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.

Greener living courses

If you or your setting is considering keeping some chickens (and many do!) I am an experienced and enthusiastic chicken keeper and am also an Omlet Eglu chicken keeper course host. I will show you how to clean out an Eglu or other wooden hen house, hold a chicken, feed, water and care for it along with some  basic feeding, health and welfare advice.

If you want to set up a composting area I have many years’ experience of making compost, talking about it and demonstrating how to do it. I am a Master Composter and spent 10 years as a volunteer Community Compost adviser with Garden Organic and my local Council. The Chartered Institute of Waste Management accredited my training. The composting courses at my site provide hands on advice on how to compost. The course involves a small group of adults (10 or so max). We would talk about the composting process, use garden tools to dig out an existing compost heap to look at the contents then put together a new compost bin filling it up with a balanced mix of materials.

I can also help with setting up an organic vegetable garden, a Gardening club or an Eco club.

I am available to run after school Gardening or Eco clubs and give talks about Organic gardening, Composting, Recycling and more general Sustainable living issues.


One of the many things I can talk about is converting an old house to run on renewable energy and our journey  along this road. Our house at Moors Wood is powered mostly by renewable energy: We have a 30 tube Solar Thermal installation for hot water, 14, 185 W Photovoltaic panels which produce electricity for our use and to sell back to the national grid, a woodburner which exclusively burns our own wood from Moors Wood. We also have our own water supply and sewerage system. We do use an oil boiler ( mainly in the winter), but our usage is dropping all the time, as we improve insulation and reduce energy loss by various means!

The Chicken keeping course is offered only at the Moors Wood site but I do offer a chicken keeping talk where some of my Seramas accompany me. For all else I can come to your setting or a hall  and run a “hands on” workshop on composting, gardening, sustainability or renewable energy use.