Steam and Cider in the New Forest

The New Forest Cider pressing weekend is a well kept secret held on their cider farm at Burley. A case of cider meets steam with some added wood. Please excuse the indulgent photos and as I am still trying to recover I will largely let them speak for themselves.


No photos of vintage tractors, I think I was distracted by the array of steam lorries and engines.


At the end of the season it was something of a relief to be down-sizing without my shelter and for the first time no pole lathe.


Squeezed into the small field behind the farm shop were at least 5 cider presses and scratters (the mills for pulping the apples) mainly run by steam. The smell of apples already fermenting was in the air. This fantastic mill featured a steam driven scratter and a steam driven press on either side.

Proudly displaying its heritage on the side.

There was a strong contingent from Gloucester at the weekend and I assume this press came up with them


On the greenwood front we put on a good show. Peter Lane and his assistant Peter were rattling off hurdles. Hurdling goes back in Peter's family for generations, he has a fascinating knowledge of how and when each copse was cut and seems to operate as much by feel as he rives the rods.

Here Paul Vodden shows his tine cutter in use.

Rod Poynting also brought a down sized display. Treadle lathes are his speciality, still foot powered but with the work piece continually rotating they are the direct ancestor of today's powered lathes. Rod also displayed his superb ash chair which won an award as last week's Cranborne Chase woodfair.


Back to the cider. This outfit came from North Somerset (Cleveland) and their pressing from last year won the cider tasting contest on the Saturday evening. Prizes awarded by Rosie, of 'Cider by Rosie' fame. Over the years Rosie's Dorset cider is responsible for a number of my friends falling down events. Needless to say I don't remember much of the evening which was a cidermakers paradise.

Sunday morning brought a lot of leisurely breakfasts and a few horse voices

and Morris met Steam

Despite the distractions I managed to make a couple of rakes. I hadn't intended to sell my first rake but Simon persuaded me to part with it for raking flax on their farm in Gloucestershire - after extracting a promise of a lifetime guarantee. Thats the trouble with cider.


The Apres-show. You may have noticed the number of living wagons in the photos, a feature of the show. So leisurely was the pace that it was quite hard to drag myself away and just for once I was not the last to leave. That would have been hard. A big thank you for Chris, whose wonderful wagon this is, for inviting to this gem of a show and to Peter Jameson for his endless advice and wisdom....and on the rakes. Provided I recover by next year I will be back.

Just in Tine

I am Mark the Rake for the weekend at the Burley Cider Festival in the New Forest. A novel experience not to be taking a pole lathe but making hay rakes is a skill I've wanted to acquire for a while and with the wisdom and help of Peter Jameson I hope to make a couple of reasonable rakes this weekend (and to sample the local brew).

For rakes you need tines, and they need to be seasoned. These tines were made just in tine to be seasoned on the woodburner this evening. I think its called 'Just in Tine manufacturing'...........

Weald & Downland Autumn Celebration

One of the last shows of the year, the Autumn Celebration at the Weald & Downland museum is one of my favourites and this year was a good one. I was joined by John and Wayne from the Sussex group of the APT (association of polelathe turners and greenwood workers) and they stayed on for the Sunday while I was busy at the blackmoor apple day.


John and I were mainly spindle turning whilst Wayne demonstrated bowl turning and spoon carving so our pitch was busy all day and with Waynes small bow lathe as well there was plenty for the visitors to see and do.



Next door at the bottom of the show field the threshing drum was busy devouring the straw rick with the gentle chuff of the steam engine


The thatching wheat is grown on the museums own fields and harvested earlier in the season. The threshing drum separates the grains from the corn ears and then the grain is collected whilst the chaff is rejected out of the pipe. The short pieces of straw are separated from the full length straw and bailed,




The full length straw is good for thatching and the machine produces bound sheaves which are then piled up. This straw is going straight onto one of the museum cottages, Gonville, which is being rethatched. I was amazed to see the ears still on the ends of the straw, though now empty after being threshed.



Up in the farmyard Julian was busy pressing apples. Both fresh juice and 2 year old cider were available for tasting, the cider was quite excellent.


Meanwhilst up in the woods above the museum the autumn sunlight played on the trees.....




.....and Jon prepared an earth clamp for a charcoal burn. The lengths of wood are carefully arranged around a central void. Once the earth is piled over the wood the central hole is used to pour in hot coles and start the burn. The size of the clamp is designed so that the burn will be completed in around 24hours and the clamp opened up before the end of the show.

I was pleased to see Wayne using a traditional bow saw, one of the late Barry Plant's giant collection of tools, many of which have found their way into our boxes and are now in use. He would be pleased. Many thanks to John and Wayne for joining me on the pitch, putting on an excellent show and for holding the fort on Sunday.

Blackmoor Apple Day

I've got my posts a little out of order as the shows have been coming thick and fast as Autumn draws us towards the end of the season. On Saturday I was at the Weald & Down for the first day of their Autumn celebration. On Sunday alone there were 4 shows that I could have attended.Even my appetite for shows was a little daunted by the thought. I chose to go to the Blackmoor apple estate for some simple reasons. It's local being just around the corner close to the village of Selbourne, it's a charity event and I am becoming something of an apple maniac over the years so I wanted to support it.




Blackmoor apple estate is a farm with 200+ acres of apple orchards. The show is held in the village by the packhouse, nursery farm shop and church, a lovely setting. It's a new show for me and I've been talking to the Blackmoor estate about organising some rural crafts at the show, so I felt a little responsible for prodding Nick and John ( the blacksmiths from Old Kiln forge at Tilford nr Farnham) and Matt (timber framer and shingle maker) to come and join me.

Perhaps being a little tired I struggled to get my shelter and demonstration up and running and once ready was besieged by visitors so failed to get around the rest of the apple-centric show. You'll have to put with with photos of us instead. Although it was a cold breeze with a little rain the worst of the weather held off for the day and there were a few thousand visitors. Our demonstrations seemed to be very well appreciated and John even received a well deserved round of applause for one of his demonstrations.

At the moment Nick and John are using quite a lot of charcoal for their fuel. I was surprised to see large lumps of chestnut charcoal on the hearth. Apparently chestnut charcoal burns hot and fast and is quite brittle so it's easy to knock it down to smaller lumps once it's burning. With my limited experience of blacksmithing my own tools I like to use charcoal, it's cleaner than coke but of course you get through a lot if you use a large hearth so you do need a local cheap supply. Perhaps us woodies are starting to have an effect upon our local metalbashers?




Every time I looked Matt seemed to be talking with a crowd of interested people who regarded his axe with obvious respect.

But by the afternoon he'd still managed to produce a useful pile of cleft oak shingles

Without the sun it was quite cold and the forge was in use as a hand warmer when not heating metal. Here modelled superbly by Harriet and Charlotte.



It was a rolling pin day for some reason, and I made a few extra long pins. Getting a 15+ inch flat finish always puts me in my own little world and time whizzed before I knew it, I was the last one at the show as usual. At least it wasn't far to come home. A lovely local show and as a bonus the vicar donated me some large rounds of sycamore from the churchyard.

Fernhurst Furnace 2009 - The Charcoal Burners

Last and certainly not least I have to mention the charcoal burners. Nowadays we think of charcoal as barbeque fuel but it has a lot more uses than that, still being used industrially for many forms of filters. For thousands of years the coppices were used to provide charcoal for fuelling the Wealden furnaces and forges. Each furnace would have used the output from around 2500 acres of coppice and as charcoal did not travel well on the poor Sussex roads it would have come from the woods surrounding each forge and furnace.



Chris and Lucy make their charcoal near Didling Woods near Midhurst, and if you are in the area you will see it available as Didling Good charcoal. Or you can find them on their Charcoalburners website. As Chris had to take his mum to hospital on the Sunday, this year they were unable to burn at the show.


Lucy had a great display showing the different types and grades of charcoal they produce and their uses. They mainly burn Alder wood which is renowned for making good charcoal, easy to light, burns well and hot making it good for cooking (as does my birch charcoal of course!)


They also had artists charcoal and fines for sale. Horticultural fines are smaller pieces of charcoal which are sieved out when producing lumpwood for cooking. The fines are increasingly popular with gardeners as they are used as a soil sweetener and add moisture retaining ability to compost and soil. As they are a totally inert form of carbon and will not breakdown in the soil the fines can also be regarded as a carbon sink locking away carbon in your soil.


Chris and Lucy are also busy this year as they are building their own house in the woods where they have been living and burning charcoal for some time. The cruck framed wooden house is being built to the design of their friend Ben Law, a local coppicer and green woodworker of some fame following his programmes on grand designs.


Chris is making the shingles for the house himself from Western Red Cedar, not a traditional material for shingles in the Weald though it's very popular for shingles in North America. The shingles are sawn on Chris' bandsaw rather than being cleft and they look excellent, the waste is charcoaled and to my surprise it seems that Western Red Cedar produces quite good charcoal, though light and quick burning in comparison to the traditional hardwood charcoals.

I'm Tyred...

Not my favourite job, and you might well ask what I am doing struggling with landrover tyres when there's a perfectly good tyre centre down the road. My excuse is that I had an odd assortment of off road tyres, trailer tyres and puntures needing new innertubes. The really cold weather last winter seemed to cause a rash of slow punctures and some of the wheels needing anti-rusting and repainting which I've done over the summer in between other jobs. I have a large collection of spares that I've been using but I need to get the tyres back on whilst the weather is still warm and the rubber flexible.



In this case the tyre just needs a new tube. I already had a spare tube and it's not necessary to take the tyre off the wheel completely to replace the tube. The first job is to pop the tyre off the wheel rim, I have a tool for this handed down to me by Richard my landrover guru, but you can use wooden wedges.



Working around the tyre with a couple of levers the rubber is levered over the rim - I find it helps to stand on the tyre whilst doing the work.


You can then pull out the old tube and feed in the new one starting with locating the valve in the wheel.


Replacing the tyre is the reverse of taking it off. Isn't that what it says in the manual? Not quite. You might find you need 3 levers to get the tyre back on and it's not going to be easy unless you get the rubber well over the rim and down into the well of the wheel. Standing on the tyre is definitely needed, and some washing up liquid to lubricate the rubber and help it slide over the rim.

A fine collection of old rubber good for a few more miles this winter with any luck.

Fernhurst Furnace 2009 - Chestnut rails

Chestnut fencing, particularly Sussex post and rail is a part of the Wealden landscape but the coppice workers that harvest the timber and produce the raw materials tend to work so deep in the woods that their activities are almost hidden. As a name Haslemere is almost a misnomer, it should really be called Chestnutmere, especially on the West Sussex side but that's a bit of a mouthful really (this photo is of chestnut coppice cut earlier this year on Stanley common).



John Woolgar is a Chestnut Coppicer on the steep slopes (hangers) overlooking Fernhurst. John brought his new toy to the furnace, a smart new timber trailer with crane, loaded with fresh chestnut lengths to split into rails and fence posts. Certainly made short work of unloading and the shiny new tractor looks like its got real windows rather than holes in the metalwork like the last one.

Here John is using steel wedges and a sledge to split out the chestnut into posts.

The timber was good and straight and despite copious tea breaks, endless questions from visitors and annoying photographers John soon produced a pile of fence posts.


Here Terry, his assistant, is splitting the longer lengths with wedge and sledge to make up rails for the traditional post and rail fencing.


The rails are dressed with an axe to remove unwanted and stray pieces splitting out. For post and rail the fencer will normally shape the rail ends and mortice the posts on the job.


If you are in the Fernhurst area and want Chestnut posts and rails then you can call John Woolgar on 0777 4149595. Or drop in and see him if you can find him, he tells me he's cutting up behind Shulbrede priory this year. This load was straight off to a job.

Fernhurst Furnace 2009 - The Blacksmiths

From the Fernhurst Furnace weekend, I can't really miss out the blacksmiths, they are going 'hammers and tongs' all day long down by the furnace site and anchor the show for the visitors. We are lucky in this corner of West Sussex, Surrey and Hampshire that we have a number of thriving blacksmiths. Robert and Carol Smith organise the blacksmithing at the Weald & Downland smithy, Nick Murray and John Cooksley run the Old Kiln Forge at Tilford, Mick Stanton (Fraught Wrought) an edge tool maker at Normandy nr Guildford, and the village forges in Chiddingfold and Midhurst are still going. But it's a case of use them or lose them...

As a gear freak I admire the amount of kit that Robert manages to spirit to the site for the weekend. Anvils aren't light, well none of the blacksmithing equipment is light. The hand turned forge blower is great, without the background of a petrol motor you can hear more of the metal being worked and the sound is a part of the magic.



With the portable forges and hand wound blowers it's not really possible to work on complicated pieces as well as talk to visitors. In the same way as I make a lot of dibbers and spurtles on occasion here Nick is making a leaf key-ring. It might not be high art but it does give people and particularly children the ability to see something they can appreciate and take away being made. First he hammers out the shape of the leaf from the solid bar

Then he puts in the veins using a cold chisel.

The leaf is almost life-like.

To finish the key ring the leaf is quenched and then cut from the bar. The stalk is beaten into shape and then formed into a ring.



We very much liked his bottle lanterns. The forged candle holder and hanger are cunningly fitted into a bottle with the bottom ground off.



Much more complex is Nick's helmet. The helmet is constructed in quadrants with each part hammered to shape over a former before being riveted together. You can contact Nick Murray (07702 114881) and John Cooksley (07759 044858) at the Old Kiln Forge, nr Farnham, Surrey.