Jane on Mendip

We're up to our eyeballs in school kids this week. Hundreds of them have come through the farm to visit our African farmer Jane. She's been amazing with them and very inspirational. I'll post more details next time. Here are some pictures of her and the children. Back to work!

The Mendip Mind

Glory Hole Garden Gets Growing

Springs nearly here and our Glory Hole Garden is showing the first signs of the soil warming up. Green shoots are starting to emerge. These are great signs of the feast to come. The garden's provided quite a lot over the winter months but there's nothing like spring and summer for the proper bounty. 

Jon the chef is getting all excited as well. He's in the lucky position of being able to wander or wonder from garden to kitchen prepping ideas and food in his mind.  Then turning them into a reality for our guests. We get to sample them of course. Quality control, you see. As much as possible is grown and reared on the farm. What's not is made and bought locally like the cheese.

Take a look at Jon's menu on our website. This is just a sample of what he can do. It also includes his award winning Royal Smithfield menu. 

The Mendip Menu Mind

Active Liaison

Many of you probably aren't aware of our involvement in Active Mendip. I'm a Director of this Community Interest Company and Fernhill is right at the heart of it. Active Mendip is a group of all the outdoor adventure companies on mendip. They've come together to help themselves but also help Mendip. My role as a director is now 'landowner liaison'. Fancy indeed. But it's important. Go down Burrington and you'll find umpteen minibuses and kids scaling all over the rockfaces. That's great - people are getting active, staff are being employed, companies are growing. But let's not forget that it's a privilege to use someone else's land for our fun. We don't have a right to continue to use these rockfaces and caves for our fun. I'm going to be working hard to make sure local landowners see the broader benefits of activity on Mendip and how this area of outstanding natural beauty can benefit from it.

Keeping active. The Mendip Mind 

Stone Dancing, well sort of

Blagdon races, Lucky Seven, Chanctonbury Ring, The Carousel, Timber Salvage Reel, Half a Sixpence, Ealing Broadway, Nottingham Swing, Strip the Willow, Swedish Masquerade, Gay Gordons, La Russe, Bridge of Athlone, Clopton Bridge, Black Nagg, Dashing White Sergeant, Witches Reel, Double Snowball, Twelve Reel, Square Frenzy, Oxo Reel, Apple Tree Square, Old Jo, Circassian O. What are they then? Would you believe they are the dances that 60 of us did at the Fernhill Barn dance last Saturday night. We all stomped and tripped out way around the dance floor with different degrees of commitment to the whole dance thing. But hey, we all enjoyed ourselves.

And the weather's looking good for this weekend when we've got an exhibition of stone carving ceramics and sculpture. There's a flyer with all the details on the home page for you to have a look at. Or there will be very soon when i've created the link!

Mind your Mendips. The Mendip Mind