A natural festival for me, celebrating all that comes from wood. Firewood cutters, bansaws, wood carvers, spoon carvers, bowl turners. A gentler happier festival I cannot remember ever before.
My first encounter was with a blacksmith, an oder man, working with a young woman, the daughter of the foundry it transpires. I asked the man:
‘Where does your voice come from?’
A mixture, he said, probably a bit from America where he was raised in an American school in India’
‘Not Woodstock, Deradune’, I asked
Well I’ll never, here we are in a Suffolk field, finding a mountainous and obscure place in India in common. We exchanged details, his name is Dave, and I will see him him Norfolk, where he is based.
On the way back I stopped by a place on the busy A12 selling plants. Wondering how they lived on such a busy thoroughfare, the woman offered me this:
‘In our lemon balm a host of golden finches congrugate.’
Lemon Balm, St Johns Wart, Day Lillies and Yellow Loose Strife all planted around the ponds. Because of what she said about the finches.
Kaliwood 