Welcome! Moors Wood is a small private woodland owned and managed by Sarah and Ian Blenkinsop as a nature reserve and as a sustainably managed source of various wood products.

Sarah is a freelance Environmental Educator, Lecturer and Forest School Leader. Based at her own site at Moors Wood, Sarah provides fun natural/recycled craft workshops; play or storytelling sessions; eco themed parties; workshops on food preservation, setting up an organic garden, setting up a composting area or keeping chickens; or training courses in various woodcraft and play skills. These services are available for adults and/or children. Sarah is also very happy to come to you and deliver any of the above, or to give talks to groups.

Follow the links to find out more about what is on offer. Please click on the photos if you need to make them larger. Also visit Sarah's other site, The Compost Bin, for more general info and advice on sustainable living.

Seasons greetings!

To all of you from all of us here at Moors Wood.

May you have a happy and peaceful Yule/Christmas/Celebration and may the New Year bring you peace, happiness and good things.

XXX

Cider and apple juicing.

One of the many workshops or talks I offer is on Preserving Natures Bounty. Some of it deals with apples and cider /juice making. I have all the equipment needed to demonstrate how to do this and can demonstrate what to do.

We had a bumper harvest this year. We picked hundreds and hundreds of pounds of apples.



This is just a selection!


I washed out loads of bottles


and apples ...

and then started to chop




Then we got busy with the scratter



 and the press




End result - 70 l of cider


and some pasteurized juice.

Hard work, but well worth it :)

FSA conference Condover Hall 2015


Back home after wonderful and inspiring FSA Conference at Condover Hall this past weekend :)




My skill share on Fri night - 3 hours of needle felting! Lots of lovely badges made smile emoticon







Excellent workshop at FSA conference 2015 with Kindlewoods. I made a drop spindle then carded fleece and spun some yarn smile emoticon More fibre lovelyness at ‪#‎fsa2015‬






Carving a mushroom



Making art on Sunday :)




Farewell ceremony Sun afternoon. Was lovely :)












Drunken Algy chicken

I have a drunken Algy Serama chicken sitting on my computer desk. As you do. Algy is one of the miniature chickens I take with me to shows and workshops. He has been at the over ripe fermenting sour cherries which are on the ground. 

smile emoticon

Algy the drunk Serama cockerel snoozing on the desk. He is making little hiccupping sounds now and shaking his little head .  I noticed he was looking a bit dopy and I thought he had blood on his comb - but when I cleaned it off it was cherry juice - alcoholic smelling cherry juice!


Green Gathering 2015

One of the things I did this August was to volunteer to help at Green Gathering, the most amazing green festival ever. Some of you may remember I went to the last Big Green Gathering back in 2007,

Well this is its baby sibling, risen out of the ashes of  the sadly ( due to no fault of its own) defunct BGG which was cancelled at the last moment in 2009.

I traveled down to Peacefield Park, Chepstow during the last week of August, in beautiful weather, to set up camp for a week in the "temporary intentional village" which is the Permaculture area;






 I set up my tent and a spare one for my daughter  and a friend, who were coming for the first two days of the festival proper. I also had Algy and Mrs the Serama  miniature chickens with me, as I was doing a workshop on chicken keeping during the festival. So my car was full to the brim as you can see! You can just see the pen that Algy and Mrs shared in the lhs tent  (it's the red thing)



I also helped to set up various structures - tents, yurts and helped with the chores in the Permaculture village.



I had fun with fellow Forest School Leaders, we were providing sessions for the festival goers and their children as well as any one else who wanted to have some fun :)





On Wednesday I was pleased to meet up again with John "Compost" Cossham and I spent a lot of time recording the process of setting up his compost waste reduction area.


The recycling areas dotted around the festival site are quite something! The dedicated recycling crew collect the carefully separated resources from the festival and all is recycled.




This is last years compost pile and the composting area on Wednesday morning, before John got clearing it up.



All the festival compostable waste was brought to John in bags and over the course of the week and the festival he (mostly single handedly!) created a huge compost heap which allows the festival putrecibles to compost down rather than going to landfill. The pile remains there unattended until next years GG.





This is a waste minimization process rather than a soil improver process, as the compost made is full of all sorts of stuff which won't decompose.



But is an amazing feat of work from the Recycling crew and John to reduce landfill from the festival site.


The composting area on Sunday






As well as helping John with the compost area and helping in the Permaculture village and with Forest School  I also gave three workshops over the course of the festival, on chicken keeping and composting. here is Algy the Serama cockerel meeting his adoring public




Apart from working hard, I met up with loads of other friends I have not seen for a long time.
I went to some excellent talks, chatted to so many people, bought an lovely poncho from The Woolly Pedlar,


saw some amazing artists and craft people







and of course listened to lots of bands :) Seize The Day, Martha Tilson and Sentient were excellent!




We had two days of terrible rain but apart from that the weather was kind to us - on Wednesday night I was able to watch the meteor showers for several hours lying on my back in the grass :)

I came home Tuesday tired and in need of a shower and with aching knees after a week in a tent, but very happy :)

BLE Bournemouth weekend workshop

I spent the first weekend of August away at a Big Lunch Extras weekend workshop in lovely Bournemouth.

I drove down on the Fri, pausing on the way to visit Durrington Walls



 and Stonehenge



and stayed at a very nice B and B in Ringwood, returning home Monday afternoon. This was the weekend of the "Blue Moon" and boy was it bright at night!


I had some excellent meals out


as well as some "picnic" style evening meals in my room. The breakfasts were excellent at my b and b :)

On Sat after an excellent breakfast  I made my way to the BLE workshop venue. Tired due to sleeping poorly because of the amazing Blue Moon - so bright and lovely, but I sleep little when the moon is full.








I really enjoyed the BLE event - we discussed ways to engage with our local communities; shared ideas on how to provide different events to fund raise or gain support for our social enterprise, heard about the Fairtrade movement, were told about the Waitrose Corporate Social  Responsibility scheme, did some stop motion animation and generally had a great time. An amazing lunch was provided by an excellent local social enterprise.

Sat evening I had a paddle in the sea then picked up a selection of salad and cooked meats and a small bottle of wine and retired to my room to shower, eat, read and watch  tv - bliss :)

Sunday we had a tour of some amazing street art and then joined in a community street party.




I drove to Corfe Castle and had a pleasant wander around but unfortunately Camp Bestival was ending that day so the journey back to the b and b was very slow! I had another "picnic" style meal in my room, showered and read/wrote in my journal for the rest of the evening. I went to bed early as the Blue Moon had kept me awake the on Fri night.

Monday after another excellent breakfast I headed for home - I stopped in Salisbury and had a look around and some lunch.then continued - doing a journey very familiar get to home, as we used to take the racing car to Gurston Down Hillclimb many times a year. Strange to drive roads so familiar once but not taken for nearly 20 years.

All in all a very enjoyable road trip for me and a nice and useful break.