Another new course, this time on picture framing, led by Glyn Jones.  All the places were taken quite quickly and those who signed up were not disappointed, judging from their comments:

Really good presentation.  I liked the demonstration and then all of us having a go at each technique.  The handouts are excellent.  Thanks too to Glyn’s daughter who road tested them!  And I’m thrilled with my finished framed photo.  Helena

This is the first time we have run a blacksmithing course at  Assington Mill.

Happy new year!  Hope you had a good Christmas.  We use the Christmas break to cut firewood, mend fences and dig out ditches.  In the late autumn, twenty of the wonderful Forest School Campers helped us clear a sevcn-acre boggy field called the Co-op Field (Assington had a farm labourers’ cooperative from the 1820s), cutting down trees and clearing brambles.  Also, the Dedham Vale volunteers came for their Christmas party here and made great inroads into the annual task of felling the conifers to allow the oak and ash trees to grow.

Hope you had a good summer.  Our new brochure is out now and covers courses until May 2013.  Here is the link for that.  Otherwise, have a look at the course list where you will see all the courses on offer at present in much greater detail, plus potted biographies for the tutors.

New topics in the programme are:

This year's strawbale course project was to build a two-bay cartlodge, re-using an old concrete base to a barn that once stood near the mill pond, We asked John Bradshaw from Assington to construct a double-thickness concrete block foundation to raise the building at least 18" off the ground, the width of a strawbale.  The bales came from the Johnson brothers at Yorley farm just over the hill, and had been baled extra dense.  As soon as the students left, John added a pantiled roof (County pantiles from Sandtoft) on factory-made trusses with black painted capping boards at each en

Hi!  Hope you are having a good summer.  Here in the East of England we have had wonderfully sunny weather since about mid-March.  Luckily our new Landshare Scheme allotments (we share the old kitchen garden with four other families) have the Assington Brook running on three sides, so the veggies have done amazingly well.  We have been able to feed students on the courses with organic vegetables for the last two or three months, which was always the aim.  In the strawbale owl tower, constructed on a course here in 2008, the barn owls have had a successful season wit

From today, 25 February, you will be able to book the courses online with a card.

For those who prefer, you will still be able to book by sending the boooking form with a cheque through the post, but be aware that the online method will result in a booking straight away.

You can see how many places are left on each course by looking at the website.  I will of course add the postal bookings to the website list as soon as I receive them.

I do hope you find the new system useful.  Let me know if you have any problems.

Happy new year!  Last year was a good one for us, with 25% more students attending the courses than in 2009, and many days completely full, so we are looking forward to more of the same.  Something else to look forward to is the arrival of Tim & Sophie's prize-winning English Longhorn cattle, now that the fields have all been fenced in for them.  This is a move encouraged by the Higher Level Stewardship agreement and will be of benefit to local wildlife.  We have also set up a small "landshare" scheme, so the area behind the tractor shed (the classroom) is fenced aga

We've had a great summer with wall to wall sunshine (the joys of living in East Anglia - luckily we don't have a garden as such), two new barn owl chicks fledged and ringed and the millwheel reinstated in the existing pit in front of the cottage.  It should generate some electricity for both the cottage and the workshop where the courses are held.  The pond had a dreadful infestation of blanket weed but, thanks to a new product called Viresco, it has virtually disappeared.  Many thanks to the Forest School Campers who valiantly battled with it on two occasions.