The Filberts Archives
Beekeeping, gardening and other musings.
William Barnes Night in West Dorset
Dorset poet William Barnes (1801-1886) is celebrated annually by a bunch of local enthusiasts. Held in a cider shed in the depths of West Dorset a group of idiosyncratic Westcountry folk spend an evening of music, food, cider, songs and poetry. The words of Barnes’ poetry is recited in the Dorset dialect of his era. Have a look of this little video of Mark doing his best wurzel…
Twinways Wassail!
A peculiar orchard tradition with its routes in paganism comes alive each year at Twinways Orchard; we invited cider and orchard lovers to help us ward off evil spirits and to shore up our chances of a good apple yield later in the year.
Bee Breeding Project at Twinways
It was an exciting end to the Summer for Twinways and their bee breeding project!
Bridport Open Studios comes to Filberts Barn
Filberts' Barn is transformed into a fab exhibition space this weekend as we host an Open Studio event. Bridport Open Studios is a West Dorset-wide event, which opens up many local artists' studios to the public. Suzy Moger is displaying a large collection of...
Making a linocut for our new greetings cards
Read how Suzy Moger, local painter and printmaker, designed the new Filberts Lino Print Greetings Card. From initial sketches, to carving the lino, and printing the final piece, here's Suzy's story of how it was made. We decided that a linocut would be a great place...
In the production barn today
This morning we made a batch of Lemon and Geranium Body Butter. As we go into Autumn and the weather cools, I find my skin is drier and in need of a little extra care. So I’ve started using a little body butter on my face (when it's still damp) as a soothing...
Making Muscle Rub
We've been making muscle rub today and one of the essential oils in the recipe is Yarrow (achillea millefolium) which is a gorgeous deep blue colour, because its composition is up to 51% azulene. Richard Mabey in The Complete New Herbal writes: "Its Latin name is...
Late Summer Flowers
The cold spell in June meant that summer flowers are a bit later this season – it’s September but the bees are still feeding on golden rod and myrtle, usually finished by the end of August in Dorset. Michaelmas daisy is late, but that means there is still something to...
Gathering Pollen
The bees are gathering pollen, most likely from willow or thorn trees in the cider orchard. The pollen is their protein source and it is stored in the frames alongside the honey. It is found in the brood nest, in an arc over the top of the brood frames. [starbox...
Making Beeswax Bars & Queens
Yesterday I made about 500 beeswax bars and queens by melting and filtering raw beeswax - the bars sold really well last year with so much crafting going on. The queens were popular when we tried them at a show and have gone down well since we started packing them in...
Bee Feeding, Harvesting & Pressing
The weather remained reasonable this year and hive populations stayed high late into the season. So, with plenty of late forage, the bees needed feeding in late September and early October.Although there are many schools of thought regarding feeding, we use sugar...
Apple cake and institutions
Dorset Apple CakeCooking apples have been falling for a few weeks now. The sheep help them down by rubbing against the trees, others fall during little bouts of windy, rainy weather. I usually turn to mum's Dorset WI cookbook from the 70s at some point in the apple...
Swarms and splits
Nearly all the colonies have been split now. Some of the new queens from this exercise will create more colonies for increase and some will replace the old queen and make larger stronger colonies for foraging once re-united. Splitting involves opening a hive,...
A day in the life of a beekeeper
I’m sat within while it rains outside. My swede aches from too much sun yesterday and a sixteen hour day trying to cram in a fungicide spray around pollination so as not to disturb the bees while they work in the sunshine. Our new accommodation is taking shape...
Dandelion love
Dandelions tend to be labelled as bad guys in the gardening world and we sometimes take a pot of dandelion flowers along to shows to get talking about how dandelion honey tastes so good. Our pics were taken some years ago by Freya in the wilds of Dorset, in a remote...
West Dorset in Bloom
Dorset is looking rather lovely at the moment. The bluebells are putting on a spectacular show and our local orchards are now coming into bloom. This means, having removed feeders and split strong hives earlier in the Spring, we've been busy moving our bee hives from...
Muscle Rub
It's that time of the year again - Mark's been on a pruning mission in the cider orchards. That means pruning several hundred trees every day. So we're especially excited about our brand new Muscle Rub joining the Filberts range - what great timing! This soft, easily...
Apples and honey, or honey and apples?
Whichever way you want to look at it, in the autumn we're surrounded by piles of cyder apples and pools of golden honey. It could be worse. Last weekend, we sold alot of honey and cyder at Eat Dorset Food Fair. A great weekend in Dorset, tasting other people's fine...
Leaker’s harvest loaf
Took a bit of West Dorset to West London with our harvest loaf baked by Leaker's of Bridport - it had pride of place on our tradeshow stand in West London last week. Like to keep Dorset on the map. Customers were a bit surprised when we gave out apples (as we don't...
Busy, Busy
Things certainly kick off for us over the summer months. While our fat sheep doze quietly under the apple trees, the bees buzz industriously around their respective West Dorset sites and we dart about after them catching swarms, splitting or moving hives and...