One word? When seven would do…

An early start for the ailing Goddards this morning as Davies had YACs. This months meeting was at Bentley for the annual Wood Fair. I’m still not sure precisely what they were doing as they were warned to be dressed for messy crafts but Davies seemed to spend most of his time wandering around the fair on his own. I don’t know if they were supposed to be participating in one of the stands to recruit new members or just having a day out really but he was happy!

I’d checked the price for the wood fair online and been a bit shocked to find it was £30 (the cheapest ticket price for Ady. Scarlett and I was a family ticket) so we’d pretty much decided not to go in and to visit Raystede with Scarlett and then collect Davies at 1pm. Bentley is down a single track road and we were worried it would be really busy at pickup time so we made sure we were early returning.

Raystede was fab as always. We had a walk round the geese, ducks and chickens and fed some of the birds. Scarlett ducked into one of the henhouses and found an egg :).

We enjoyed fronting out the geese trying to front us out, looked at the rabbits (I’m not big on rabbits to be honest, but some are quite pretty) and then had a look round the charity shop on site. They have proper sensible charity shop prices so we got a selection of stuff including some fancy ornate teaspoons that Scarlett took a liking to (and got five for about 10 pence each), several T shirts for Tarly, some nice balls of wool to continue adding to my blanket and a few books. We also had a drink in the cafe there too.

A quick walk round the birds – parrots and such like, saying ‘hello’ to them and getting ‘hello’s back in return and we headed back to Bentley. In the end the traffic was fine and we parked really quickly with over half an hour to go. After some debate we decided to go in after all.

We spent the first 20 minutes or so trying to find Davies as I didn’t want to have to trek all the way back round to the beginning again to meet him at 1pm. Along the way we bumped into Caz with her dad and A and E who had seen Davies several times during the morning. We had a fairly hurried cuddle and hello with them and then continued looking for Davies. We found him, sitting peacefully with a woman doing tablet weaving working with her and doing a fab PR job of Home Ed. I don’t know if it’s a result of Badger camp and finding his feet defending his lifestyle or all the campaigning and protesting we’ve been doing and talking about lately but he is on a one boy crusade to convince the world :lol:.It’s fab to see and hear him so proud of his Home Ed status, so articulate about why he’s Home Educated and how it all works, so sure and confident in what is surely now his lifestyle choice rather than ours any more and doing such a good job both of talking about it lucidly and indeed being such a good advertisement for it :).

I joined him in the weaving and chatted to the woman running it for a while and then went and sat with Scarlett who was talking to another woman about brushing, washing and spinning fleece so we had a go at that. I was surprised at how much I know, let alone how much Scarlett knows about wool and processing it from various things we’ve been to (Green Fair, Weald and Downland Museum, Butser, Open Farm Sunday). One of the women came over to ask if she could take Davies’ photo – apparentely she’d wanted to earlier as he’d been doing such a fab job with the tablet weaving but the YAC leader had said they couldn’t give authorisation and it needed to be a parent. Still seems odd that they can’t just ask Davies really 😆

We finally left that stall and Davies wanted to show us a couple of things that had caught his interest earlier so he took us to the flint knapper. He was cool – a huge bear of a man who makes all sorts of flint tools – knife blades, arrow heads, axe heads and so on. We listeded to him talking for a while and Davies showed me the knife he really liked made by him. The guy runs a flint knapping course but it’s for over 16s. Maybe Ady or I need to go on it so we can teach Davies?

Next Davies wanted us to see the food being cooked and talked about in one of the houses. There were two guys, cooking over an open fire and toasting nuts and berries, talking about fruit leather and other edible foraged for foods. We tried some hawthorn berries (raw – a bit dry but quite apple-y), some plum fruit leather, some toasted nettle leaves, hazelnuts and various other bits. I admired his fab basket made from birch bark and another from brambles and then we moved on.

Next we paused at tree climbing. Children were being winched up a very tall tree with gear used for tree felling. We got there at just the right time with only 2 children in the queue so Davies and Scarlett joined it and both had a go at being pulley-d up. They both went well over halfway, which was very high indeed. We only saw one child go all the way to the top and they had been asking to come back down again but misheard by the guy doing the winching.

We decided we were hungry so headed back to the main field in search of refreshments. The kids had an ice cream each and after much debating we settled on sharing a couple of portions of chips. The small girl who’s parents owned the burger kiosk came to chat to us while we sat down and told us all about her pickup, lorry, kiosk and how she lives in the East End. We suspect she is also Home Educated as a traveller but she was so chatty we didn’t get a word in to ask! 😆

Suitably refreshed the kids were each given a soft toy by one of the stallholders, Scarlett tried on a felted tiger skin
and they both had a go at paddling a wooden boat. I got cross as I assumed someone had pushed their child infront when Davies ended up with a random small child in with him and accused them of pushing in. I got a fairly mild mannered answer back from the father that he’d not pushed in but Davies and Scarlett hadn’t wanted to go together so he thought it would make sense for his daughter to go with Davies so I apologised but it turned out it wasn’t about them not going together, they’d both wanted to have a go on their own – which of course Davies didn’t get at all then. Grrr.Not sure if I am more cross with Davies for not being assertive, the bloke for shoving his kid in or myself for interfering at all or for not getting the whole story and then interfering properly. I suspect the only person wound up by it still is me though…

We walked round some more and came across one of the rangers from Forest School who was there selling wooden cutlery and bowls he whittles himself. We had a chat with him and then watched a blacksmith forge a snail which he hammered into the tree – very cool 🙂

The children had a go at a wood turning tool which was being used to make rungs for a ladder

swapping over midpoint so they both got a go at turning and shaving.

We moved on to watch the heavy horses moving wood about for a while and then stopped at the East Sussex Wildlife Trust stand for them to make a bee hotel and an apple bird feeder each. Both Ady and I were flagging by this point so were glad to pause awhile.

We moved on and Scarlett got caught up doing some painting which was egg yolk mixed with pigment. Not sure what Ady and Davies looked at, I suspect it was the flint knapping again.

Another Home Ed friend hailed me while I was watching Scarlett so I had a brief chat with him and marvelled that our allegedly hidden and unsocialised children had bumped into two sets of friends, a ranger from Forest School and Davies had done a marketing job on someone about Home Ed at an event 30 miles from where we live!

We started to head for the exit but stopped to chat to a guy on the endangered species stand about stag beetles. We admired some amazing wood carvings and then looked at the owls and other birds of prey on display. Ady loves owls, I don’t think he has ever looked at me like this 😉

The owl did have very beautiful eyes though, I suspect I was looking at it in much the same way!

Finally the fair was closing and I think we’d done it justice for our entrance costs, so we headed back to the car. Home via the supermarket for various bits. The kids had tea and watched The Cube. I watched X Factor and we had a curry. Given we are all still in the throes of a cold I suspect today was a bit too long a day for us really but I’m glad we went.