With only a few weeks to go until our spectacular Beltain festival on Saturday 29 April, our wickerman is beginning to take shape! The team have been out in the spring mists this morning, having made hazel hurdle pieces off site and brought them in to fix onto the body.Ken, Darren and Mike are all professional woodworkers, with a range of skills including hurdle making, wood carving and treewrighting - you may recognise Darren as the mastermind behind our Saxon longhouse. They all work in sustainable local woodlands, using coppiced hazel and British wood to make our fantastic wickerman.As always, the design will not be revealed until the night of Beltain, so book your tickets today to see the final sculpture and watch it burn to the ground! The Beltain festival is an ancient Celtic celebration that welcomes in the warm summer months, and the wickerman is a way to please the gods so they will bless us with a good harvest.See you there!
Farewell Piggies!
It seems only yesterday that our Christmas piglets were born, but they have already weaned themselves off the sows and are ready to find new homes. The first five were bought today by Park Community School, a fantastic education facility in Havant that has its own smallholding for students to learn all about growing vegetables, looking after animals, and taking responsibility for the food they eat.Our piglets will be looked after and fed by the students and staff, and at some point in the future their meat will be used in the school kitchen to feed the students - a welcome change from turkey twizzlers, which are both unhealthy and unethical. Not only will the good meat be used in the kitchen, but the organs and offal will also be sent to the science department, where they will be used in biology lessons to teach the students about anatomy - waste not, want not! It's a great way to teach the children to value the food they eat, and will ensure the pigs are greatly cared for, just like they are here.
Mary's Villa Blog: Sandblasting
This is a project update for our Roman Villa Renovation work - read more about it here!At half past eight on Monday morning a large white van, towing a solid little trailer, trundled through the five barred gate, past the curious goats, through the Iron Age enclosure to the Roman villa. An auspicious day in the history of our Roman villa began, as Phase 1 of the Roman Renovations, paid for by the generous donations of Butser fans and supporters in last year’s crowdfunding campaign, was launched.Last week, the site team and volunteers worked tirelessly to clear the villa, spending hours sorting, storing and sweeping to prepare the way for sandblasterer, John Grant. John, Director of Airstrip Ltd in Titchfield, and son Toby, quickly extracted entrails of pipes and nozzles from the van. Donning a spacelike helmet, John entered the villa. A man on a mission. A flick of a switch, and the compressor on the trailer burst into life with a hungry roar. The sandblasting had begun!Throughout the day, dust poured from the windows of the villa and everyone kept their distance letting man and monster do their work. John methodically worked his magic on the beams and ceiling of each room, clearing off the flaking limewash paint to reveal golden wooden beams beneath. After a day’s hard work, John and Toby had cleaned all the wood they could reach and retired for the day.The ground team then moved in, armed with brooms to sweep up all the sand before any moisture crept in, which would create a gluey mess on the floor. First day done and two more sandblasting days to go to bring the ceilings and beams to a gleaming finish. Once the sandblasting has been completed, the villa will be accessible again until the beginning of June, when renovations begin in earnest.Watch this space for renovation updates!
The best thing since sliced bread?
Staff and volunteers have recently been getting stuck into a new project at the farm. While most of our experiments are based on archaeological and scientific research from across the industry, sometimes we just want to use our skills to make something fun. So this month we have been making a bread oven, ready to use this summer to cook food and melt pizzas on balmy evenings!
This kind of oven has been used for thousands of years to cook food, and while we are following the basic design of an ancient oven, we’ve added a modern twist by using fire bricks, which can reach a high temperature without cracking.
First we built a layer of sand and clay, then a second layer of sand, clay and straw (cob mixture), both of which help insulate the oven in different ways and keep the food hot.
All that remains is to wait for the clay to dry over the next few months, and by summer we’ll be having pizza parties every day!
From Hampshire to Dorset: Butser visits the ATC!
Last Thursday we had the privilege of visiting our friends at the Ancient Technology Centre in Cranborne, Dorset, to share ideas about archaeology, education and running an outdoor centre. We had a fantastic trip and learnt so much from the centre, managed by Luke and Pascale who are working incredibly hard to provide a brilliant educational facility for the people of Dorset and beyond.
We started with coffee, biscuits and a tour of the site, which looked beautiful in the bright winter sunshine. Below you can see the Viking longhouse and Iron Age roundhouse, which has been covered in turf. Inside the roundhouse the floor has been built in different levels, providing a truly unique atmosphere and a great venue for storytelling and parties!
The Viking House and Earth House
Inside the Earth House
The Viking house was a marvel to behold, with ancient runes carved into every timber and a blazing fire in the centre of the room. The ATC hold residential trips for children, who get the chance to stay overnight and live like a real Viking clan, chores and all! We then visited a Grubenhaus, a Roman water carrying device, another roundhouse, a Roman garden and a Mesolithic structure.
Inside the Viking House
Roman Water Lifting Machine
Mesolithic House
After a delicious lunch, we headed to the Roman forge to learn how to work Iron like the Romans. After a lot of tapping, whacking and bellowing, the team made one medieval ballista head – hoorah! Watch Mary have a go below:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5U12h26UK-c&t=9s
A fine ballista head!
Thanks so much to Luke and Pascale for an inspiring day out – we look forward to welcoming them to the farm very soon! You can find out more about the Ancient Technology Centre by visiting their website here.
Holly, Jolly Christmas
The days have finally darkened and winter is upon us! At the farm we’ve been eating mince pies and listening to festive tunes, and the site is now being prepared for a short sleep over Christmas while we take a break for holidays and maintenance. Why not join us for our two Christmas family events? We’ll be celebrating Saturnalia – the Roman Christmas on Friday 16th December and Tales of Winter Magic on Monday 19th December – join us for two unique festive experiences!
Our pregnant pigs have now moved back to Piggy Palace, their luxury winter cabin that keeps out the damp and cold. We’re expecting them to give birth any time from now until January, so there is lots of straw available for them to make nests with, and we are keeping a close eye on their behaviour to check for early signs of labour. Here’s to more little pigs in 2017!
A few weeks ago, our goats Sorrel and Yarrow went away on holiday to spend some quality time with their new boyfriend, a billy goat called Gandalf. We’re hoping they’ll have such a great time that in a few months we’ll have two new baby goats! Our two remaining goats Bella and Áine have been enjoying a little peace and quiet, as Sorrel and Yarrow are quite boisterous and squabblesome, rather like drunken aunts at Christmas dinner. Nevertheless, we all miss them and are looking forward to them being back together in the New Year.
The gift shop is fully stocked for Christmas gifts, with traditional honey mead to warm our hearts, natural soaps, handspun wool skeins, stocking fillers and homegrown meat for Christmas dinner. Visit us this week for last minute gifts, or take a look at our shop page here for more information.
A few fires have still been burning the roundhouses, as we’ve welcome the last remaining schoolchildren before Christmas. We’re looking forward to January when we will once again be travelling back in time with school groups, allowing them to experience first hand what it would have been like to live in Stone Age, Iron Age, Roman and Saxon Britain. We still have a few spaces left for January and February bookings, so please get in touch if you are interested in bringing your school to Butser.
We will be closed for Christmas from Tuesday 20 December 2016 – Monday 9 January 2017. Take a look at our Events and Workshops programmes for 2017 – we’ll see you in January for an exciting new year!
Back from Extinction
As part of our ongoing work with the Species Recovery Trust, our site is being used as an experimental area for Darnel (Lolium temulentum), a plant that arrived in Britain in Roman times and one that was originally considered a serious pest of crops, mentioned both in the Bible and Shakespeare. In the twentieth century, seed cleaning technology and the increased use of pesticides meant Darnel was exterminated from the wild, and up to now has been extinct in the UK. However, we are delighted to announce that the seeds planted at Butser have germinated and we now have a small crop of Darnel growing on site!
The plant has a fascinating history, particularly with regard to medieval myths surrounding witchcraft. The seeds contain a mild toxin if eaten, and can also act as a natural host for the ergot fungus. Ergot causes a wide range of symptoms including temporary hallucinations, and an outbreak in Massachusetts may have been behind the Salem witchcraft trials!
This particular project has used a small number of seeds collected from Inis Meain off the coast of western Ireland, and aims to bring the plant back from extinction and into a small number of trial sites like Butser Ancient Farm. For more information visit www.speciesrecoverytrust.org.uk
Three Little Piggies?
Regular visitors to the farm will know that in the summer months, we usually have a family of pigs tumbling about in the mud behind our Roman villa. This year was no exception, and we currently have two Saddlebacks and one Oxford Sandy and Black… But that’s not all! On Saturday we welcomed Michaela from Tedfold Cottage Farm in west Sussex, who carried out an ultrasound on our pigs to see if they were pregnant. The results? Not one, not two, but all THREE of our pigs are pregnant with a litter each of piglets! We aren’t sure exactly when they will be born, but we should hopefully be welcoming them sometime before the end of January. If you would like to say hello to our new arrivals, be sure to make a winter visit in February or March before they grow too big! Why not join us for our Imbolc festival on February 4th?
Watch our exciting announcement as it happened on Facebook Live: