For the past six months we have had the builders in! Our former “open-fronted cart shed”, as the land agents called it in a previous sale (c.1933), has been subjected to surveying, excavations, infilling, concreting, wooden-framing, insulating, glazing, plastering, fireplace-forming, kitchen-unit assembling, wiring, plumbing, painting – to mention just a few of the ministrations – all with the solicitous, meticulous oversight of our architect-builder John Norton (Hampshire Homes Ltd.).

Outside we have had mega-tons of soil removed to bring the levels down to the bleeping requirements of the laser level, and car parks and new roadway have started to emerge. Underground, lots of new pipework for drainage (if you want to see a fantastic example of a “French drain” just let me know!) are now invisible. All of this down to Richard and his dumper, excavator (and laser level!).

And so our opening date comes ever-closer. At first, we will open on Fridays from the beginning of April, 2012.  Who will come on Fridays  in April?

We have been meeting couples where they have had a recent diagnosis of dementia. Early signs of little confusions and memory losses, then memory tests, and scans – leading to a diagnosis of dementia in its early stages. There is no turning back. Like a diagnosis of any chronic or life-threatening condition, it is a massive thing to take in. The expectation that one had of the future has changed. There is a mourning for lost hopes. We all know that something dreadful could be round the corner – but, as long as it has not yet happened, maybe it never will. What to do? Who to turn to?

In this part of the world at least, there is not much on offer. An occasional coffee morning for fellow-sufferers. Many people in the same boat, some further down the road of deterioration. A “memory clinic” with therapists, but seen as emphasising the loss of memory rather than offering hope of improvement.

Can we here at “Green Age” do any better? Well we hope so. We are offering contact with nature –  scenery, woods, pasture, animals,  the ambience of a working farm, helping with the poultry – as well as social contacts and good food. And staff with nursing, psychology, and social care training.

There is a lot of research evidence that such things help. In fact there is a massive report from the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) precisely on the subject of improving health and wellbeing in older people. Getting people outside to walk and do light work of different kinds stimulates concentration, requires balance and co-ordination, and reduces anxiety and depression. Not a cure, but help with being positive, what one can call a “self-help plan”.

Research findings apart, it is surely common-sense that a change of scenery, healthy eating, something interesting to do, contact with nature, and friendly people to talk to – even if only on one day per week – are going to help people who are lonely, further on in years, and needing that extra bit of support. And if people with early dementia are lucky enough to have their partner or close relative looking after them, then who would argue against their need for a bit of respite.

And that’s what we are planning –  individualised support, a positive approach, advice on self-help, respite for carers.

If you are reading this and feel that our service might be what you or a family member need then contact Rosie or John on 01630 653912 or email us at greenagenature@gmail.com

The first livestock I kept at Blore Heath was some laying hens. I must admit I was pretty excited when I saw my first egg!

My father-in-law, Harold Matthews, put me up to it. “You should get some hens”, he said. He must have been pretty amused at my excitement. He, a farmer of  55+ years, with a married lifetime of keeping hens (they were the province of the farmer’s wife), had seen probably tens of thousands of eggs in his time. (In fact, one room of our farmhouse at Blore Heath was actually called, “The Egg Room”, because that was where Rosie’s mum kept the eggs until they were collected.)

Anyhow, I have kept hens ever since.

 There are lots of issues around keeping hens. One of them is, what is the best kind of hen house for them to live in. You would be surprised how many different designs there are (there are even books on this, such as Judy Pangman’s “Chicken coops: 45 building plans for housing your flock”, from Storey Publishing in the US). I have yet to find the ideal system, having tried several. Perhaps I should write my own book!

 Surprisingly, to those who have not kept hens, they need a lot of food if they are to lay eggs. You have to buy it in the form of “layers pellets” [punctuation point: there is no apostrophe here because it is not a possessive but a reduction of the phrase ‘pellets for layers’. I share this thought because there is bound to be someone who takes issue. Your views are welcomed….]. But they can be choosy and lust for something different – especially grass! So it is quite good if they can roam around – i.e. free-range.  Except for Mr Foxy, some dogs, occasional stoats, and even birds of prey….

 The point of this, however, is that I always wanted to hatch some eggs. So I bought a small incubator from a well-known supplier. It’s good because it is almost completely automatic, as it turns the eggs regularly (essential) and maintains the correct heat. You wait 21 days and, miraculously, (this is the right word!), little chicks start pecking their way out of the eggs.  Well, not always [cue chorus: ‘Don’t count your chickens until they are hatched.’] ,  because there are myriad reasons for failure. One of which is the  XXX bit. Unless you have an “active” cockerel and a hen he fancies  ( it’s not really consensual), of course, the eggs are infertile.  See picture – what do you think of him! Pretty good, eh! Cannot say, as a mere human male, what he sees in her…

 To date, we have had 8 lovely offspring of Mr and Mrs Fowl (pictured). It has been a real pleasure to see the chicks through their development – they even have their own personalities! And lovely plumage! Don’t know yet how many boys and girls we have  – have to wait and see. More news of the family soon.

 Oh, and we can eat the eggs again now – don’t need to save them for the incubator!

This post is an advert for our new training course for therapy professionals – aimed primarily at counsellors and other psychotherapists who want to harness the healing power of nature in their work. John Hegarty and Janet Heath are the trainers, and the workshop is based on their research and development work on this topic over the past 5 years.

The course is over three days in early 2012, and will be held at the brand-new “Hub for Sustainability” building at Keele University, North Staffordshire. Clink (I’ve just coined that word – corruption of Click and Link!) below to get further details!

Nature as co-therapist training workshop brochure

I am not sure exactly what you would call this rusty piece of kit that, until recently, was in our farm “mixing house” (i.e. for mixing animal feed).  A shaft with pulleys? A drive shaft? If anyone knows the correct technical term, please get in touch! Its purpose was to drive farm machinery such as root grinders and grain mills. (You cannot feed whole turnips or whole barley to cattle being fattened up in the farm buildings.) Some source of motive power (an internal one such as a stationary steam or diesel engine, or one outside the buildings such as a tractor with a flywheel on) would have been connected to the shaft by a belt, and then additional belts used to connect different machines. The pulley wheels are different sizes to create a gearing effect for slave machines of different sizes.

I wanted to find a picture of such an apparatus in use, or even of redundant machinery of a similar kind. Not easy, but then I found a book by S.W. Martins, “The English Model Farm” (Windgather Press, Oxford, 2002). This shows a very similar layout to our own (on p.145) at a Grange Farm in Lincolnshire with open-fronted cart shed, door to feed mixing house, with granary above, and external driving wheel – but regrettably there is no picture of the interior. This farm was built (1866) at about the same time as our own (1879, as far as we can tell).

On page 113 of the same book, there is a woodcut illustration of the “machine room of a barn”. The author notes that this is “obviously a very idealised drawing”, taken from a textbook of agriculture dated 1866, but it nevertheless shows the intention of such apparatus. In this drawing, you can see the motive power being an internal steam engine, a threshing machine at the rear left, various types of grain mill on the right, and root or chaff cutters on the left. A health and safety nightmare, but still!

The only photo I have found so far that is similar is on Hollycombe steam museum website www.hollycombe.co.uk/ This gives the idea!

The interest in such machinery remnants is in the use of it in practice. What was in the mind of the designer as to what it would achieve? How did they intend it would be used? Was it actually useful? How long was it used for before it was superseded?

Meanwhile, this undoubtedly expensive and high-quality piece of kit (when it was installed) is unfortunately languishing in the corner of our yard. It reminds of a bye-gone era, when energy sources were hard to come by. Perhaps that time will return, as oil is a diminishing resource …..

The picture shows our open-fronted “Cart Shed” (situated under the grain loft) as it was a week ago.

Floored!

Yikes! Realising that the floor of the grain loft was absolutely riddled (and I mean riddled) with what our Czech helpers called “little animals” [= woodworm] we had the whole floor ripped up and dropped into what will be the care farm day room below.

As we speak it is being converted to firewood for the log burner. But you just have to be amazed, as we constantly are, at the quality of the workmanship (and the expense!) that went into the farm when it was build in the 1870’s as a “model farm”. These floor boards are not the modern kind of thing but really thick tongue-and-groove boards – with, believe it or not, metal inserts in the tongues (see photo), presumably to strengthen them with the weight of grain they would need to bear.

You simply cannot buy this kind of wood now. When the loft floor is replaced, it will be with a modern wood composite, not the solid pine that we pulled out. Still, it met its purpose – lasting over a century, supporting as many grain harvests, and feeding countless cattle over the years. And even, in recent years, superannuated for a venue for an indoor skateboard ramp for our children and friends,  and latterly as a Christian youth camp “sacred space”. Looking forward, it will house our Battle of Blore Heath interpretation centre and be flexible space for our care farm functions.

Below is the view from our cart shed. I must say I particularly like this view, dominated as it is by a luxuriant oak tree coming to the prime of its life. We hope it is going to be restful but also an object for meditation and reflection, with the interest of its changes in the passing seasons. You can wax lyrical about oak trees as well – the predominant timber tree throughout Europe since earliest times, supporting some 500 species of moths, weevils and other insects, and with many uses for its bark and other products (E. Milner, The Tree Book, Collins and Brown 1992).

In the last blog post I reported on the launch of Care Farming UK, the new national umbrella organisation for current and aspiring care farmers. Gaynor Orton and her team are promoting care farming nationally and giving advice to small farmers and larger care organisations that want to use the beneficial effects of connecting with farms and farming for people with any kind of special need.

There are also smaller groups that are cooperating to develop care farming. Some of these are national such as Care Farming Scotland, others more regional such as the active group in Eastern England group,  and the grant-funded Care Farming West Midlands, founded by Jonathan Dover, that serves the three counties of Shropshire, Hereford and Worcestershire.

Closer to home, nine farms in Staffordshire have formed “Staffordshire Care Farming Cooperative” with the aim of sharing ideas, giving mutual support, organising basic training (such as risk assessment, and marketing), and developing core standards. Green Age is an active member of this group.

We were recently told by an eminent agricultural advisor that no farm business plan these days is complete without a detailed “farm diversification” strand, and therefore that “care farming is definitely agriculture” – just as farm shops, dairies, canal side developments, paint balling, and so on are examples of value-added activities for different farms.

For agricultural economists in mainland EU countries, care farming is seen as an example, not just of farm diversification, but of “multifunctionality” or of instances of “positive externalities”. That is, whilst farming is primarily about food production, the very act of farming also brings about other positive and negative side effects (“externalities”). Pollution of watercourses from over-application of fertilisers would be an example of a negative externality; having people with special needs enjoy the countryside would be a positive externality. Multifunctionality is the broader picture whereby farming has multiple functions, rather than just food production.

We (Staffordshire Care Farming Co-operative) are increasingly meeting with social and health care commissioners in Staffordshire and beyond who are interested in how care farming can meet their needs of “personalisation” – giving a wider choice to care seekers about how their needs can be met. “Staffordshire Care Farming Co-operative” is therefore at the forefront of service provision for vulnerable groups, offering a range of social enterprises that people with health and social care needs can choose to help them meet their own needs.

For further details of  the nine farms in Staffordshire Care Farming Co-operative see our website coming soon! In the meantime, please contact us for further details.

It seemed a long, long way to go for a breakfast. Rosie and I were invited to the national launch of the new umbrella organisation for care farming, called “Care Farming UK”. Only drawback – it was at 8.30 am at the Norfolk agricultural show!

Anyhow, we thought it a good thing to do – both to represent our organisation – “Green Age at Blore Heath” – as well as the “Staffordshire Care Farming Co-operative” (which we are members of, along with 8 other Staffordshire care farmers).

We stayed at a farm B&B the night before – quite eventful, but that’s another story – and got there in good time for the breakfast feast. Even at 8 in the morning, people were flocking in, partly because the weather was Summer- perfect.

The Reverend Dr Gordon Gatward opened the proceedings, welcoming everyone and clearly proud of this milestone in UK care farming that he had helped to make happen. Gordon has embraced care farming as a valuable part of the social benefit that farming has, in his capacity as Director of the Arthur Rank Centre (supported by the Royal Agricultural Society).

After hearing the experiences of some care farmers, Sir Donald Curry (Northumberland farmer and author of the 2002 Curry Report on the Future of Food and Farming in the UK) then formally launched “Care Farming UK” and thanked us all for coming.

Why did we go all that way for breakfast then? Well, for one thing it is a decade since the first inklings of a national movement for care farming in the UK – so that’s pretty cool to be part of. For another, it was important to support Gaynor Orton (the new administrator and lead of Care Farming UK- see photo below) and her team as they move care farming up a rung of the ladder of importance nationally. And I suppose we just wanted to be nosey – to know what is going on and hopefully influence it positively.

Gaynor Orton, her deputy Linda and our grandson Callum at Blore Heath discussing plans for the care farm

By the way, there are over 300 farms on www.ncfi.org.uk (the current web home of Care Farming UK) – early days, but a growing force in health and social care.

Tree enthusiasts who read our last blog will be wondering what happened to the seeds we carefully buried in a box of compost on our first taster day. Carefully following the instructions of our horticultural guru Simon Abbott, I had put our box of mixed tree seeds in the garden and covered it with leaves. It sat outside all winter getting plenty of “cold units” (Simon’s explanation was that tree seeds need to be exposed to cold for a period of time) and then I had a look one sunny Spring day to see if anything had happened.  And had it?  Well, yes and no. Nearly all the horse chestnut seeds (conkers) had germinated (see picture), and some of the acorns, but no sign of any of the other seeds. Perhaps it was too cold, with such a hard winter.

Success! - a conker seedling

I’ve got a bit of a thing at the moment about trees. I think they are very important for our emotional and spiritual life, as well as looking good and giving us wood and other products. Many of them should be in the Guinness book of records. Did you know that, of all the living things on the planet, trees are the OLDEST (bristlecone pines in California, over 4000 years old), and LARGEST (the redwoods, also in California)? But at least Scotland has some of the smallest trees in the world, the dwarf willows in the Scottish mountains that grow only an inch (2.5 cm.) tall.

Rosie and I went on a “social forestry” course at the Green Wood Centre in Ironbridge, Shropshire. Over four days we had talks on working therapeutically with people in woodlands (like care-farming but in woods), interspersed with practical sessions. We tried our hand at using a felling axe and two-person cross-cut saw, we helped weave a willow shelter and even started to make a chair. It was great fun and quite inspirational.

Keele had a counselling psychology conference in March. With a colleague (counsellor and psychotherapist Janet Heath) I ran two workshops on “trees as co-therapists in counselling”. Ideally, we would have taken everyone into Keele University woods (http://www.keele.ac.uk/arboretum/), but we were limited for time. Instead we laid on a “woodland floor encounter” with lots of objects Janet Heath had picked up in her own woods such as branches, bags of leaves, and pine cones. People were invited to pick one of the objects and “connect” with it for a minute or two. They then shared experiences.

It was both interesting and a privilege to hear how this brief encounter with trees for some people had sparked off childhood memories, whilst others enjoyed the texture or shape of the object they had picked. I think that encouraging our “nature-connectedness” is really important psychologically for us all, and of course that is what “Green Age” is fundamentally about.

"It'll be a while before we can play conkers...."

This 14th Century proverb sprang to mind as we sat with four older guests, volunteers and carers on our very first taster day preparing some tree seeds for planting in the spring.

We’d started our day meeting up for tea and coffee and then we all watched the video from Erve Knippert care farm for older people in Holland. (Blog followers will know that this has been our inspiration.) All seemed to think it was a good idea for a new kind of day support service for older people.

Although there was a bit of a nippy Blore Heath wind blowing outside, it was warm in the sun and so we went outside to have a look around. Everyone said hello to the sheep, cattle and checked out the hens for eggs (none – all had gone off the lay). Then up the drive to watch whilst John fed the pigs

Guests enjoy welcome October sunshine by the pig patch

After a super lunch prepared by Rosie and Caroline the consensus was to do the afternoon activity inside in the warm, so we squashed ourselves into my office and listened to a talk and demonstration from gardening and horticulture expert Simon Abbots. Over the past couple of weeks I’d collected different kinds of tree seeds – sloe, damson, acorns, hazelnuts, hawthorn, holly – and Simon’s plan was to show us how to “stratify” them to encourage germination. He gave an interesting talk on the importance of this and then everyone helped put them into a compost mixture that would be left outside during the winter. Come Spring, they would hopefully start to grow and could be planted out.

With Christmas only a few months away, pots of hyacinth bulbs seemed a good project, so everyone planted bulbs in bowls to take home as presents or reminders of their day at Blore Heath. “Don’t press them hard down!”, said Simon, “Or you’ll damage the bulbs.” “And keep the mice away from them!” One of our guests said there would be no problem about that in her flat – she would put the bowl near where the cat slept!

Hyacinths for Christmas

J

Don’t know why – I’m fascinated by nuts. What’s nicer than a bag of salted peanuts, or mixed nuts and raisins? Grandma Lear (mum’s mum) used to bake me Dundee cakes and send them to me when I was a student – they were basically fruit cakes, but marvellously had nuts on the top. Nuts seem to be mysterious, from distant lands, tasty, different….  

But, hey, we have them at Blore Heath!  Hazelnuts were plentiful in the hedgerows and I picked some this year when they were still green. (None went to maturity – squirrels?)  15 or so years ago, with the help of Scout volunteers, we planted some walnuts – this year we had the first fruits – like conkers, they are jacketed in a green shell. Conker trees aren’t plentiful around here but we planted some that Rosie and I collected on the banks of the Seine years ago and, most years, they fruit nicely. Aren’t they a beautiful colour! We have some good sweet-chestnut trees but their nuts aren’t worth getting pricked for – very small and insignificant, so I buy Spanish ones from the shops.  

I’m building up to a success story – acorns!  

Walk along our “green lane” (not just our farm drive but part of an ancient way, used anciently by the Bishops of Lichfield to travel between parts of their diocese) and we have a wonderful oak (see picture)  

our oldest oak

that, most years, sheds bucketloads of acorns. Actually, this particular oak is part of the “great forest hedge” mentioned in the chronicles of de Waurin about the Battle of Blore Heath 1459 (“at daybreak Salisbury and his men could seen their adversaries behind a great overgrown hedge, with only the tips of their pennons showing above it” F.R. Twemlow, Battle of Blore Heath, Wolverhampton: Whitebread Brothers, 1912, p. 23) , but I digress.  

In half-term week, on October 27, we will hold our first “care farm taster day” at Blore Heath, supported by Staffordshire Council Community Wellbeing Fund.  

We’ll have about 12-15 people – all ages – volunteering to put together the kind of day that people will find sociable, farm-oriented, interesting and fun. Of course there will be the tea/coffee to drink (perhaps with Dundee cake?), and soup and salad with home-grown ingredients. If weather permits, and people want to, we’ll look around the farm and our pigs, Angus cross suckler herd and our sheep (which started out as Shetland but have evolved into a Blore Heath strain– another story!).  

We’ll also be planting tree seeds (led by horticulturalist Simon Abbotts), especially (you’ve guessed it) acorns. We hope this will be the beginning of a key care farm project for us, sowing and bringing on native trees that will repopulate our hedgerows and coppices. Perhaps, who knows, we may even be planting second-generation walnuts. In the meantime, although possibly we can’t eat acorns, our pigs really really love them! We cannot easily turn the pigs onto the pasture to eat the acorns (but if we did we’d be doing the ancient custom of pannage) but the next best thing is to collect them, chuck them into the pig field and watch their delight in finding them!  

Did you say acorns?

Our care farm taster days are supported by Staffordshire County Council, whose financial support we gratefully acknowledge.