Woodland Events at The Hillyfield This summer saw 2 wonderful events. The Woodland Olympics 2016 & Our Great Celebration fundraiser for the Hillyfield Appeal. Thank you to everyone who helped make these happen! All the volunteers, guests, competitors and performers! Having a Woodland Open Day at Hillyfield is a great way to meet our wider community and stay in touch. The Great Celebration was a Great Celebration indeed with folk music by Martha Tilston, The Crow Puppets, Daniel Marcus Clark, and Nathan Ball. And story telling by Martin Shaw, Clive Fairweather, Clive Pigg, and Isabella Story Cycle's Liz Hurly. A feast for all was cooked up by Ginnie including a wonderful pit roast of organic
In the great scheme of things, what we are up against here at The Hillyfield is a mere mole-hill.... but boy has it seemed like a mountain! When the world seems to be shaking at the seams life can rapidly come into focus with a clarity often lost in the busyness of our day-to-day activity. Here at the Hillyfield a small team of us have been nose to the grindstone, honing the sharp edge of the axe we will use to cut through the red-planning tape and bureaucratic nightmares which have enveloped us for the past year. To be on the wrong side of the planners is a terrible thing. And here on Dartmoor, without their say so, it is nigh impossible to breathe, let alone achieve all it takes to create
It's been exactly 800 years since the writing of the 'Charter of the Forest', and now the Woodland Trust has got all sorts of people talking trees. IF you want to add your story then please contribute something to their website www.treecharter.uk. It's really important to us at The Hillyfield, as in our efforts to restore the ancient woodland here, and get the woods back into active management we have met a lot of resistance. Is it that working woodlands have been forgotten? Has it been so long, and how has Dartmoor - whose name harks back to the great Oaks which once covered these hills - turned her back on the small woodlands which now make up the edges of the moor? There is a quiet moveme
