Parham House - Autumn Foraging And Estate Life

Hannah and I joined some friends at Parham on Sunday for their Autumn event.

Hannah had a try at long reining a beautiful Ardennes heavy horse, watched the heavy horse demonstration, explored the antique farming equipment, the herb gardens and the maze, and generally had a lovely time with her friend!

Meeting Drew the shire horse.

Learning to long rein Ellie-May

Outside the playhouse

 Learning about life in days gone by

Milk churn!

mushrooms and truffles

 Hannah's favourite exhibition, the heavy horse demonstration.

Celandine the Suffolk Punch

Drew

Ellie-May

Parham is a lovely place, well worth a visit. We are looking forward to exploring more next time.

Natural Art Workshop - Swanwick Nature Reserve

Swanwick Nature Reserve is an old clay workings reclaimed by nature and now managed as a wildlife and educational site .
They run all kinds of nature workshops for children , and yesterday Hannah went on a natural art session with our home education group.

The children made natural paints, paintings and natural sculptures in teams.

 Foraging for colours

 learning about natural paints

Hannah's blackberry paint

Painting and using leaf crumbs for texture.

Hannah's natural palette

 After lunch the children split into teams to make sculptures. Hannah's team wanted to make a woodland scene,

 and they did - complete with tree, dragonfly, snail, squirrel, mouse, rabbit, mole (and his hole) and a frog!

While we were out in the woods we did some nature spotting and saw some really special caterpillars, fungi and hornets.

elephant hawk moth caterpillar

Bracket fungi

Hornet

Fly Agaric fungi

Pale Tussock Moth caterpillar

We had a great day, Hannah loved being out in the woods with her friends and really enjoyed the workshop as the staff were so friendly and informative.

Huge thank you to Sally for organising it - we can't wait til the next one now!

An Afternoon At Staunton Farm

This afternoon Hannah and I spent a lovely three hours at Staunton Farm. My dad came with us for a little while and we sat in the sunshine and had a cup of tea together. Then he left to run some errands and Hannah and I visited all the animals and Hannah played in the trees and gardens.

Feeding a hungry chicken!

 Hannah met the Shetland pony foal for the first time and was completely smitten. Her name is Poppy and she is a tiny, adorable little thing.

We saw the sheep and pigs,

Hannah fed the goats.

She really enjoyed exploring the park and making up fairy dances in the trees!

 She found herself a cross country jump and "cantered" up and down jumping it!

There were signs of Autumn everywhere - my very favourite season!

The gardens were full of autumn herbs and flowers, and the flowers were full of bees and butterflies!

Teddy and Pony had a nice time exploring the maze with Hannah!

I think she might be practising her riding position here!

Hannah spent a lot of time sitting or laying in the trees!

Finally we had to leave as the farm was closing, so this lucky goat got all the rest of the animal food in Hannah's bag and we spotted the barn owl on the way out!

 It was really nice to just wander around, no schedule or activity, just the two of us, and Hannah so happy to be out with the animals. We've had such a lovely afternoon.