besom brooms

Its Stall Time!

To pass my apprenticeship this year I am required to set up a stall. Little encouragement is needed however because I love setting up stalls and playing ‘shop’!

I recently had my first opportunity through a new venture called the We Are Women Festival set up by Laura Currie to bring together women who practice various skills, mostly in the healing arts but also in the crafty arts as well.

It was a great opportunity to really shift gears and get things together for the coming year.

Part of setting up a stall is to create something that is visually appealing and shows off the products. I love the colours that split hazel baskets offer. Its creamy beiges with dark brown bark. And this goes lovely with the green of my sign.

Personally, I prefer stalls that are not too over loaded with different items. When there is too much to look at I can find this overwhelming as my brain tries to focus on too many things at the same time and I’ll usually move away from those stalls fairly quickly. So with this in mind I only set out a few different items, enough to make the table look full, but not busy.

Pricing is always a tricky one and I’ve had some great advice from my sponsor business such as adjusting pricing as the day or weekend goes on and listening to the potential customers as they browse – apparently they will be very open about what they think of your prices, even in front of you!

It can be difficult not to undervalue items because, as a crafter, I am competing with imported, mass produced items, and so it is difficult to charge what I should be charging. A basket, for example, that takes 5 hours to make should be at least £50 but when a customer can go to a shop and buy a basket three times as big for a third of the price its difficult for them to understand why my basket is so expensive.

One remedy to this is engaging customers. I have a friend who is very good at engaging customers and selling her products without, it seems, selling them a thing. She explains to them why her product is going to be beneficial for them and the product sells itself. She sells creams and potions. I sell baskets… it a tougher sell. But what I did notice was that talking to the customers and explaining how things are made, why I make them and all about my apprenticeship got them interested in the items much more than just letting them look at the baskets. Another remedy is to be making the item you’re selling. This gives people an idea of the amount of skill and work it takes to make the items you’re selling and encourages engagement.

I did quite well at this market and I think this was because it was a niche audience. Finding the right stalls may be more beneficial than just finding any old market day. Because my products are sustainable, and with regards to the besom brooms, a traditional witchy item that is used in wiccan ceremonies, I will be on the look out for more specialised markets.

The next one coming up for me is a christmas market day at a local shop run by a lady who wants to encourage local crafts people who are using sustainable products. This is a really exciting project to get involved with as it is part of an initiative run by the local council who will be offering free workshop spaces to people like me!

The National Coppice Federation Gathering 2018

Not everybody would be excited to talk about coppicing for a whole weekend but I certainly was. So it was a delight to attend the National Coppice Federation on their annual gathering in Hampshire. Each year one of the regional groups takes the baton and hosts the get-together which, although relatively small, is one of the only chances that members of the coppicing community have to meet up.

Some people arrived on the Friday and met old faces and new. Then, on the Saturday, we had a chance to see some of the local craftsmen practicing their skills alongside two demonstrations of retort charcoal makers.

A retort charcoal maker, as opposed to a ring kiln or an earth mound kiln, uses the volatile gases that the wood itself gives off when its burnt and redirects it back towards the fire. This means that once the retort has heated up enough it will keep itself alight until all the gases burn off. And because that gas is used up it no longer gets pumped out into the atmosphere.

I took a particular interest in the smaller retort that was basically a giant rocket stove. The designer was a gentleman called James Hookway and this was his own unique design that, although small, was portable and very easy to use. This retort was just the right size for someone just starting out in the charcoal making business or looking to just use the unproductive wood that is no good for products or leaving as insect hotels.

During the gathering we also took a trip to a local sweet chestnut coppice at Stansted Park Estate and was kindly shown around by the head forester Michael Prior. Michael had been working at the estate for 38 years and although they had an extensive sweet chestnut coppice he was also keen on biodiversity and you could tell he enjoyed his job very much.

Dave Lister demonstrating thatching spar making

The NcFed gathering was also a chance to network and meet other people who you could connect with and either share skills, news or work. For me it was just nice to be around people who knew what coppicing is! Most of the time a get a very blank stare when I tell people I’m doing a coppicing apprenticeship. Hopefully groups such as the NcFed will change all that in times to come.

A day with the East Anglian Coppice Network

20180825_103911 — Making pegs on a tine cutter

One of the many things I’m looking forward to during my apprenticeship is meeting the various local coppicing communities. Coppicers tend to work alone as sole traders and this means that networks are an important way for local coppicers to meet and share skills and stories.

This weekend I had the honour of being invited along to one of the East Anglian Coppice Network events being held at a woodland owned by Iain Loasby. I met Iain after discovering his shop just up the road from me in London. When I came across his shop a year ago I was intrigued by this strange shop that seems to being selling a variety of sticks. When I won the national coppicing apprenticeship I was delighted to remember this shop and realised what a treasure was on my door stop. Although the name would suggest otherwise, Wood Green was the last place I’d expect to find a coppicers shop.

So a few weeks ago I eagerly presented myself to Iain as a fledgling coppicer and was invited along to the network event.

On the agenda this time around was Besoms Brooms and Traditional Rakes. Both of these, especially brooms, are a staple for coppicers and although not used as much for their originally purpose still attract customers looking for a nice item on their wall.

20180825_095956 — Andy and Paul showing us different types of rakes

First up was Paul, a newly retired coppicer, who showed us how to make an ash rake. Rakes often come with regional differences and can use a split handle or a flexible piece of hazel to brace the head. I believe in this case we were being taught the Suffolk way of putting a rake together.

Before anything else you need a nice piece of ash around 6 – 10cm in

diameter to make heads. We were lucky enough to have a lovely piece of ash that split beautifully and I was assured it wasn’t always this easy.

Once you have a rough size its time to use a shave horse to take the bark off and turn it into a lovely smooth piece of wood. Paul chose to ‘batter’ his heads which is a bricklaying term that means making the top of the head thinner than the bottom, but Andy, another coppicer at the event didn’t think this was necessary.

Making the pegs was an interesting process. First a piece of tree truck the same length as you want your pegs was split into tiny pieces, using an old inner tube to hold the wood together, then these pieces were jammed through a piece of metalwork called a tine cutter. Apparently its useful to have a splayed end on your tine cutter so that the tines don’t get stuck as they push through the hole.

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One of the great things about the day was getting these sorts of little hints and tips from the experienced coppicers. “Throw the mallet instead of hit it” was advice from Andy which stopped my wrist hurting so much, and “aim for down here” was more great advice from Paul as he pointed to half way down the piece of wood I was preparing to split with a Froe (a type of wood splitting tool).

After the tines/pegs were made the next task was to drill holes into the head. Paul suggested using a ‘green’ head (a piece of wood that hasn’t been seasoned) with seasoned pegs. This would mean that the head would season and shrink around the pegs, holding them into place.

The pegs were then shaved down on two sides and bashed in with a mallet. Next we needed to choose a handle and split the end. A rake handle can be quite long and needs to be straight as possible but can have some wiggles* in it for character. After the handle and head are fixed together copper nails were used to keep the head and handle together.

20180825_122917 — joining the head and the handle together

Another handy tip to remember was to drill a hole at the end of the split and wrap some wire around to keep the split from going any further.

20180825_142056 — Andy showing us how to bind birch sprays with elm bark

In the afternoon it was Andy Bashem‘s turn to show us how to make a good broom. I’ve already helped my mentor Mark to collect birch ‘sprays’ (birch sticks) so it was interesting to see the next step in the process.

Andy chooses to make all natural brooms without any metal parts as this seems to appeal

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more to witches. No, this isn’t a joke. Apparently wiccans use besom brooms to clear old spells from ritual spaces but the brooms mustn’t contain any metal. This is the kind of vital information passed on during networking events. There is also an aesthetic reason for a wireless broom but it does take much more time to make.

One starts off by grabbing a handful of birch sprays then moving them around until all the bottoms of the twigs are lined up. You need a bit space to wrap around your binding material so any twigs that are in the way are pruned. When your happy with your bundle of birch sprays you can then start the wrapping process. In this case we used some Elm Bark that Andy had had in his barn for a couple of years. To refresh it he simply soaked it in water for a couple of hours the night before and the bark became flexible again like leather.

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Once the binding was on tight we then drove a sharpened stake through the middle of the bundle and used a wooden peg to hold the handle in place. The peg is important to stop the twigs and the handle from separating and the customer being left with a very sharp stick in their hands. A good handle can also increase the price of a broom if it has special features like twists. Andy didn’t try to make the broom look all the same and believed that as people are all unique then the difference in the brooms would appeal to different people. As I didn’t pick up enough birch I was pleased to hear this and declared my very small broom a special camper van sized broom to fit into tiny houses just like my own. The broom was then bound with baling twine so that when the twine was removed in a few days the broom would maintain a slimmer shape.

Overall I had a lovely day with the East Anglian Coppice network. I raked in the knowledge and wasn’t swept away by all the new information at all.

I hope to visit some of the members coppices over the next few years and plan to join them at another event soon!

*I’ll develop my technical terminology as go – but in the mean time i’ll be making up my own…)