THE POEMS OF GEORGE HERBERT – POSTED 14 DECEMBER 2020

Community member Jonathan Herbert was to have led a weekend at the end of November but unfortunately the lockdown happened.  Here’s a short film on YouTube where you can hear Jonathan and Community member Marie read 4 poems.

4 George Herbert poems

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LORD THANK YOU FOR OUR SOLAR PANELS – POSTED 14TH DECEMBER 2020

Here’s the link to a short film on YouTube blessing our new solar panels.

Br Hugh blesses our new solar panels

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ADVENT QUIET DAY, SATURDAY 5TH DECEMBER 2020

Join Br Clark Berge, Hilfield Friary’s Guardian, for a virtual Advent Quiet Day.  Click the links below to see his 2 meditations:

First Meditation

Second Meditation

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HILFIELD FRIARY SOLAR – POSTED 22 NOVEMBER 2020

The poster at the Friary entrance announces Hilfield Friary’s solar project, part-funded by Low Carbon Dorset as part of the European Regional Development Fund.  Read more about this exciting news on the Sustainability Page.

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FACE MASKS BY HILFIELD – POSTED 22 NOVEMBER 2020

Email:  hilfieldssf@franciscans.org.uk

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URIEL’S GIANT PUMPKIN – POSTED 14 NOVEMBER 2020

At the start of lockdown Tony challenged Uriel to a giant pumpkin growing competition. Both spent the following months lovingly tending their charges but it soon became clear that Uriel was growing a real monster.

At the end of summer both competitors bought their entries to the chapel where they were very much enjoyed and celebrated. Tony was very gracious in defeat and Uriel even enjoyed a pumpkin themed birthday cake. You can see what a spectacular sight it was. There was more than enough pumpkin carved out for soups abd cakes for a few meals as well.

This left the question of what to do with such a big pumpkin. Uriel decided that a fitting end would be to carve it into a lantern for Halloween, but how to carve such a beast? Chain sawed by Dad of course!

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SHARING THE WILDFLOWER SEEDS – POSTED 14 NOVEMBER 2020

The Friary is part of a group of neighbouring land managers working together for our shared conservation goals around Hilfield. For the last few years we have spread freshly mown ‘green hay’ full of wildflowers from our beautiful meadows onto sites where our neighbours want to create new wildflower meadows. This is normally a big community event, bringing lots of neighbours together in the task of collecting, hauling and spreading the hay. This year unfortunately we weren’t able to do this due to the Covid restrictions.

Rather than be defeated we enlisted the help of specialist company Heritage Seeds who came in July with their brush harvester to collect the seed. They then threshed and dried it producing 45kgs of beautiful pure seed which was shared by two of our neighbours. This cleaned seed is much less labour intensive to handle and spread than the green hay so could be done by a small group of us over a gentle afternoon. Last week we went to spread the seed onto one of the neighbour’s wildflower meadows to be. It will be very exciting to see what comes up in spring and over the next years.

To find out more about brush harvesting visit https://www.heritageseeds.co.uk/brush-harvesting/

Visit the Facebook Hilfield Conservation Page https://www.facebook.com/groups/709029506134847

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A FILM ABOUT THE REBELLION AND CONTEMPLATION WEEKEND WE COULDN’T HOLD DUE TO COVID-19 – POSTED 17 OCTOBER 2020

Click here to watch the short film about the weekend

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