It’s certainly been wet and windy at the farm this month, but the autumnal weather hasn’t stopped our schoolchildren visitors having lots of fun in the mud! The education team have worked really hard to keep spirits high in the drizzle, and the positive feedback we’ve received from teachers has proven you don’t need glorious sunshine to enjoy the outdoors and learn about the past. Here’s our staff weather report from last Friday…
Elsewhere on the farm, we’re adding a new chimney pot onto our Roman villa roof so that we can actually use the fireplace. We’re basing the pot on one excavated in Yorkshire, now on display in the Yorkshire Museum. We’ve commissioned Bursledon Brickworks to make the pot, and West Meon Pottery are making the flue. Below on the left is the original Yorkshire pot, and on the right is the start of the new chimney in our villa. It should be ready to use in the new year, so expect lots of delicious Roman cookery demonstrations this summer…
We have also finally found a new home for our male kid Comfrey! He was born at the end of the summer and is a truly handsome young thing, but unfortunately he has been getting rather promiscuous with his female relatives and needs a new home where he can live out his years as a stud. After a long search, he will be joining the team at Manor Farm in Bursledon. They are coming to collect him this week, and we will miss him rather a lot… Here he is as a newborn, compared with the fluffy lad he has become!
Juliet: Sheep in the City
Last week we left the farm for a very exciting excursion… One of our lambs went to the big smoke to find a new home at Mudchute City Farm in east London! ‘Juliet’ was hand-reared by farm staff earlier this year, as her mother developed a problem with her udders and couldn’t feed both of her twins. As we are a working farm, many of our animals are sent to the abattoir to finance their upkeep and bring in a little extra income, but we all grew so attached to Juliet that we wanted to try and spare her from being turned into chops. After a few emails, Mudchute City Farm kindly offered to give her a new home where she will interact daily with visitors as part of their educational facility, and she will be allowed to live out her natural years on 32 acres of land with a new flock of sheep!
Our journey took us through the delightful scenery of the M25 and through the beloved Blackwall Tunnel, and Juliet was certainly a little confused by her journey in the back of our truck… We tried to soothe her with food and cuddles but as soon as we got back in the front she wailed, so eventually we had to just get going and hope for the best!
After an uneventful journey, we managed to find Mudchute and deliver our babe to her new home. The farm is a beautiful community project with completely free entry, and we would certainly recommend visiting if you like open spaces and farm animals! Their menagerie includes horses, pigs, sheep, alpacas, donkeys, bunnies, birds and more, many of which are rare breeds enjoying a happy retirement.
You can read how Juliet is getting on at Mudchute on their blog here, and we know our visitors will all wish her the very best! We just hope she can work out the Oyster system…
Stud Goat for Sale
For those who visited the farm this summer, you will have been introduced to our brand new baby goats, Sorrel and Comfrey! They have had a wonderful summer escaping, causing mischief and playing on their paddock climbing frame, and we have decided now to keep Sorrel as part of the farm family, joining our three ladies Ainee, Bella and Yarrow. Sadly for us, we have decided to sell little Comfrey as a stud goat, so that he can lead a bachelor’s life just like his father, Indiana Jones.We are therefore looking for a new home for Comfrey, who is descended from a prize-winning grandsire; his mother Ainee is also our gentlest goat with a really lovely character, and we can see her personality coming out in Comfrey too. We are looking for around £120, but it is much more important to us that he finds a good home.If you are interested in rehoming our little kid, please get in touch using the contact details below. We would also really appreciate it if anybody could share the poster to any individuals or group who might be able to help.
To the Catapult!
After many weeks of carving, measuring, hammering and dealing with minor catastrophes, our Roman onager is finally complete! The creation of this giant catapult was led by our residential archaeologist Ryan Watts with a team of staff and volunteers. It was successfully fired at the ‘Secrets of the Heath’ event in Petersfield, Hampshire last weekend.The name ‘onager’ comes from the Latin for ‘wild ass’, as the catapult has a very powerful kick! The catapult uses torsional force created by twisting 210m of rope, which stores energy ready to fire ammunition.
The Butser onager is portable and can be carried on the back of a trailer, ready to be driven to any nearby battlefield requiring reinforcements… After its successful weekend at Petersfield Heath, it has now been returned to the farm and can be found at the northern end of the site by the Roman villa.Visitors are welcome to come and see it, and in the meantime you can watch a slo-mo video of an unfortunate cabbage meeting its maker…(Best watched in HD)[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiyLHLGy5Ps[/embed]
Capturing the Past: Infrared at Butser
Infrared photographer Ron French recently visited the farm to take these infrared photographs, and we are quite mesmerised by them. At first glance they appear to portray a cold winter’s day, but they were actually taken using a special sensor that is sensitive to infrared light. The bright, whitish colours in the photos give them a dreamlike quality, and it really makes the different textures and materials stand out.Many thanks to Ron for capturing such wonderful images! We always welcome photographers to the site and love to see what you produce, so please do share your work with us.
A New Arrival
We are very happy to announce the arrival of our first baby kid, Sorrel! She is the daughter of our Old English goat Bella and was born on 22nd July just after lunch. Although she shares Bella’s charming personality we believe she looks just like her father, a handsome billy named Indiana Jones who lived with our lady goats for a few months earlier this year. Consequently, we are still awaiting the arrival of a few more kids any day now, as our other two goats Ainee and Yarrow are also pregnant! It’s going to be chaos…Please come and visit our new arrival to welcome her into the world. She is very friendly and loves attention, just like the rest of her family!
We love our volunteers!
Like many organisations, we owe an awful lot of our success to the hard work of our volunteers. From the murky depths of winter to the blazing heat of summer, they never fail to turn up and dedicate their time to the farm’s development. In return, we try hard to make them feel valued and provide them with useful skills and knowledge to help them in their future careers. This afternoon, we had a chat with a few of them to see how Butser has helped them follow their ambitions. We are always very happy to welcome new volunteers, so please email us at admin@butserancientfarm.co.uk for more information!Phoebe has been volunteering at the farm for almost two years whilst studying for her Level 3 Extended Diploma in Animal Management. Now she is preparing for a new adventure as she starts her BSc in Zoology at Reading University in September. She says that working at the farm has improved her confidence and given her a whole load of new skills. In the future she hopes to work in conservation, particularly with endangered species around the world.
Stuart joins us every Friday to take care of the animals, and spends the rest of the week volunteering at Staunton Country Park and Blendworth. He loves animal care and working outdoors, and is now an expert on understanding the subtle behaviour of our livestock – especially the goats! Last year, he was awarded Volunteer of the Year by East Hampshire District Council for his hard work and dedication.
Harry has been completing his work experience with us for the last two weeks. He is currently studying for his GCSEs in History, PE, Geography and Media Studies, and chose to work at the farm because it was local and he likes working outdoors. He hasn’t yet decided which career he’d like to pursue, but he is very pleased with the variety of skills he has picked up over such a short time here!
Ancient Trees for Ancient Houses
While our Saxon longhouse is developing steadily every day, our reconstructors need to think about materials.A number of trees have been carefully felled and hand-hewn with an axe, before being shaped into beams to use in our latest exciting Saxon experiment. The woodland in which the trees were felled is known as the ‘Richard de Bere Copse’ near Droxford, and contains a range of ancient oak trees. Restoration coppicing is essential for woodland management, and thinning of the oak overstory allows light to reach through and benefit flowers and hazel thickets.Oak is the type of wood that would have been used over 1,000 years ago, and the information gathered during the process will be of great historical importance and fantastic for educational purposes. The longhouse is coming along nicely and our treewrights are hard at work – be sure to come and see how we’re doing!
