Celtic Druid Temple
  • Home
  • Blog
  • Community Woodland
    • Community Woodland Volunteer
    • Woodland Blog
  • Celtic Ceremonies
    • Celtic Weddings >
      • Fees and Service
      • Wedding FAQ
      • Wedding Testimonials
    • Naming and Welcoming
    • Coming of Age
    • Passing Over
  • Holy Days
    • Summer Solstice Pilgrimage
    • Full Moon
    • Sun Festivals
    • Pilgrimage
  • Druidschool
    • Sli an Druí Celtic Spirituality Weekend
    • Slí an Druí Online Course
    • Ard Druí Course
    • OgamNua Book
    • OgamNua Weekend Course
  • Membership
    • membershipcards
    • Primordial Tradition
    • Member's Library
  • Contact Us
    • Book a Tour
    • How to get here
    • Media Notice
  • Videos
  • Feineachus (aka Brehon Law)
  • Tuath Mór na nGael
  • Donate

23/12/2020

23/12/2020

1 Comment

 
Picture

It’s been awhile since my last update. Like the rest of the world we too are feeling the effects of the restrictions and changes. So we are exploring ways of keeping the woodland open and active.

Plans for 2021
Our plan for 2021 is to host an open day in late Spring focused on exploring the benefits of mixed woodlands to families. From this open day we will offer 6 weeks of interactive woodland workshops free of charge to local families. These workshops will be fun in design and will encourage further exploration into how individual families can benefit from mixed woodlands. It is my hope that after the 6 weeks some of the families may wish to explore their woodland interests further and that ultimately our interactions will lead to co-management of a thriving mixed woodland.

Woodland Progress
The woodland itself is progressing great. This year we are starting to thin the woods as well as taking out dead branches along pathways. This is part of the necessary ongoing care and maintenance of a managed woodland but it’s also a wonderful harvest. We now have a continuous supply of small diameter branches and are converting these into kindling for the fires and wood-chips to use in two ways – mulch around the farm and to inoculate with mycelium. We are growing a plentiful supply of edible mushrooms and the mycelium will help to bring the earth alive.

Rewilding
I've been having great fun and success with re-wilding some burdock plants – many years ago I harvested wild seed from a nearby forest and sowed it directly onto a patch near the house where I could keep an eye on it – nothing appeared for years but now I have a continuous harvest of burdock from that small patch and I've been encouraging and supporting the plant to move further out on to the land.

Irish Sustainable Forestry Standards
I reported previously that I was attending meetings as part of the PEFC Sustainable Forest Standard review. I attended several meetings in person and as the restrictions came in I attended the online meetings. The standard was reviewed and a lot of discussion took place in the process. However we have just received notice from PEFC that the process has been suspended due to lack of funding. The next step of the process was to bring our review and suggestions to the wider consultative group and then to the public. I can’t help but wonder if the current discord in the forest industry has impacted this review process in some way which may not be obvious to someone not working within the industry. Time will tell.

So for now we're busy working in the woodland, harvesting, clearing and chipping. The local archery club has also been working on the land establishing a walkway with bridges to navigate drains. This means the club can move from the practice field out onto a walking archery course. We're also planning a fruit orchard and will be investing in some heritage fruit trees very soon.

As always thank you for your continued support, we are always open to positive ideas and offers of contribution and collaboration.

I won't leave it so long until the next update,
Happy Winter Solstice to you and yours,
Grá
Niamh

1 Comment

April 23, 2020

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
During March 2020, we had planned to extend our opening times and facilities to the local community, we had planned a series of articles in the newspaper encouraging people to visit and explore the concept of community woodlands with us. So much of this plan relied on physical human interaction, but this element of course had to be postponed.

But then a Sleeping Giant woke up and gave us a gift!

Some of you might be aware of a project in Leitrim initiated by a lady called Lyn Brookes, she set up a go fund me called Sleeping Giant with the aim of buying land in Leitrim and planting a community woodland. The project couldn't go ahead and in January Lyn let everyone know that she was closing the go fund me and that donators could have a refund or their donations would be passed on to our Candlefield Community Woodland. Last week The Sleeping Giant project transferred €2,958 to Celtic Druid Temple.

Thank you Sleeping Giant!

Previous to this one of our wonderful members took up the call (pre lockdown) and collected over 2000 trees from a cancelled planting project and delivered them to the woodland here, he would have stayed to plant them as well only the lock down measures were announced. Thank you Dave!

We decided to share a large portion of the 2000 trees with our neighbours and realised that the community woodland truly has spread its roots. This month we have also received a number of new membership subscriptions and some very welcome donations from long standing members and contributors. Thank you all so much!

These gestures have raised our spirits and given us renewed energy. At a time when big industry supported by the State is treating trees as another resource to extract profit from, the actions of Sleeping Giant and our members are essential to restoring our relationship with the trees and the woodlands........
Read the full update on at this link https://www.celticdruidtemple.com/blog/meitheal-and-mead-indigenous-solutions

0 Comments

January 28, 2020

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Thank you so much for your support. In February I will attend the first meeting of the working group to revise the Irish standards for sustainable forestry management under the PEFC, the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification. I am preparing a working document as my brief and I would very much like to hear your opinions. You can see the current set of standards at http://pefc.ie

I am representing Celtic Druid Temple and our interests in restoring our Native Woodlands as a source of abundance for the indigenous peoples of Ireland. I ask you, if interested, to email me your suggestions and ideas in a focused short document of no more than 500 words. The proviso is that your suggestions must be phrased in the positive and be solutions focused. We are aware of the many problems associated with industrial planting of mono cultures and the harm it is inflicting and the harm associated with foreign investment companies buying up large tracts of land. Our focus will be to present working solutions to eliminate the harm currently being caused by the industry. Please email me with your suggestions or questions.
Grá
Niamh

0 Comments

December 14, 2019

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Thank You!
We have received a number of donations over the last month and we would like to say a big thank you to all our supporters. This month we'd also like to highlight the contribution of Emma and Dave at Emma's So Naturals. This homegrown family run enterprise decided not to go down the 'black' Friday route and instead chose a 'green' Friday and donated a portion of their sales from the day to our Forest Nation!

Forest Standard Review
Celtic Druid Temple was nominated and accepted as a stakeholder on the Working Group to review Ireland's sustainable forestry standard. We'll be participating with a view to highlighting the spiritual and traditional needs of indigenous people in relation to our forests and woodlands. We'll keep you posted on this one!

Grá
Niamh

0 Comments

November 11, 2019

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Thank you so much for your continued support, it's the busy season now in our forest, busy for us that is! Time to get in there and clear some pathways, stomp down the grass and find any lost trees not to mention see how the trees survived the Deer rut! We had a biodiversity survey commissioned last Summer, here's an excerpt from it........."Due to previous farming practices and land use techniques the majority of the land suffers from poor soil regeneration......original hedgerows remain relatively intact and without testing indicate more balanced soil PH. These hedgerows are the largest source of biodiversity and possess the most beneficial eco tone on the land. Improvement of soil conditions, water drainage and take up are visible from the efforts of the recent years. With proper management practices and the succession of time the land would eventually regenerate into a unique woodland and thriving ecosystem" you can read the full PDF at this link: https://www.celticdruidtemple.com/druid-forest.html
Grá
Niamh

0 Comments

October 14, 2019

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
We are a forest people without a forest. Our way of life, our culture and our abundance comes from the forest. The forest is our great teacher, it is not gone from us, it lies dormant in the earth of Éire. When you leave a piece of land to regenerate naturally trees appear, when a diverse and natural forest develops it becomes a place of abundance where our culture can thrive. The forest provides food, fuel and shelter to name just some of the physical abundance, imagine food fuel and shelter in abundance - impossible to tax or regulate - just take a moment to actually imagine that this is possible,really possible - I mean stop reading and look out your window and imagine for a moment a free food machine outside your door - if you can accept that an abundance of food, fuel and shelter is possible and that this is a good thing then you can do two things to make this happen 1. Plant a tree or let a tree grow and 2. Be open to learning about abundance from that tree.

Trees don't need us - we need them, we need to reconnect our culture to that of trees and that means educating ourselves, not with academic knowledge but with hands on practical knowledge and skills. Our vision as Druí is to create a nation of demonstration sites in the Celtic Homelands where trees and people live in harmony and abundance. This is Celtic Forest Culture for today. Candlefield Community Forest is our first demonstration site within the Celtic Forest Nation.

0 Comments

September 5, 2019

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Thank you so much to all our supporters. Over the summer months we’ve been strengthening community connections. In July we co-hosted a showing of a documentary film titled Call of the Forest to some of our local County Councillors and community activators in the beautiful settings of Clonalis House in Castlerea. The Woodland League presented their school’s forest in a box initiative and it was warmly received. Our next step is to support more schools and community groups to connect with this great initiative. We’ve joined a knowledge transfer group to connect us with people who are stewards of other woodlands. As well as sharing experiences we will be attending class room sessions in the practical aspects of managing our woodland e.g when and how to thin. We’ll be visiting other managed community woodland spaces and are really looking forward to those days out. In August we had a great day at Ireland’s first woodland festival in Leitrim. Now that it’s September we’re connecting back in with the schools and community groups to start some local tree planting this season. In the forest here every thing is growing really well, we’re preparing for the busy Autumn season – lots of grass stomping around trees, checking for damage caused by the deer, and pruning some of the thousands of oak trees in our youngest forest which is protected from the deer. We’ll be hosting volunteer days most Saturdays until November. Our outdoor craft project for the winter is making willow wattle hurdles. The three pics we've shared here are of the young mixed native woodland forest and some of the other residents we share this Land with. As always we really appreciate your support in what ever way you can share. Grá Niamh and Con
0 Comments

June 14, 2019

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
We had a great week here at Candlefield Community Forest. We visited one local school to make plans for next year and another school visited us. I also made contact with The Woodland League and heard all about their brilliant Forest in a Box initiative. More to follow on that soon.
On Wednesday last, 40 children and their teachers joined me in a walk around the Land, we started at the Round House where after an introduction each child took a quartz pebble to bring on their walk. When we got to the edge of the young forest I asked them to hold the pebble tight and breath a wish of health into the rock then encouraged them to find a tree to leave the pebble and wish with. We had great fun. My favourite quote from the school's visit in response to me saying I've offered to host a beehive.. “well, if you do get bees send them down to us as we've just planted a pollinators garden” .... the school is just under a mile away so it might just happen :)

0 Comments

May 25, 2019 Thank You!

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Thank you for the donations and shares. Including donations via our website we are now at €645. We've also received some brilliant ideas from donors and advice from professionals. We've signed up for the host a hive initiative which means our forest is now open to local beekeepers to keep a hive or two. This means the bees and the forest will benefit from us humans talking and sharing with each other. I share a pic that shows the forest progression, in the back ground beyond our property line you can see the bog and sitka spruce, then as you come to the middle you can see our native woodland and in the foreground is our young oak wood. It really is a joy to be here but to have your support as well is so important to me and this forest initiative. Grá Niamh. #celticforestnation
0 Comments

May 15, 2019 #celticforestnation

11/12/2020

0 Comments

 
Picture
I've created a hashtag for this campaign: #celticforestnation
Support the Celtic Forest Nation one community woodland at a time. Trees give us so much, they are the foundation of our Culture. Join us in co creating the positive change needed for this beautiful world we live in. We need your help to co create and share this abundance. One community forest at a time #celticforestnation

0 Comments

    Author

    Exploring the benefits of mixed woodlands for families.

    Archives

    December 2020

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed