Epping Forest Olympics

The pic I'm using for a header at the moment is one of our favourite spots in The Forest - it's called The Lost Pond.  It's easy to get lost round there if you go off piste.
Nothing against cyclists but - Thank God they didn't put the Olympic cross country cycle track through here as was originally planned...

The City of London, in their role of Protectors of The Forest, took a really firm stand against the proposal citing various historic and environmental factors, SSSI etc.

Tree Listening

A bijou event that we attended on Sunday was Tree listening at The Vines in Rochester, Kent.  Alex Metcalf has worked out ways of listening to the inner workings of trees - sounds a bit like a gurgling, popping peristalsis.  Now he's working on ways of identifying particular species from their sounds.

The tree we were listening to was a Caucasian Wingnut (Pterocarya fraxinifolia) - quite rare and not one I've seen before.

Wonder what the wood's like?

Bench Hook

I think the humble Bench Hook is a useful item to have in the workshop and also enables you to work on the kitchen table - if you're allowed.  Made from any old bit of board (could be chipboard or mdf) with a batten fixed at either end as a stop to hold the work against.  The battens are about 1" narrower than the board so that when sawing you don't hit the table or bench.  Left handers, leave the gap on the left hand side.
I used to screw the battens on until I hit the screw on an old, well used one with a nice sharp chisel and took a big lump out of the edge.  Now I glue and cramp them and run a couple of dowels through when dry.
Good for wasting wood off spoons with a chisel and handy for sawing up and sharpening my twig pencils and crayons.

Make one now if you haven't already got one.

A ? of Spoons

Just emptied out my satchel of roughed-out spoons etc to look for something to work on during the rainy afternoon and was quite shocked to see how many have managed to accumulate there.  I often manage to do a couple on courses whilst the novice turners are struggling to come to terms with the skew chisel.  Better sharpen the knives and get cracking.

Anyone suggest a good collective noun for wooden spoons?

Fish, Chips and.... Samphire

What a meal...

We like to eat fresh fish and our fishmonger comes down from Grimsby to our local market every Tuesday.  He picks the Samphire (Crithmum maritimum) from a secret location in Norfolk and we've been having it for the last month or so.  I love it and tonight we had it with a lovely bit of Rock Eel. 
Last night we had some Red Mullet which tasted great but was full of bones.
The name Samphire comes from the French "herbe de St. Pierre", or St. Peters herb.  It makes your pee smell quite strong, a bit like Asparagus. 
Anyone else out there lucky enough to have a taste?

Two Men in a Bowl

Mark came over to our Woodland Field yesterday and we had fun trying to turn a lump of Birch that he'd brought over into a bowl.  This was fairly ambitious considering he hasn't done any turning yet and doesn't have a lathe.
Here I'm showing him the correct angle of presentation of the hook tool to undercut the core.
I think the experience was enough to put him off wanting to be a bowl turner but he did end up with a big chunky bowl that he's going to use to eat his CocoPops out of - he'll probably get a whole packet in there!

Babies in the Toilet

Quite exciting to have our Woodland Bog chosen as a place to bring up babies...

This is the second nestful of Blackbirds raised here this year - I think there's 3.

It's amazing how hard it is for humans to understand a composting toilet system.  Someone (we know who he was) recently threw a load of the ash/shavings mix into the pee bucket to try and soak it all up!  A lot of guys use the pee bucket and the ladies prefer to pee behind one of the many bushes...
Perhaps we should put our copy of Humanure in there for them to read?