I think it was in a Braziers Park newsletter some time last year there was an inventory from a clean-out of the barn or another outbuilding that was really evocative. Laid out like poetry, it suggested volumes of hidden histories in a (long) list of brief lines, the secret stories of the voiceless objects unearthed for reburial somewhere else. This came back to me recently listening to reports from a Cleaning of the Furniture Store, along with a very real sense of relief that I hadn't been involved. (It's not that the enormity of the task was daunting, although it most certainly was, so much as the knowledge that most of the rejected items would've ended up in my room rather than at the recycling centre or the charity shop. It's hard to let go, and comforting to have a space for all the things you don't want or need but feel deep down are part of you somehow. In Japan it's not uncommon for long-used and discarded items to take on lives of their own: I can't help but thinking of the old-mattress- and strangers-photograph-spirits we've sent out into the world with this big clean.)

Anyway, thanks to the efforts of Sean and Simon and Catherine and Ali, the furniture store is once again a room you can walk all the way through and see what's stored there. To celebrate, here's a cute photo of Catherine and Ali hard at work. This is also a chance to mark the date, in case anybody's curious to see how long it takes to fill up again.

Our second jazz night of the year in the Pine Hall (October 17th) was a great success. An enthusiastic audience was treated to some scintillating solos from Azhaar Saffar on violin, Philip Clouts on keyboards and Ben Taylor on bass. Azhaar was in fine voice also and the repertoire covered a variety of styles from Bossa to swing and included some original compositions. A well-deserved encore rounded off the evening nicely and left us looking forward to the next time.

More images from the Pine Hall on the night on flickr!

Our kindergarten children and parent and child group gathered together on the front lawn to make apple juice from the apples we had picked from our orchard a few weeks ago. After visiting the straw bale house where the apples were stored we made our way to where Roger had set up the equipment. Roger explained that we needed to wash the apples first before cutting them into quarters. All the children helped and soon we were ready to put the pieces into the apple crusher when the children had a go at turning the handle. Once the apples were crushed Roger put them into the apple press and a jug was put in position to catch the juice. The children began to turn the handle, gradually increasing the pressure on the apples. All eyes were watching for the first signs of juice and after a few minutes to our great excitement the first little drops of brown liquid began to trickle through. There was enough for everyone. We carefully carried our apple juice back to kindergarten to drink with our snack and we all agreed that it was the best apple juice ever – it really was!

So we’ve just finished the 5^th of our 6 family weeks, a fantastic Bushcraft Family Week run by the amazing Jonathon Huet. The week started off with a showing of how to use a bow drill followed by an impromptu lesson with flint and steel, which resulted in a fantastic fire where the 27 of us listened to stories about the old world, when wolves, boars and witches roamed freely around Albion (that's England to most folk).

Day 2 started with Jon teaching us how to light fires with a Special Forces survival tool, “Fire Steel”, and how to manage these fires to produce loads and loads of heat and light. With the fires we made wild teas, sweet breads on sticks, and charcoal. Although the charcoal wasn’t as tasty as the tea and bread, it would come in very useful for the days to come. After a hearty dinner we went on a walk into a wild orchard, across a flowing river and through a dark tunnel to watch and observe the Lesser Horseshoe bat, a trek that all enjoyed and survived.

After a long and deep night's sleep came more fire lighting techniques with flint and steel (the main fire lighitng technique until the invention of the match in 1805), the difficult but satisfying bow drill, and the building of dens in the wild. With fire lighting mastered we learned more bushcraft skills and tricks with woodcarving and cordage making from willow, nettle and lime trees. The woodcarving was brilliant, absolutely fantastic. I managed to carve a butter knife that was far too long and far too thin but a butter knife all the same. Others were more adventureous and managed fantastic and almost perfect spoons.

On the Friday we headed off on our walk down to Lyme Regis, which was hampered with heavy showers and a crowded beach but I had fun all the same and some of the party even managed a dip in the sea, brave souls. Upon our return we played some games and got ready for the “Pea Fair”, an event put on by two of the participants and run to absolute perfection and precision. It was a brilliant way to end the week, and after all the excitement we sat around the fire and ate plum bakewells, telling jokes and scary stories.

I have to say that this week and the group that I was with were among the best to date for me, mainly because in the evenings the kids, a few of the adults and myself played games and sports for hours and hours until too dark to see. We played all sort of games; tag bulldog, a European version of bulldog called spider, cricket, 40/40 and an in-the-dark tag (which was actually quite nerve racking never really being sure who was on and who wasn’t).

To finish I’d just like to say thank you to Jon and Christine for running the course and to all the adults and kids for making the week so memorable. I’m looking forward to you returning next year on the 16^th of August to run another. Cheers.

Thanks for reading.

Tom

Hello Monkton Wyld People —

We used to come on your Family Weeks and they were an enormous help to a tired single mum with 2 little girls. I found this poem which I wrote on a family week because it was so great + we saw dolphins at Charmouth!

Hope you like it and whoever is running them now realizes what a wonderful thing they are doing!

Happy memories + gratitude,

Love,
Charlotte


This place, this place
It’s like staying with the perfect set of grandparents—
Calm and gentle, it cradles you—

It’s in the poplar leaves rustling over happy children’s shouts
In the football field alive with action,
and in the lazy cushioned moments—

It’s in the felt pen notices we soak up every day
“♡You matter far more than any material possessions”
“Thank you for taking care of our water supply!”
Thank you for taking care of us!
For saying to us: Take care of each other
Take care of yourself
Take care of the earth

This place…
You can go barefoot, you can bare your bum,
You can bare your soul, you can just have fun!
This place—It hugs you close, then lets you run free…
It’s like your best ever Granny—
warm and easy, it feeds you
It’s in the magic bottomless ever-filling milk jug,
the scented tea leaves and the comfort of soup—
It’s in the frilly leaves of a petal-starred salad—
Looks like seaweed, tastes of good earth.
It’s in a mum’s embrace and being well fed.
It’s that nice tired feeling when you want your cosy bed.
You can bang your spoon! You can have it with JAM!
You can get away with anything, you know you can.
Only eat it if you like it, you can come back for more
You can get down from the table and go running out the door!

This place—It hugs you close, then lets you free…
It’s like your favourite Grandpa—
Safe and strong, it holds you—
It’s in the old floorboards beneath our feet,
creaky, cool and worn smooth to a dancing beat.
It’s in piano music and the woodsmoke smells,
It’s in a Dad’s high lift and carry
and in the stories he tells…
You can build a fire. You can swing even higher!
You can bang your drum or you can suck your thumb.
This place—it hugs you close, then lets you run free…

It’s like your best friend
It frees you
You can laze in the Meditation Hut
In the glow of candlelight
You can dance or watch, opt out, join in,
or make toast in the middle of the night—

It makes you want to sing: ♫ ♫
♫ Oh it’s such a perfect place, I’m glad I shared it with you!

This place—it hugs you close, then lets you run free…
And now it’s time to let go—what would your perfect set of grandparents give you, for on the way—?
Remember the DOLPHINS—LEAPING JUST FOR JOY—
Joy-- here, take some home with you…
They’ve wrapped some up for you…
Joy-- There’s plenty to go round…
You might need some on the train, or in the car…
Joy-- You’ll need a bit to keep you going until teatime…
Joy-- Remember, don’t wash it all off…
like the sand in the bath…
This place, this place
It’s hugged you close—now you can run free…

Charlotte
7.8.98 Family Week

So we’ve just hosted our second beekeeping course. This time it had a slightly different feel, firstly it was over 2 days not 3, secondly it rained on us for half a day and thirdly Kate Humble, 3 members of the BBC film crew and a photographer from The Times were in attendance. I had a brilliant time linking the course, it was just fantastic, an astounding group of people. My only problem was that I got stung, on the hand, not once but twice. How extraordinarily frustrating, but I took it well and didn’t cause any panic, which was important. The course was brilliantly run by David, our leader and next door neighbor, with a great mix of very entertaining chats about bees and hands on experience, in my case a little too hands on.
Just to blow our own trumpets, which is aloud I assure you, here are some of the more memorable quotes from the feedback.

About David - “Excellent. We had a very knowledgeable tutor”
“… excellent tutor and was patient with our questions”

About Us – “The welcome and the staff 100% excellent”
“Welcome v. warm, room lovely”

About the food – “Food far, far too good”
“The food was excellent”

Kate Humble and the film crew were here to film a piece for Autumn Watch to be shown in October and the photographer was shooting for a Times Supplement on Sustainability and the Environment to be published in August.

We’re hoping to run further courses on Beekeeping in September and in spring and early summer 2010.

Thanks for reading.

by Estibaliz Garcia, Monkton Intern February-May 2009

The beginning of the porridge cake was three months ago. There were guests in Monkton. We asked them if they wanted porridge for breakfast. They told us yes, but at the end they didn´t have it. So Laurie asked me to throw away* the porridge leftovers. The pot was full! How waste! I´ve to admit it, I didn´t know nothing about the porridge. I looked at the pot and I saw something looked like rice. I thought it was make from more than just oats and water. I couldn´t throw away all this fresh food! This day was the birth of the porridge cake (well, to be honest, I tried first to make arancini, but they didn´t work...). I told the people what was the cake made from, it was a mistake because they didn´t like the idea (Are you joking? You can´t make a cake with porridge!). Just the braves tried it, and they liked it! Little by little the people started to take a bit, the cake wasn´t too bad! I used to make a cake with every porridge leftovers since this day. Each one was different!


There is not a unique recipe, the best of the porridge cake is that it´s you want it to be. The first step is make more porridge than you need for breakfast. Make much more stuff, we want a lot of leftovers. Mix the porridge with sugar, honey or syrup. How much? The people from Monkton like it really sweet. You can use almost the same quantity of sweet you have of porridge! If you put little and the people complain (yes, it´s difficult to believe, but somebody can complain about your porridge cake. It´s not a problem, this means more cake for you!), they can put honey, syrup, jam... on the top. Then you´ve to mix the sweet porridge with... all you want! I made a lot of different kinds of cakes. For me, the best ones are the ones just with sugar, cocoa and orange, cocoa and nuts and cocoa and cinnamon. But I tried with peanut butter, cocoa and banana, cocoa and strawberry jam... It´s up to you, find your favorite porridge cake flavour! Put the mixture in a grased pan and bake in the oven. For how long? It´s your choice again. It depends on what you prefer, cake or pudding? One hour is enough for the pudding. In one hour and a half you will have a cake. Enjoy it!

*read 'give to the chickens' -ed

The year's first 'family week' event a great success, some of us took advantage of the perfect spring afternoon weather and suddenly empty grounds and chore lists (not to mention the fridge full of leftovers) for a traditional Japanese celebration under our flowering cherry tree, Dorset-style. That is to say, we reclined beneath it with fair trade wine and locally (well, South West and Wessex)-brewed ales.
At last count over eighty eggs have been hidden around Monkton's terraced front garden, and every last one was found again by our dedicated teams of hunters. Thanks to all the lovely families who came to join us for Easter holidays, and a warm welcome to the group due in tomorrow!