The Handover

Not an episode of The Waltons, but a moment in my life.

This autumn, I will be taking over a plot of land.

It’s a blank canvas, in a way, but of course, it has a history.

For the most part, it’s been well managed. There is rich, diverse grassland, which has fed livestock and in the main, not over-grazed. There are some old hedges in a poor state of repair but rich in life. There are also some newer hedges, wonderfully well maintained by traditional laying techniques.

Most of the peripheral fencing is compromised. There isn’t really a paddock safe to turn anything out into which wouldn’t require electric fencing as back up.

There is an old Dutch barn, which has potential.  In the barn are about eighteen large bales of hay, which would see a flock through a winter.  A couple of sheds and an old caravan flank the garden area. The caravan could be a really great safe space and hidey hole. A good clean, a tin of paint or two, some new curtains, maybe some bunting? There is a certain amount of trash. Then there is the garden.

The garden has been neglected. The beds are full of weeds, head high in some places. There are two polytunnels, one of which is in disrepair, and a greenhouse with some glass missing and a mighty crop of nettles. The sadness of a once productive space, slowly being reclaimed by scrub is hard to articulate. Plenty of wildlife spaces abound on this land – this was clearly not meant to be one of them.

I have walked the boundary, quietly praying, wondering how and where to begin. The garden needs to produce our food. I’d love it to produce a surplus to share or sell.  The rest of the land needs somehow to support itself and help to support us, but it also needs to be protected. It is currently, post drought, the only green space for miles around.

The state it is in is lamentable, but relatable. Like a much loved sweater that has seen better days, it feels in some ways beyond redemption – just too much work to do, and yet the compulsion to fix it for another winter is strong.

Before I can take over the land, enter onto it and inhabit it with my soul, I need to think about my predecessor.

There is a great deal of love in that ground. The wildlife is abundant, the diversity quite unusual. I can see that it has been a place of many lived experiences. On top of one of the compost heaps, a child’s rake, many years old and rusted, rests ready to level each new delivery. The head is green metal and has many bent teeth, the handle old, spongy wood. It still serves, but it’s a couple of decades old, I guess.

Alongside the sheep, there’s an old grey Welsh pony. She’s happy and fat and asleep most of the time. She also has a story to tell, but you can’t ask her to share it. Or you can, but you’ll just get a lazy head butt and a blatant plea for a treat.

The garden, before it fell into its current state, was clearly loved, and tended. More than twenty no-dig beds are divided by grassy paths. An overgrown herb garden sports mint flowers and tall, frothy yarrow. Watering cans and line markers tumble with seed trays and pots on a plastic covered area next to the greenhouse.

She was an instinctive gardener, and grew along permaculture principles, for the local market. Mostly vegetables, some flowers and herbs. Last year, everything went wrong. I can see it in the rusted garlic left to rot – that was quite a big crop! The ingress of the ever-present rabbits into the carrot beds, completely cleaned out. The dry as dust soil and roof high weeds in the polytunnel with the broken door. As broke as everything is, there is a heart break in here as well.

I can only feel compassion for the person who tried so hard, felt so much rejection, became overwhelmed, and unable to meet her family’s needs, had to turn her back and close the gate, and just hope and pray that the next tenant of her dreams would be kind to them.

I know this because I am she.

I am taking over this field from me, from us. The last two years have beaten the blue bloody blazes out of us, and we are tired, sick, emotionally ground to dust and this close to being done with the whole thing. But I don’t want to be. I want to start again, and the only way I could do it was to hand the keys over to myself, take a good long walk around the fence, and beg myself to be gentle with her, the woman who screwed this up.

It made me think how easy it would have been to judge if I had in fact been taking over from someone else.

How quick I might have been to deride the lack of upkeep of the fences – because I wouldn’t have known that ‘she’ had spent a winter applying for stewardship packages, drawing up plans, working with contractors, only for prices of materials to overtake the amounts allowed  by such a huge margin that it all became impossible, and all those plans, dreams and drawings ended up in the compost bin.

How easy it would have been to be shocked at the neglect in the garden, arrogantly announcing that I would have it in shape in no time, and never, ever let it go again. Oh yeah? That was also me. And then this happened. It’s so easy. We are all truly only the thinnest sliver of light away from destroying all we’ve worked for in a fear induced frenzy of survival.

So, no. I won’t be giving myself a tough time either. Just as I felt nothing but love and compassion for the sad shadow of a woman I couldn’t know when I walked around my ‘new’ plot, I’m going to shower grace and understanding on the person I have been in the last two years, and hope I bring her dreams back to life, at least in part.

Autumn. The time when tenancies change hands, the rams go in, and seedbeds are readied for the new cycle. The farming year begins again.

Life for me, is also autumn. I wonder if I can walk the boundaries of my life here – not where I’d planned, or what I’d hoped – and give myself the same sweet benediction as I have my field farming other self?

Some of the boundaries really are wobbly. Some of the people and places could do with weeding out, and some tending. Like the ground I walked, my soul is all good, saved by grace and green in the surrounding barrenness. The trusty old caravan of my heart could definitely do with a clean-up and new curtains, though, and I’m going to have to let myself off the hook of years – many, many years – of not quite getting it right, if I want to start this new season with the hope of a clean seed bed.

Living slowly and simply, connecting with the land, providing for ourselves, somehow escaping the matrix. There has to be a way. Prayer, peace, quietness – hand in hand with toil and commitment. And the first step, is the handover.