Christmas is coming!!!  At this time of year the Marldon Christmas Tree Farm have started their annual task of cutting trees from their fields which adjoin our yurt camp.  The 100 acre field at Reeve Acre is home to thousands of the beautiful needle fast trees at all varying sizes.  Christmas trees are now being felled every day and their is a flurry of activity as the tractor and trailer stacked high with the new cut trees goes backwards and forwards to the Farm shop a couple of miles away at Marldon.  The trees smell amazing and have grown well this year.  The only down side to the constant traffic is that the lanes outside our home and the yurt camp are now covered in a layer of sticky mud from the constant tractor movements on and off the Christmas tree fields.  Now Christmas in a yurt would be a lovely thing, although our current planning restrictions unfortunately prevent this.  Of course we are still taking bookings now for 2015 and the camp will reopen around the 15th March 2015.

This rather magnificient specimen pictured with my husband, is an edible puffball Calvatia gigantea, not to be confused with an Amanita which is deadly poisonous. Autumn is a season when many species of fungi is common in our fields and the woods surrounding the yurt camp. The warm and mild and damp weather is perfect conditions for the fungi to bloom.  This puffball was growing on our muck heap and is around They can reach 20Kg although this one was around 40 cms across and weighed a few Kg. Please never eat any mushroom that you have not positively identified as being safe.