Hope you all had a fabulous festive season & happy New Year.
We are celebrating our Wassail this Sunday 14th Jan from 3pm. Everybody welcome and please invite other people.
Lots of information about it including the songs on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/wassail-2018/
The Wassail is a very old tradition to ‘bless’ the trees to produce a good harvest for the coming year. We circle the oldest tree in the orchard and serenade it with special wassailing songs and then ‘toast’ the trees with pieces of actual toast soaked in cider. We then run around the orchard making a lot of noise with musical instruments & pots & pans to ward off bad spirits from the orchard & to waken it from it’s winter slumber.
Come along to enjoy, and if you fancy, you can decorate yourself with some ivy, leaves & feathers & bring along something to make a noise, like a musical instrument, drums or a pot & spoon.There will be mulled cider to enjoy and wood-fired pizza will be available to buy from our cob oven. Be lovely if you bring along some snacks to share.
Eat,drink, be merry, and wish our trees ‘Waes heal’ (good health).
Also………………………….
Meeting – this week, 7pm Thurs 11th Jan at Cafe Art (3 Chapel Str, Drill Hall). All welcome to come along.
It is an impromptu meeting to discuss, amongst other things, an application for a grant for Grow Wild as the application has to be submitted by the 15th Jan – next week!!
It is quite an exciting project for up to £4000 and the focus is on growing wildflowers / fungi & why the wildlife & pollinators need them so much. //www.growwilduk.com/project-funding
They like us to be inventive and we have started to put together a project plan for how we intend to spend the grant money. They particularly want to see projects that will involve lots of people (at least 300 people) to cause far reaching change, bring communities together to raise awareness of the plight of the bees and pollinators and how we can make a difference, for our benefit & that of the pollinators. They would more likely give us the grant if we could show that some larger organisations being involved in the Tate, National Trust, schools that may be willing to advise or help us?
This is why I’m sharing our plan with you all in case any of you have contacts / suggestions on involving larger groups / schools / companies. Any teachers / homeschool groups that would like to get their kids involved etc
If you can give us any input please come along to the meeting or email through your ideas, it’s a big project (if we get the grant) & we’d appreciate any help. If we don’t get this grant though there are other places we can apply to for same thing.
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A bit of news and an invitation to come along to help us this Saturday 11 – 1pm. Please see attached flyer.
On Sat we’ll be mostly clearing a large area for planting wildflower seeds. Last year we planted a small patch and it looked amazing so this year we want to plant a much larger area with wildflowers. We are also doing some tree pruning and various other jobs. If it’s not raining we are also going to fire up our earth oven to cook pizza for the volunteers. St Ives Cider has given us some more of their lovely mulled cider so we might even heat some of that up too.
We regularly have work parties on the weekend (about twice a month) as well as every Tuesday 1 – 3pm but we’re making an extra effort to recruit volunteers for this Saturday as KBS – a South Korean TV film crew are coming to film us volunteering. They are producing a TV documentary about the future of coastal villages, how old fishing villages have changed, focusing on how community and local people make efforts to change, protect and develop the town in positive ways and they think that St Ives Community Orchard would be a great example as their case study.
Here’s your chance to be a South Korean TV star!
On these cold days we often only have a few people coming to volunteer so we would really appreciate it if more people could brave the cold and could come give us a hand…..they said they coming rain or shine…. otherwise it will be a bit awkward for the few of us with film crew around.
Other news…
Also Cafe Art at the Drill Hall is having a Community Month celebrating the Community Charter and all the wonderful things happening in various community groups around St Ives. Last Sunday of the month, 25th February we are having an Orchard day at the cafe. We will hopefully celebrating the grant we’ve received from Kew Gardens & planning how to spend it (we find out on the 23rd if we’re successful in our grant application) We also have Jo McIntosh running a flower felt workshop from 11 and a fascinating talk ‘Bees in Trees’at 3pm by a big advocate of natural beekeeping, top bar hives and making hives in tree.
See what’s on the rest of the month.
Events are as follows:
Sun 4th, 10am – 5pm – St Ives Skate Park, information and fundraiser, with film showing at 4pm. Happened already & we got lots out of it.
Mon 12th, 2-4pm – Cornish Conversation for beginners “Yeth an Werin”, informal drop-in
Wed 14th, 6-8pm – Cornwall Writers Group; regular informal group, all welcome
Fri 16th, 7-9pm – St Ives Charter Evening, Community Quiz, cheese and wine
Mon 19th, 2-4pm – Cornish Conversation for beginners “Yeth an Werin”, informal drop-in
Mon 19th, 5.30-7pm – Talk: History of St Ives, by Janet Axten
Tues 20th, 2-4pm – Knitting Surgery, bring along any failed projects
Fri 23rd, 2-4pm – Stash Swap, get rid of unwanted stuff, swap it for more useful stuff!
Sun 25th, all day – Community Orchard, 11am Flower Felting Workshop; and information about the Orchard; 3pm Talk: Bees and Trees
Mon 26th, 7pm – Film “Ghost Town”, housing and community in St Ives, by Senara Wilson Hodges
Wed 28th, 2-4pm – St Ives in Stiches, Community Tapestry Project
Every Tuesday 3-5pm Knitting Group, every Thursday 3-5pm Drawing Group.
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Hope you enjoyed the glorious sunshine today. We will be up at the orchard tomorrow (Sunday 2 – 4pm) planting a variety of fruiting bushes / trees, so come along to give a hand if you can, not gonna let a little drizzle put us off but if it’s raining a lot we probably won’t go.
We’ve been given 30 of each of these beautiful hedging bushes / trees by
E-forest – Hawthorn, Sea buckthorn,
Cherry Plum,
Crab Apple and Dog rose (rosehip). They provide wonderful flowers for the bees & pollinators and fruit for us and the birds, see photos on
//www.stivesorchard.co.uk/fruiting-hedges/ of the fruit. We started planting them today in our stone wall Cornish hedges which are wide enough to support them but we have plenty more to plant. They have also given us black & white current bushes, raspberries and willow, plus 15 Hazel, Elder and Alder trees and 10 x Holly & Sessile Oak trees which are going in some bordering areas, as well as all the stakes and tree protectors.
We are also still doing our Tuesday work parties every week from 1 – 3pm.
Next Sunday 25th we are an orchard day at the lovely Cafe Art at the Drill Hall, no digging involved!! They having a community month there with lots of activities. See posters below.
From 11 – 1 Jo McIntosh is coming in to give us a Flower Felt workshop, great for kids & adults, cost is £3 per flower, they are drop in sessions or you can book a place at Cafe Art. We also welcome you to come in and chat about the Community Orchard, how you can be involved or share ideas. Hopefully we will have found out whether we have received the Grow Wild grant by then so we can start planning the project.
From 3pm we have a really interesting talk about ‘Bees in Trees’ from Simon Kellam who is going to be sharing his views on how modern day beekeeping practices can be detrimental to the bees welfare and the importance of allowing them to follow their innate preferences.Fundamental to this is providing alternative nesting sites away from human intervention. The Tree Hive is one such alternative and Simon will explain how these can be made and recall a recent trip to Belarus where a re wilding project is currently taking place.
See posters below.
Just to let you know we’re having an impromptu tree planting in the nature reserve area just behind the orchard today from 3 – 5pm. We’ll be planting Hazel, Elder, Alder & Sessile Oak trees. We will either be up in the area above the Skatepark or even more hidden further up. Pop by and help if you can. The shed will be open so you can grab a spade, gloves and a lopper
If you can’t find us give me a call, I’ll have my mobile on me 07585777110.
Otherwise hopefully some of you will pop in to see us at Cafe Art this Sunday – there’s a great talk about bees in tree hives at 3 & a flower felt workshop from 11 – 1. Hopefully we will have heard by then if we’ve received the Grow Wild grant.
Hope you enjoyed all the snow. A couple photos from this morning, a lot of the tree buds are starting to come out, only to face this freezing weather again.
Well tomorrow is Spring Equinox and to celebrate the occasion we are going to go on a walk up to the top of Penbeagle Hill. For those of you who haven’t been up there before, it’s about a 15min walk from the orchard and has huge granite rocks at the top with incredible views all around.
5pm Tues 20th – meet us in the carpark just below the park if you’d like to join us on the walk. Path is quite muddy so gumboots are advisable.
We’ve learnt a lot of history about this area above the orchard recently – this is the area that we lease from Cornwall Council that we want to get recognised officially as a Nature Reserve. See maps //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/maps-of-area/
We were up close to the top of the hill planting trees and clearing parts of the stone walls a couple weeks ago and discovered these amazing boundary stones.
The inscription reads: Boundary Stones E & P Best 1922 and Boundary Stones EH Best JP.Dr P Best 1926. We are not sure what these dates represent as Dr Palemon Best died in 1927 leaving 6.5 acres of land to the town to be used as an ‘open space’ and this area became the Palemon Best Recreation ground, site of the St Ives skatepark, playground and football pitch. Ernest Harris Best (Palemon’s brother) left 15 acres of this land to the town in 1943 (he died in 1957) and this is where the orchard and nature reserve land lies. We lease 38 acres in all so it also includes land on the other side of this boundary wall that belonged to the Bolitho Estates that was sold to the St Ives Town Council in 1943.
On Friday Viv Stratton who took Melanie and I on a fascinating walk around the orchard and up onto Penbeagle Hill **, the area we want to get recognised as a Nature Reserve. It used to be part of their farm and he showed us where they kept bees, pigs and cattle and where they grew hay and various crops. We looked at the area where the Best’s Summer House and summer garden used to be and the huge granite rocks at the top where they spent their days playing. They called one of them the
Old Shoe and the other the Sphinx (see photos). Luckily for us all, Viv planted many hundreds of trees on the Hill in the 80s; Oaks, Sycamores, Ash, Holly, Beech and Birch Trees. We also went over to the old quarry area, that was used for the extraction of granite for construction in the local farm buildings. It’s a perfect watering hole for wildlife. Here’s more history about Penbeagle farm //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/penbeagle-farm/
** NB – we’ve been told up to now that this was called Carnstabba Hill but Viv reckons it’s always been called Penbeagle Hill, Carnstabba hill is the one closer over towards Halestown. So henceforth we will now call it Penbeagle Hill! Here’s some photos from the top.
A quick update….
- we having a tree & wildflower planting session this Sunday 11am – 1pm (just received loads of free wildflower seeds from Kew Gardens)
- our weekly Tuesday sessions are moving to 4 – 6pm now the evenings are lighter
- Easter Monday 2nd April we are having an Easter egg hunt at 11am and attempting to build a willow den
- Thursday 5th there is a willow weaving workshop at the orchard 11am – 1pm. It is being run with Amy Jemmett of Living Crafts – see more info on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/willow-weaving-workshop/
- Tues 10th & 17th April we are away so looking for someone to run those work parties – any offers?
Tomorrow (Thursday) we are having a fun day at the orchard.
We have Amy Jemmett from Living Crafts coming to do a willow workshop, starting 11am. Learn living willow techniques and weave a sculptural willow tree to take home. Or make a dreamcatcher from willow, wool and feathers.
£20 per tree, you can work in teams of 2 if you like. Dreamcatchers £5. Free hot soup from campfire included, there will be seating and a tent cover if it rains. Weather report looks promising though.
We still have spaces so email me if you’d like to book a space. It’s suitable for adults and children.
1pm we are having an Easter egg hunt (as the hunt on Monday was postponed due to bad weather), we have loads of eggs donated to us from Co-Op on the Stennack, County Confectionary and I should Coco and we will have some games to win some of the fancier eggs afterwards too.
It’s a completely free event but donations are welcomed.
We are then going to start building a willow den.
More info on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/willow-weaving-workshop/
Hope you can join us.
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