To the Catapult!

After many weeks of carving, measuring, hammering and dealing with minor catastrophes, our Roman onager is finally complete! The creation of this giant catapult was led by our residential archaeologist Ryan Watts with a team of staff and volunteers. It was successfully fired at the ‘Secrets of the Heath’ event in Petersfield, Hampshire last weekend.The name ‘onager’ comes from the Latin for ‘wild ass’, as the catapult has a very powerful kick! The catapult uses torsional force created by twisting 210m of rope, which stores energy ready to fire ammunition.The Butser onager is portable and can be carried on the back of a trailer, ready to be driven to any nearby battlefield requiring reinforcements… After its successful weekend at Petersfield Heath, it has now been returned to the farm and can be found at the northern end of the site by the Roman villa.Visitors are welcome to come and see it, and in the meantime you can watch a slo-mo video of an unfortunate cabbage meeting its maker…(Best watched in HD)[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PiyLHLGy5Ps[/embed]

Capturing the Past: Infrared at Butser

Infrared photographer Ron French recently visited the farm to take these infrared photographs, and we are quite mesmerised by them. At first glance they appear to portray a cold winter’s day, but they were actually taken using a special sensor that is sensitive to infrared light. The bright, whitish colours in the photos give them a dreamlike quality, and it really makes the different textures and materials stand out.Many thanks to Ron for capturing such wonderful images! We always welcome photographers to the site and love to see what you produce, so please do share your work with us.

A New Arrival

We are very happy to announce the arrival of our first baby kid, Sorrel! She is the daughter of our Old English goat Bella and was born on 22nd July just after lunch. Although she shares Bella’s charming personality we believe she looks just like her father, a handsome billy named Indiana Jones who lived with our lady goats for a few months earlier this year. Consequently, we are still awaiting the arrival of a few more kids any day now, as our other two goats Ainee and Yarrow are also pregnant! It’s going to be chaos…Please come and visit our new arrival to welcome her into the world. She is very friendly and loves attention, just like the rest of her family!

We love our volunteers!

Like many organisations, we owe an awful lot of our success to the hard work of our volunteers. From the murky depths of winter to the blazing heat of summer, they never fail to turn up and dedicate their time to the farm’s development. In return, we try hard to make them feel valued and provide them with useful skills and knowledge to help them in their future careers. This afternoon, we had a chat with a few of them to see how Butser has helped them follow their ambitions. We are always very happy to welcome new volunteers, so please email us at admin@butserancientfarm.co.uk for more information!Phoebe has been volunteering at the farm for almost two years whilst studying for her Level 3 Extended Diploma in Animal Management. Now she is preparing for a new adventure as she starts her BSc in Zoology at Reading University in September. She says that working at the farm has improved her confidence and given her a whole load of new skills. In the future she hopes to work in conservation, particularly with endangered species around the world.Stuart joins us every Friday to take care of the animals, and spends the rest of the week volunteering at Staunton Country Park and Blendworth. He loves animal care and working outdoors, and is now an expert on understanding the subtle behaviour of our livestock – especially the goats! Last year, he was awarded Volunteer of the Year by East Hampshire District Council for his hard work and dedication.Harry has been completing his work experience with us for the last two weeks. He is currently studying for his GCSEs in History, PE, Geography and Media Studies, and chose to work at the farm because it was local and he likes working outdoors. He hasn’t yet decided which career he’d like to pursue, but he is very pleased with the variety of skills he has picked up over such a short time here!

Ancient Trees for Ancient Houses

While our Saxon longhouse is developing steadily every day, our reconstructors need to think about materials.A number of trees have been carefully felled and hand-hewn with an axe, before being shaped into beams to use in our latest exciting Saxon experiment. The woodland in which the trees were felled is known as the ‘Richard de Bere Copse’ near Droxford, and contains a range of ancient oak trees. Restoration coppicing is essential for woodland management, and thinning of the oak overstory allows light to reach through and benefit flowers and hazel thickets.Oak is the type of wood that would have been used over 1,000 years ago, and the information gathered during the process will be of great historical importance and fantastic for educational purposes. The longhouse is coming along nicely and our treewrights are hard at work – be sure to come and see how we’re doing!

The Saxons are coming!

After months of planning, funding applications and material sourcing, our Saxon longhouse is finally on its way! Recent excavations have revealed the remains of an Anglo-Saxon village right here in Chalton, and we are now starting work on a reconstruction of one of the main structures, a longhouse at the northern end of the farm. Archaeologists believe it is a large rectangular structure with opposing doors in the middle of the long sides, and a dividing interior wall.This is a great project for anybody who has been thinking about volunteering with us here at Butser, and we have already welcomed several new volunteers to the team. If you’re interested in helping out or you have any questions, please email: administrator@butserancientfarm.co.ukFeel free to wander over to the construction site and see how we’re getting on! We hope to have the building completed by Autumn 2015, which will mean the farm spans 11,000 years of ancient life, from the Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages through to the Romans and Saxons.

Mustard Seeds & Fighting Weeds

Life on the farm isn’t always filled with glamorous roundhouses and gladiator fights! Today, residential archaeologist Ryan Watts and volunteer Jordan have been planting crops in the beds outside the Moel y Gerddi house. In January, we hope to sow a scattering of flax seeds, so when they grow we can make the plants into weavable fibres.As the flax can’t be planted until winter, Ryan and Jordan are putting mustard seeds in to keep the weeds away. The mustard plants will then be used to make green mulch to dig back into the soil for natural fertiliser. They’ve also added cow poo from local herds to increase growth! Both the flax and mustard will be unofficially organic, using just natural silage and soil without adding chemicals – that’s the way we like it!

Making hay while the sun shines...

While weather in the South Downs has been rather mixed lately, on Saturday we were treated to a morning of sunshine, spread across the hills like marmalade on toast. This was fortunate, as today had been chosen for a group of volunteers to work on our ancient crop field. Situated behind the Roman villa, most of the plot is already swaying with barley, oats, emmer wheat and Celtic bean plants blushing with pink flowers. The last remaining section had been rotavated shortly before and was ready to be sown, and a menacing army of pheasants had already started forming beyond the fence, keen to indulge in a seeded feast…

After a quick demonstration of the different tools, we took up the roles of ancient farmers. Some of us used the furrowing hoe to create grooves in the soil; some sprinkled seeds and beans into these grooves; some followed behind in small shuffling steps to flatten the soil over the seeds – this is all we can do to protect our seedlings from the pheasants’ insatiable hunger.

With a little hard work and a few rays of vitamin D, we had soon finished planting several rows of lovely crops. Our efforts were then rewarded with ‘authentic’ chocolate chip cookies and coffee, and a hot lunch of baked potatoes cooked over the roundhouse fire. It was a morning well spent, and hopefully our Beltain celebrations impressed the gods enough to grant us a large yield later in the year!