There’s nearly ten acres to explore: two ponds and your own woods. When the sun shines and the summer light floods in, there’s nothing finer. Actually, when the sun doesn’t shine and winter sets in, it’s still lovely. Just you, the space and the peace. But actually, there’s much, much more that you may not see.
We’re Gilly and Jed, and we’d like to show you around. Follow the signs around our Wild World when you get here to find the stories right under your nose.
Come offset with me
It seems that carbon offset plans haven’t changed much in the four years since we’’ve flown anywhere, although the better travel companies have added them as part of their B Corp tick-boxing. And it’s still just as hard to grow a tree as it was when we planted 30 on a very jolly community planting day. The deer were watching on, tying their napkins around their necks and licking their lips. Five saplings survived. Even of the more mature Pacific Sunsets we planted, only one has survived.
So we’ve been looking for options. Inspired by Make it Wild, a family project which plants trees as part of their own carbon offsetting business, we’re inviting you to offset with us in our rewilded land and restoring woodland (it’s a process). You can even meditate on the wonder of it all in our upcycled old barn yoga space.
It hasn’t been easy to bring back the bees and butterflies to this little part of Sussex. We’ve fought the neighbours and Wealden Council for years to keep a second pond as part of the #millionpond project. It was Nettie, the hibernating Great Crested Newt that Jed unearthed while destroying the jetty to keep the council happy that saved the pond.
We give you an idea of how our eco -house works when you come to stay within the set of house rules, but we don’t tell you about the ground source heating, the solar gain of the big windows and the upcycled barn and easy-green philosophy we live by. And until now, we haven’t told the story of our land. How can you and all the guests who come and stay here for the weekend know that you’re in a vision of eco-living if we don’t tell you?
So, we’ve made a nature trail signage to take your around our world, and added links here to take you to my various podcasts such as Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith, which will tell you much more about how to live to save the planet. We hope it joins the dots between the experience you have here and our ethos. Most of all, owe hope you look again at this epic rural space and realise just how magical wild life is.
Go to the ponds and watch the emperor dragonflies, the water boatmen and the nesting coots. Watch Wild Isles on iPlayer to watch those demoiselles in action and ponder on the wonders of life in the UK. We’ll take you through the woodland restoration project that we’ve been meaning to do for ages (volunteers, let me know if you fancy a wood chopping Sunday afternoon). We’ll show you the sloes, the rosehips and the blackberries right under their noses and how to make elixirs and jams, and get Vicky from up the road at Starnash Farmhouse to show you how to make her wild wines – her oak leaf wine is a revelation.
Composting, growing veg, drying the seeds for next year’s crop, topping the meadow, the butterflies, the wild flowers, the even wilder mushrooms… the stories are endless and they’re right there!
We get at least 12 people coming through our gates every single weekend of the year. Imagine if even half of you decide to dig up your concrete drives and plant a bee loving garden! We need you on board!
Follow the signs to …
Bush Tucker
The sloes and rosehips line our lane, easy feeding for the birds and deer which use our bushes as their breakfast bar. But they’re also a surprisingly delicious elixir. Apparently, they make the most excellent gin too, macerated together in sugar and red wine! Negotiate with the local wildlife how much you’d like to take home.
Rosehips are best in tea – blend in a processor, bring to the boil and steep for at least 2 hours. Reheat and drink. They contain 50% more vitamin C than oranges, and beat off most of the bugs in our household. It has been suggested that a daily 5-gram dose of rose hip supplement can help treat symptoms of arthritis, boost the immune system, lower cholesterol, prevent type 2 Diabetes and heart disease… It’s a superfood!
Can you eat them raw? Well yes, but avoid the hairs inside the fruit. They’re much better used by pesky children as itching powder.Although rosehips are the fruits of the rose flower plant and arrive as the temperature drops at the beginning of Autumn, they come from the same family as crab apples which you’ll find further down towards the bottom gate. Try this damson or slow gin from The Modern Preserver, Kylie Newton
Damson/Sloe Gin
Makes approx. 4x500ml bottles
600g damsons or sloes (fresh or pre-frozen)
150g caster sugar
1 tsp almond or vanilla extract
1 litre gin
Prick the damsons or sloes with a needle or toothpick (if frozen then they should break up anyway).
Place the fruit into a large, clean, wide rimmed, 2 litre jar and stir through the sugar.
Add the extract, cover with gin, stir gently and seal.
Leave to macerate, in a dark place, at room temperature, for up to 3 months.
Gently rock the mixture daily for the first week, to dissolve the sugar, and then once weekly.
When ready, strain the infused gin through a muslin lined fine mesh sieve, (keeping the boozy fruit to make a jam if you like.
Pour into clean bottles, seal and label.
Keeps for 1-2 years.
Listen to my chat with Kylie on Cooking the Books here
Photographer: Philippa Langley
Recipe from The Modern Preserver
Blackberries
Late summer and early autumn is the time to get out your baskets and wander down the country lanes to forage for Britain’s favourite free food. We’ve got masses of them, but birds and insects, particularly caterpillars, live on blackberry plants so lay your booty out on a plate and sift through for interlopers before you scoff them. Butterflies are more interested in the nectar of the flowers. Even the local dormice, squirrels and badgers love them so fill your boots but not if you’re going to make them into a winter’s supply of jams and juices.
Legend has it that you shouldn’t eat blackberries beyond Michaelmas on 29th September when the devil covers them toxic moulds. It’s probably just the damper weather that spoils them, but don’t let the kids know.
Our friend Vicky Radtke who holds all sorts of Resilient Life workshops up the road at Starnash Farmhouse in Upper Dicker makes wild wines. Her oak leaf wine is legendary around here. Email: info@theresilientlife.co.uk for info on her courses. Here’s her berry wine recipe.
Berry Wine
Wild wine making was one of our greatest joys over the Pandemic lockdowns of 2020! We had a house full of people and food and resilience became very important to us all. At the end of every day we would sit down for a meal together and we quickly came to realise that we couldn’t possibly afford to drink wine in the evenings with so many of us. I tried making wine from a kit but it was revolting! Kit beer was more successful.
Wild wines made from the fruit and leaves that grow in hedgerows or that we tend in our veg patches are a wonder. They all have different properties and they are surprisingly easy to make.
When you forage for the hedgerow berries to make this particular wine, you are naturally creating biodynamic wine with all the goodness from the Earth and the Sun and no chemicals. It is a drink to celebrate the end of the day and best enjoyed the home-cooked supper of local or homegrown food.
How to do it:
Equipment:
*Sterilising powder (e.g. BrewSafe)
*A lidded bucket as a fermenting vessel (www.biggerjugs.co.uk)
*1 gallon glass demijohn with bank and airlock
*Siphon tube
Six saved wine bottles and *corks
Ingredients:
1.5 kg berries. These can be a mixture of foraged hedgerow berries such as blackberries, elderberries, wild plums, sloes, haws and rose hips. Alternatively you can buy fruit of your choice from the freezer department at the supermarket! Both work equally well for the recipe, although you understand that they will have different qualities.
1.25 kg granulated sugar
3 teabags for tannin
4.5L boiling water
*1 teaspoon pectolase (pectin destroying enzyme)
*1 teaspoon citric or malic acid
*1 teaspoon yeast nutrient
*1 teaspoon wine brewing yeast
Funnel & muslin or similar for straining wine into demijohn
(*all found on internet)
Method:
From start to finish the process can take as little as five weeks, but leaving your wine for longer, if you can, will change the flavour bringing out subtle qualities.
Day one:
- Sterilise your fermenting bucket according to the steriliser instructions.
- Bring 4.5 L of water to the boil.
- Unsterilised put 1.5 kg of fruit into your cleaned fermenting vessel and add 1.25 kg sugar
- When boiling add 3 teabags to the water and steep for a minute or so to make a tea which will provide tannin for the wine.
- Remove the teabags and pour the boiling liquid over the fruit and sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved.
- Put the lid on the fermenting vessel (and fit an airlock filled with water if you have one). Leave to cool.
Day 2
- When cool add 1 teaspoon of pectolase, stir and leave for 8hrs or more. This will destroy the pectin that can be found on most fruit and could cause your wine to be cloudy. The pectin destroying enzyme is added before yeasts as this is when it works most effectively.
Day 3
- Stir the wine and add 1 teaspoon of citric or malic acid to prevent the wine from being too sweet.
- Stir and add 1 teaspoon yeast nutrient.
- Stir and add 1 teaspoon wine brewing yeast.
- Replace the lid of the fermentation vessel and refill the airlock with water if necessary.
Days 4,5,6 & 7
- Your wind will start to ferment and bubbles will pass through the water in the airlock. Simply stir your wine once a day. This will keep it oxygenated at this stage and prevent moulds from forming.
Day 8
- Sterilise a demijohn, bang and airlock and maybe a glass jug if you do not have a tap on your fermenting vessel.
- Put a final lined with Maslin or similar into the top of your demijohn and fill with the liquid from your fermenting vessel, leaving behind the fruit. You will note how much the aroma has already changed since the fermentation process has begun.
- Fill the demijohn to the top, even if you have to add a little cooled boiled water as you want to minimise the amount of air in the demijohn for the rest of fermentation process.
- Seal with a fermented bang and airlock filled with water and leave at room temperature to continue fermenting until it has stopped bubbling. This could take about a month or more.
Week 5 or beyond
- Check the demijohn to see if all bubbling has ceased in the airlock.
- Once the fermentation process has stopped you can rack your wine off into another sterilised demijohn or, if you prefer, straight into sterilised wine bottles which you can then seal with corks and lay down to further mature. If you want to drink some young, you can seal with screw tops and store upright.
Cheers…Enjoy!
Our Wild Flower Meadows
We were inspired to let nature rewild our land after reading Wilding by Isabella Tree who lives just down the A27 at Knepp. Her story of how she and her husband turned their family’s farm back into a rich eco system has made her one of the most influential environmentalists in the country. You can hear my chat with her on the delicious podcast here.
It was only a couple of years before wild flowers and pondlife brought health back to a cracked, parched desert of meadows which had long since seen any animals. For long summer months, the long grasses in both meadows are a haven for butterflies, and you can almost see the wild flowers proliferate as those crucial pollinators and weeders busily get on with saving the planet.
Nettles
You may be wondering why we haven’t strimmed all the nettles, pesky weeds that they are. Well, we eat them. They’re rich in iron, and steamed as spinach or cooked with wild garlic in the spring, they make a delicious soup. Try a pesto too. The sting disappears when cooked, but the juice of the nettle helps if you get stung while picking. Wise women have suggested it’s great for PMT and hair loss. Have a listen to Hugh Fearnely-Whittingstall on Cooking the Books with Gilly Smith for why we should all be eating more nettles.
The Woodland
When we bought our little bit of woodland in 2015, it was a tangled mass of dead and ailing trees, some young self-seeded, some more mature. It hadn’t been used for 25 years, maybe more, and had been enclosed in barbed wire to keep out the horses, sheep and cows which had lived in its neighbouring meadow.
There were silver birch and fir trees, hawthorn and beech, but so dense that we could barely make our way through. It was like a witch’s woods with spindly branches blocking our path, poking us in the eye and driving us back. The canopy blocked out the sun and cast a gloomy feel over the forest, pierced only by occasional shards of sunlight. It was silent; the birds preferred to live in more vibrant neighbourhoods further into Vert Woods.
Cutting down some of the trees created an instant glade where the sun could cast a dappled light onto the forest floor. Ferns which love the rich organic matter formed from leaf mould that had rotted down for years, could now breathe in the light, and quickly brought the forest back to life. We were delighted when bluebells began to carpet our woods in their iridescent shades of purples, violets and cobalt blue the following spring and every April since.
We’re restoring the woodland, slowly coppicing the trees by cutting them close to the ground to regrow from the stump. This ancient system of woodland management can be traced back to Neolithic times, and is designed to create dense stands of multi-stemmed trees which grow back faster and provide a much more user friendly and sustainable supply of logs.
Taking one area – or coupe as it’s called – at a time, the idea is to create open spaces in rotation; ‘this continuous cycle of thinning and clearance followed by regrowth’ says the National Trust ‘creates a varied understory in the woodland, allowing a mosaic of different habitats to form. The warmth and light that can now reach the woodland floor through this process helps to encourage new plant growth and insect activity.
The spindly, poky branches known as ‘brash’ can be gathered and piled to become creature habitats which support a wide diversity of species, both plants and animals.
Piles of cut wood can become nests for birds such as wrens, thrushes and blackbirds. Log piles are excellent hiding places for over-wintering newts and frogs. It’s also where fungi grow and where insects can lay their eggs. And in the circle of life, these become food for birds and other species. Do help our restoration project by piling the brash that you see lying around. The tiny rodents who’ll make it their new home will thank you.
Come back in 20 years and you’ll find a magnificent forest bursting with life!
The Big Pond
We’ve fought hard for this pond. After a complaint from the neighbours, Wealden Council forced us to take a sledgehammer to our lovely jetty made out of reused beams from the old house for pondering. But who did we disturb? A pretty little great-crested girl newt shaken out of hibernation. Suddenly the fight with our ‘green’ council who were threatening to make us fill it in was over. The great-crested newt is strictly protected by British and European law after catastrophic declines in range and abundance in the last century. It’s now an offence to: kill, injure, capture or disturb them; damage or destroy their habitat; and to possess, sell or trade.
Long live Nettie the Newt, and all who swim in our pond with her, the emperor dragonflies and spangled and diving beetles, and the deer who leave their hoof prints in the mud after their dawn and dusk visits to the watering hole. Why would any council – let alone one that claims to be saving the planet – try to force anyone to destroy such lush habitat?
The Little Pond
Not so long ago, this little pond was covered in bullrushes, hiding a housing estate of nests for the coots, Canada Geese and mallards which have made it their home. We’re not sure why the rushes have died, sending our pond life to build elsewhere, but it looks like a sludge dredge might be due. Sludge is the natural decay leaves, fish waste, plant debris, dead algae, and debris washed into the pond with rain run off. The decomposition will reduce oxygen levels in the pond which affects all the planet saving life in it. Watch out for new rushes and new babies by spring.
As in the Big Pond, the demoiselles and May flies dance over the water in spring like fairies. Take the kids to the water’s edge and marvel and the wonders of nature.
Firepits
Nothing calms the soul like a fire, and we’ve got two fire pits for you to enjoy. Please don’t light a fire when the summer has already scorched the meadows as it’s a hazard, but do wander the woods for your tinder as part of our woodland management.
Cook outside, eat outside, be outside. And if you need any inspiration, here’s Gill Meller on why it matters.