Lower Shaw Farm Newsletter
- a look back at 2015
Best wishes for 2016!
Prologue
Many thanks to those of you who sent us season’s greetings, especially in cards and letters. We read them all, with interest, and mostly joy but sometimes dismay. Then, we put them about the house, suspended or propped up, for others to enjoy and to give a festive look to the old house in winter. Lovely!
Lovely too was our end-of-year Carols by Candlelight. In fact, it was amazing, from start to finish! We had a phenomenal team to help set up: prepare and decorate the Cowshed, make mountains of mince pies and trays full of gingerbread biscuits, and to light and put candles in jars along the drive and around the yard, to make sure that we really had Carols by candle light!
And we did. Scores of people came, young and old. The Cowshed was full, very full. Jake and Ben warmed up proceedings with a seasonal story done with trumpet, accordion, and juggling clubs. Linda and her Swindon Community Choir led us into song, and Debbie and her in-tune instrumentalists from Music Alive made sure we were all singing in approximately the same key.
A boy called Oliver wanted to know why we sang While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night to the tune of On Ilkley Moor Bar T’at, Winter Fairy Andrea helped make some wishes come true, but not how to win the raffle.
We raised hundreds of pounds for Christmas Care, helping the homeless in Swindon; and for the Harbour Project, helping refugees who find themselves in Swindon.
Introduction 
At LSF, 2015 has been a very full year, full of what makes life both joy-filled and sad.
Notwithstanding the fact that, in terms of courses, people, and helpers, it was a fabulous year, there was one person, with a strong and long connection with LSF, who was much on our mind.
Longstanding friend and Yoga teacher, Barbara Hicks, was having her own personal struggle with Cancer, and her family and friends in London, and all of us here, were doing all that we could to support her. As the year ended, so did Barbara’s life.
Mixed with feelings of sadness was a wish to celebrate Barbara’s life, to express gratitude for all that she had brought to Yoga Weekends at LSF. So we were honoured when her family chose not only to bury Barbara at nearby Westmill Burial Ground but to make LSf the place to come to after the funeral. With music, words, chill wind, and warm hearts, it was a sad but meaningful and celebratory day!
And, thanks to generous donations, we now have a hand-made memorial oak bench at LSF, for Barbara. And Barbara’s legacy lives on in another way at LSF. Her friend and sometime student, Mary Mcinerney, will be teaching on our Yoga Weekends, and we hope Dave, Barbara’s husband , will make occasional ‘guest’ teaching appearances!
Loos News 
Late in ’14, breeze-block base man Stewart and green-wood builder Chris, both ably assisted by humble Hugo, started work on a super compost loo between the Polytunnel and Hayloft. It was wonderful watching it take shape: the deep trenches for foundations, with ducks looking for worms on the piles of spoil; the precise process of block-laying; the search round the farm for the right living trees and branches to sacrifice to support the wattle and daub structure. The care with which the work was done, at every stage, was a joy to behold and gave the impression that this compost loo was to be special, thought about, beautiful, and an intricate work of art. And it is, and was launched as such at a great Easter Weekend ceremony, with speeches from the loo’s balcony and appropriate sprinklings of Easter Bunny poo! And now, it’s a much-used compost loo.
The erstwhile popular-with-some Anyone’s Loo, which had a compost compartment, has been dismantled and gutted and is being converted, by former resident, Tame Builder Martin with help from Stewart, into a lush bathroom and toilet that will be spacious, terrifically-tiled, and exceedingly wheelchair-friendly. It promises to be our new super-loo!
Building & Maintenance 
And by way of making the entrance to Caravan Alley a super-view, we enlisted the services of miracle house-builder and woodworker Jesus and his dutiful disciple Simon to create twin larch and cedar cabins, with a garden roof. As ever when Jesus is around, people want to follow him, or at least work with him, and so it came to pass that wwoofers from Italy, Spain, and Scandanavia all had a hand in building our beautiful Cabins 1 & 2.
And in order to brighten our veranda, Martin put up new see-through corrugated sheets; and in the Centre, skylights, to let in the light. Terrific!
And to give our herb gardena more stylish look, Andrea designed and Bristol-bred nephew Fergus, who could easily trade under the name Brilliant Young Builder, constructed a curved and paved pathway, with heart.
Events
Bread Baking courses proved so popular that we had to put on an extra one. It’s a great course: kitchen full of people, stirring, kneading, and chatting.
Our kitchen has the addition of several hand-carved wooden spoons, definitely fulfilling William Morris’s notion that one should have things around the home that are both useful and beautiful. You too can have such functional wooden beauty if you come on the spoon carving course in April!
Easter Weekend – in its 35th year - is one of our favourites and last year had the usual unforgettable and colourful spectacle of dozens of children and grown-ups throwing themselves down the slopes at Avebury, chasing and tumbling after their rolled eggs, while amused tourists wondered at the apparent madness of it all.
The Chicken-Keeping Weekend was attended by families with questions – good questions, like these. ‘Do hens blow their noses?’ – ‘Why do hens run away?’ – ‘Do hens have teeth? Do they lose them?’ – ‘Do hens get married?’
At the end of May, at Juggling and Circus Skills Weekend, a human pyramid made up of 5 to 50 year-olds all dressed in indigo tie-dyed T shirts was a sight to behold!
Our first Oaks – Ancient and Modern weekend went some way towards fulfilling one of our wishes: to create a rainbow of wonderful experiences over Swindon, from LSF on the west side of town to the Richard Jefferies House on the east side, near which is the amazing Coate Tree Collection, a treasure trove of trees, native and exotic. A magical place!
Yoga and Running was a new event led by ex-resident and personal trainer Claire, with help, of the amateur enthusiast’s kind, from Matt. It included parkrun, of course, but also yoga, stretching, jumping, bending, lifting, and more running. By the end, endorphins were very happy, and so were we!
Another new event was the experimental Open Weekend, which included a hilarious performance of Hamleta, one of Beth’s domestic theatre plays; an outing to a nearby festival; a drone-eye view of LSF, and a baby’s first steps!
Long-running Lower Shaw Farm Activities Week had things like this said about it by participants. “I feel I was part of a mosaic made of people” – “I spent too much time on the tyre swing.”- “I especially like the ducklings!” – “I love the hedgehog, that I made.”- “I apologise for not doing my share of the washing up.” – “It’s overwhelming to find so many nice people and know how to talk to them.” – “I loved the music floating in the background.” – “Lovely late night conversations!”- “I liked Saskia’s clog dance with the violin.” – “I saw a fox playing in the pig field.”
As you can imagine, the two splendid literary events whose base is and was LSF, the Swindon Festival of Literature and the Poetry Swindon Festival, were both full of phenomenal quotes.
Animals
The pigs get older and fatter, the two black sheep, thinner and wiser, and all four have a daily feeding and going-out routine that they love. Human residents, volunteers, and visitors like them and their pampered lifestyle and future well-being seem secure.
Not so the lambs. Beautiful but big and boisterous, they went to slaughter. Where once they frolicked happily in fields, a full and wholesome life if ever there was one, they now sit in bits in the freezer.
And the ducks and hens went happily through their seasonal routines: moulting in autumn, not laying in winter, creating egg mountains in spring, and going broody in summer. A new all-white cocky young cockerel, first flirted with hens in the woodshed and then challenged, fought, and deposed the reigning long-spurred golden boss cock. The Mighty Whitey has now established a new order in the hen house. He takes the top roost, struts rather than walks, and has persuaded his favourite little rebel hen to go broody. He wants progeny, now!
She has made herself a secret nest on a shelf among flower pots and bric-a-brac in the back porch and is sitting tight on a clutch of nine eggs, a most unusual sight in midwinter. Making the back porch fox-proof has now become a nightly ritual. It’s very exciting, the prospect of chicks in January but we are not counting…
We do count the three new rabbits daily, to make sure none have burrowed off, and enjoy their happy hoppings. They are looked after by our most reliable of neighbours, Sarah and her boys Thomas and Charlie. They often keep a watchful eye on all the animals when we are far away.
Trees 
We have so many trees here that from the air, LSF looks like a little jungle, with a few sheds among the greenery. Very nice, in one sense but high branches, on high willow and poplar trees, can be a danger in high winds, or almost any breeze, to people, animals, and buildings below.
Both Willow and Poplar trees, when mature and aging, are inclined to ‘drop’ branches. We need to keep a watch on them. And we do, through the eyes of our friendly tree surgeon Ross.
He’s been here twice this year, to take down an ageing and leaning willow by the duck house. He also cut branches on the giant poplar by the compost bins and pollarded another in the bottom garden.
To see Ross work is amazing, stretching between branches high up in the tress, with ropes, pulleys, swinging saws, making branches fall just when and where he wants them to, most of the time. After he’s gone, it’s like the trees have had haircuts: they look new, trim, and safe.
People
As well as those of you who come here for our events and courses, and are key to the continuity and well-being of LSF, there is also a steady stream of volunteers, wwoofers, or, as at least one of us prefers to call them, life’s seekers, who find their way to LSF from all parts of the world.
These people are special in that they help us keep LSF running, helping us with all the practical matters of consequence, the jobs, the daily tasks that need to be done. And not forgetting the fun they bring to the table, to the Centre, to the Visitors’ Book, and even to parkrun! Without their support, we could not manage. So, wwoofers, helpers, friends, we thank you, one and all!
Of people who live here permanently or were bred here, and still live here occasionally, this can be said.
Grown up daughter Rosa continues to live and work both in Bali and England, in the former in winter and the latter in summer. Wise young woman! As T S Eliot wrote, ‘read much of the night and go south in winter.’ – Though Jacob sometimes juggles much of the night he chose to go south in summer, in his amazing brilliantly-put-together Mercedes truck, which is a home on wheels and was, all across Europe, to a beautiful band of circussy co-travellers. Anna works with travellers of a different kind, as management facilitator of refugee camps in Lebanon, where she sees plenty of extremes, of people fleeing conflict and a grim life while others are living in luxury and enjoying the good life.
Andrea, would you believe it, notwithstanding all she does at LSF, made three trips overseas. One, to Sri Lanka, in part a tour of temples, with our friend Pam; to Tuscany with daughter Anna, for food, pool life, and calm; and to Lebanon, with Jake, who juggled at refugee camps. Matt, after he’d got himself a sub-25 minute PB with a plus 70% age grading at parkrun, managed a trip to Paraguay, to his little house under mango trees by the river, and on the way back, stopped off in Spain, to sample the best bars of Madrid with recent LSF resident Nuria and to participate in a delightful little festival project in Ontinyent with erstwhile wwoofer Laura and friends.
We all feel very lucky to have a home-base like LSF and also the means and wish to travel, explore, work, and play in other parts of the world. Amazing!
Amazing too has been the extra help that we continue to get from loyal LSF-linked people. For example, Hugo stayed on for an extended period and, as well as helping with building projects, got used to reliably doing numerous routine but key jobs. Massage Mary, who is also a brilliant artist, craftswoman, and ‘film star’, has been a frequent and longish-term resident-helper on her sabbatical year. LSF really benefits from her creative eye for things and general help, as it does from that of local Jessica and London-based Maria. LSF is lucky, and thankful, that people like these find their way here, stay a while, and even return.
Wedding
In mid-July, on the sunniest of summer weekends, we had a super sunny event here. We celebrated the commitment to one another of our key cook and friend Josie and her found-man from Stroud Kevin. What a celebration we had! A cabaret, with live music, singing, stories, dancing, and fabulous feasting; and a chance for many good friends to be together. Life at LSF is both for learning about life and for celebrating it!
Peroration 
By way of end-word, here is an account of something that took place early in the year.
On our February Working Weekend, long-time friend and supporter of LSF, Marion Paul, alerted Matt to ‘a man and two boys in a pick-up truck who have just driven in and are eyeing things up on the Front Paddock’. This is what followed.
‘You wouldn’t by any chance have a chicken run you could spare?’ says the nice Irish man, looking in the direction of an old ark in the undergrowth at the edge of the car park. ‘Yes, you can have that one!’ says Matt, in a good mood because newly-back from parkrun and high on endogenous opioid peptides. The man and the very excited boys load it onto the pick-up truck. – But the man still lingers and the boys look around. ‘You wouldn’t by any chance have a chicken or two to go with the ark?’ they enquire. Amazingly, we find an old hen and young cockerel surplus to LSF requirements. The boys practically explode with excitement but are not quite speechless. ‘Will they be laying eggs for us?’ they splutter. ‘No, not now.’ says Matt. ‘But in spring, the hen might lay one or two, but not the cockerel.’ – ‘Oh’, says the man, ‘You wouldn’t by any chance have an egg or two, to go with the chickens and the ark? It would sure make the boys happy!’
We went to the hen house and found six eggs. They sure did make two boys and one man very happy!
We were reminded of the joy of giving; and pleased to have evidence that, at LSF, today’s stranger really can be tomorrow’s happy friend.
Hope you will come and also be our friend, and enjoy what LSF has to offer in the year to come, which, by the way, includes apple juice by the gallon from our very own trees. 2015 was one of those phenomenally fruit-filled years!
We’ll welcome you! But please note, we have no more spare hen pens or surplus poultry but do have lots of eggs, waiting for you to boil, perfectly, at breakfast together!
Till then, keep well.
PS. Now it’s early January 2016, and the days are mild and wet; the front paddock is a quagmire; the ducks are happy but the snowdrops are not. They look limp, barely open, uncertain, as if waiting for a frost. Unlike the daffodils, which are already golden, open, and in hosts along the stone wall, as if ready to rock, in January!
