If you go down to the woods today

The out door kitchen

Herefordshire charcoal

The charcoal burner

Sherwood outside his amazing house

I've taken a couple of evenings off work, a) for lambing and b) incase I hadn't got the toilet block finished or the shop ready for the opening of the caravan season, well luckily for me I am just about ready and lambing does seem to be rather slow so this afternoon I took myself off down to Herefordshire to get more charcoal for the shop, off a very aptly named gentleman called Sherwood and what an absolutely lovely afternoon I have had.  Although only 4 miles out of Hereford, in a part of the world I had never travelled before I came across a real woodsman with the most amazing working wood, and to boot he was building an eco cruck beamed house, albeit in its infancy I was totally blown away.   Just bird song and the bluebells shooting through, wood anemones in little clumps everywhere. The kettle was on when I arrived in the outdoor kitchen what a welcome.

Well all I hope for now is some lovely weather over Easter so that everyone will be lighting their barbecues.
Sherwood does woodcraft courses and I am hoping to get a group of us together to go along and make "wooden spoons" they looked like something from Goldilocks and the three bears, they would be wonderful for stirring porridge!

Spring has sprung

Well spring has certainly arrived, the birds are singing, there's frogspawn in the pool, pussy willow is out and it's waming up nicely.

This is a very busy time of year for us we have cows calving, ewes lambing and we are preparing for the start of the new caravan season, cleaning the toilet block in readiness for the season ahead, let's hope for lovely weather ahead..

Couldn't resist a photo of these, they are outside my kitchen window.

I have also been setting up the shop for the start of the season, I've been busy over the winter with lots of little projects, little pieces of furniture, sewing of course, so hope there is going to be something there for everyone.

Shepherd's Hut

One of our many projects over the winter has been to make a shepherd's hut.  Glyn bought some lovely old wheels from a vintage tractor sale.. It has been quite a long time in the planning stage but this winter he started.

Glyn loves working in wood, especially oak, he had to make a turntable out of steel, making a forge to bend the steel to the correct size, a major job on it's own, he used an old hoover motor to get the heat for the forge.

It's really exciting seeing it coming together, I only get to do the boring stuff like the painting, I just can't wait to put my stamp on it.  I am making a patchwork quilt for the bed, my very little contribution.  Am having a wonderful time collecting old china for the shelf which will run around the top of the hut, also any enamel items I can lay my hands on.

As you can see it's patchwork, what else!!

Tom giving a helping hand!!!

The other thing that I have been busy with last week was to do a weeks upholstry workshop with Tom Clough who has a shop in Knighton.  It has been quite a challenge but thoroughly enjoyable.

Tom told me that my chair was a very challenging project to take on as a first attempt, well I never did take the easy route.  I have quite a long way to go to finish it but hopefully will get to more of Tom's classes in the near future as I totally LOVE my chair, patchwork what more could a girl ask for.