Despite a frightfully cold May where we needed to feed our four overwintered hives of bees to keep them alive, we now are in the healthy position of having eleven hives in our apiary up by the wind turbines and should have some honey for sale come September – watch this space! We have also enjoyed having a few more people including some young folks come along to our weekly sessions with the bees to find out more about their fascinating world and help with
the practical work of making up new frames for the hives etc.
We now have a fantastic educational resource that we have developed for the FHT which we hope to use more of over the coming years. This has been created largely through the continual sterling efforts of our enthusiastic core team, Martin Harker, John Willoner and I, plus the generous funding that has come through Robert Holden and others. A huge thank you to all that have been involved to get us and the bees to this point.
One thing we have been missing is a shed close to our apiary to keep our various pieces of bee equipment in. Thanks to the generosity of George Goudsmit donating his shed which has been outside George Ripley’s house for a long time, the much appreciated funding of £250 from the Findhorn Wind Park Community Fund and our neighbour Ed Bichan’s skill with his JCB, we now have a shed in place on site! It needs a new roof and some TLC before it is fully functional but we feel that this is a great step forward.
Enjoy the pictures and if you do want to find out more or contribute in any way to our good work, do get in touch. New members always welcome and it’s a great way of supporting the land based and people work we do.
Jonathan Caddy
[email protected]
Three years ago an agreement was sought and granted from the landowner the Findhorn Foundation to build the structure on the southern edge of Wilkies Wood close to the present wood store and access track to the FHT Green Burial site on the northern edge of Pineridge. Henry Fosbrooke, a master builder who built the Outdoor Learning Space building in our Edible Woodland Garden, helped design the building, which will use round timbers cut from our woods for its main structure. Cladding and other squared building timber will also be from our own trees with Logie Sawmill set up to process them – at present you will see them lying in various places next to the Pineridge road. Overall the building will be 100m2 with much of this covered space to keep our materials and tractor and trailer dry with a smaller enclosed space for our workshop facility and safe tool storage. The outside of the building will be used to present educational material. 
This winter the site was cleared by Kajedo Wanderer, our Land Manager, and these trees along with others thinned nearby in the woods, have been measured, selected and dragged to the site using our tractor. We received a small grant from Volunteering Matters to allow us to purchase woodworking tools and for a good many weeks in February/March over 25 volunteers peeled and prepared the logs – a splendid community effort in the snow and darker months. Thanks goes out to all involved.
Our beekeepers come and visit us every week. There are more of them this year and the new ones are keen to learn all about us. It is funny listening to the ‘experienced’ beekeepers talking about us. They know quite a lot but we often give them a surprise by doing something unexpected. Perhaps they should spend more time listening to us.
Summer News from the Land August 21
I have just returned from another round of watering our youngest trees on the land… It’s been a summer of periods of very dry weather and torrential downpours. Sadly for some of our broadleaf trees our watering efforts came too late. We have also finished defining the Northern Heath areas – this involved a lot of gorse cutting by hand over a two year period. There is a bit of chainsaw and brushcutter work left and then it will take minimal effort every two years to keep these precious habitats open.
As the covid restrictions were eased, what was most evident this summer was the increased human activity on the land. We had Paul Howell’s vision quest group camping here again for a week plus the shelter being used on a regular basis by the Northern Light Sangha and less regularly by other groups. Birgit Carow initiated and held gatherings around a fire for young families with small kids for many weeks on Friday mornings -it’s been a joy to see them around the picnic table and in the woods. We also had an unusual overnight visit from a lady with two horses who does cross country charity rides… In addition we had three work-parties with about 10 attendees each – to catch up with work in the Edible Woodland Garden with a small but much appreciated grant from Volunteering Matters to help fund this work. A few people have also started using and enjoying staying on our camping pads during the last couple of months. Other events included ‘Hinterland Tours’ being restarted with some great feedback and as you probably know this is the first year when we, the Findhorn Hinterland Trust, are offering our own retreat programmes.
I am particularly excited about running these retreats here in and for Hinterland as they are a way for us to share some of the wisdom amongst our members as well as the magic of the land. They also open a potential and much needed income stream for the Findhorn Hinterland Trust and the partnership with the Findhorn Foundation is proving to be a fruitful one – hopefully building a model of cross partnerships within our community in the future.
The first weekend retreat held at the beginning of July was very successful with two of the retreat participants coming back to support the next retreat. We are about to start that first week-long ‘Out of the Ashes – turning crisis into opportunity’ camping retreat in a few day’s time which, as I write this, is almost fully booked! There are 100 details to consider and organise before the first participants arrive. As this is a first for us there is still a good deal of learning involved …
On a personal level I am grateful for the FHT for having taken me on as their first employee after I was made redundant by the FF in June. It is a half time position and I have to be creative about finding other income but I believe that creating this position of employment for a Land Manager is another step for the trust towards a sustainable future.
Many blessings,
Kajedo Wanderer, August 9, 2021