Annwn: Culinary Tales of the Unexpected

“To begin at the beginning: It is a spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboat-bobbing sea.” 

- Dylan Thomas

I have long thought of Matt Powell, foraging chef and culinary visionary, as the Dylan Thomas of the kitchen. And it was a moonless night in the small town of Narberth, Pembrokeshire, with its burgeoning reputation as a foodie magnet. 

Il Maestro’s chef’s tunic was indeed bible-black…although the 4 hours of gastronomic theatre that follows has an aesthetic perhaps more closely-aligned with the hospital theatre than Drury Lane. The scrubbed white of the walls and the lights that would cut through goose fat make the solitary figure in black all the more dramatic as he glides from stainless steel counter to hob in pared-back open plan kitchen. Annwn focuses the diner’s attention directly on the creative hub by setting the tables to face the chef, as stalls seats would the stage. With two of us, and one other couple, as the total audience for this particular show, we sat side by side, drinking a brace of British wines (a Welsh red and an English white) from the very select and  exclusively UK wine list. It’s another bold move from a fearless chef.

There followed ten courses, delivered in a flawless and unhurried manner by Matt and his partner, Naomie, playing all of the roles. Matt comes front of house for every course, his modest conversation introducing each creation in his soft Welsh voice. Strain your necks like hawsers to catch the sotto voce commentary on each extraordinary offering. Slow food doesn’t begin to do justice to the long gestation and fore-thought on show here. Take the bara planc (Welsh for bread on the planc, or griddle) with a mother yeast half a century old. The menyn halltu oen served with this bread of heaven is no ordinary butter, even by the standards of refined restaurants. This is a homemade mixture of creamed butter and the fat of the air-dried lamb; half butter, half dripping, fully divine. The ‘bread and butter’ is served with slices of cured lamb and a signature Annwn dish, wild garlic preserved in its life cycle, as much a work of art on a plate as a starter.

We imbibe and chat and sample one incredible dish after another: oyster puree, preserved beetroots, spider crab roe with kelp cream, and duck egg yolk slow cooked for 4 hours, taking us to the ‘main event’, approximately scene III of V. Oen Melog (shoulder of salt marsh Welsh lamb, braised in salt marsh honey is this main, artfully trimmed with the foraged delights of marsh samphire, sea plantain, sea purslane, honey cream and lamb sauce. It is another old Welsh recipe re-invented by Matt for the modern diner.

Now for the fab four ‘desserts’ to take us to the final curtain: Meadowsweet cheese curds and honey; Ynys Gwales, gorse flower custard with birch vinegar meringue, pure art; and chocolate cockle shells filled with sea buckthorn gel.

Simples! Not.

If you can get your head around parting with £130 (per person for the menu) and 4 hours of your life, Annwn will not disappoint. Bear in mind that a copious lobster roll in Pembrokeshire can set you back £25, you may consider that you have got away lightly for the mesmerising show you have witnessed. Book soon - Matt is holding his prices despite the fact that he and his team have recently won a Green Michelin star!

Find Matt on Instagram here

Ynys Affalon is in the media (darling)

We’ve been delighted to see Ynys Affalon, one of our fantastic tree tents, in the media both here and abroad.

It featured in Geo Saison which circulates in Gemany, as well as the Observer this weekend!

Make it stand out

Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.

You can read the Observer article here, where we are named as being among Britain’s top 10 most peaceful retreats…and remote as we are we’re inclined to agree!

APRIL - I GOT KNOCKED DOWN BUT I GOT UP AGAIN...

APRIL: By just after April 1, Avalon’s 16th birthday the  status quo ante on the home front had begun to restore itself and Tiny (Pole) Dancer and the mould infested bathroom in Hackney became a thing of the past. Easter Lunch was lovely, Tennis and a Glorious Roast with one of Inigo’s ski-catering chums, and the family, on one of the few nice evenings of the spring so far. Orlando started training with Child line and also netted himself an executive job where he will be heading for Barcelona in September. Just for a moment, I am delighted and thinking myself quite establishment and posh with Orlando in a great job, Inigo off to Exeter and Avalon to Westminster. However,  at the coal face, with Orlando gone from Chillderness, it means I am on my own again with the wonderful but overwhelming welter of Chillderness bookings,  because  Katie, is simultaneously  ill with a racking cough which doesn’t go away because she is a workaholic with two young children to drain her immune system. Plus the weather feccking cold, so no vitamin D to boost batteries. Tempers are short. Those who have avoided Covid have instead contracted a sense of  humour failure. 

So when David and Inigo finally manage to finish Llaregubb and run to Powys to try and meet Dawn’s deadline of the 27 April to drop off the pigs before her chemo treatment begins, it’s already 30 April, the day the first guest is due in. We arrive at Red Kite Estate, to find some wheels have fallen off the Red Kite Bus. We see more action on the fields than the battle field at Agin court.. Six months of rewilding  Flash Gordon style and, I haven’t changed the world as quickly as I thought.  The sheep empire has struck back and despite our, I feel, heroic efforts, to keep them out, having to earn a living elsewhere has meant the fencing has some congenital weaknesses. Besides those wily sheep have been coming into us for years. And there has been no help available from locals, notably usual suspects Joel and Martin. Most of the population down here do work in some kind of farming  and Corona doesnt stop that. Agricultural work takes place in the winter/spring when the plants are dormant and the animals are about to give birth. So even Martin, the man who usually finishes the work you are going to ask him to do tomorrow and  never lets me down was so busy that he didn’t finish off the nursery/piggery fence line by the previous Tuesday as he had promised. Worse still he didn’t tell me.

Between Tuesday and Friday, I got a stringful of anxious wattsap from Joel the tree planter, asking why the fence line hadn’t been finished.  Joel and I were going to do a bit of a joint venture with a Chillderness - 9 Trees carbon offset nursery and in return he would plant some willows and alders and hazel whips to provide trees for us. It was a really charming project. However, he too had been overrun with work and not available for fencing even though we had asked him to do some fencing for us officially. The bare root {dormant plant}planting season also ends at the end of April and it had become unseasonably boiling hot and dry and everyone was racing to finish planting. His messages were that he was “desperately keen to plant his little christmas trees but at the same time worried about the sheep encroachment. WHEN was I going to finish the fence?”

Caught short I assured him it would happen before confronting Martin who mumbled a string of vague excuses about not enough fencing materials when he had gone up there, which didn’t explain at all why he hadn’t at least used the materials we had left.  But he had moved his machine on Thursday morning to another job, and wouldn’t be back for two weeks. I sucked this up. I can’t afford to lose Martin as an ally. He is invaluable. He made all the roads and bridges and you can always rely on him to turn up despite grumbling in true Mid Walian fashion about the weather and about the absurdity of the request “what do you want to do that for” is what he says about pretty much everything.

I was very committed to the Carbon Off set nursery and also to Joel and I felt I didn’t want to let him down but we simply did not have enough hands. Although employing all of these people had become rather expensive, I felt obligated to find a solution. I had seen a face book post by Jacqui our chef friend saying she didn’t know where she was going but she had four days off. Because the Llareggub project was running late, I suggested a working holiday - Jacqui is a farm girl as well and married to a very practical, can I say slightly autistic and precise surveyor so it seemed an ideal combination of folk to set up a rustic, pig sty and Sam’s extraordinary speccing of a solar powered electric fence line which would also power a live streaming of the pigs. Yes, really. I felt old too. [see Hogwarts live on the Chillderness web site}

Im not sure when I became responsible for Joel’s fence line, I thought he was going to provide his own electric fenceline. I said that I would do a solid better one and pay for it but use it myself temporarily for the pig-initiation before they foraged for themselves. Somehow I don’t think he read that memo all the way through, hastily garbled as it was at the corner of the estate on the previous Monday . As I said, when David and Inigo turned up there was more action than Agincourt and that’s where it all went wrong.

Friday morning, Joel turned up , with a pile of baby Christmas trees he was going to plant for his Christmas income in the pig pen . I thought Joel would see that we were committed to his fence line but he just saw Mike and Jacqui making a pigsty in his nursery and putting fence stakes exactly where he wanted them. He went a bit mad saying that we had deliberately chosen the one acre of 81 acres for his trees and we had essentially sabotaged the plan. PLUS he wouldn’t be talked to to explain that it had just all been too much for everyone and we were slogging our guts out to make a safe, sheep free space and if we could just get the pigs there for the weekend, because Dawn’s chemo dictated she couldn’t really keep the hogs, we could then let them out with the new electric fence line whilst looking after the trees.

He remained convinced that it was a conspiracy which was upsetting and adding insult to injury basically said I had totally failed to keep the sheep out and put fence signs up to prevent the human element letting them in.  I felt pretty hurt and glum and alone. Joel has been a real support over the rewilding ideas I have had but he has, of late just stopped communicating.I also felt glum because I feel a bit misunderstood and however much I explain myself he [ and everyone ] always think I am saying something different.

I am still not sure why he couldn’t triangulate an electric fence area from the solid fence we had created for him, save that the water would be a bit further away. I mean it is Wales and it does rain a lot.

His fallout caused me to fall into a bit of a depression, as I felt that was yet another promising relationship which had gone wrong. He has been a source of knowledge and support on the rewilding . But he made me feel a bit of a failure as he told us that as we hadn’t done “anything” and the sheep were damaging everything and he was going to take “his” trees elsewhere. I felt that my support system had been taken away. In hindsight, I think that the wheels had fallen off his personal bus and he couldn’t cope with the end of the season either. As David is not 100 percent behind my concept of rewilding, I am having a confidence crisis and getting nervous about whether we are doing the right thing by introducing the wild stock when we don’t even seem to be able to fence out the tame ones.

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BACKSTORY: March came in like a lion.... {and went out like one too}

BACKSTORY MARCH AND APRIL

A Pig Improvement

This is  all a big improvement on the last two months [March and April] where the temperature both outside the house  and in has been very stormy. To write has been too painful: it’s been hard to process the slings and arrows of outrageous, if first world, fortune.   Thankfully at the time of writing “At Home” has improved and though outdoors, the weather remains revolting, projects like the advent of the pigs and Frank’s progress have proven most uplifting.

For  the sake of completeness and to prove we are all not just capering round like Marie, or should I say “Carrie” Antoinette [ Spectator reference to PM”s squeeze in wake of Wallpapergate] , let  us just say March’s domestic tempests  involved  blue flashing lights and one of my progeny moving in with a satan worshipping midget in Hackney. Stroppy Slav shoved her shapely jodhpured ass between me, the steed and my good friend Jim, leaving him blind-sided by her and Frank moving to Richmond. Me,pretty sick with worry saddled (um) with this responsibility, as I have no idea how to school or look after him though Minette stalwart and magnificent instructress of 25 years did cheer me up a by saying she would help.  Continuing frustration as David and Inigo struggle to finish the Beach House, Llareggub - a never ending project. The definition of Irritation is, the feeling you get when the children whom you brought up to be independent thinkers start being just that, independent thinkers and bloody ones at that, making David servant of 5 masters (as they all have a share in the house). Reminds me of that prayer “O Lord Please make me good - but just not yet”..

Luckily the first guests at Llareggub Phase iii were very much primed for the fact that it was a trial period, and, spoiler alert, were delighted, but it has been a trying winter for me to anticipate when the House would be ready and what to charge for it. As a result I have probably undersold it but I don’t mind as I think it is always better for people to feel like they are getting a good deal especially when the property just comes on the market. Besides, even if I thought it were finished, David has a habit of having a EXTREMELY AMBITIOUS NEW IDEA which he saves for the morning that he is leaving the property [ which is usually the morning someone is coming in and which makes it not finished at all. Even if it was. ]. I used to go along with this but I am now too old and tell David that the guests are arriving two days before they are due. As he really gets into super achievement gear when he knows the deadline is approaching.

However, when even using the fake early arrival trick looked sure to fail, I had to admit defeat and tell Dawn, the Owner of the Pigs, that we just were not going to be ready for the pigs to be dropped off to us on Thursday, and instead we would have to come and pick them up from Derby { involving us in a whole new set of expensive, unknown and tiring logistics. She, Dawn would thereafter be too weak from chemo to handle these bad boys. Loading on a lot more stress too.

Caring for Avalon, who has pulled out a boyfriend from her hat two months before the-GCSE’s which-aren’t has also been challenging, particularly in David’s absence.  Asian Mother, Boyfriend, Exams are not words which sit comfortably in the same sentence.  I can’t think of a verb for a start. Pandora’s box is open and Asian mother cannot squash it closed however heavily her Asian bottom sits on it. DD  has concurrently  developed a huge lassitude. Her  only appetite seems to be for late night phone calls and the weight is dropping off her. She is swimming in her clothes about the only exercise she will take. I am afraid she will fall at the last fence and nothing I can say or do,nice or nasty policeman can persuade her she needs to revise. The question is does she? A  hard and conscientious worker it seems she has simply burned out. Sitting at that desk in front of a screen for the COVID SCHOOL year has taken its toll.  Having spent two weeks of the Easter holidays trying,  I feel defeated as I can’t think of any way to help. And so I have stepped back. But I remain in limbo as if I go to Wales which I am bursting to do to make final decisions on Llareggub or prepare for the piggies,  she neither wants to come nor does any revision at home, but she likes me to remain her phantasmic in the background while she just is. I am after all her mum and proud to be so. Just not used to anyone actually wanting me to be there.

I actually introduced her to Boyfriend , Sam, my 16 Y O pal and Chief Erratic inventor in the Chillderness Creative Team. Whilst the new dynamic with Avalon does cause some additional tenisons I guess they are fewer than if he was someone totally new. And he is both nice and fun.  Ironically he  likes doing things none of my children do and has even taken an active interest in walking out and riding Frank living only 10 minutes away so I think I see him more than anyone. Frank and Sam have developed a real bond I am glad to be able to give him that gift. He is also turning out to be a bit of a decent rider.

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In The Pig-inning

What an incredible weekend. Pigs One and Two, Winston and Blossom are installed at Red Kite in a slightly surreal sequence. Sam and I left for Derby yesterday morning on the train. We got up super early and arrived at the bizarre St Pancras and King’s Cross stations in time for the train before. Such is the North South Divide, the train to Derby is sited cheek by jowl with Eurostar leaving from St Pancras International separated by tall wire fencing. Is Derby really in another country.  It is actually only one and a half hours away. There is still no catering on the train (don’t understand why cups of tea or even water on a train cause Corona).  Sam has rightly decreed that there is no point in having a fancy camera if we don’t have a proper lens (at the moment we have a zoom) and insists that first stop on arrival will be a camera exchange shop or we must throw away the camera. Reluctantly I agree and am parted from £600 quid but it is true to say we have been lugging this huge camera round for three years now and hiring photographers which has to be a false economy on some levels! Also there is just so much to photograph at the moment. Life is very exciting.

We meet the delightful Dawn at the end of the Sadlers Gate. Dawn is bearing her cancer with such equanimity and hope I pray she gets through. She is a casualty of the Covid bypass as she did not go to the doctors in time even though she knew something was wrong. She is full of light, aptly named. She has in tow young Connor her foster child, in year six, also full of hope, who quizzes Sam on maths and music [Doja cat] and is delighted when he finds Sam both knowledgeable and ready to play . I liked him too. I find people in the North of England much more easy to deal with. Well, I did till I met the farmers who had our charges waiting in her truck at their Farm. Crikey they looked scary - just about distinguishable from our porcine friends in gabarie and looking like extras from ‘It shouldn’t happen to a vet’.  Apparently they were sister and brother. Of course, they took great delight in testing our yuppiness, by telling us we could pee behind a truck, selling us bales of straw (liquid gold on a plate) for £4.50 and tearing Sam off a strip for taking photos of their calves (STRICTLY FORBIDDEN)

Not people we will be seeing again in a hurry I rather suspect. They nearly choked on their carrots when Inigo turned up on the trailer looking like D’artagnan with his long flowing locks and new ranching boots clearly expecting him to have not the slightest clue about how to load pigs. But years of training with Alis and Granny Val at Furzehill Farm have left him fairly experienced with farmyard machinery and he nimbly placed the hurdles in place, effecting a kind of cloacal trailer passage through which W and B could lumber, he kept our townie credentials right up!!!

. Dawn was sad but not too sad as she knows they are going to a better place. Although the price set upon Winston’s head was modest, by god the extras [ not even including the lens] and column inches devoted to the methodology by which we should enclose them has already run into the thousands.  Blossom, beloved and pregnant wife [possibly pigs number 3-16] though [shhhh as David does not know as he would freeeeak being already quite apprehensive about the responsibility and the endless stories of escapism - also - serves him right for not reading my blog] was chucked in for free to keep him company and we are really happy about this as it appears she is boss woman. A large , but not as large as him,  500lb Old Spot Sow to his “Coal black Bible Black Large Black” Boar, she took her time to unload on arrival at Red Kite, having rehydrated herself quite delicately from a dustbin lid full of water.

She walked on unsteady legs but soon found a patch of green to sate her hunger before identifying the stream and wending her way towards it.  The fairly steep Welsh slate slope toward her new sty did not daunt her and she was most discerning, refusing pig nuts in favour of fresh grass. She then explored the two sties made for her electing for Mike and Inigo’s low hut in favour of the more bustop style one made by Tony the carpenter, slightly randomly not very far away but which combination also led Joel to believe that I had deliberately conspired to thrwart the new nursery by building not one  but two permanent sties in the space he was going to plant trees. As l said, communications have been difficult and tempers have frayed in the time of Covid.  I had specifically said to Tony the Pony, on the phoney, put it as far away as you can from the other one so the pigs can go there when they are roaming free, but he put it about as close as it could be. Apart from crushing the nursery venture it is lucky as the chaps are so large that they do not both fit in one and one will be very useful for Blossom when she farrows.  It is a bit of a joke that absolutely everyone who has seen them has asked if we are going to have piglets. I feel a bit guilty that David tells them Blossom is past it. Oh dear. That was the intention but another Covid casualty is that Dawn couldn’t catch them in time before Winston caught her. Actually, one month later, they have both slimmed down and do fit in there but we are going to have to extend it in preparation for the piglets.

Winston on the other hand was frankly overweight. 

Despite the many tales of how the pair could not be caught by the equally overweight sibling farmers [supra] the night before, flipping them and their mother on their backs in the Derbyshire mud, {bravo Winston is wot I say}, they seemed totally docile to us despite his heritage being half wild boar, what they call an Iron Age Pig. D’Artagnan’s second agricultural strategy meant Winston did not charge off the trailer with the full might of his 750 lbs into us, but fairly quietly unloaded with the assistance of some brush wings leaning against the side of the trailer. Perhaps he had been too much weakened by his voyage  and then being starved for the day to get him on. In any event, the stress point came subsequently. Having meandered off he alined him self parallel to the stock fencing and it seemed as though it would be but moments before he nosed up the flimsy wire and tossed it to one side .  I felt my pig [ as opposed to cod] psychology, previously scorned by hubby would work. I don’t think they want to escape. They are so myopic that I suspect that they can’t even see the wire and it just looks like the wide blue yonder.  The light pours in and it seems easy to walk through. Obscure it with something solid looking, I feel, and they will look in another direction. Happy pigs stay at home.

So IN the pouring rain, we nailed some cross poles across the fence and dragged in the ever useful brash I had scored last time I was down from some bourgeois couple who had rid themselves of two perfectly good birch trees to plant leylandii or the like. We had used them to dead hedge the pig paddock over the river and my vision with the brash piled and bales to the right had worked as a directional screen when we offloaded Winston. (They are such lovely trees too, so supple and pretty with their purple branches and silver bark and weeping catkins.)

Winston staggered about a bit feet and then stood parallel to the fence line looking like a coal black, bible black helium balloon, if helium balloons were low flying and filled with lead and stone bricks. Try as we might we could not persuade him to place his trotters on the Welsh slate slope to his new home. We remained in terror that he was just about to plot his escape through the partially obscured boundary wire and we argued about the best way to go about his security . Should we fence on the inside and give them an electric shock at snout level, 2O cm high [ the classic solution]. and then put another layer round at 50 cms high to shock the sheep and ponies. This solution doesn’t feel right for me as I don’t want the pigs to feel enclosed and afraid to forage in the future. What i don’t want is for the pigs to learn they should stay within the perimeter or they get burnt or they won’t want to go further afield and forage.

Anyway we were distracted from our squabbles when suddenly Winston sank down dramatically onto his oversaturated knees and couldn’t move.  A terror of the responsibility of taking Dawn’s beloved pig and killing him on the first day washed over me but also rapid calculations that if he was going to do it he should do it quick so she would put it down to the journey rather than my lack of husbandry.  Eventually he staggered to his feet but still refused to go down the slope despite poking and prodding, cajoling and shouting. He was very good natured about it but would not budge being used to living on the Derbyshire flats.  Inigo’s second wave of agricultural competence kicked in and he grasped the gold dusted straw bales and  scattered them before him unfolding a sweet smelling golden carpet. Winston put on his best gold carpet walk and staggered down and like Buttons in Cinderella or maybe Dartagnan in front of Milady, Inigo continued to work his magic all the way to the sty. Once there, he did a bit more staggering and was not quite courageous enough to enter the hut. He had a second spasm mid field and when Blossom was standing over him worriedly I really thought he was a goner. I called Dawn and said should I call the vet..she said no he was probably just tired and dehydrated but in our hearts I know we were both worried. However, after cooking some sausages in the pouring rain { I know and they weren’t vegan}, David got some water into him and he staggered into the bus shelter. Blossom had already put herself to bed in the Mike and Jackie Shelter BUT eventually, in seeing Winston snoring peacefully in another bed, she faithfully came over even though she didn’t quite fit in lay peacefully next to him, trotter to trotter,

even though she was getting quite rained on.  And that dear readers is where we found him this morning at 6 o’clock, 9 o'clock and indeed 3 pm this afternoon when he FINALLY deigned to get up for his daily bum scratch, and performed his wiggle wiggle dance. 

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“And hand in hand on the edge of the sand -
They danced by the light of the moon, the moon, they danced by the light of the moon.”

— Edward Lear

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My true bulb said to me (and other lockdown passions)

FEBRUARY - MARCH 2021 REWILDING CONTINUES at RED KITE BARN AND CURVED HOUSE…

REWILDING THE RED KITE ESTATE. Conker in the foreground, trees to re-plant and beginnings of the lake dug to create wetlands for beavers and birds

My crazy family, hound-of-little-brain, and elegant feline, are my first loves. Travel-barred in lockdown, other passions have come to the fore. One, long-held, is, the noble equine. The other, is for Things -Wot -Grow. In particular, Trees. Which are a lot cheaper to look after than horses it must be said. Lockdown takes much away from us, but it also gives us the Gift of Time. The little voice in my head which has always said “you don’t deserve it”, cleared its throat in December and squawked “you do and damn the cost. Because if not at 56 - when?”. So that’s the horse purchase dealt with. As for the trees…

MIKA - HOUND OF LITTLE BRAIN

ELEGANT SMALL

Up to last year, my one significant arboreal other , was the ancient Horse Chestnut around which our Curved House in Clapham spreads. Some of you may have seen her majesty featured as an architectural conundrum on Grand Designs nearly 20 years ago. This year, 2021, my central Plus One has swollen to a veritable partouse with the further One Thousand Four Hundred and Ninety Nine other native upland trees: copper beeches, aspen, dogwood, hawthorn, willow and wild cherry, we planted on the Red Kite Estate in November, some as forest and some as hedgerows. As for the equine habit, in an orgy of careless acquisition, not only did I acquire Frank, both a horse and chestnut (see what I did there) a skinny urban thoroughbred with a heart of gold but am adopting Huckle, Berry and Flynn 3 shaggy rescue Carneddau ponies from the wilds of Snowdonia. These boys I plan to rehome (wild) on the Red Kite Estate when we feel confident four legs will co exist with two in our re-wilded utopia.

HORSE CHESTNUT - My one significant other AND CHESTNUT HORSE - Frank

In a rare moment of good humour, David says they (the ponies not the guests) will find life in the Cambrian Mountains like a holiday in St Tropez after Snowdonia, [ he is a Southern Welshman] and that they will have to bring their sunnies in their nosebags. The guests, methinks, will be under no such illusions and find the weather a bit under par for the Cote D’azur. But since ‘80’s when David was unwokely ribbed by Men from the “Hice” as “Evans or Williams or Hughes or whatever your name is”, Wales as a destination has had a renaissance, helped by the advent of specialist waterproof clothing. Holidays in Cambrensus are a far cry from the school adventure one I had in Llandrindod Wells, 40 years ago, when the only technical barrier to water into my cagoule was surface tension. As a drenched bespectacled Asian teen who didn’t like cider [ or adventures] and had the wrong footwear for every occasion it was horridious. But times have changed and now there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing.

I now need to add to my list of loves, a sub-clause of woodland bulbs about which I have gone lockdown fever mad. They are such fun and so much less arsy than delicately rooting seedlings. The best toys ever, cheap as chips, recyclable, colourful, with endless permutations including the extraordinary fact that you don’t even need soil to grow them, [“ hand-grenades - yours to detonate”]. Bulbs don’t like good soil , don’t need sunlight crikey - what’s not to like? This gives rise to endless options of terrariums and indoor gardens and altogether comprise best ever fun with your clothes on. Especially when you have two crazy potters working in your garage making and breaking pots to plant in all the time.

Bulbs regenerate AND reproduce so you can give them to friends [if you have any], dig them from the garden to make living floral arrangements for your Sunday luncheon table, [ so impressive] and then, unlike cut flowers, shove them back in the soil where…they happily photosynthesise till the leaves retract back into the bulb. And they spring up next year complete with a little bulbette family. Snowdrops are particularly cute about this This is the theory, I have yet to see if they survive this quite vigorous floristry treatment, but early signs are good. Here are two woodland mixes I have done this week, one in a huge old shell, the other in a rusty wine cooler. They literally took 10 minutes to throw together and most of that was looking for the planter.

You can use moss to cover up the bulbs without soil { we have loads at RKB}. It certainly looks cute in glass but I actually used soil into my arrangements as the container is solid AND you can stick in lots of budding twigs, and recycle the slightly dried out botanicalss that you have bought in old Freddy flower boxes three weeks ago.

Though there has been lots of false dawns, it is the end of March, and I vote it is the year to give into your passions even though I have found in doing so I feel a bit more distant to my family. I have definitely had the most fun with the bulbs. There are flowers enduring both in the woods, and Londres, which is no mean feat with the sheep, squirrels and weather to combat. So that’s a tick.

Whether or not that amounts to success I don’t know. I planted hundreds and probably have fifty flowers. But the interaction charmed a winter of discontent for me, (and has already got me planting summer ones). Bulbs, Frank and a lot of trees sum up the first three months of the year. But if you want to hear more about the agony and ecstasy of my hunt for my first snowdrop … read on.

CANT GET OUT OF THE DOOR FOR BULBS ! CRAZY BULB LADY

Welsh lamb v Piglets: Clash of the Bite-ans

Sunday Rewilder Exclusive: are pigs the new sheep??

St David’s day 2021

Four legs are better than weeds.

Lockdown III the sequel, prequel and whole kit and cabooquel continues leaving us listless, lustless and powerless to advance the rewilding programme through lack of funds, lack of direction and lack of labour [ everyone else in Wales being engaged in the production of lambs]. Against this tide we seem to be spending vast amounts of time and resource fencing OUT every last sheep from Red Kite Estate. I’m even demanding a Shepherdess’ crook for Mothers day - [who even knew there was a farmer’s co-op?]

Symbolic of spring, God, and on this Welshest of weeks, [Wales smashing England 40-24 winning the Triple Crown, followed by St David’s Day], the Welsh lamb should be being celebrated. Lambs are of course as adorable ( and edible) as any other baby creature and extremely useful to boot. I just fed one with a bottle at Granny Val’s [as it’s mum showed no interest at all] but it sadly died. It seemed so bright and characterful and full of hope but just didn’t make it. Those which do however, have evolved brilliantly to feed themselves on just about any of the decent different grasses and plants available in the uplands leaving only bracken, sedge and gorse in their wake. But our woolly friends are currently PNG and considered instrumental in the diminution of bio-diversity amongst the conservation cognoscenti. Being mild-mannered they roam free whereas their more intelligent (less biddable) chums lead more yard based lives. Surprisingly good escapologists they return to the locus in quo with Darwinian persistence, and whilst apparently not overtly intelligent, have certainly worked out the calorific value of food on the mountain.

Winston, our new coal black, bible black porker

So over the winter, we at Chillderness HQ have concocted our own version of the Recipe for #Rewildingredkite and for us right now, pigs and ponies are the new sheep. The rewilding theory which has been buzzing in my head since I read Feral by journalist George Monbiot some years ago [ the meme is not universally popular], is of trophic responses and regeneration. In his case he wrote of Yellowstone Park and the reintroduction of wolves at the top of the food chain that ate the deer which were overgrazing, particularly at the water’s edge which dramatically regenerated and renewed the wildlife and geography of the Park, even down to the courses of the rivers. We did not think our guests would like a replay of Red Riding Hood on their glamping breaks, and with our history of erratic stock fencing, we know our neighbours would probably take a shot gun to us, so we have stopped short at that lupine move. Instead, with some rudiments of O level biology, but throwing theory and caution to the wind at the same time, we will, in spring, introduce some semi-wild, largely vegetarian four legged chums. Although people do keep telling me pigs will eat anything, including humans. So it looks like Red Kite will be the ideal place to play murder in the dark if your family has been getting on your case during lockdown. But seriously folks - The theory is the creatures will graze and rootle and find different ways to churn up the crazy wild grass which has over taken the estate, nose up any native original species and create the groundwork for new air borne ones to embed themselves in the ruts the beasties will leave in the soil with their trotters and hooves. With the resultant seeds they ingest through one oriface and plant through another, they can plough the land a dam sight quicker than I can with a petrol strimmer, but more than that, we reckon this will result in attracting other forms of life and soak up the water from the boggy landscape left by the tree cull. Somewhere in there, I dare to dream that the common land behind us, known as the Desert of Wales will also regenerate [more anon].

The key is that the animals will not be fed by us, they will need to find their own food. We will have a CHP1 or something similar and watch respectfully from a distance. If we prove ourselves capable of husbandry [of which my own husband, David is not convinced], and our guests at RKB and the Conker can exist side by side with roaming creatures, we will breed next year. So watch out for Huckle, Berry and Flynn, 3 rescue Carneddau ponies and Winston and Blossom the semi Wild Boars. More on their provenance later but as I say, Lockdown has provided some good time for research and reflection.

Some time before the this band of merry four-legged friends had been shortlisted. I had decided we should jog the flora along by providing the woodlands with some winter colour. Even if it is white. [ Cause apparently bees see white as UV]. During Lockdown 1 The Prequel, when I managed to produce about three peas and a few runner beans at a cost to the earth and my pocket which was disproportionate, my family advised politely that I could give up providing for them with no sense of failure.

But I still believe I can reproduce. At my age it becomes a need. And so to accompany Joel’s tree planting, hail stinging our faces, November bulb planting took place. God actually must have had quite a hard time creating the world in Wales. Let’s just say that root, reed, rock and clay posed significant challenges.

I’m putting all my hope into these buoiss..

Celtic Serengeti

Rewilding Wales…on a budget

Hello, we are a bonkers but idealistic Good life (if Felicity Kendal were Asian) middle class London family with no farming experience. We find ourselves rethinking the way we run our hospitality business during Covid. Over Lockdowns 1 and 2, we realised that our efforts to run our wilderness glamping and barn stays, (chillderness.co.uk) over the last 12 years, had ignored the fact we are de facto custodians of a magnificent but destroyed 80 acres of clear-felled forest backing on to a remote, beautiful but barren piece of Common land [also known as the Desert of Wales]. Till now, we have always thought that Red Kite barn, sitting in the Sheltered Valley, Cym Clyd, belonged to us {and a few banks}, and treated the 80 acres which come with it, as a giant unweeded garden. Lockdown 3 brought with it the damascene revelation that it is actually we who belong to it and have a job to do. 

Over the next three years, can we overcome the odds, turn the bleak 'Desert of Wales’ into a Celtic Serengeti, and win the race to become the first location in Wales to host beavers? Set up a herd of breakaway Carneddau ponies, native to Snowdonia to save their gene pool? And work with the animals to rewild the landscape?

This is a once in a lifetime pandemic-imposed opportunity to try and regenerate the original open grassland, pastureland and forest of the Cambrian Mountains using the original native, ponies, pigs and cattle. Can we also impact the Common land in any way by using our long lost Commoner’s rights?

• We BELIEVE we can  literally change the landscape

• We THINK we can also create and dig a wet-land paradise

• But as usual with our projects we HAVE to do this on a shoestring budget.

We are looking for

We are looking to assemble a creative team which would like to share the experience of rewilding Red Kite by making a docu-drama with us following its progress over, say, the next three years. We potentially have on board a 15 year old ornithologist who has appeared on BBC Winterwatch, and is incredibly bright, as visiting bird expert and believe other guests and visits could be fascinating. [ Have ideas]. Scope for visiting other projects for ideas, exchange etc.

Our part in the Waste Land

“In my end is my beginning”

— T.S. Eliot

Three years ago we were poised to replant the forest we had been offered a lot of money destroy, but were simultaneously shafted by an unscrupulous firm of London lawyers to the tune of an eye-watering £200 grand. Replanting a new upland forest was not as high a priority as saving ourselves and our fledgeling business from bankruptcy.

Then, with Red Kite firmly locked down 1, I began to enjoy some time working there. I read my guests’ reviews of the stunning countryside, yet the deforested hill opposite stared at me, skeletal, littered with brash and the ubiquitous marsh grass. Just three trees, which had housed buzzards, had been spared. The glorious mixology of bird song emerged invisibly from the trees immediately round the barn and my heart hummed alongside. But the plant life and tree scape just didn’t make me feel good. Something was missing for me which I just couldn’t pin-point despite everyone’s wholehearted endorsements. Lockdown 2, with our once more empty colourful glamping shells, I realised what it was.

No flowers.

No other colour.

No biodiversity.

Inadvertently and innocently we had killed it all and I suddenly felt it was my duty to put it back.

My first response was to throw money at it and interfere. I rushed and planted 1500 trees and hedges in November and began to dig a lake. I thought about wildlife but mainly I thought about winter colour...copper beech, shaking aspen and wild cherry and a very wildlife friendly hedge line, dogrose, sloes, hawthorn, buckthorn, crab apples. But when the lake proved like digging gravy, then I took a step back and thought about rewilding.

Three years of neglect should – in rewilding theory at least – have seen the bees buzzing and the birds flocking to paradise. In fact, we had 40 acres of silent, post-apocalyptic wasteland and a muddy man-made pond that looks like a sperm. Why? Rewilding alone when there has been monoculture of both flora and fauna has resulted essentially in  Welsh tumbleweed: marsh grass rolling over the saturated lands.

So this is where our team, the Devoys plus talented and telegenic 15 year old naturalist Indy Green [ as featured on BBC’s Winterwatch come in as SPECIES BUSTERS.

What we hope to do

Together we have SPECIFIC goals of… 

1. Establishing a small breeding herd of the endangered Carneddau ponies with a programme we are co-creating with the Snowdonia farmers so they are protected from flood and famine in the North of Wales. First ponies coming in end Feb. and opportunity to film round up for the brood mares in Nov 2021.

2. Entering the race to house Wales’ reintroduced first beavers and creating a wonderful wetland area instead of a swamp but if not we can fence off our river if we can only get a licence.

3. Bird habitat proliferation. With Indy, we can with him consulting on all the ways we (and by extension viewers) can enhance the habitat and encourage wildlife into the land we manage, whether it is 3500 acres at Knepp, 81 at Cym Clyd or a window box in Peckham. Indy’s job would be to keep tabs on  progress and species.

This series has both scientific and entertainment merit. Indy is going to cringe when I write this but Indy, is also an example of a teen who spends lots of time outside and has lots to say and overall is just a great role model.

We are looking to team up

Creative, passionate, individuals, a production company, director and broadcaster, knowledgeable about wildlife, who could join with us to format a programme which follows the seasons, the changes to the landscape over maybe 3 years and produce the show. We think there is a lot of interest in rewilding and we think that working with Indy who is young and fresh, we, the weatherbeaten Devoys, will provide a humorous backdrop and catalyst to change. All in stunning scenery atop the Cambrian mountains. This could make a different more entertaining programme to the genus of environmental awareness broadcasting.

In haste, if we want to make any difference this year, we need to cut back all the marsh grasses three times before May, do some wet land planting and introduce some animals – so time is of the essence.

We envisage being more like executive producers and imagine, then that rather like Grand Designs format if we come across a problem we can then try and invite or visit interesting rewilders or pioneers in foraging like our friend Pembrokshire chef Matt Powell or Derek Gow of Bring back the Beavers, to find solutions. Indy says though they are few they are all very interesting.

Our experience: what we offer

We are of course influenced by the Knepp project but we are not part of the landed gentry and hence more relatable to. Part of our scheme will be to show people how they can be more aware. I can’t wait to visit Knepp though and talk to Isabella Tree.

We are authentic: it’s our land even though we come from the Tom and Barbara Good class. All our recent construction projects (our company is Chillderness Retreats) have been in hostile environments: Wales, the French Alps.

Entertainment. So much wildlife programming is earnestly academic. We’ll actually be out there rolling up our sleeves and getting knocked back by every mud-smeared tragedy.

We’re experienced blunderers, with ‘the stamina and determination of the Great British Eccentric’ – according to Kevin McCloud.

Memorable presenters. We know we’re capable of carrying a programme (Grand Designs, hanging tree tents on George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces, This Morning, The World’s Most Extreme Homes, and our chalet on La Maison on France5) with a hilarious creative tension between David and Anjana.

The theme seems often to be: we take on yet another impossible project; will we succeed? And to be honest this is how we run our lives.

Who’s who?

Indy: half boy half bird. Passionate naturalist and ornithologist and special advisor.

Anjana: the slave-driver, the dreamer, a force of nature; deeply impractical and highly opinionated. The only Indian farmer in Powys. Her parents never let her ride but, as a Sagittarian, stubbornly remained a passionate horsewoman. Executive producer and front-woman.

David: determined have-a-go Welshman, barrister turned builder, who has now built three houses in hostile environments. The voice of reason.

Inigo: middle son, devil’s advocate, the little grit that makes the pearl in the oyster. Also surely the gayest, most literary labourer you’ve met.

Orlando: eldest son. The quiet, organised one who keeps the show on the road, and keeps Anjana’s feet on the ground.

Avalon: the stroppy, multi-lingual teenager doing her GCSEs. 16 turning 36 – who greets everything we’re doing with utmost cynicism.

Adam: the London lodger, friend and foil stuck to us in Lockdown bubble. Executive producer.

Topology: Red Kite Barn

We have a wonderful stretch of river, where the trees we planted 15 years ago straggle but provide a perfect habitat for beavers if the lake doesn’t work out, so again, not all bad. We are a pretty organic family and like nature, if one thing doesn’t work out we go for another. I identify with nature, not people!

We are in talks with the Beaver Trust, which happens to be in our local town, to do a feasibility study on their introduction. I always wanted an island to row to like everyone who loved reading children’s books in the 70s. And I wanted a horse and I’m going to have 10, 4 at the end of February, thus making up for lost time.

Red Kite Barn backs on to one of the biggest areas of common land this side of Scotland and yet, the lamb, both beloved and symbolic of Wales, and god has by its strength, adaptability and lack of predators, destroyed and out survived all but the hardiest of the native species of animal and plant.  

The stumps and detritus of the trees lie untouched whilst the rough tough reed grass has sprung up in the ground which has turned to bog now the trees have gone. The wool, the wealth of England past dominates. Can we help rebalance this?

Not everyone has acres of land. But this series will aim to give people ideas of how to re-wild their little corner of home, on a shoestring budget as they watch a bunch of lovable blunderers learn as we go, and make a lot of mistakes as we battle to return our land to the wild.

Possible format

• 12 part project, 4 episodes created each year, filmed over three years with scope for updates and spin-offs (book, blog, podcast, merchandise, conservation cause)

• Each episode is one season of the year

• Genres: lifestyle, nature/conservation

• Low-cost, high entertainment value reality TV documentary

• The ultimate goal: can we be the first place in Wales to reintroduce beavers?

• An opportunity for viewers to see a landscape change in real time

• Each episode is an experiment in re-wilding or conservation, with some featuring explanations of conservation techniques, flashes into different conservation projects/countries (e.g. Knepp Estate, Forest Coalpit Farm, Oostvaardersplassen, Highgrove, Exmoor Pony Trust, Daylesford, Durslade Farm)

• Potential for eminent guest experts on nature/conservation like Derek Gow, Isabella Tree, The Prince of Wales, David Attenborough, Monty Don

• Dramatic colour from local ‘glitterati’ of Joel the Forester, Martin The Tractor Gwilym, and Francis, Martin’s wife and implacable head of the Powys common land grazing committee

• Wales pioneers alternative projects in energy and conservation, but hides its light under a bushel. We want to showcase the magic of Wales to the rest of the world

Project details

WATER. Restore an upland water landscape, and ultimately a habitat to reintroduce beavers to Wales, also solving the problem of boggy land and flooding. (We are already working with the Welsh Beaver Trust, who are conducting a feasibility study on our land.)

LAND. Kickstart a trophic cascade which spills onto the Cambrian Mountains, reviving our defunct grazing rights by putting wild ponies and cows to re-wild the biggest moorland in the UK south of Scotland.

AIR. See which bird and insect species we can attract, probably in year 2. We already have an abundance of red kite, barn owls and nuthatches, showing that recovery is possible. 

SOIL. Working out where we’ve done right and where we’ve gone wrong. Solve the problem of how to regenerate land that has been stripped bare of nutrients and species by generations of over-grazing and monoculture timber forestry.

Timeline so far

1. WINTER 2020-21. All journeys start with destruction. We were absolutely brassic. Thanks to Covid, our business has gone up in smoke. Locked down in London, Anjana feels the call to nature and rings the ‘beaver woman’. We attempt to dig a lake and finally re-plant our lost trees. Over-grazing has killed everything. But we just replaced one monoculture with another (conifers -> marsh grass) and now need to solve the problem.
   

2. SPRING 2021. Green shoots and leaves. Time for a new approach. We try nature-led re-wilding rather than imposing trees and lakes as if we were Victorian gardeners on a grand scale. But what to do about the sodding marsh grass? We find out we have to cut it down THREE TIMES before May. By hand. 40 acres of it. We look at getting mountain ponies and ancient breeds of pigs – we’re doing everything arse about face as usual. The ponies should be here by the end of February to help us get rid of the grass.

St David's Day Supper Club at Llareggub, Saundersfoot

To get the 2020 season off to a cracking start, chef Matt Powell will be running a pop-up at our beautiful Llareggub Beach House in Saundersfoot, overlooking the harbour. This is a celebration of St David and will run over the entire week from 29 February to 8 March 2020. The venue can accommodate six people staying, and the dining experience itself will cater for up to 12. 

There are three options, with further detail described below

• Option 1: Foraging, dining experience, bed and breakfast. From £100 per person (6 places available per day)

• Option 2: Foraging, dining experience. £65 per person

• Option 3: Dining Experience only. £50 per person

Foraging and dining experiences can cater for a maximum of 12 people. Overnight accommodation for those wanting to take Option 1 is available for up to 6 people.

Fish for your supper – a Pembrokeshire foraging experience

Foraging will cover hedgerow, estuary and foreshore. The meeting time for the foraging will be from around 10 am to 11 am we then take a break from 3 pm to 4 pm.

Beachside dinner with your own private chef

Dinner will be served from 7 pm to 9.30 p.m. As always, Matt’s menus will focus on the best of Pembrokeshire produce. Set in the wonderful ambience of Llareggub, the dining experience is set to be pretty special. The anticipated menu is as follows:

Bread and butter
Wild garlic and herbs

A taste of the sea – two separate dishes
Seaweed broth, Kelp emulsification, Pepper Dulse, Scurvy grass
Cured St Brides bay prawns, Sea Campion – Alexander’s, Sea radish

Hogweed and Goats cheese mousse

Grains - Rye grains cooked in lamb stock

Shin of Carn Edward beef, Hedgerow plants, Sorrel and Shin juices
or
Slow-cooked Leg of Lamb, Hedgerow plants, sorrel, lamb juices and gorse flower cream

Birch mousse, Primrose, Wood sorrel, Ground elder twigs, Lime tree leaves

Crab apple

Welsh cakes, Butter and Chamomile tea sweetened with honey

Please note, the above dishes are subject to change depending on availability. Foraging isn't like a supermarket trip!

The venue – Llareggub

A Dylan Thomas-inspired, upside-down house in the coastal village of Saundersfoot, with stunning Atlantic Ocean views from every room.

Cool, contemporary, and impossibly scenic, Llareggub is the perfect coastal escape for a romantic couple looking for a getaway, or a larger group/family seeking an enviably located seaside retreat.

For starters, the house's location in Saundersfoot means you can take in all the amazing beauty of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, with windswept strolls and peaceful dog walks along the uncrowded coastal path. Not to mention incredible views of the Atlantic Ocean right from the house itself, which you can take in from each of the living rooms.

There's a lot of love and care to be found at Llareggub (which spells ‘bugger all' backwards, in affectionate homage to writer Dylan Thomas's fictional village in Under Milk Wood.)

“Be joyful, keep the faith, and do the little things that you have heard and seen me do.

Gwnewch y pethau bychain mewn bywyd.”

— St David