage some of the woodland near the farm.