Another 'Try It Day' Success!

Last Friday we held our annual 'Try It! Day' event, as part of the Festival of Archaeology run each year by the Council for British Archaeology. It's always a fantastic day, with a range of archaeological and outdoor activities for all the family to take part in.This year our visitors made bread, bird feeders, wooden pendants, wove textiles, dug for artefacts, wattled fences, crushed chalk, tasted Roman cooking, watched blacksmiths at work, practised drumming, Stone Age painting and much more.We'd like to thank all our visitors for making it such a fabulous day, and we'd also like to thank all those who voted on our staff Archaeocake competition! As part of the Festival of Archaeology, we each took part in the Archaeocake baking challenge to create an archaeology-themed cake. The winner was Charlie, who baked an amazing Saxon house cake (below) - you can find all the other entries on our Facebook page here.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6jmr_u83sw[/embed]All photos (except the first) below taken by our brilliant volunteer Eleanor Sopwith.

The Bog Blog: Day 2

After days of getting down and dirty, our slaves were finally able to start construction on the latrine walls! Using the flint and mortar technique used on our Roman Villa, the latrine has been built up slowly and precariously, but don’t worry, we’re sure it will be stable enough to sit on!Also, over the past couple of days, we’ve caught our slaves skiving off work to play the Roman board game latrunculi with our domesticated legionnaire, Larus Fucius Hispania. They’ve had so much fun playing it, that they might just end up incorporating it into the latrine itself as the Roman’s did themselves, so you can play while you poo! Watch this space...

The Rare Breeds Show

We had another fantastic day at the Rare & Traditional Breeds Show on Sunday! The show takes place each year at the Weald & Downland Museum in Singleton, and it's the perfect outing for anyone who loves livestock, rare breeds and rural life. Last year we took our youngest kid Sorrel to the show, and this year we took Sorrel (now grown up!) with her two male kids Hops and Burdock.It was also a great opportunity to catch up with our fellow members of the English Goat Breeders' Association, dedicated to the promotion and preservation of the English goat breed. English goats are a rare breed in Britain, and we are lucky enough to have six of them at the farm. They are a great dual purpose breed for milk and meat (although we don't eat ours!), so if you're interested in introducing a goat to your family or smallholding, we really recommend this breed.We also bought a brand new Manx Loaghtan ram to refresh our flock! He's a pedigree yearling called Norman, and is very handsome. Sorrel and Burdock each won 3rd prize in their categories, although Hops was a bit naughty and won 4th... Nevertheless, we are proud of them all and look forward to another lovely day next year! Hops is also still currently for sale, so do get in touch if you'd like a pet goat or a companion for your horse or sheep.

The Bog Blog: Day 1

Apparently, one of the most commonly asked questions about the Romans is: Where did they go to the toilet? So our student volunteers from Cardiff University, Hannah and Lewis, along with our archaeologist Claire Walton thought they’d show you first hand!After initial investigations into the dirty work of Roman toilets, we discovered that the average toilet stood at 43cm tall and as little as 30cm apart! To save such a close encounter and give the modern derrière some wiggle room, we decided to increase the distance to a more moderate 56cm instead. Such a gap however, had its downsides as it meant we had to create a three-seater latrine 181cm long, which meant some digging!..and some more digging…..and more digging….When our slaves were all dug out we thought we’d be kind and let them mix some mortar, with the help of supreme leader Simon instead, ready for tomorrow’s antics!

Celebrating National Volunteers' Week

A big thank you to all the Butser Ancient Farm volunteers, this week and every week! It’s National Volunteers’ Week and organisations all over the country are celebrating their volunteers.Our volunteers come in many different guises. They are the regulars who come every Wednesday to help with physical work around the farm. They are groups who come from local businesses to give some of their time and skills to help with tasks that range from counting Roman mosaic tiles to daubing a roundhouse wall. They come to help with special events, including our major festivals like Beltain, or the Toga Tuesdays for this year’s Roman Summer. They are students, or retired, or people wanting to learn a new skill, meet some friendly people, work outside in our lovely site, or share their love of the past. They are all welcome and very much appreciated.Thank you to all the Butser Ancient Farm volunteers. We couldn’t do it without you!

Twin baby goats born at Butser!

We are delighted to announce the birth of twin baby goats! The boys arrived this morning and are the sons of our English goat Sorrel, who came third place in her category at the Singleton Rare & Traditional Breeds show last summer. English goats are a traditional breed in Britain and there are only 1800 individuals in the country.At just a few hours old, the boys are already exploring their paddock and tiptoeing out into the rain under Sorrel's watchful eye. Based on past experiences at the farm, the next few months will be full of mischief and mayhem as the two boys will find every opportunity to escape their paddock and explore the site.The boys have not yet been named but will probably go with Butser tradition and take a botanical name, like our other goats Sorrel, Yarrow and Comfrey. Now is the perfect time to visit the site and meet our new arrivals in the beautiful spring weather, as we are now open seven days a week! 

Meet Mike the Carpenter

Ever fancied trying your hand at traditional carpentry or woodwork?This summer we have a brand new range of woodcraft workshops at Butser Ancient Farm with tutor Mike Bennett, who helped build our Saxon workshop and the wickerman for this year’s Beltain festival. You can learn to carve a spoon, weave a split hazel basket, carve wooden patterns, sharpen tools and carve a bowl, all using traditional skills and hand tools.We still have a couple of spaces left for our workshop on 13-14 May to make a split hazel basket, as well as our workshops in June, July and August. What better way to learn something new within the beautiful surroundings of the South Downs National Park?Feel free to watch this video where we talk to Mike about his workshops and the joy of working with sustainable green wood:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o47dW3__OVAIf you’d like to book on, simply visit our website here: www.butserancientfarm.co.uk/adult-workshops

The Coppiced Wickerman

Meet the woodland team building our 30ft wickerman for Beltain 2017!Ken and Mike use traditional woodland management techniques like coppicing, which is an ancient skills that creates fantastic habitats for wildlife and provides a sustainable building material for us to use. Essentially, deciduous trees are grown in copses and their branches are lopped off for materials; the stumps are then left to grow in rotation to produce more wood for the future.The wickerman design for 2017 is yet to be revealed, so be sure to book your tickets for Saturday 29 April and watch it go up in flames! Take a look at the video below to meet the build team and learn more about traditional woodland management. You can also book onto one of our carpentry workshops with Michael Bennett (as seen in the video), with the chance to carve a spoon, bowl or weave a wicker basket.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2tG2knXtnAA