Another week hurtled by, leaving me sitting on the back porch of Tuesday, wondering what happened.
Design Culture
It started with me trying to work out the best way to employ Permaculture Tools to help us keep on smallholding over … ahem … 50. I’m generalising because my dear husband is over 50, whereas I am over 50 by 14 years or so, if you see what I mean. We are both over 50. That’s factual.
This could consume a great deal of time, but the ones that spring to mind are:
Stacking Functions
We’ve recently been gifted a pile of old road mats from a construction project over at the school. They are basically slabs of robust material (I’d guess at recycled tyres) with holes in them, which make a solid path on mud. If next winter is anything like the last, we will be very glad to have them.
They are currently in a large heap near the gate. Grazing the goats (most particularly the youngsters) in that spot means they are currently serving as enrichment for the livestock. That’s an example of stacking functions which sounds a lot like an excuse for not moving them yet! Which it is, but it’s a principle I need to investigate further. We need to do some serious design work around elements and functions, and make life a little easier for ourselves in the next half decade.
Using Small and Slow Solutions
I’ve already discovered this year that the only way I can possibly reclaim this garden is inch by inch. If it is ultimately to come back to life as a market garden, that will be next year at the earliest.
This year, its best ambition is to feed us, and even that has proved a challenge. So it’s important to accept that I can’t wait until the whole garden is clear before starting to plant it. In fact, I’m not even waiting until individual beds are cleared. I clear a square metre and get something in there!
Apply Self Regulation and Accept Feedback
This entire process is one of self regulation. If I’m to carry on, I will need to carry on in ways that work for this older body, this post menopausal ( and most probably neuro-divergent) mind, and adapt to life as it is now for us.
My main feedback to myself is ‘stay grateful.’ I can get down in the dumps about life on land I can’t own, that I can’t (and don’t) live on and all the challenges that brings, but I need to remind myself daily that the land itself, our relative proximity to it, and our current health and wellness and ability to get there and be there are huge, huge blessings, God given, and bestowed to enable us to do good things, and give Him the glory. No excuses.
An Inspector Calls
The Crown Estate manages its land via Agents, and approximately annually, a representative of said Agent comes to visit, to inspect the land. Although it’s never been particularly stressful or eventful, it inevitably causes tension in the run up to the event.
Of the farms on this part of the Rural Estate, we are the smallest, most insignificant dot on the map. At least three larger, generational, family farms surround us in the village, and our own little patch is bounded by fields which were once part of two more, but are now farmed by the same giant contractor.
In one sense, this makes us think that it will all be ok, since no-one’s much interested, but in another, it makes us feel small, vulnerable, and open to being wiped out at the stroke of a pen because we’re just not big enough!
The day of our inspection dawned and we met the agent, Nirajan, at the gate, anxious as ever, but he turned out to be a breath of fresh air. We had a good long walk around talking about our mob grazing, swales, soil organic matter and water retaining capacity, and also hearing about permaculture in Nepal and his hopes to go back there one day and create a learning centre.
Hopefully feedback will be good, but it’s never done until it’s done, so we await official confirmation.
The Undone List
I write far too many lists. I’ve started a list of lists, and that’s not a joke. Too often the important, but less exciting bits of my lists get consigned to a list of ‘not done’ things and pushed vaguely forward into the future. I would include the urgent completion of my bookkeeping course, which has absolutely ground to a halt.
Haymaking is upon us and as we all know, I should be making hay while the sun shines (or at least while it’s not raining) and in my case that involves wielding an actual scythe, and hand cutting, turning, and carting as much as I can. To do this properly and in the approved order of operations would take over much of my life for the next four weeks or more and I’m just unable to adjust life that much. I have work for clients to do, a home to look after, and a desperately needy vegetable garden crying for attention.
I did a ‘set up day’ to find my balance with the scythe again, decide where I’m cutting, and define my first swathe, which was an utter disaster, so I did another ‘set up day’ to try to sort myself out, and managed to have the scythe fall apart on me.
The problem is that the snath (or handle) I was using is not mine, but Neil’s. Mine is adjustable, and adjusted to my height and reach, his is fixed. As we’re the same height, or as near as makes no matter, I didn’t think that would be critical. With the shorter path and orchard length chines (blades) we usually use, I think it isn’t.
With a whacking great hay chine on, I think it is!
Anyway the whole thing fell apart because I hadn’t tightened it well enough so now we’re back to square one and I have to confirm I am no further along with the bookkeeping course.
Birdsong
With the final arrival of some sunshine, warm dry breezes have attended my forays into the hay field. The spot half way up the rise, where I stop to look down and across the valley to the blowsy, slumbering downs beyond is once again a gentle, comfortable contour, from which to ponder on life. In winter it’s a vicious place, with an open aspect to the north and east which will take your ears off, but today, it is dandelion soft and perfect for reflection and gratitude.
With the proximity of the road, it is not the best spot on the land for birdsong, although it is where you will hear the Skylark and the Corn Bunting, who don’t venture down closer to the garden. The lower garden area with its wild hedges and trees is the more musical part of the field, and along with the Blackbird Choir, Yellowhammers, Gold Finches, Chiffchaffs and Whitethroats accompany my muddled musing and the mumble of an audio book. Of course, it’s also home to a horde of marauding pigeons, who took out my first sowing of Tuscan Kale in the momentary slip of a protective net, but you can’t have it all ways.
Solstice and All That
In the Christian Calendar, there isn’t really a midsummer festival, which is odd, isn’t it? Whether you feel the first Christians to arrive on these islands ‘stole’ old pagan festivals or simply merged with native traditions in a pragmatic kind of way, we do have touchpoints around the year which mostly match with older traditions and indeed newer religions, as in fact all peoples have traditionally marked the passing of seasons, but midsummer is missing.
Winter Solstice, though not a spiritual date in our faith, is a really important day for us as land workers. During the depth of winter, the idea of the returning of light and the lengthening of days is essential for everyone’s mental health. When we lived at Dairy, surrounded by a big garden and trees, I would hang jam jar lanterns with tea lights in them, all around the house to mark the momentous turning. Of course, we celebrate the birth of Christ some few days later, and everyone, spiritual or secular, is celebrating something in those dark, cold days.
Summer Solstice not so much. I feel a certain sadness as the days mark their intention to grow shorter, but it’s an illogical one really, since not only is summer only just getting going, but in any case, I do adore autumn, so I’m just making a fuss about nothing. I do however live in an area of much celebration of earth festivals, being close to both Avebury and Stonehenge, so there is evidence. Gateways and laybys are blocked off to prevent excessive parking near landmarks and ancient monuments, and our streets fill with colourful, joyous people, for a few days either side of the longest day. There are more Druids than usual in Lidl.
So now, as my father used to say, cheerily on the 22nd June each year, the nights are drawing in, then.
Just the thought of scything makes my neck and back start to hurt...I'm in absolute awe.
So much I could say here...about the land, the not-owning and feeling precarious and vulnerable (having lived that and lost it)...I've been pining for the old 'neighbourhood' these past few days, missing the landscape, the wild things....and then remembering to be enormously grateful for what we do have. It's a tricky balance to maintain. I'm glad you had a good conversation with the inspector...it's comforting to think there are people in those roles who have a passion for sustainable farming.
It's been hotter than the hobs of hell here the past week or so...'it's not the heat, it's the humidity'...so I'm fine with the nights drawing in :) xo
LOL at 'the nights are drawing in, then'! We've been saying the same - as well as 'gosh, look, it's six months until Christmas....!' 🤣
I'm so glad your experience with the agent was so good - fingers crossed for a brilliant outcome for the inspection.
I love that you're scything! We spent a day in the company of a scything team when Jim was shooting pictures for the 'Meadow' book project - it was fascinating! I even had a go, which was great fun but very difficult. I was astonished at all the steps the scythers needed to go through to take care of their blades - it was fabulous to watch them at work on that side of things, not just scything the meadow itself - although that too was an incredible site to behold, so many of them working together (but far enough apart, for obvious reasons!).
My bottom and legs were sooooo stiff the next day from just the few minutes I'd spent being shown how to scythe!