Let the sunshine - into our new education space

Aim

THANK-YOU! We reached our initial target. Can you help us stretch a bit further? +enable our volunteers to learn how to make a staircase!

Orchard Barn is a community project (run by OBee CIC). We're based in an old timber frame barn in 1.5 acres of wild orchard in rural mid Suffolk, UK.

Since 2007 we have built a thriving community of local volunteers. This summer, we’re enjoying great green gym workouts making and fitting Light Straw Clay insulation into walls of our current phase. Straw bale by bale we're building our new environmental education space.

Going forward our new education space will provide OBee with extra space in which to work with many more volunteers and trainees. The new education room will also enable us to step up our environmental education work by giving us an all weather space in which to run more courses.  

YOUR DONATION  will be doubled by Aviva. Many BIG thank-yous to you in advance and to all at Crowd Funder and Aviva for enabling this funding. It is greatly appreciated. 

In order to keep our carbon footprint as low as possible we have taken our lead from the people who constructed buildings on this site hundreds of years ago. We make as much as we can from raw materials from the local landscape, but we are unable to make the glass needed to let the light into the Long House! We need your donations to enable us to pay for glazing and professional fitting. This will not only keep the wind and rain out, but 'let the light' and create passive solar gain in our new education space. 

A little bit about what Orchard Barn Volunteers have achieved in the last year:-

• 1288 days contributed - comprising of 298 practical days, 739 (up 393.5 from previous year) semi-skilled days and 251 skilled days.
• Raised the timber frame Long House (hand made by 250 volunteers and trainees over previous 5 years)
• Held a ‘Topping Out’ ceremony (to mark the completion of the roof frame)
• Ran 13 Traditional Building courses for 69 students (included Tree to Timber training for college and university students)
• Awarded 48 Institute of Historic Building Conservation CPD certificates
• Celebrated OBee CIC's 15th birthday with music and Morris dancing
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• Held a Wassail in our old orchard (toasted the good health of the fruit trees with home-made apple juice)
• Made and fitted over 4,000 Sweet Chestnut shingles and 1/5th mile hand-made batten using traditional greenwood working tools
• Mixed 72 bales Barley straw with a ton of clay with a hoe to make Light Straw Clay insulation for the new Education Room
• Provided a good example to all our many visitors of how to build using materials that truly are just under our feet!
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Orchard Barn is a carbon neutral site which promotes sustainability and environmental education through:-

• The use of water-free compost toilets (our toilet system has won two awards for helping to reduce water use)
• Toilet walls made from flints and wattle and daub by volunteers (toilets situated in old orchard which means people get to enjoy a little walk through the orchard when they visit our ‘facilities’
• Rainwater harvesting (13 x 1000L reused IBC tanks for storage) NO mains connections = careful water use – especially during the 2022 drought
• Rainwater used by volunteers and trainees in building projects and gardening
• Permaculture community gardens (13 raised beds and sheet mulched paths)
• Use of traditional hand tools and human energy in all that we do and make (scything orchard grass, hand turned compost heaps)
• Construction of new biodiversity habitat (use of brash-wood to make deadwood screens around compost bins and wood stores)
• Building using our own clay (cob walls around outdoor teaching space)
• Sourcing coppiced trees for our new roof (one log = 30 hand-cleft shingles) – the regrowth of coppice trees locks up 2.5-3 times the amount of carbon compared with standard trees

Our project helps build community cohesion and connection through nature positive activity that encourages collaboration in the local community, connecting people of diverse backgrounds, generations, and abilities to nature and one another.

We are preparing our local community to be resilient in basic human facilities –with our off-grid water, toilet and energy. 

Below are some examples of what volunteers and trainees have built in previous years, and what you could learn if you choose our Rewards. 

Testimonials from two volunteers:-

Monica is a volunteer (69 years young). She writes ‘Orchard Barn is a place of calm, a place where we are using age-old techniques and hand tools to reinstate the Long House.

My first hurdle when I joined the shingle making team was the mounting of the shave horse. That accomplished, there was the draw knife to conquer. Very slowly I have learned to draw this seemingly simple tool at the correct angle across axe-hewn shingles before they get fitted to the roof. Week by week, with support and guidance I am gradually mastering this tool. 

Over shared coffee breaks and lunchtimes we sit together to share stories and experiences and build a community; a family; a group with a common purpose. From a wide range of backgrounds and ages we have come together. We have a real sense of pride in what we are achieving together. ‘

Another volunteer writes ..... ’I started volunteering at Orchard Barn two years ago as a project to get me out of the house and to gain a further interest in my retirement. However I have been taught new skills and ways of achieving goals far greater than I bargained for. 

My initial instruction was on the use of hand tools, their care and maintenance. This left me a great deal of shame for my hitherto misuse and lack of care, maintenance and sharpening of such tools I possessed at home. …

I am now involved in the  cleaving of sweet chestnut logs for shingle blanks and then the debarking, shaping and dressing of them to be fitted on the roof. 

All of this has been achieved without the help of the usual services we enjoy at home such as electricity, gas, running water and sewerage. Nothing is wasted and by its reuse or composting everything returns to the land.’

During our current accounting year we have worked with over 80 volunteers.

We need your help to pay for the glazing for the new environmental education room.

We can make do with 14 double glazed units, but if funds allowed we could double this us and be able to keep even more precious heat in the building! Funds are needed to pay for 28 quadruple glazing units for south gable of our new environmental education room.

Please help us to expand the environmental education work needed to both combat climate change, and to enable community to become more resilient as changes happen. 

THANK-YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

This project successfully funded on 10th August 2023