Curney Bank Wood

03/10/2025

Consolation for the deteriorating weather? The first birch polypore (really early) in a basket, sliced, ready for drying; the first proper sweet chestnuts bouncing out of their shells and an unexpected crop of lawyer's wig mushrooms (or not - no ink dripping after several days - a shaggy parasol, I think)... Had hoped to make some ink but another time

06/07/2025

Sweet briar or eglantine (rosa rubiginosa or eglanteria), introduced by us 25 years ago and thriving on the woodland. The smell from the foliage lingers on damp days...

07/04/2025

At last! Curlews trilling up the hill above and a small tortoiseshell spotted on the allotment, today. Both have been absent the last couple of years.

02/04/2024

A fresh green wren's nest discovered in the goose house a few days back. Any ol' bit o rope will do, it seems. Spring is here.
The woodland abounds with oversized wren song as well as the welcome returning drone of bumblebees. I saw my first peacock butterfly flitting around out there, today. Maybe we'll have some tortoiseshells this year but none seen here overwinter
nor for the last few years.
And the rowan buds are starting to burst, ready for harvesting. I make an almond flavoured syrup from the tight new buds - flower and leaf, using birch sap gathered a month or so back and sugar or honey, as much preservative as sweetener. I should have some for sale, shortly, in the etsy shop https://curneycurios.etsy.com

25/12/2022

Meanwhile, I've been concocting, again, this time some "black drawing salve" using marigold, plantain (major and lanceolate) and alder buckthorn (for the charcoal) from the woodland. Made also with oil (coconut and olive) for macerating, beeswax and honey, I needed something for tending various prickles, splinters and minor skin damage consequent on woodland life and it seems to work, with good report from others who've tried it.

25/12/2022

A Robin in "blast-beruffled plume" mid December at CBW, after a week of sub-zero and little snow. I was after the hoar-frosted bramble looking spectacular (and not munched by deer as too close to our home) and the nearby figwort. A month before and it was the trees on show... Sun seems to have turned, now. The Hazel catkins came out on our Cobnash cultivar in time for the Solstice, if a lttle scorched by that frost and a new year begins..

29/03/2022

And then it was Spring, suddenly and if only temporarily as snow and subzero are forecast, shortly. Two days of Spring warmth and just passed the Equinox, the 22nd saw the first primrose, in an old boot, celandine at top spring and the top of the swamp and some pink cherry flowers on some suckered rootstock long before any sign of flowering in either wild or cultivated cherries and beating the pear and amelanchiers to first flower.
And we came alive with insects, from butterfly aristocrats (lots of peacocks) to a wealth of bumblebees. I'd been wondering where they were. Tis a pity I haven't managed to photograph any of them..
A week of warmth and more appears, including a few that we also can eat..

03/03/2022

mushrooms, moss and lichen - CBW's winter, so far

04/11/2021

Hardly surprising, when birch is one of our "weeds", that we have birch polypore (Fomitposis betulina), again, this year. More nature's bounty, and used for millenia. Otzi, the "Ice Man" had some in balls strung round his neck, for tinder, sticking plaster or to make tea from? He never said and he likely had no razor to need a razor strop. Whole specimens on sale with etsy, for now....

24/09/2021

Well, Clun Forest, maybe...

Have you ever wondered where our Western Hemlock boards come from? For the past five years, we have developed a great partnership with Mr David Gillen who fells, mills and processes trees from his 33 acre agroforestry, before delivering them straight to our shop. Based in Shropshire, David has been....