Monday 28th May 6pm

Coniston Institute

Dr. Derek Lynch is an expert in organic agriculture and professor at Dalhousie University in Canada. He is in Consiton to give a talk on his research into organic and sustainable agricultural systems from around the world. This talk is free and not to be missed so please come along! Refreshments will be served.

Dr. Derek Lynch is Canada Research Chair in Organic Agriculture at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. His teaching and research interests include organic and sustainable agricultural systems, environmental/ecological impact of farming system, and soil quality and fertility management.

Coniston cricket pavilion

One of the most beautiful recreation grounds

A talk and workshop with renowned Interior Designer Michael Marriott, as part of the development of the Coniston cricket pavilion and grounds.

Friday 25th May

6 - 9pm

The event is free and a buffet dinner is included. All are welcome.

This is the second event in a series of talks focusing on contemporary, sustainable building and design for a community build project.

Welsh apple 'Croen Mochyn' in blossom

Followers of our garden here will remember that the orchard is filled with competing English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh varieties all chosen for their suitability for this windswept spot.

First into blossom on these young apple trees are local variety 'Keswick Codlin', with Welsh varieties 'Croen Mochyn' (pictured) and 'Bardsey Island'. Also interesting to note was the early leafing up of the quinces - an unnamed variety gifted to us by Brantwood, a seedling from the Russian estate of Tolstoy�and a new Eastern European variety 'Humbug'.

Welsh apple 'Croen Mochyn' in blossom

Followers of our garden here will remember that the orchard is filled with competing English, Scottish, Irish and Welsh varieties all chosen for their suitability for this windswept spot.

First into blossom on these young apple trees are local variety 'Keswick Codlin', with Welsh varieties 'Croen Mochyn' (pictured) and 'Bardsey Island'. Also interesting to note was the early leafing up of the quinces - an unnamed variety gifted to us by Brantwood, a seedling from the Russian estate of Tolstoy�and a new Eastern European variety 'Humbug'.

Keswick Codlin - a local apple going for it as only a local could

A very tragic recent night when 4 of our 5 runner ducklings were killed by a badger breaking in to their housing, but on the plus our young orchard has been in blossom for about a week - lovely sunny weather after a few very wet and cold April weeks which had them in cold storage.

Keswick Codlin - a local apple going for it as only a local could

A very tragic recent night when 4 of our 5 runner ducklings were killed by a badger breaking in to their housing, but on the plus our young orchard has been in blossom for about a week - lovely sunny weather after a few very wet and cold April weeks which had them in cold storage.

Holidaying at home is the new going away so here's a link to our neighbour and friend John Atkinson's holiday blog. His 2 week annual leave from his National Trust job is spent lambing on his farm.

Dominic Stevens at Coniston Institute. Photo by Hydar Dewachi

We have now had a couple of meetings with the local cricket, tennis and bowling clubs with a plan to work with them to re-develop their buildings (in particular the cricket pavilion). Set in one of the most stunning views in Coniston at the base of a mountain, the opportunity to create a contemporary build (or series of buildings) couldn't be missed. As a community project, this will involve quite a lengthy process of discussions, talks and workshops to re-think the whole area and how it might be possible to generate income streams from these new buildings. The first talk we organised was with Irish architect Dominic Stevens. With his sensitivity to the landscape and to environmental issues, use of local materials and labour and to being cost efficient, his talk went down very well. We then had a discussion about the needs of Coniston, the community and the three clubs and decided that what we don't need is another pub (there are 6 already in the village) but what would be beneficial was if the pavilion could double as accommodation during the winter, generating income for the clubs. There was a bit of opposition to this, mainly from fear that a precedent would be set which would allow the site to become a housing estate in the future, but generally everyone was all for a multi-use contemporary build.  

Runner ducks - 2nd generation

In fact a crowd of people helped to name these, our 5 new runner ducklings hatched ourselves from our own Maurice's eggs....

Runner ducks - 2nd generation

In fact a crowd of people helped to name these, our 5 new runner ducklings hatched ourselves from our own Maurice's eggs....

Three full-time residential Land and Garden Internships are now available for 4-6 weeks each, to run between�May and the end of September. We are looking for proactive people who are engaged in horticultural study or that of a closely-related subject (e.g forestry) and/or have a keen practicing interest in gardening and land management. Previous experience of practical horticulture is essential.

The produce from Lawson Park Farm farm provides for those working and living at Lawson Park and for food-related projects we run locally, nationally and internationally. The farmhouse is surrounded by woodland and circa 15 acres of land (largely managed organically) that contains ornamental gardens, a new orchard, extensive kitchen gardens, a polytunnel and wildflower meadow. We also keep chickens, ducks and pigs. The gardens open to the public annually under the National Garden Scheme and to visiting specialist groups to whom guided tours are offered.� Under the leadership of resident warden - artist Karen Guthrie - the land has been developed over the last decade with an emphasis on productivity, sustainability and manageability, marrying contemporary elements with traditional materials and features.

Duties will include general garden and land maintenance, establishment of new cultivated areas, propagation, harvesting, arboriculture and animal care. Although the practical work is often routine, you will have the chance to develop and further your personal interests as well as having the opportunity to participate in diverse Grizedale Arts projects. You will be paid £100 per week and we provide full board in the Lawson Park farmhouse.

Please email maria@grizedale.org for an application form and any questions you may have.

Three full-time residential Land and Garden Internships are now available for 4-6 weeks each, to run between�May and the end of September. We are looking for proactive people who are engaged in horticultural study or that of a closely-related subject (e.g forestry) and/or have a keen practicing interest in gardening and land management. Previous experience of practical horticulture is essential.

The produce from Lawson Park Farm farm provides for those working and living at Lawson Park and for food-related projects we run locally, nationally and internationally. The farmhouse is surrounded by woodland and circa 15 acres of land (largely managed organically) that contains ornamental gardens, a new orchard, extensive kitchen gardens, a polytunnel and wildflower meadow. We also keep chickens, ducks and pigs. The gardens open to the public annually under the National Garden Scheme and to visiting specialist groups to whom guided tours are offered.� Under the leadership of resident warden - artist Karen Guthrie - the land has been developed over the last decade with an emphasis on productivity, sustainability and manageability, marrying contemporary elements with traditional materials and features.

Duties will include general garden and land maintenance, establishment of new cultivated areas, propagation, harvesting, arboriculture and animal care. Although the practical work is often routine, you will have the chance to develop and further your personal interests as well as having the opportunity to participate in diverse Grizedale Arts projects. You will be paid £100 per week and we provide full board in the Lawson Park farmhouse.

Please email maria@grizedale.org for an application form and any questions you may have.

Tomas, not helping in the orchard

Lawson Park's new orchard of UK-wide heritage fruit varieties has been finished, with the last few trees from Irish Seed Savers - a heritage nursery in Co. Clare, from whom we have the deliciously named Cavan Sugar Cane, Keegan's Crab, Armagh, and Yellow Pitcher.

I've also pruned the trees that went in last winter and added a quince, Serbian Gold.�

Every tree has received ample well-rotted manure and / or garden compost, and we are trying a biogegradable fibre mulch mat around each to keep off weed growth for as long as possible.

Here are the varieties we are growing this year:
Beauty of Bute,�Cara,�Highland Burgundy Red,�Pentland Squire,�Picasso,�Red Duke of York,�Sarpo Axona

Here are the varieties we are growing this year:
Beauty of Bute,�Cara,�Highland Burgundy Red,�Pentland Squire,�Picasso,�Red Duke of York,�Sarpo Axona

Currently enjoying the light airport novel by Maxine Berg: The Machinery Question and the Making of Political Economy 1815 - 1848. It includes this marvellous illustration by Burnett from 1826 to be hung in every Mechanics Institute in the land. It shows the King in the middle and spirals out through fifteen layers of revolution with the paupers in the workhouse at its tail: "the best informed and the most industrious will always, in their exertion to get forward, thrust out the more ignorant in the rear". Like an aspirational colon. Should be made into an app for for Art Facts. Nominations please for who's in the middle and who's left in a blue pastic doggy bag in a roadside hedge.

Art factories in the snow

The print studio is the hangar on the left and the tower was used to imprison peasant farmers who didn't pay enough tax.

This week travels bring me to a wintery (-12C) Breugelish Hildersheim in the middle of Germany to meet up Charles Esche and his team from the Van Abbe Museum and Prof. Thomas Lange of the University to discuss 1848, the usage of art, agriculture, the Zombie of modernism, cluelessness and edutainment (that word has, worryingly no spell check alert), among other things we are plotting to crowbar into an exhibition to change the world, or at least change how we see it .

The art school here is like the Mercedes version of Lawson Park’s Vauxhall Chevette. The arts school is built around a gargantuan 13^th century mega farm-cum-fortress, surrounded by the most fertile soil in Germany. It’s very notable as you travel through this country by train that, in contrast to the UK, this is a land dedicated to productivity. Trackside in England reveals and a parade of retail hanger parks, malls, industrial wastelands, leisurelands and factories converted to go-kart tracks; a country given over to consumption. In Germany everyone seems to be at work, factory chimneys have smoke coming from them, the countryside is heavily farmed, not set aside and an engineering aesthetic pervades all, even at the Choco Leibniz factory.

Back at the art school we go to the student cafeteria which serves homemade café und kuchen. In fact it trumps pretty much any restaurant the Lake District has to offer and I gaze down at my 90 degree slice of subsidised patisserie and remember less fondly the Ginsters and scalding milky tea of the Goldsmiths’ refectory. But this is interrupted by a request from an art history student who is doing her thesis, startlingly, on Grizedale Arts and has heard that I am in town. “Are you sure?” I say. Apparently this website is read avidly in Europe, so we’d better get our act together. This is subsequently confirmed by Grizedale alumni and current Hildersheim artist professor Antje Schiffers who complains that we need to maintain the joke count on the site. Although, she says, we might be doing that but just not in a way she finds funny.

Our lonely pig Octavia has found herself suddenly kicked out of her palatial home and grounds, and into a smaller field with makeshift arc, to make way for a herd of 8 new pigs. They're a very rowdy bunch and full of lice and worms (and God knows what else) and are very malnourished. The renegade 8 were found abandoned in a nearby car park last week by our neighbour farmer John,but with no ear tags, it was impossible to trace where they came from. John had no room on his farm so we decided to home them. Judging by the state of them (I've never seen protruding spines, ribs and hip bones on pigs) I guess whoever had them didn't know what was involved in keeping them or just didn't care. I think they are actually mico-pigs. Not the cute ones everyone imagines mico-pigs to be, but the things they grow into. They are smaller than most pigs but still above knee high and pretty ugly! They are 'micro-pigs' because they breed runts with runts, ie. the unhealthiest in the litter of any breed. You can see in these ones bits of Tamworth, Saddleback and maybe a bit of Berkshire or Large Black. It could be that someone stole a couple, thinking they could breed them and make a ton of money. A rare breed pig like our British Lop, bought as a weaner, costs about £60. Mico-pigs cost about £600! However, unless you have registered the pigs and have them ear tagged, you can't sell them on or take them to slaughter. You can't even legally move them without the right paper work. The animal welfare people at DEFRA have let us register these pigs with our own herd mark so we can legally move them and take them to slaughter when the time comes (if I can get them healthy enough).

In the mean time, the BBC are coming up to Lawson Park with their cameras, so who knows, maybe someone watching will identify the rogue owner!

Wolmsley Cricket Pavilion - for real

A recent dinner in Norwich with my favourite nature guru Richard Mabey brought to my attention a utopian cricket ground that could influence our own endeavours to revision the home of cricket in our local village of Coniston: Sir Paul Getty's 'cottage ornee' cricket pavilion set in the heart of the woods of the Chilterns (that's the bit soon to be changed by high-speed rail).

We won't quite have Getty's budget but we may well have his gumption.

The annual seminar organised by Tate was hosted by Grizedale Arts throughout Coniston using the Coniston Institute, St Andrews Church, Brantwood, the Waterhead Hotel, Coniston launch and our headquarters at Lawson Park farm.

On the Wednesday evening the main hall of the Coniston Institute provided the backdrop for a grand dinner of 34 people comprising the directors of the Plus Tate group and the local “villager elders” who have been consistently volunteering over the last year towards the restoration of the historic Institute.

The dispersed nature of the seminar, was used to demonstrate the concept of the Village as Institution using what might be termed the Civic Framework, people and all, as the site for the conference. This is turn works to build a collective, social resource rather than a simple venue hire or site visit – using the village like one might use a work of art.

Throughout the three days the delegates ate menus that were made entirely from local produce and artists projects including local venison, Lawson Park pork, St James’ and Ruskin Blue cheese, wild grouse, Kathrin Bohm’s sauerkraut and Lawson Park grown vegetables and so on. Particularly popular were the dessert contributions of trifle, chocolate cake and lemon meringue pie created especially for the Tate by the village.