Mallinson Ltd - woodwork courses in Dorset. Perfect short breaks for everyone.

As regular readers will know, this newsletter is the place where we release new dates, new courses and special offers. Subscribing means you will always be the first to know. In between newsletters, don't forget that you can also keep up to date with what we're up to via: Facebook, Twitter and our blog.

Firsts

We've been having a great time of it in the last few weeks, working and playing in the Woodland Workshop, and a few new 'firsts' have been achieved.

Our woven willow woodland shower (a first in its own right!) is now fully functional. It's been very enthusiastically received by our first campers, here for the first two courses of the season last week - both 'Pole Lathe And Green Woodworking'.

As I always hope happens, a great time was had by all with lots of dibbers, priests, spurtles and candlesticks being made as well as the obligatory spatulas.

One guest has very kindly made a YouTube slideshow which I thought gives a good flavour of the goings-on.

As well as the woodworking, a few guests tried their arm at axe throwing following a rather intimidating demo by Mace - he assures me that he did really throw a bullseye and has witnesses to back him up! (I think it was a first for him on that front too.) Fun for the brave.

Learning Under Shelter

I'm always particularly pleased when I hear about guests who've gone on to hone their green woodworking skills back home, and doubly happy when they re-visit us! We've set up fully equipped 'Bodgers Shelters' in the woods here for this express purpose - so former guests can come back and practice. They can be rented for just £15.00 a day and (I hope) are perfect for anyone who fancies a short break to practice some more. You can even camp here too for a properly immersive experience.

Filling Up

I'm delighted to say that courses are still booking up very quickly - the next available chair making space is in December. You can always check on course availability on this page, which is where 'Course Full' announcements first appear.

At the time of writing there are still plenty of spaces this summer for Spoon Carving, Totem Pole Carving, Primitive Pottery, Coracle Making and Adult's Bushcraft Courses, and the children's courses and themed days. However, as ever, if you have an eye on a specific date for any course, do please book up quickly as once they are full we don't have any more free dates to release - the year is full! And we never take more than 10 guests for any one as that would go against what we're about.

Filling Up #2

Turning to a different sort of filling up, after I gained my Food Hygiene Certificate, we have been busy upgrading our woodland dining facilities. This means we can actually prepare lunches in the woods, and there's now quite a bit of stainless steel amongst the logs and canvas, as well as fridges, triple sinks and all the other requirements. However, I think I can say that all of these necessary changes haven't spoiled the feel of things.

To go with the new facilities, there's a new team at work in the woods! I'll introduce the stars (Vicky, Joy, Anna and The Fivepenny Farm Co-operative) in depth next month, but suffice it to say for now that all the food guests enjoy is fresh, local and organic, and our first week of home made lunches were spectacular as well as very healthy! More on this in May.

After Mastercrafts

The Mastercrafts series seems an age away but it's still a big part of life here in the Woodland Workshop. Tom, Charlie and Sarah (the ducks, not the trainees) are getting braver by the day and have taken to coming to see what's going on in the Workshop, and producing some delicious eggs as well! Meanwhile Tom (the winning trainee, not the duck) is coming to help me on some of the summer courses, which means many guests will be able to meet him too.

I hear that the BBC have been very pleased with the response to the series, as have we. I think it really has raised the profile of crafts and particularly green woodworking. This is as much thanks to Monty Don as anyone - we particularly appreciated (and liked) this recent quote from Monty:

“Green woodworking is the one I felt closest to because I've carved bowls for years,” he says. “I suppose you'd call it a hobby, although that sounds like it's belittling something. Green wood is unseasoned wood - no saws are used, it's all done with knives and spoke shaves. Unfortunately it is really hard to make a living from it because, no matter how excellent, you just can't charge enough to justify the time that an item takes to produce, the only way is to supplement your income by teaching. But I love the way they go into the wood and say 'that's the tree I want to make my chair out of'. To make a chair from a tree that's growing - it's enough to change your life.”

Dorset Arts Weeks

As well as helping on some summer courses, Tom (the winning trainee) is going to be supporting us throughout Dorset Art Weeks (29th May - 13th June). We will be open to the public throughout this period and I hope lots of this newsletter's readers will come and see us and have a look around. You'll be very welcome if you can make it down here.

Entry is free, but we'll be making and selling pizza in our clay oven and we'll have local cider for sale too. We'll also be showing the processes and products from the courses as well as the new camping facilities and Bodgers Shelters. Boo's painting studio will also be open at Higher Holditch, giving visitors a chance to buy directly from the artist, as well as the three current gallery exhibitions she's currently holding.

Guinea Pig Days

As well as our first proper courses of the year, we ran three Guinea Pig Days for the new children's courses. On the Basic Bushcrafts day the children made their own bow and drill for fire making as well as doing some shelter building, trapping and whittling. This was followed by a trial 'Wild Child Adventure' day when they made their own bow and arrows before hunting each other in a giant game of capture the flag (or teddy) using soft tip arrows. There was also a fair bit of stalking, tracking and spear throwing - fantastic if a bit exhausting and scary at times! One participant, Julia Hailes, has added her own blog entry about it all if you'd like a more independent voice on the goings-on.

In contrast to all that excitement, the final Guinea Pig Day was 'Away With The Fairies'. As it sounds, this was a wonderful day of imagination and creativity with 10 beautifully detailed fairy houses (or castles) being made by the children (and parents) around the base of trees. I had my work cut out with making miniature furniture as well as leafy crowns.

Yes, I did eventually give in to the spirit of the day and don a pair of wings ... against my better judgement. (Thank you, I think I have heard them all now!)

Free Course Competition

Just a quick one to say don't forget to get your photos in if you have been on a course in the last year - the deadline for our 'win a free course' competition is the end of May.

Tool Of The Month

I have been using Japanese pull saws in preference to Western (push) saws since learning my trade at Parnham House about 30 years ago. They cut on the back stroke thus keeping the blade in tension. This enables the manufacturers to make the blade very thin with very fine teeth, precisely because the blade is always in tension - clever! The saws give a very fine and accurate cut as a result.

One side has teeth ground for cutting across the grain (small pointy offset teeth) and the other for 'ripping' along the length of the grain (a series of minute chisels). These are often mistaken for course and fine cut - which they are not. Other than being very precise and flexible tools they make a great boing sound when bent and released - hours of fun for the whole family.

As always, you can buy tools - including Japanese Pull Saws - from our online shop by credit/debit card or you can order by post and pay by cheque. More details are on the 'tools' page.

*****

That's it for this month. Let's hope that this beautiful weather holds! Thanks for reading.

Guy and the team

Tree of the Month: Hawthorn - Cataegus monogyna (revisited)

At last we are finally enjoying a proper spring after such a long, long, winter! The speed with which everything suddenly springs into bright, green, glowing life in a sudden explosion of verdant green growth always takes me by surprise; no half-measures in April! The masses of flowers and new leaves, the warm scent of wild garlic in woods and lanes, even the weeds, irrepressible in the garden - all a powerful and uplifting manifestation of the life-force.

In the Celtic calendar, as April moves into May and the peak of Spring activity pushes into the beginning of summer, Beltane, the Celtic festival of fire and fertility is celebrated at the midpoint of the sun's progress between the Spring Equinox and the Summer Solstice. Traditionally, this was the night of the 'greenwood marriage', whereby people spent the night in the woods and made love to celebrate the union of the horned god and the green goddess, to ensure the continuing fertility of the land. Luckily then, the weather is now warm enough to consider this activity! Hawthorn - Crataegus monogyna, the May tree, is traditionally associated with Beltane, which falls, in our calendar, around the end of April.

The Hawthorn is one of only 35 native species in the British Isles. This means that it was present in Britain over 6,000 years ago, at a time when enough of the land ice had melted in the slow thaw that followed the last Ice Age, to raise sea levels sufficiently to cut us off from mainland Europe. There are a few variations, including the beautiful, red-flowered C. laevigata, or Midland hawthorn, which is common, but not as widespread as the white-flowered C. monogyna. Another, much more uncommon, is C. monogyna 'Biflora', the most famous specimen of which grows in St John's churchyard, Glastonbury. Tradition has it that when Joseph of Arimethea thrust his staff into the ground while visiting Glastonbury around AD 30, the staff broke leaf and sprung into life, growing into a tree that flowered twice a year, both in the spring, and at Christmas-time. A descendent of the original tree still lives, and flowers, in the churchyard to this day.

Hawthorn is a tree of wild places, long believed to be the haunt of faeries, and strongly associated, even today, with the old festivals. The maypole dance on May Day, itself a plainly symbolic celebration of the interweaving of male and female energies, danced to celebrate and ensure fertility at this time of intense growth, harks back to a much earlier tradition in which a living tree, probably a Hawthorn, would be bought to the village for a ceremony to ensure a fruitful harvest. The living tree would still contain its tree spirit, or dryad, which would be invoked in the ceremony to ensure the continuing fertility of the land.

Garlands of Hawthorn blossom were, and still are used to decorate doorways, dancers and maypoles, hence 'here we go gathering knots in May' rather than nuts; the meaning has become lost over time, but nuts would not be on the trees at this time of year. Despite it being traditionally used as a decoration outside, it has long been considered unlucky to bring Hawthorn blossom inside the house. In some traditions, to bring hawthorn indoors presaged a death; the Welsh name for the flowers in fact, Blodau marw mam, literally means 'flowers death mother'. So not one for the Mother's Day bouquet then!

As the pagan fertility festival of May Day was Christianised, with a virginal May Queen who was also associated with the Virgin Mary, so Hawthorn also became associated with Catholicism. When England was Catholic, mayflowers were bought into the house to decorate an altar to Mary; after the Reformation, the new national Puritanism made this practise illegal and dangerous; in passing, they also cut down the famous Hawthorn of Glastonbury which had become a place of pilgrimage; luckily generations of pilgrims had taken cuttings from the tree, so it was, in time, replanted from the original stock.

Historically, Hawthorns are strongly identified with old sacred sites and the faerie world. Even today they mark sacred groves, springs, and faerie places. The trees, although often shrubby and stunted, can live for up to four hundred years, and are strong landscape features; furthermore, their sacred and faerie associations meant that roads and buildings were redirected around the trees to avoid the bad luck associated with felling a tree. Later, Hawthorn became widespread due to hedge planting carried out in the wake of the enclosure acts, when an estimated 200,000 miles of hawthorn hedge were planted, permanently changing both landscape and land usage. And Mace, after a winter season of hedge laying, can attest to the strength, longevity and, yes, prickliness of a well-maintained hawthorn hedge.

The importance of the Hawthorn in myth, tradition and popular culture is reflected in the fact that the Hawthorn is the most commonly-mentioned tree in Anglo-Saxon boundary charters, and is also the tree most commonly named in English place-names - Hay, Haw and Hag in a place name usually refers to the Hawthorn. Hawthorn itself also goes by the names of quickthorn - quick is used here in the sense of 'live', as Hawthorn was a fence of live wood, rather than dead - also Whitethorn, no doubt for its mass of creamy white flowers, and, as in the song, May.

Carolyn Brightwater