This week at Windmill - Mice 3, Us 1!

Finally - a bit of warmth came to Windmill this week, and we made the most of it. The weather has actually been quite dry and the winds have dried things out even more, so we were able to get into the area next to the fruit cage where the brambles have gone a bit mad.

Pete is a forester, so he's a hardy soul who laughs in the face of jaggy vegetation - just the man for the task. He did a great job of taking the growth back to appropriate side-branches, and also of digging up areas where the brambles had planted their heads into the ground and rooted. We used these to plant a row of blackberry along the fence line by the new raspberry bed, as well as weaving the cuttings into the fence itself, the better to deter raspberry-thieves later in the year!

Pete tames the brambles next to the fruit cage.

Carrie concentrated on getting more paths sorted, with the able assistance of Andrew. The main task is to remove the composted bark (which makes a great soil conditioner, but also a great place for weeds to root), and replace it with fresh wood chips which will hopefully reduce the amount of path weeding we need to do. We've still got a few more to do, but we getting there.

Carrie with a tamed path!

Pete also found time to give our rhubarb some tlc (tender loving care, not tables, ladders and chairs!), with a nice thick mulch of compost.

Giving the rhubarb a treat

We fitting in plenty of planting too. Mark finished the onion planting, and we also managed to put in some Weld, to complement our Dyeing Herbs area which already has Woad in it. Now we just need some Madder, and we'll be able to make red, yellow, blue (and from them, lincoln green).

Weld and Woad 

In the polytunnel, the saga of Windmill vs. the Mice continues! You might remember that we had tried to get peas going in the tunnel, and found that the mice nipped out the growing plants and peas, just leaving the top leaves? We tried putting them into gutters (the mice climbed in and happily dug into the feast), and in desperation, we put them on a pot stand (the mice scaled the structure and chowed down on the peas in the first 2 levels!). We also grew them in egg-boxes on the metal table, and finally had a bit of success. So new volunteer Ulrika got to work and used them to replant the small pea bed that we had created.

Add caption

We're hoping these peas are not so succulent and tender as the freshly sprouted ones, so fingers crossed! Now we just need to get some going outside....

Ulrike replants the peas

Dyeing to tell you what we've been doing at Windmill!

 For the last 2 afternoons, we've been trying something new at Windmill - dyeing and spinning wool.

You might remember that last year, some of our meadow plants turned out to be weld - a dye plant that produces a rather nice yellow dye. Apparently, combined with woad, weld was used to create Lincoln Green, so there are a lot of historical associations with it in this area. Knowing we had the weld, we contacted the Spinners, Weavers and Dyers Guild, and they put us in touch with Sue Routledge who happily agreed to help us find out what to do with it.

Sue gets set up - don't be fooled by the L plates
- she knows what she's doing!

The Wednesday group get ready to dye their wool.

So for the last 2 afternoons, Sue has been running workshops for us to show us dyeing techniques with weld. She has experimented with the dye and discovered that the effects can vary from a gold to an almost flourescent yellow, and we managed the same variety over the 2 days. We were given prepared wool (it needs to be treated so that the dye will be taken in), and we bound some of it with string to give a tie-dye effect. On the second day, we made our own "Lincoln Green", though we used artificial blue to simulate woad, by painting it on to the wool we had already dyed. With the string effect, we ended up with white, yellow and green wool. Sue kindly gave us some woad plants though, so hopefully next year we will be able to make our own woad blue too.

Tying string round parts of a wool skein for a tie-dye effect.

Pip placing the wool in the dyebath

Wednesday's gold wool

Thursday's dye batch - a few tweaks meant a stronger colour

Carrie shows us the 3 colour effect of adding
blue in patches and steaming in clingfilm

The final result - and Mary arrived ready colour co-ordinated

Sue is a skilled spinner too, so she provided us with drop spindles, made using old CDs and dowels, and showed us how to do it, and also got out her spinning wheel. The spinning was a big hit, with some of our visitors finding it almost addictive!

Sue shows us how to use a drop spindle.

Getting the hang of spinning by hand

Sibel with some of the woollen thread she made

Trying out knitting with some chunky wool and big needles

Sue shows us how to use a spinning wheel
it's not as simple as it looks!

If you missed the fun but would like to know more, keep an eye out for Sue and other spinners at the Sherwood visitor centre at their monthly visit there. We are also hoping that she will visit again soon. We'll keep you posted. 

More about weld and how to use it to make dye here.