Orchard Harvest Day!

Well what a wonderful day!

Today we headed on down to the Winterbourne Medieval Barn Orchard Harvest Day. Late, as usual, we pulled up, decked out a gazebo and brought down two of our youngest calves, Peggy and Pearl.

The crowds started pouring in to the barn and grounds at 11 o'clock and we soon had lots of 'oohs' and 'ahhs' thanks to these little ones:

We wanted to not only promote our Christmas birds, but also all of the other activities on the farm, such as shearing the sheep and the uses of wool, how we rear our calves and how we look after the hedgerows around the farm. The children and adults enjoyed learning about the different hedgerow species we have in England, and their lovely fruits. The conkers were also quite a hit! Will demonstrated a bit of hedgelaying with our make shift hedge and the children got to touch (and frequently sniff?!) the wool from our sheep.

The calves were, of course, the stars of our stall, and as you can see, were beyond chilled out all day - quite remarkable given that they are only 6 weeks old! They were lapping up the attention and enjoyed lots of lovely stokes and cuddles from everyone! Lucky little beasties!

The day was a fantastic show of rural crafts and traditions. We were opposite a beautiful horse whose job it was to press the apples to make scrummy scrumpy, and there were handmade soaps, beautiful straw craft masterpieces, fantastic felt arts, dry stone walling demonstrations, local bee keepers with honey and lots of delicious homemade cakes! The calves weren't alone either - there were ducks, pigs and even llamas!

It was truly wonderful to see so many skilled and passionate people teaching others about their crafts, and even better that so many people were interested in hearing about them! Thank you to everyone who stopped by at our stall and had a chat - we hope you all had a lovely day
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We can't wait for next year!