THOUGHTS ON SPRING
As the days start to lengthen and the sun rises higher in the sky giving off its welcome warmth it is heartening to see nature coming into her own again. Bulbs are pushing up through the earth, some already with the glorious golden flowers of daffodils and the mixed colours of the early hyacinths not far behind. Hellebores, those hardy perennial plants of late winter, are filling odd corners of the garden and the white, yellow and pink of primroses and the more vibrant colours of polyanthus have replaced the early snowdrops and aconites for another year.
Many birds have found their partners for this year and have started nest building. Collared doves and wood pigeons can be seen collecting twigs and even small sticks to make their precarious platforms (one could hardly call them nests) whilst blackbirds have been gathering muddy waste to stabilise their nests and make a safe place to lay their eggs.
The pair of robins that come to the feeders have built a nest somewhere close by having seen off the second pair that were here during the colder weather of the winter months. Goldfinches, great tits, blue tits, chaffinches, dunnocks and the odd great spotted woodpecker are all around and our resident sparrow has been seen taking nesting material into the hole in the wall by the back door. Our biggest delight this year is that we have been visited by siskins who seem to love the sunflower seeds that have been put out. Three or four of these colourful little birds come regularly although we did have a congregation of eight of them all together on the feeders earlier in the month.
Following the rather wet winter the lawn is looking quite lush and growing apace, it will not be long before we hear the steady sound of grass being cut on a regular basis everywhere. This year the cyclamen has spread its leaves into the grass which poses a problem – do we dig up and replant elsewhere or just leave them and hope they don’t get mown down later in the year.
Enjoy the changing seasons of your gardens and be grateful that we have these marvellous spaces to revive our senses and renew our love of nature.
Keith Lievesley to step down from Ufford Parish Council
As some of you will already have heard, Keith Lievesley is shortly to retire from Ufford Parish Council, having served continuously for a remarkable 40 years or so. In so doing he will be stepping down from the post of chairman – a role he has fulfilled for most of his period of service.
During this period of office Keith has led the parish council with vigour and great diligence – far surpassing the workload that many people might associate with the role.
As well as being voluntary and unpaid, the job of Parish Council Chair can sometimes be a thankless one and being seen as a figurehead can make one a target for brickbats as well as bouquets. To his eternal credit though, Keith has never shirked difficult decisions and has acted without fear or favour – always seeking to do what is best for the village as a whole and for the wider environment.
Keith’s work on behalf of Ufford Parish Council has often taken him beyond the village to attend regular meetings elsewhere. As well as being the Ufford Parish representative on the Barnack Ward Group he has also been a long-serving member of the Peterborough City Council Joint Scrutiny Committee.
His final parish council meeting as a council member will be on April 9th and his very last duty before stepping down will be to chair the Annual Village Meeting in early May (watch out for further details).
Keith’s sterling work has benefited Ufford in too many ways to list here, and the village owes him a great debt of gratitude.
Notes from Barnack Hills and Holes Village Forum
News from meeting held on 21st February 2024
The sheep will be moving to Castor when then ground is dry enough, and will have moved by the time this is published.
The scrub continues to be cleared. To maintain the SSSI status, no more than 25% of the site can be scrub. Peterborough Conservation Volunteers have been helping, as well as the usual Hills and Holes volunteers on alternate Tuesdays. If you are available to help at 9.30, every other Tuesday, please contact ross.edgar@naturalengland.org.uk The next volunteer days are 19th March, 2nd April, 16th April. All welcome, for a variety of tasks.
The turkey oak trees which have been taken down have been difficult to have removed from the site, as the wood is of little value. Hopefully, it will have been removed by the time this report is published.
There are five ‘mushroom’ censors with guards to protect them from dogs and sheep when they are on site, which are part of a long-term Anglia Ruskin University study of soil temperature and moisture.
Fences will soon go up again to protect particularly sensitive and valuable areas of the Hills and Holes. There was a particularly good showing of orchids last year, and pasqueflowers the year before, so we are hoping for another good year.
A plea to take your dog poo to the bins, or home with you, and not leave full dog poo bags next to the gates. If you see anyone doing this, please politely request they use one of the six bins around the edge of the site. One dog poo bin seems to fill very quickly, and this is being addressed.
A robot mower has cleared the track at the southern edge of the site, and also one of the holes which was completely covered by a rampant version of a clematis climber.
There is an active village liaison committee, so if you have any items you want raised, please contact Ross, or one of the village members of the committee, such as Margaret Palmer.
St.John Burkett, on behalf of Barnack Hills and Holes Village Forum
Messy Church
Messy Church this month is on Sunday 14th April, 3.30 to 5pm in Barnack Church. Lots of families come along to Messy Church regularly, or from time to time, and there is always a real buzz as everyone arrives to be welcomed by tea/coffee/squash and homemade cakes and biscuits, and a starter activity to help everyone to get thinking about the Bible story for the month. Last time the children really enjoyed searching for animal footprints around the church as we began to think about Jesus washing his friends dirty feet – who makes messy footprints in your home! After hearing the Bible story and singing a favourite song, there were lots of fun and thoughtful crafts and activities to keep everyone busy. We made lovely scented foot soak as a gift for someone we know whose feet get tired after a long day, a puppet to show that Jesus is both King and Servant, a thank you card to give to someone who does a messy job to help us, and the children stood in a bowl of paint and made a footprint certificate to take home then had their feet washed at Messy Church. All at one Messy Church! Afterwards we thought about why we had made these things and found out a bit more about the story, sang some songs and prayed a short prayer, before heading home.
At the time of writing we hadn’t decided on the crafts and activities for the April Messy Church, but there will be just as much fun and thoughtfulness as we find out about the many times people met Jesus in the days and weeks following his resurrection on the first Easter Day.
If you have not been to Messy Church before, please do come along and try us out! May Messy Church will be on the 12th and June Messy Church on the 9th.
More details from Carol Summers 07715460177 or Mike Mills 07523312387.
The Arts Society Peterborough
11th April 2024, The Arts Society Peterborough’s monthly talk is at The Fleet, PE2 4 DL.
‘The Golden Age of Mexican Painting’- Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, by Chloe Sayer.
Chloe surveys the work of both of these iconic artists and chronicles their turbulent marriage and Mexico’s history after the 1910 revolution.
Doors open at 10-15am for coffee and a chat, the talk starts at 10-45 and lasts an hour, all are welcome, so why not come and join us?
For more information and details of how to join the society, visit: www.the-arts-society-peterborough.org.uk
The First Wednesday Club
This has been running for almost a year now.It rose from the ashes of the WI and we were pleased to welcome some additional members from last September.
We were aware from the start that the first Wednesday of the month would rather clash with Bainton’s Buttercross Club but we were trying to find an afternoon slot that would suit most of our members. In addition the after-school karate club on a Wednesday has meant that we have had a time constraint for clearing up to be away from the hall by 4pm. So from May we are going to morph into:
The Monday Club.
We will meet on the third Monday of the month at 2pm so as to avoid most Bank Holidays. Our aim is still to meet together at the Village Hall or go out together when the opportunity arises. Thus our May meeting will be on the 20th of the month at 2pm when subscriptions will be due.
Our last event as the First Wednesday Club will be to visit the Wilfrid Wood watercolour exhibition at Peterborough Museum on 3rd April. Those who are going to the exhibition are travelling on the Delaine 10am bus from Stamford picking it up on the way through the villages.
The Barnack & District Branch of the Royal British Legion
The Barnack & District Branch of the Royal British Legion is always happy to welcome new members. No military service is necessary, just a willingness to support the aim of the RBL, which is the welfare of present and past members of our armed forces and their families. If you are interested in joining us, please contact our Membership Secretary, Geoff Dunkley on 01780 783346 or g.m.dunkley@btinternet.com
On the social side, we do have a programme of talks, visits and lunches at various times throughout the year, open to members and their families/friends.
After many years’ sterling service, our Poppy Appeal Organiser, Columb Hanna, is standing down and we are looking for a replacement, whom Columb is of course willing to train. Please contact me if you think you would like to take on this important role.
Max Sawyer, Branch Chairman,
01780 765507 audsaw@aol.com
SAD FAREWELL
We are very sad to be saying goodbye to Will and Jan Aldwinkle of The Limes,
Main Street, one of the last remaining Farmers in Barnack. Will has been a very colourful character in the village, a lot of us fondly remember the decorations left in Main Street the morning after his fortieth birthday (they all disappeared by lunchtime). He has always been very helpful in the village, clearing the roads after a heavy snowfall. Erecting the Christmas Tree. He built and erected the village Beacon, always there in his cherry picker, ready to light it on special occasions.
We would all like to join together in wishing them Good Luck and every happiness in their new life on Shetland.
The Buttercross Club
Our meeting on March 6th was well attended. Our speakers,Rita Turiccki and Diane Wheatley, are best friends who met through their mutual love of embroidery. Their talk was on quilting – how it is produced and the lovely end product. We were able to admire a fine display of their intricate work which they had brought with them.
Quilting is an umbrella word for different types. There is both hand and machine quilting. Longarm quilting is the process by which a longarm sewing machine is used to sew together a quilt top,quilt batting (which gives the quilt weight and warmth) and quilt backing into a finished quilt. Whilst quilting is now a hobby it was once a necessity. Originally covers were made out of scraps, old shirts, sheets, even sacks, and it seems to have had its origins in the 1600s in Turkey.There is a fine array of quilts dating from as early as the 17th century in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Dutch settlers went to North America where quilting became very important. Items were made from potato and flour sacks, old clothes – in fact any sort of available fabric that lent itself to being used. In modern times quilters might use an old duvet. There were and still are many different quilting blocks. A block is a square which is repeated. In earlier times each block could tell a story. Slaves could, for example, learn from a quilt that they might obtain their freedom.
The first quilt that one of our speakers made was a double bed quilt. The last piece would not fit in to place and it transpired that the instructions were wrong! That quilt is still incomplete! True patchwork quilts are made from many small pieces with patterns on them. In bygone days they were made by hand and often by candlelight. Nowadays one does not even have to use scissors as there are rotary cutters. There is also a vast array of colourful fabrics from which to choose. One can buy packs of small pieces of fabric to make up blocks. These packs are called jelly rolls (and there are fine examples of them online). They are two and a half inch strips from which one can make lovely quilts. There is also appliqué quilting for which one uses bondaweb. The fabric is ironed on and stitched around to give definition.
Antique quilts used all sorts of wadding, for example wool. Nowadays there is a wide variety of specialist waddings (eg. soya, bamboo etc.) which come in different thicknesses, and the stitching used depends on the thickness. To complete a beautiful quilt a suitable backing fabric must be used. One doesn’t need a new sewing machine – just one that does straight stitches. A ‘walking’ foot is useful in order to keep the fabric level. There are lots of different styles of quilting, created by machine or by hand and in a selection of colours. Whole cloth quilting is quilting done in one colour (usually white or cream). There are programmes on modern sewing machines for heirloom quilting. To commission and buy a completed quilt would cost thousands as they take such a long time to produce.
A vote of thanks to our speakers was followed by a brief business meeting and our usual light refreshments.
Diary Dates: Our next meeting is on Wednesday, April 3rd, in Bainton Reading Room at 7pm. Our speaker is James Kudlinski whose talk is entitled ‘The Other Side of Stamford – 1895-1928’
BARNACK COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION – THANK YOU BARNACK BARMY BINGOERS!
Just a note to say thank you very much to everyone who came and supported our slightly alternative Barmy Bingo night on Friday 8th March.
A special mention to Rich “The Wise” Wisdom, who came all the way from Sissons Close and stepped up as our resident bingo caller for the night and kept everyone’s balls in check!
The evening raised a whopping £900 profit, which is one of our most successful fundraisers at the Hall to date, and your support is very much appreciated. As you know, these funds are essential for ensuring we continue to manage and maintain the Hall, which is a Grade II listed building, as well as continually improve it as a facility for the Community to benefit from, now and in the future.
Tickets are now on sale for our next event: Oompah pah Party Night – Saturday 11th May – see our separate advert on p11 in this edition: bookings.barnackca@gmail.com or Tel: 07795 565658
Could you help out?
This May will bring with it the Annual Parochial Church Meetings of the four parishes within this benefice. And with it opportunities, should you wish, to serve God and support your church.
Across the churches we are always happy to find people willing to serve as Church Wardens, Treasurers Electoral Roll Officers, or Secretaries. These are all ways to bring your own particular skills to bear in your local church. We are always keen also to welcome people to service on the Parochial Church Councils. This is the way in which the clergy and lay people all work together to look for God’s will, to discuss plans and opportunities.
If you think you can serve in this way, why not have a word with someone who is on the PCC, or a Churchwarden, or one of the clergy, and find out what about what it entails?
And to all those who are coming to the end of a year’s service – thanks for all that you do. Christ’s church is a body of many parts, and we all have a role to play, for the whole to thrive.
3rd Sunday Service at Bainton
Sadly the number of people wanting to attend a Book of Common Prayer Evensong has reduced over the years. Therefore we’re going to make a change to the 3rd Sunday of the month afternoon services at Bainton.
The service will continue to be at 4.30pm on the 3rd Sunday of the month. We’re going to use it as much as possible for special services – St Mary’s Day, a Pet Service, Harvest, Nativity.
But we’re going to use it also to try something a bit different. So on Sunday 21st April, at 4.30 pm, we will have an Evening Praise service – something a bit folkier, a bit rockier, or a bit more alternative. Some good old-fashioned hymns played loud, and some more modern ones as well.
1st Sunday services at Bainton at 4.30pm will continue to be our quiet, meditative Taizé service. On 7th April it will be marking the Feast of the Annunciation. And the other Sundays of the month at Bainton will still have Communion at 9 am.
Sunshine & Showers Gardening for the Mind
Can you remember a weather man called Michael Fish on the BBC? He had a grey moustache, wore brown suits,and commanded some large rain and sun shaped magnets that covered a map of Great Britain.
This week I would like to celebrate the ever changing omnipotent weather. The opposite to common disgruntled observations, I wish to honour the constant fluctuation between the wet, warm, cold, and dry climate we are blessed with.
We are all probably a little guilty of becoming fair weather gardeners. Avoiding the uncomfortable and inclement, in favour of embracing the calm and casual. We could all do with abiding by my mother’s favourite saying; ‘There is no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing.’
Research shows that gardening can help alleviate depression and anxiety for all ages. The weather is often the precipice that our enjoyment and satisfaction of the outdoors balances on. I therefore ask the question, ‘What would happen if every time it rained, we put on our waterproofs and tolerated the drizzle?
In Susan Stuart Smith’s book, “The Well Gardened Mind”, www.susanstewartsmith.com she digs into robust evidence that irrefutably demonstrates being outdoors in the gardens can enhance all aspects of wellbeing.
The sights, sounds, and scents of a garden can reduce blood pressure, improve serotonin levels, reduce levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and decrease the need for pain relief. It is a proven powerful tonic. As I witness beautiful magnolias dancing in the wind, I can understand why.
Finding your Tonic
For me, it’s the spinney at Ufford Hall; the walk way just the other side of the perimeter wall. As a morning ritual I grab a rake and collect debris comprising of fallen twigs, leaves, and other storm remnants, from off the grass. I walk leisurely, tuning into the bird song, as the black birds and thrushes murmuring good morning to each other.
As you head away from the house past the treehouse, the planting becomes wilder, as the hellebores and Asplenium Scolopendrium (Harts tongue Ferns), that we planted some years ago, poke obnoxiously from the grasses under the self seeded holly tree.
There is a view through to the paddock beyond framed by a Cedar Labani that has doubled in size over 4 years to almost 16ft. Oh the pride that stirs within me. Sometimes I stop to take a breathe, leaning on my rake. Often the grass is still damp, and the silence deafening.
To Stand Still
Standing there,a feeling of calm spreads amongst the chaos that often rattles inside my busy mind. I find that gardening forces me to slow down, and I relish the feeling of being part of something much larger than myself. It is like zooming out to see the whole picture.
To follow the seasons,planting the smallest of seeds, witnessing deep colours, and the annual growth through nurturing and maintaining, has brought the team and myself so much joy. That is why we do what we do. I have become noticeably more present, amenable and positive.
The Process
Whilst surveying the squirrel damage to the tulip bulbs, the level of destruction becomes insignificant, and the results of planting now shine through as a large reward.
Last year we made the small commitment to the Charity ‘Mind Space’ www.mindspacestamford.com to prune the apple trees on a patch of land they curate on Uffington Road. It was after a morning there recently,that I felt prompted to write this piece.
The Psychologist Carl Jung believed modern tech life had alienated us from the “dark maternal, earthy ground of our being’. He grew his own vegetables and argued that “every human should have a plot of land so that their instincts can come to life again”
It is all too easy to make suggestions of what you should be doing in the garden this April. You can create lists, look at the weeds, and count the endless tasks. Or you could just get outside more, even when it is raining. Even if you are without an outdoor space,feel inspired to lend a hand to Kay and her team at Mindspace,and join their community. Just one hour can make a huge difference.
Let’s embrace what happens between the sunshine and the showers. I relish those slightly inaccurate predictions from Michael Fish. Being caught in those warm April showers evokes happy memories. Have an amazing month. Until next time.
Alwyn, Edward, Ali & Laura – www.hayneshorticulture.co.uk
Ufford Parish Council VACANCY: Clerk & Responsible Financial Officer
Ufford Parish Council is looking for an enthusiastic, diligent and self-motivated person to undertake the role of Clerk and Responsible Financial Officer (RFO). The Clerk, as the proper officer of the Council, has responsibility for the administration of the business and finances of the Council. These are statutory functions which would suit a person with an administrative, organisational and financial background. The role is home-based except for meetings which are held in Ufford Village Hall.
Ufford Parish Council has 218 electors. The Council is made up of 5 Parish Councillors and the precept for 2024-25 is £9,175. The Council meets on the second Tuesday of each month (except August).
Salary will be in accordance with NJC LC2 (18-23): £29,269 – £32,076 per annum, pro rata, or by agreement commensurate with experience and qualifications. The post is approximately 5 hours per week, or 20 hours per month.
The successful candidate will have:
• First-class administrative and organisational skills
• Experience of working within local government (preferred but not essential as
training will be given)
• Excellent communication skills with the ability to build professional relationships
• Time management skills and the ability to meet deadlines
• Confident knowledge of MS Office applications, Outlook and competent IT skills
• Accurate administrative and financial skills with particular attention to detail.
Experience of Scribe financial software (or similar) would be beneficial but not
essential
• Availability to attend evening meetings (usually the second Tuesday of the month)
and other meetings where appropriate
• The Certificate in Local Council Administration (CiLCA) or equivalent, or a
willingness to work towards the qualification (not essential)
• Have an interest in community life and the local government sector
Ufford Parish Council is an equal opportunities employer. For a copy of the job description please email clerk@ufford-pc.gov.uk or call Susie on 07747 033990. To apply for the position please email your CV and covering letter to the above address.
The closing date for applications is 14th April 2024.