Back from Extinction

As part of our ongoing work with the Species Recovery Trust, our site is being used as an experimental area for Darnel (Lolium temulentum), a plant that arrived in Britain in Roman times and one that was originally considered a serious pest of crops, mentioned both in the Bible and Shakespeare. In the twentieth century, seed cleaning technology and the increased use of pesticides meant Darnel was exterminated from the wild, and up to now has been extinct in the UK. However, we are delighted to announce that the seeds planted at Butser have germinated and we now have a small crop of Darnel growing on site!

The plant has a fascinating history, particularly with regard to medieval myths surrounding witchcraft. The seeds contain a mild toxin if eaten, and can also act as a natural host for the ergot fungus. Ergot causes a wide range of symptoms including temporary hallucinations, and an outbreak in Massachusetts may have been behind the Salem witchcraft trials!

This particular project has used a small number of seeds collected from Inis Meain off the coast of western Ireland, and aims to bring the plant back from extinction and into a small number of trial sites like Butser Ancient Farm. For more information visit www.speciesrecoverytrust.org.uk

Three Little Piggies?

Regular visitors to the farm will know that in the summer months, we usually have a family of pigs tumbling about in the mud behind our Roman villa. This year was no exception, and we currently have two Saddlebacks and one Oxford Sandy and Black… But that’s not all! On Saturday we welcomed Michaela from Tedfold Cottage Farm in west Sussex, who carried out an ultrasound on our pigs to see if they were pregnant. The results? Not one, not two, but all THREE of our pigs are pregnant with a litter each of piglets! We aren’t sure exactly when they will be born, but we should hopefully be welcoming them sometime before the end of January. If you would like to say hello to our new arrivals, be sure to make a winter visit in February or March before they grow too big! Why not join us for our Imbolc festival on February 4th?

Watch our exciting announcement as it happened on Facebook Live:

Seven Nights in a Saxon House

Thanks to Beatrice for writing this beautiful piece about her experience living in our Saxon house for a week. She joined us earlier in the summer as a student of archaeology from the University of Reading, and slept and ate in our new Saxon house dressed in authentic costume.Life in the Saxon hall has been an ultimately new experience, unlike any other previously encountered. Time spent there feels less stressed, no matter the activity and the simplicity of routine is relaxing. The central fire keeps the hall fully heated, even into the darker hours. After a day or so, a ‘lived in’ feeling develops, bringing a warmth unrelated to the fire or candles. Waking up in the morning to light streaming in through the ceiling vents is an amazing feeling, and its hard not to think back to hundreds of years ago, as our ancestors woke themselves in the same way.The house itself is beautiful, and it has been wonderful to be lucky enough to spend the time that I have in it. The clothing is surprisingly freeing, despite long skirts and leg wraps. This maybe comes from how comfortable they are to wear, and how adaptable and easily alterable they prove to be. Pride can be taken in appearance whilst simultaneously losing the concern over such things as body type, current fashions, and getting clothing dirty. Similarly, bare feet hold no issue and remain surprisingly clean due to a lack of modern pollutants. The ritual that comes from routinely placing similar clothing on, and combing and plaiting hair for the start of the day actually becomes calming, and surprisingly comforting.Whilst in the house I’ve eaten, and drunk, surprisingly well. A lack of processed foods lays way to stews and homemade breads. Fruit and nuts become snack food and act as a bulk on top of simple meals such as bread, cheese and honey. The fire gives off far less smoke than imagined, and it mostly rises well above head height. In the evenings, candles in brackets on the walls light the hall surprisingly well, and the atmosphere is amazing, no matter the number of people inside. Music enhances this, and even if just talking, or sat in silence, it feels different and special.It’s going to be odd leaving it all – dressing in modern clothing and no longer relying on the fire as the backbone to daily life. I think I will miss it: It is oddly easy to slip into life here, and having to venture back out of it feels like a strange and alien concept.

The Expanded Log Boat

Our favourite thing about the summer holiday isn’t just children’s trails and sunshine! Each year we welcome students from universities around the country, to take part in an experimental archaeology project for around five weeks. This year we have welcomed Ollie and Lewis from Cardiff University, who are working with our residential archaeologist Ryan to build an expanded log boat.The boat is based on a small Germanic vessel dating back to 400AD, excavated to the north of Stockholm in Sweden. Archaeologists think it would have seen use in the Viking Age. The boat they are building is based on the Björk boat, a replica recreation by Hanus Jensen and Rasmus Budde Jensen on display at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde, Denmark. Its bottom was an expanded lime tree with added boards of pine wood, its frame spruce wood, and the added boards were fastened with iron nails. From this experiment, the Jensens learnt that lime wood is likely to split when cut very thinly, as it is a soft wood.During this experiment, the team will be using authentic tools from the era such as axes and adzes, to find out if tool marks remain and/or change the log boat after its expansion. Feel free to visit them on their working site this summer, which is in between the Saxon house and the pig pen, and see how the boat is developing!

The Big Butterfly Count

Seeing as the farm is brimming with so much wildlife, we are always looking for opportunities to conserve it and protect its future. One of the ways in which we do this every year is to take part in the Big Butterfly Count with the charity Butterfly Conservation, which has taken place this year between 15th July to 7th August. With conservation always in need of extra funding, one of the best ways to help protect wildlife is through ‘citizen science’ – that’s where normal individuals like you and me help keep track of what wildlife there is and where, so that scientists can analyse the data and work out ways to increase those numbers.We attempted a count this morning but the sun wasn’t particularly encouraging and we didn’t find many… So this afternoon we went out again in full sunshine, and what a transformation! We spotted five gatekeepers, four red admirals, fifteen cabbage whites, one comma, four peacocks, one brimstone, one meadow brown and one large white. The area we chose is the old piggery – the pigs used to live there last year but now it is full of wildflowers and the odd pumpkin plant grown from the kitchen scraps we threw in for the pigs!If you would like to get involved with the count, visit www.bigbutterflycount.org and get spotting!Red AdmiralCabbage WhitePeacockComma

Goaty Celebrations

Last weekend we spent a wonderful day at the Weald & Downland Museum in Singleton, who were hosting their annual Rare & Traditional Breeds show to celebrate the nation’s most rare and beautiful breeds of livestock. This year we decided to enter one of our English goats called Sorrel, a year-old goatling who is both pretty and mischievous.We spent the morning watching an array of colourful animals strut around the show rings, including sheep, cows, pigs and pygmy goats. When it came to our turn, Sorrel behaved better than ever and impressed the judge so much that we won third place! We came home with a lovely green rosette and lots of goaty pride.Looking after our rare and traditional breeds is important to us at Butser, as anyone who has seen our four-horned Manx Loaghtans will know. They are an Iron Age breed dating back thousands of years, and have beautiful wool that is reflected in their name ‘Loaghtan’, meaning mousey-brown in Manx.One of our close friends Janet Brown is a goat breeder and regularly helps us with our own goat herd when we need expert advice. She won Best of Breed for her English goat, a breed of which there are only a handful in the UK. The English Goat Breeders’ Association was formed in the 1920s and is dedicated to the preservation of this special breed. Please have a look at their website here, as well as the Rare Breeds Survival Trust here.

A Wild Goosefoot Chase

We have some rather exciting news for all the archaeobotanists out there! A few weeks ago we invited someone from the Species Recovery Trust to use our site for an intriguing plant-based experiment. A small patch of greenery outside our Neolithic longhouse is being used as an experimental area for growing Upright Goosefoot (Chenopodium urbicum), a plant that has existed in Britain since farming began when both the seeds and leaves were eaten. Its last known site was at a medieval farmstead in Essex, where it was last seen in 1995.Thanks to the Millennium Seed Bank at Kew Gardens, these plants are now growing fabulously in our Neolithic area! It’s all part of the Ancient Plants Project part-funded by Natural England, and is aiming to restore Upright Goosefoot and Darnel (an extinct grass of Roman origin) back to a network of working Iron Age and Roman sites across the UK.

Adiós! Auf Wiedersehen!

Yesterday we waved goodbye to the second of two fabulous exchange students who have been working at Butser for the last few months. Catalina from Barcelona and Dennis from Germany found places with us through the Erasmus programme, and were here to enhance their studies on Dennis’ undergraduate degree in linguistics and Catalina’s in heritage. They have been unbelievably valuable to us and both have created an interactive activity for visitors; Dennis’ is a Saxon word game in the Saxon house and Catalina has made a livestock game in the Iron Age enclosure!We always welcome new volunteers on exchange and work experience schemes, and although we may be a little biased, all of our temporary team members seem to have a fantastic time, learn brilliant skills and make friends with everyone. If you’re interested in joining us for volunteering or internships, please contact us at admin@butserancientfarm.co.uk. Here is Catalina learning woodworking skills to build her game – good luck to both Dennis and Catalina in their future careers!