Special Courses

These special courses are designed to be instructive and fun; all are hands-on.
There will be plenty of time built into the programme for relaxation and enjoyment if the peaceful countryside at Woodland Valley. Guided farm and woodland walks may be provided by arrangement and you can join in with the day to day activities on the farm if you wish. All meals are home cooked and wherever possible organic produce from the farm will be used.

Sausage & Salami Making
Tim Wingfield
Suitable breeds, preferred cuts and cutting, making your own mixes and seasoning, choosing skins, equipment, making your own sausages and salami, and eating them!Dates: See notice board for availability and Prices. Maximum six persons

Curing Bacon / Ham / Biltong
Tim Wingfield
Suitable breeds; preferred cuts and cutting; different methods of curing (sweet cure, dry cure and brine cure); equipment required, curing bacon, ham and biltong and taking some home to try out. Dates: Maximum 6 persons

Rural Skills
Janet Jones
Hedge laying, Hurdle making and Cornish hedging. Straw bale builing, Composting toilets to name a few... Dates: See Notice board for availablity and details.

Natural Horsemanship
Catherine Hoskin

Survival Skills and Self Sufficiency
Spanner Manley and Chris Smart
All aspects of survival matters, pre expedition training for families, schools and buisnesses through to commited survivalists

One-off Workshops
A gamelan is a set of percussion instruments from Indonesia. At Woodland Valley we have a small gamelan from Bali, which was specially commissioned for Cornwall and is available for workshops for school groups and other visitors. We can accommodate up to thirty children or twenty adults at a time, and participants will learn about the instruments and their background, and try their hand at a simple Balinese piece. The sessions are great fun, and promote listening and concentration skills as well as teambuilding.

Gamelan weekends
For a fuller introduction to the gamelan, weekend workshops are available. Come and stay at the beautiful Woodland Valley centre, and in between exploring the lovely countryside, learn more about the gamelan and develop your playing techniques. There is always another part to learn, a more complex and challenging pattern to master, and when you’ve had enough of music, you can try your hand at dancing, or puppeteering!

These weekends cater for between 10 and 20 individuals of any age, although young children might find it tiring over the longer periods and the recommended minimum age would usually be 10.

for more information click here (adobe acrobat required)

Dates: See Notice board for availablity and details.

Sustainable building
straw bale, cob, wattle and daub, composting toilets, all sorts.

‘live as if we’ll die tomorrow,
but farm as if we‘ll live forever.’