Winter Schedule

Oh, but it's almost dark at suppertime. The days are getting shorter, everybody's talking about it (and the faintest sense of foreboding blows over your ankles like the first winter chill). Busy summer's ended and all our gears are winding down for a long winter's nap... Not really!

We have so much excitement brewing for the next few months, what with a steadily expanding schedule of events, the never-ending project of Monkton upkeep and the unseen changes and developments life does always bring: who knows, we might even have ice skating on the little pond come February!

And then we have our own little pet projects to while away the spare moments. These are a couple of mine:

2010 Monkton Wyld Wall Calendar

including seasonal recipes and stunning colour photos of the house and grounds of
Monkton Wyld Court
ORDER NOW!
available from late September

The MWC Archive Drive welcomes your photos, stories, brochures (2001-2006, anyone?), schoolwork, etc.
Help us preserve our shared oral and visual history, to present this place to the world .

There are more, but let's save them for next time. Remember to keep your 2009 calendars clear for our September 27th Open Day. We look forward to seeing you then.

Laurie

Upcoming Events
See Website for
full details!

Sept 9th, Oct 14th
Local Lunches
§

Sept 9th, Oct 7th
Knit & Stitch
FREE!
§

Sept 11th & 18th
Herb Spiral Making
FREE EVENT!
§

Sept 18th - 20th
Introduction to Permaculture
with George Sobol
§

Sept 27th
Wyldside Walk Grand Opening Event
FREE EVENT!
§

Oct 2nd - 4th
Sacred Drumming

with Doug Blacksmith
§

Oct 9th - 11th
Trance Dance
with Leo Rutherford
§

Oct 14th & 15th
Creative Coppicing
FREE EVENT!
§

Nov 6th - 8th
Dowsing: An Introduction
with Alan Neal
§

Nov 28th
MWC Winter Fair
Vendors & Performers wanted!
FREE EVENT!
§

Comings & Goings

John Lipinski's occasional visit (to check up on us and on his beautiful stained glass work throughout the building) was timed perfectly to help us through the busy summer season and beyond. We're grateful to him and all the steady stream of wonderful summer volunteers
for pitching in.
This week we say farewell (for now!) to our Bea, an inspiration and delight, whose family in Spain are understandably keen to get her back.
A special morning bird chorus is scheduled for Monday at dawn in her honour.

The Kindy Corner Kindy Painting

Monkton Wyld Court Kindergarten is currently seeking an energetic and enthusiastic Steiner-qualified teacher
to take on and develop our fledgling kindergarten.
Terms are negotiable for this potentially residential position,
an opportunity to live and work in a truly beautiful and unique educational setting.

Application deadline November 6th
Interviews November 20th
Position beginning January 2010

For more information about the position or about enrollment,
please contact Caroline or Catherine by email or phone 01297560342 .

Help Us Spread the Word!

We're always looking for like-minded people, groups, businesses and publications who might be interested in a little reciprocal info-sharing.

Let us know where you would like to see Monkton mentioned, or better yet, take some brochures and fliers away with you the next time you stop by!

Upcoming Events:

Autumn Lecture Series
with Bob Machin

Bob Machin, appointed Bristol University Resident Tutor in Dorset in 1969, draws from years of research on the history of local architecture in this fascinating series. Guests for the morning talks are also invited to book for a simple low-cost lunch and an informal look at the Victorian art and architecture of St Andrews Church and Monkton Wyld Court itself. Companion pieces in the neo-Gothic style, both were designed by Richard Cromwell Carpenter, pupil of Pugin. Coming from the (three-time) sell-out popularity of the first Dorset Farmhouses & Cottages talk in the Spring, these are sure to be illuminating as well entertaining days out.

23 Sept (Wed)
Dorset Farmhouses
& Cottages II

20 Oct (Tues)
Looking at
Parish Churches

24 Nov (Tues)
Furnishings & Farmyards
in 17th-Century Dorset

The cost for each of these events is £8 for the talk or £14 including a two-course lunch. Please be sure to book ahead as spaces are limited.

Travels with Henry
the Hoover
by Bea

Monkton Wyld Court has already finished the summertime session, six weeks of receiving lots of people who have chosen this magical place to spend part of their holidays. We all have been working hard as a team to make this happen, and Henry is part of that team (the smiley one, of course).
It's exciting when you go upstairs to collect Henry, and he is probably excited too. Sometimes you get a disappointment when you don't find him there: he is in the other stoarage room (the Medical Cupboard downstairs), and I think he doesn't like it! He is warmer upstairs. Maybe the Medical Cupboard is nice as a second residence but not for the winter... Anyway, you find him and he is happy to go with you to every room, never losing his beautiful smile. Look back to check that he's not strangled by the electrical cable and he is still there, following you to all the amazing rooms already prepared with fresh flowers and nice views at their windows. He'll accompany you to the Piano Room or even the Old Library on the ground floor, nice rooms with magical windows. If you try to get him to the Pine Hall he even goes uphill!!! And he really likes that room, even if there's nothing to hoover, just because it has a very big window and you can check what's going on outside the courtyard. Like who is off to take herbs from the garden, which bike has been repaired, and the comings and goings of staff planning something!
Henry doesn't complain at all, not even when you ask him to go as far as Beech Bottom just to hoover a place that he doesn't fit: Bee.
Thank you, Henry, for your effort and total demonstration of love!! You sure do know how to sprinkle the dust*.

Since the start of our new cleaning regimen five weeks back, we've all had more opportunities to spend quality time with Henry, who follows along contentedly through the daily hoovering rounds. He and Bea are particularly well matched, though, in relative size as well as boundless energy and optimism, and the sight of them trundling together down the drive from the Pine Hall would bring a smile to anybody's face.
(Beech Bottom is an outbuilding of volunteer accommodation and Bee is Bea's own sleeping quarters, a walk-in closet, really.)

*Spanish innuendo listed in Bea's new book of proverbs, Solo Bea

Activities Report:

Counting Bees

Hi, I'm Tom, and I'm the apprentice beekeeper at Monkton. I'll just give you the back story of our bees before I give you the seasonal report. We got our five colonies off a pleasant gentleman called Noel, and they were delivered to us all the way from the Bristol area last November. We set the hives up down just below the cowsheds, out of sight and out of mind for any budding explorers that might be on our family weeks, and left them to get on with the winter. By February we needed to unite two of the colonies for fear of them failing, so down to four, and then by the end of spring, about May time, one of the colonies was trying to swarm (the queen with literally thousands of bees leave the hive to never return) so we had to split the hive to stop that happening. So we had more hives, five because of the split, but less hives that were ready to collect and produce honey. What would happen in the summer?
     So the summer months rolled on and it started off wet, not as bad as last year but the fear of a repeat was there. When it's wet the bees don't fly, and if the bees don't fly we don't get any honey. But then, thankfully, the clouds left us and the bees could get out foraging. In June we had our first beekeeping course led by our next door neighbour David Wiscombe. It was a great success and the bees were well behaved and everybody learnt loads of useful things, e.g. drone bees (the male bees) don't have a sting, and have bigger eyes that touch at the top of their heads and help you tell them apart from the other bees. With the summer by late June still going well, our best hive was looking like it would produce a vast amount of honey. Things were going great.
     In July we had our second beekeeping course, again run by David, and again everybody learnt a huge amount of information. But this time we had a special guest (not to say that all of our guests aren't special) in the shape of a BBC film crew, a photographer from The Times and Kate Humble, presenter of Spring Watch and Autumn Watch. With their arrival Monkton was a bit of a buzz (I'm so sorry for the pun). Unfortunately July wasn't kind to us and it managed to rain, on and off, throughout the whole course. We did get to do some beekeeping but it was somewhat damper than you would usually would like. All the same everybody enjoyed the course and were told little interesting facts about bees: a colony can have up to 50,000 bees in it with 1 queen, 1000 drones and all the rest workers. After the course we started to get the honey off the hives, and after a day's hard, heavy work we managed to collect 90 lbs, 45kg of honey. A beautiful pale and runny honey. After the honey collection we split the hives further so next year we'd have more hives, more honey, and more educational tools for our courses. We managed to raise our number up to nine colonies.
     Now it's September and I've got some bad news, the wasps won. Wasps love honey, and they can attack hives for the honey that is inside. And unfortunately they did it well this year. We lost 3 hives to the wasps, and had to unite 2 hives to stop them failing too, meaning we're back down to 5. It's a very sad business, but that's nature. But we've got honey, and we've got beeswax and we still have five hives, so we have to look at the positives. We have one more beekeeping course next year, and if you are interested in watching us on the box then tune into BBC2 on the 2nd and 9th of October to watch Autumn Watch. You might get to see me, which could be either a curse or a blessing depending what you think of my dishevelled appearance.
Thanks for reading.

Tom

Kitchen Cook-pot

   Well hello & welcome again, this time to the autumn edition of our little kitchen report. Things have been crazy busy here. We have literally just finished our 6 packed summer family weeks and even before that was hardly what we could call slow. One highlight for me was the beekeeping course in July when we had a BBC camera crew and Kate Humble (off the telly!) here; the course was great, the participants lovely & the crew were all brilliant. Because of being so busy over the summer we had a break from our local lunches, but they're due to start up again this month which is great. The garden has been producing like mad, the usual glut of courgettes & cucumbers which we are desperately trying to preserve, making chutneys and some really lovely sweet pickled cucumbers. This year we've also had huge quantities of plums, last year the weather wasn't good enough & they didn't ripen, this year we've almost been overwhelmed by them! We've been making plum chutney, jam, sauce and I even braved bottling some, which seems to have worked so I'll hopefully be doing some more, along with some apples and pears when they're ready too. We've not had as many tomatoes as last year, but the varieties and flavours are still amazing. Our famous 'Martian purple' sweetcorn is just ripening, and our runner beans are almost ready. We've had an impressive crop of aubergines, much to my surprise, and we've got tons of chillies coming too! Our brassicas are starting to get there, we've had our first few cabbages, and we've also just started on our potatoes, carrots and beetroots. It really is a total cornucopia of delightful loveliness!
   As it has been a bit of a mainstay over the family weeks and as so many people have requested the recipe this time we've got my chocolate brownie recipe, which can be made gluten and dairy-free if needed, a delicious runner bean stew and a really delicious courgette ribbon salad.

(Gluten-Free) Chocolate Brownies
The method is the same for both these brownies, but the quantities are a little different. You can make these dairy-free too by using margarine instead of butter. People who have tried the gluten & dairy-free version have commented that they can't believe they're not conventional and not packed with chocolate.

Conventional                          Gluten-Free
4oz Butter                              4oz Butter
1-1/2 oz Cocoa                       1-1/2 oz Cocoa
8oz Sugar                                8oz Sugar
2 Eggs                                     2 Eggs
1tsp Vanilla Essence                1tsp Vanilla Essence
2oz Flour                                1-1/2oz Potato Flour
3oz Walnuts/Pecans/               1-1/2oz Ground Almonds
        Hazelnuts (in pieces)       1/2tsp Baking Powder
                                              3oz Walnuts/Pecans/
                                                           Hazelnuts (in pieces)

Preheat your oven to 190°C. Gently melt your butter in a small saucepan and then add the cocoa. Stir well until smooth and then set aside. Beat your eggs and sugar until light. Stir in the cocoa mixture and then the vanilla essence. Fold in the flour (or the potato flour, ground almonds and baking powder) then the nuts. Line an 8inch square tin with baking parchment/greaseproof paper. Pour your brownie mixture into the tin and bake for 30-35minutes. You don't want to over cook brownies or they go hard and horrible. It should be set when it comes out, but you can't test it like a cake. Cool it in the tin and then cut into whatever size pieces you fancy! If you want to be extra decadent you can add chocolate chips or broken up pieces of chocolate as well, or instead of the nuts.

Runner Bean Stew
While this might not sound that exciting, I urge you to give it a try. It is delicious with jacket potatoes for example and it's something a bit different to do with runner beans.

Good glug of olive oil
1 onion, finely sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Good sprig of fresh rosemary, chopped finely
1 dried red chilli, crumbled
500-600g runner beans, sliced finely on the diagonal
400g tin of chopped tomatoes or a bottle of passata
Small bunch of flat leaf parsley, chopped

Heat your olive oil in a good sized saucepan, add your onion and fry until browning at the edges and softened, add the garlic and rosemary and stir well, fry for a further minute before adding your runner beans and combining well. Cook until the runner beans have softened slightly and then add the tomatoes, stir well and leave to simmer with a lid on for 12-15 minutes until the beans are cooked. Taste and season well with salt and pepper. Sprinkle with parsley and serve.

Courgette & Cashew Nut Salad
This is adapted from a Leith's recipe and its always very popular amongst the adults. If you have a selection of yellow and green courgettes use a mixture to make it more colourful, if not then all the same is fine. Just make sure to pick smaller firm courgettes for this salad.

2-3 courgettes (depending on size), made into ribbons using a peeler
1-2 cloves of garlic (depending on taste), crushed
2 tbs lemon juice
4 tbs olive oil
1 tbs each fresh chives, oregano, mint, chopped
Salt & pepper, to taste
A handful of cashew nuts, toasted

Put your courgette ribbons into a large enough bowl that you'll be able to mix them about in it. Now make your dressing; combine the garlic, lemon juice, olive oil and herbs in a jug or small bowl and whisk together, season with salt and pepper. Pour this all over your courgette ribbons and mix well. Set aside for about an hour, after which time taste and adjust seasoning if needed. Dry toast your cashews and just before serving mix through the courgettes.

Happy cooking and eating,
Sophie x

Land Use Update

While Rachael, Mark K and all their helpers have been busy restoring our one-acre walled garden and providing us with wonderful fresh produce [see Rachael's report], we have also been able to make significant progress on some of our other ten acres.

Various overgrown hedges have been pruned and rescued from bramble growth with other areas of brambles left for blackberry picking, and damaged trees have been given some attention.

The young orchard downhill from the strawbale house has been developed into a forest garden with new trees and bush fruit planted, the trees spot-mulched and then surrounded by a living mulch of strawberry plants, and the area protected from visiting deer. Below this, a new double hedgerow has been planted on contour which will provide shelter from the wind and food for us and for wildlife.

Downhill again, the semi-mature oak and lime trees in our meadow have been cleared of the massive growth of brambles that was around their bases and climbing up into their branches, and some dead-wooding and formative pruning done. Elsewhere on the site there is plenty of dead wood left standing for the woodpeckers that can be seen and heard here most days. Between these trees a much-nibbled area of relatively recent tree plantings has been rescued, mulched, fenced and added to, to create a band of coppice with standard trees.

Several new areas of coppice have also been created, thanks to GreenPrints 'Events' funding from the Sita Trust, and two herb spirals linked with tyre ponds have been built close to buildings, taking advantage of the rainwater run-off from the roofs, to show how a multi-layered growing area and varied habitat can be fitted in to even the smallest garden.

[See our website for further free events this autumn.]

And it is the GreenPrints 'Flagship' projects funding which has enabled us to create...

The pond!!!

This has filled up amazingly quickly (one compensation for the wet summer) and has already become a focal point for swallows, ducks, wagtails, dragonflies... And along with this we have of course...

The walk!!!

A nature trail around Monkton's grounds has been designed and created with the help of volunteers to allow visitors to explore and enjoy our diverse natural habitats. Everyone is invited to celebrate the opening of Monkton's new Wyldside project walk at the...

Monkton Wyld Court Open Day
from 10.00 to 16.00 on Sunday 27^th September 2009

There will be delicious food and an opportunity to buy plants, seeds and various produce from our orchards and gardens. Plus the opportunity to find out more about who we are and what we do!

George Sobol and Patsy Garrard

Gardener's Grove Rachael Moss

Autumn has arrived on a blustery wind, daylight hours are decreasing, and the harvest is at its peak as nature sets forth her bounty. The fast growth of summer is beginning to slow down as the temperature drops and darkness increases.

It's been a good summer for growing, with some hot days but also plenty of rain. A few weeks were dry and we were desperately rushing about the garden hauling watering cans about, but the rain came to the rescue, wetting the land with its moisture, relieving the soil and all the micro-organisms that reside there.

The garden is blossoming: the colourful dahlias are providing us with cut flowers for the house, sunflowers are beaming yellow sunshine from all corners contrasting with the vivid blue morning glory, the sweet peas are startling with their variety of colours, and the vegetable beds are heaving.

Our crops are doing well. We have harvested vast quantities of blackcurrants, despite the resident blackbirds that share a passion for these fruits, and these have been turned into delicious jam, a great boost to our vitamin C levels. Our plum trees have not been outdone by the blackcurrant bushes, however, and have provided us with plenty of plums, also to be made into jam, along with the odd plum pie, a lovely treat after a hard day's work. The courgettes, with their exploding growth, are giving us unbounded amounts of these vegetables, and the peppers and chillies are also supplying us with many fruits of wonderful tastes as well as colours. One of our aubergine plants has produced a record breaking enormous black glossy aubergine, whilst other aubergine plants have provided a variety of varying shaped and sized fruits. Peas, onions and the first of the beetroot and carrots have been harvested; the wind-blown runner beans are next, followed by the pumpkins and squashes. The melons are growing rapidly, requiring support from nets as the plants climb, winding upwards, joining the cucumbers and sweet peas in their canopy in the shelter of the poly-tunnel. Blackberries, apples, elderberries and sloes are ripening on the ground, ready to provide us with more jams, pies, juice, wine and tasty gin to get us through the winter.

Pests, however, have been a little bit more abundant this year. Pigeons were the first challenge, feasting on the brassica leaves, taking off on noisy wingbeats as we approached. Silver foil pie cases on sticks that we placed amongst the plants that rattle in the wind probably scared us more than it did them. Then, if that wasn't enough for the cauliflowers, broccoli, cabbages and kale, the larvae of the clouds of cabbage white butterflies that had been happily fitting about in the garden all summer hatched into billions of caterpillars. These have been gorging themselves on the brassicas in squirming masses. At least we did not have a problem with cabbage root fly laying its larvae in the roots. We placed little carpet mats around the base of the plants to prevent the fly from laying there. We also sowed trefoil below our brassicas which helps to confuse the fly.

Moles have also been a bit annoying, making tunnels and disturbing the roots of newly planted chillies. Badgers may possibly take the credit for providing us with the biggest nuisance, however. One morning whilst walking down the garden path, I was horrified to see that the tall and graceful sweetcorn had been savagely pulled down, snapped, torn and ripped: stems, leaves and beautiful corn cobs with big chunks taken from them were laying massacred all over the ground. It was not the most pleasant sight or the best start to a sunny autumn day but after having built a fence around the sweetcorn bed we hope to keep these pesky minstrels out.

Unfortunately, it was not only pests that have been challenging this summer. We dug our potatoes up earlier than we would have liked because of blight (and some of our tomato plants have also suffered) despite our efforts with evening sprayings of equisetum. This native plant, also known as Horsetail, can be used as a preventative against potato blight if dried, simmered, diluted, stirred and sprayed onto the potato plants. This time it was less successful, but with the potatoes jostled out room was made to plant the baby leeks in their place, a good hearty winter staple.

Monkton Wyldlife

I thought it was about time someone Grass Snake taken by Sean Morony

mentioned the other residents of Monkton Wyld Court. I have always been fascinated by nature and have been looking under rocks, logs and many other hiding places since I can remember. My year and a half living at Monkton has been no exception to this and what a treat it has been. In a mere 11 acres of land I have witnessed a startling variety of wildlife either by actively searching or sometimes just stumbling across things. To make it easier I will talk about each animal kingdom in turn.
   As well as the various wonderful humans I have encountered here (some wilder than others), many mammals live in and around the site. Deer have been seen in the lower field and sometimes have been brave enough to wander up to the football pitch. Foxes can be seen and more often heard in the early evening (probably plotting ways to get at our chickens). Squirrels are common in the trees around the lower garden and the beech woods above the house. Although I have never seen one, the tracks and droppings of badgers are present in the lower field by the reed bed and have been recently suspected in raids on the sweetcorn in the vegetable garden. Rats and mice are not so welcome around the house but preventative measures, thorough cleaning of food waste and sealed compost bins have kept their activities to a minimum. A small family of field voles has moved in under a piece of corrugated tin (great habitat) by our chicken sheds and they sometimes share the space with a common shrew. The moles around the vegetable garden are causing a fair bit of trouble uprooting plants but it seems to have kept them away from the lawn for a while. Rabbits do not seem to come too close to the house but are often seen hopping about nearby. Last but by no means least,though some are pretty tiny, our wonderful resident bats have continued to attract and entertain visitors and residents alike. Our local bat expert, the lovely Jan Freeborn, has identified at last count around 15 lesser horseshoe bats (and perhaps a couple of pips) living above the courtyard, but to the layman or someone lacking the equipment to distinguish the sounds they make it is hard to identify fast moving tiny flying creatures in the dark. Hopefully we will soon have a batcam to help keep track.
   Birdlife here has caused quite a stir, mostly due to our incredible Spanish intern/volunteer. Her enthusiasm had us all looking to the skies and trying to learn the various birdsongs. Many birds I once thought to be uncommon seem run of the mill at Monkton. Green woodpeckers happily hop about on the lawn looking for worms and their laugh-like call and pecking could be heard all around the site through spring. Buzzards and kestrels patrol the skies for us and may have also contributed to our decreased rodent problems. As yet unidentified owls call out to each other in the trees at night. Jackdaws used to be a common sighting on the post of the chicken fence but now it seems a rather plump family of magpies have taken over and perch happily on the rooftops watching us. The swallows cohabiting crawlspace with our bat families perform fantastic arial dispalys throuout summer. Many tiny birds sing to us throughout the year and it has been nice to put up feeders for them in the winter. Robins often appear when the gardeners are digging and greenfinches, chaffinches, goldfinches, blue tits and bull finches have been spotted regularly. The most recent addition to Monkton birdlife is the singular female mallard duck that has been spotted splashing about in our new pond.
   Reptiles are a personal favorite of mine as I spent much of my youth in East Sussex trying to catch common lizards in the Ashdown forest and on my travels I have spent many a night trying and failing to outsmart geckos. At Monkton however the most common reptile is the slow worm, also a fan of the corrugated metal sheets I leave around as habitats. I have seen a few small grass snakes but was most pleased when a volunteer spotted an inpressive specimen just outside the new library. I didn't hesitate in scooping it up and we did a little photshoot before we released it back into the wild.
   Toads and frogs are the main amphibian contenders here and only the common varieties have been found, though they do make up for their lack of variety with numbers. Many toads have been found in the garden while digging and a few like to sit around under the outside lights at night catching bugs. We relocate some of the toads to our polythene tunnel pond to help fight the battle against slugs and they seem happy with thir new home. A few common newts have been spotted but we expect more when the larger pond is more settled.
   Insects, spiders and other associated creeping things make up the largest group of critters and although many people may not find these as interesting the incredible colour and variety of our bug life never fails to amaze me. A menace to our cabbages and nasturtium, the cabbage white butterflies are no less a happy addition to the terrace garden as they flutter around the lavender. Peacocks, red admirals and small tortoiseshells are just a few more of our butterfly guests as well as an incredible array of moths, many of which seem to prefer to be inside the house. My personal favorite, though, is the varied species of dragonfly and damselfly no doubt attracted by the pond now as well as the stream.
   Thankfully Sean is always on hand with his camera and has managed to bulid up quite a collection of photographs of colourful spiders, beetles and various other finds around the grounds.
   I think that concludes our Monkton Wyldlife tour. I hope to find many more things in the future and maybe given time the pond may provide me with a fish section.

Mark