A Winter Solstice I will Never Forget. Such Beauty. Oh.. and Christmas too...

These pictures are a mix of Winter Solstice and Christmas day photographs. 

You can click them to make them bigger. 

The winter solstice sunrise.With the Moon setting over the yurt and shelter. I was weighed down with buckets of chicken feed, straw and hay. I froze (literally) to the spot though to witness this breathtaking scene.

After feeding the animals I went for a wander around the land. The snow is cold and hard to walk on but there's no arguing the magical quality of it. This years winter solstice was made extra special with the full moon and snow.

I only found bird tracks in the snow on the banks of the river. I felt electric walking along here.

Amazing ice sculptures on the branches that stretch across the river & the roots that creep out from the bank.

The light and contrast the snow gives to everything is particularly stunning when trees are involved!

The yurt was toasty warm inside.  You can see how well the wool felt lining keeps the heat in by the fact the roof has lots of snow on it.

Our slopey fields come into their own for sledging! I've got to work on not "teeeheeee"- ing all the way down... it's humiliating...

Cooking our christmas dinner in the dutch oven on the open fire. I cooked roasties in the cast iron pot on the chimenea. That didn't work so well! Still had lots of crispy bits, not attached to the pots though! Will definitely need to get our clay oven built as soon as possible!  I'm only happy if I can have roasties & home baked bread!

Stunning view over to South Wales. Just stunning... did I say stunniiiiiiiing...!!??

Winter solstice sunset also blew my tiny mind. I need more descriptive words for "breathtaking"!

Then the Full Moon rose. It was the biggest Moon I've ever seen.The way it caught the snow making the crystals sparkle like diamonds brought tears to my eyes. 

Our roasted chicken. The dutch oven did us proud :)

Hope you all had a beauty filled day!

Much love,

hen

xx

Cloud Inversion at Sunset!

Click on the photies to see them in better quality & a bit bigger. They don't do it justice mind you :)

One of the most beautiful things I have ever seen...

The cloud billowed slowly west to the sea

hen xx

These gentle days...

... are quite cold.

cor, it's chilly isn't it!



I was out and about and had to call Leo to take a photo of the Sun this evening. Did anyone else see it? Huge and clear and sooo red.

He was all warm at home but went on a mission in the freezing cold to get the photo. My hero!

Hope you have all had a peaceful Christmas and I wish you all every ounce of happiness in the universe for this coming year,
hen
xx

Remembering early summer

At this time of year I always find myself drawn in to the shapes of naked trees. Sometimes they remind me of ballet dancers, petrified in wood. I imagine them, with their arms thrown up, stretching, grasping at something, anything, to set them free from being rooted to the earth. Ballet dancers shouldn't have to be bound by the laws of gravity.
Sometimes they're not.

Anyway, I thought I'd share with you my reminiscences of early summer. In between making baskets, I've been sorting through my photos. Photos like these are perfect for me at this time of year. A reminder that winter is not here to stay, it's a part of a cycle and will wane. I do love winter, but spring and early summer are my favourite..


This is from a camp I did on the land in early summer. I felt right cosy.


Our woodland is a typical Exmoor woodland. Confined to the slopes - but not for long! It's not the steepest forest I have been in though. I think that this woodland is well over a hundred years old. There is quite a few trees that are a couple of hundred years old, they tend to be the ones near the top of the slope, that haven't grown very straight. There are lots of lings (tree seed-lings) in the woodland now, as it's had some time to rest from cattle grazing. It was heavily grazed by cattle and sheep before. Thi s type of woodland grazing, if managed properly, would potentially be beneficial to the regeneration of the under canopy of the woodland. However it wasn't managed at all and the cattle caused a lot of erosion, damaged the bilberry and fern population (as well as all the other herbage) and prevented the lings from growing.


This is from one of our hedges. *sigh*



This is the top of our woodland. Although this picture doesn't show the oldest trees, these ones are quite old. Standing next to them is a grounding experience. To grow here these trees have to be tough. The grazing has kept a lush grassy ground cover. It looks great, but isn't very diverse.


I sat here for a good few hours just watching the light through the trees. It's very sheltered here, you can tell by looking at the wild flowers growing in the grass.



I don't know if my nest looks cosy in this photo. It felt cosy to be in at the time. Normally I would have my tarp backed up against a hedge or something as extra wind protection. It wasn't windy though and I was using the huge oak log that's out of shot but in front of my nest for splitting lots of wood and making baskets. The stack of coppice wood at the back of the photo is the poles for the large shelter.

Go nowhere without an umberella.

On our land we have red deer. The stags are magnificent. This one is a 5 pointer (the amount of points on his antlers). It tells you how old he is I think. There is normally five of these stags, hanging out together, munching their way through our regeneration area. It's been a while since I last saw them though.

I almost hunted one of these stags. With a gun and everything. I had decided it was important to be able to do it, part of the whole meat thing. Being able to feed, clothe and shelter myself is of huge importance to me and on this piece of land a stag would go a long way towards all of those things. Meat, skin for clothes, antler to make all sorts of things and tendons to make strong cord.

In the end I just couldn't do it. A step too far for me at the moment. Theory is all very well, but listening to your heart in the moment is important. In those moments everything is stripped bare and all that is left is pure insight. Well, I may not have had pure insight, but my heart certainly stopped me shooting this stag.

Sunset...

*sigh*

Samhain

I'm off to the land for a couple of weeks. This is going to form part of my Samhain ritual.

Honouring the lives of those that have passed over this year, those I have known, those I have not known.

Communing with the spirits of the woodland and rocks, river and meadows, wind and sun to gather strength for my practice to carry me through this New Year.




Warm wishes for your happiness in this New Year!

hen
x


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Now playing: Rachel Unthank & The Winterset - River Man
via FoxyTunes

Photos of the Solitary Retreat

Here are some pics from the retreat. There will be more when I do my diary thing on my new blog Solitary Retreat. There is a feed just to the left so you can see what's going on over there. Thank you so much everybody for your comments!!!

The cottage is in the middle of this photo somewhere...


Yes, this is a brand new Ashford spinning wheel. For some reason I got a double drive and it's a pig to learn on! My reasoning was that I would be getting Exmoor Horns and therefore needed a wheel that could do a stronger yarn. What I didn't realise was how fiddly it would be to work out!


It's another Hen-head wearing a horny head-bag. I have named this particular bag 'Trinity' after the stitch that I used on it. There's a couple of lines of crosses that run along the head-bag. I worked the crosses out using the trinity stitch. Actually I got bored practicing the trinity stitch and managed to somehow make little crosses in a fluky kind of way!! I loved it though!


This little family came to visit me one day. This photo doesn't really show just how tiny the kittens were, I think it's because their mum was also very young (she is in the middle front, black and white). They were all healthy though and pinged and sproinged their way around mums hunting ground. I am convinced it was their first day out. There was a barn on the other side of the valley that I saw her go into one day when I was watching her through my inspectacles. So she is obviously an un-neutered barn cat. There was a rather heart stopping adventure that they all had that day too, which I'll write about on the other blog!


This is a fairy... shut up, it is...


This was the garden she was tending when I snuck up on her...


Sunset...



Moonrise


Thank you everyone for your kind words of support around this retreat!

Our Land on Exmoor - Summer

Ooooh, it's looking so good on the land at the moment. I've just been camping there and had the most wonderful time. I really needed it after all the thinky thoughtyness of the past few weeks.

The view from my nest to the moor was simply gorgeous...


Here is my nest, it was good...

I had the most peaceful time knitting in the sunshine. Stink dog had the best time revolting me with her stench. This is her in fits of laughter after acting cute, tricking me to cuddle her and covering me with her stinky foulness...


This is a proper animal...


My favourite time of the day, evening. Looking over from my nest to the Bristol Channel and the Brecon Beacons...


I turned around and there she was...

The Great Turning and Solitary Retreats

The Sheiling, Dhanakosa

Last year I spent, in total, about a month in retreat in an attempt to settle my mind, answer some painful questions about our Earth and decide whether the direction I was headed was the right one. The final week of this was in solitary retreat in a hut in the Scottish foothills of Balqhuidder.

One of the retreats I attended was based on the Great Turning using the Work that Reconnects - conceived by the incredible Joanna Macy.

"The Great Turning is a name for the essential adventure of our time: the shift from the industrial growth society to a life-sustaining civilization." Joanna Macy

Please use the links to Joanna Macy's website to learn more. She has some strong answers to help us deal with our pain in this time of the Great Turning and give us the strength and inspiration to keep going and understand our feelings.

In my playlist is a song called the Elm Dance. Please take some time to have a look at the details of this powerful song and dance.

My plan was to go through the Work that Reconnects retreat and then immediately spend a week in solitary retreat allowing myself to let what emerged settle and what couldn't emerge, emerge... all with no distractions.

There is no way I suspected what I was about to experience. Just one week in solitary retreat, doesn't sound very long I know, but believe me, it's not easy. One week set aside to be alone without any distractions has had one of the most profound effects on my life. Going on solitary retreat clarified the job of learning and living. It's effects still permeate my everyday life, even when I'm being a bit rubbish. I had never really met myself. Finally, there I was, all fragile and powerful. Quite frightening to behold but also in need of care, attention and protection. For the first time I was able to feel compassion toward Hen and understand just how deeply important it is to be compassionate to oneself.

A Hen head, 5th day of Solitary Retreat

A week isn't long enough. To begin with though I think it's sensible to give yourself a chance and ease yourself in by starting with one week and then building yourself up. As I said, it's not a simple task. If there is one gift you give yourself in this life, I would suggest going on a solitary retreat should be somewhere near the top of your list. This website is brilliant goingonretreat.com.


View from the Sheiling

The solitary retreat photographs are fuzzy because I realised half way through the week I had a camera on my mobile phone. I hadn't thought of it before because there was no mobile reception up there! I'm happy I took the photo's!

Quite simply...I LOVE this country.

Views from our land...