A delicate butterfly wing, creamy-white coloured. A yellowing vole skull. A tin dish full of dried scraps of lichen. These rest below a string of dried flowers – pansies, calendula, chamomile, strawflower, pearly everlasting. And below that, on an old, rubbed-smooth shelf, sit crystals and rocks – dull pumice and lava rock, shiny quartz, ethereal satin spar and fluorite. Other curiosities – fragile bird’s nests, aquatic exoskeletons, elegant pheasant feathers – fill the gaps, each one labelled with a date, an observation and a note or two, and two names – common and scientific. This is The Fernskull Conservatory, a museum of naturally-found curiosities.

I consider farms to be one of those interesting things I was talking about. Isn’t it just so lovely that a small, tilled plot of land can hold so much life? Food for humans, food for animals, bulk and produce, cover crops, an environment for domesticated and wild animals alike. If you were to pause time, think of all the things that would be happening! In the stalky field, a bleary-eyed fawn twitches tired ears. In the hawthorn hedge, a magpie pulls at a thorny twig, artfully constructing a masterpiece of a nest. In the barn, the scurrying of an evasive mouse catches the attention of the draft horses, slowly chewing their breakfast.