Giving HMS Neptune a hair cut!

Down at Neptune Wood, the Earth Trust has a number of willow sculptures representing HMS Neptune, three cannon balls, a scope and an anchor. Every autumn, the sculptures get a haircut and loose ends woven in, so that they remain neat and tidy.

The Countryside Skills students have done all the work! We’ve learned how to use loppers and secateurs safely, ready for coppicing in Little Wittenham Wood later in the year.

We have bundled up all the willow wands (after tickling each other with them from afar!) ready to use for building hurdles later in the year.

Here are some pictures of Bishopswood School tackling HMS Neptune:

Blackberry picking and fire lighting

The hedgerows are full of ripe blackberries so we’ve been harvesting them and making ourselves a delicious blackberry cordial to drink with our snack when we arrive for Countryside Skills on Friday mornings!

We tried not to eat too many while we were picking them, but it was tricky!

We practiced making fires in the garden to boil our pickings on.

Flow built us a big fire in the fire circle to heat our blackberries on.

We also picked some apples to eat! Yum yum!

Cooper's Oxford Pork

At the Earth Trust, we run a programme called Farm Step which offers land and farm buildings to aspiring farmers who have previously been locked out of the industry by high land prices or lack of skills. We support green businesses who will work together for sustainable land management.

One of our Farm Step tenants is Mark Cooper. Mark keeps his Oxford Sandy and Black pigs in the woods around the North Farm part of the Earth Trust site, where they forage in the undergrowth and encourage rare woodland plants to thrive in the disturbed soil.

Every spring, the Countryside Skills students pay Mark a visit to learn more about the pigs and how Mark and his family look after them. Today, it was the turn of our students from Wallingford School.

You can buy Cooper’s Oxford Pork sausages online or from local farmers markets. We can highly recommend them!