On Tuesday six of our twelve lambs were rounded up, herded into a trailer and driven forty minutes to an abattoir near Chard. They have had five months of life. When I arrived at Pilsdon in March they weren’t yet born. I’ve seen them take their first stumbling steps towards their mothers, I’ve watched them play, racing each other around the field, rolling around on their backs. One of them, Immi, had to be bottle-fed by hand four times a day for the first couple of months because he had been rejected by his mother as a runt, and was so small and frail he could have died at any point. Now it’s virtually impossible to distinguish him from the other lambs, all of whom are as big as their mothers. In fact the only easy way to tell a ewe from a lamb is that the ewes have been sheared so they actually look smaller than their offspring.
We use this abattoir even though it’s quite a distance away because they dispatch the animals as soon as they arrive rather than stressing them further by holding them in unfamiliar surroundings. It was possible for James to go back later the same day to buy the lambskins which he plans to tan. After a week, during which the meat is left to hang, we’ll collect them and do the butchering ourselves and then lamb chops will be on the menu for the next few months!
Here the cycle of life is in full evidence wherever you look. The peas that we planted out in early spring have bloomed, produced all their fruit, withered and died, as have most of the broad beans. The ‘purple sprouting’ broccoli plants sprouted purple broccoli followed by a glorious display of yellow flowers. Our cauliflowers turned into either normal-looking white globes or into strange exploded shapes, we blame the rain and cold. The hundred and fifty or so sweetcorn, sowed in squares, are still maturing but the cobs are visible and tasty-looking. Some of our courgette plants we left to let huge marrows emerge, the first of which we ate on Wednesday stuffed with beef bolognaise. Our tomato vines fill the large polytunnel, giving so much fruit that we have to do an almost daily harvest of a full bucket. We have a glut of cucumbers that are blocking up the top shelf of a fridge with more ready to pick. There’s only so many cucumber sandwiches that one can eat! We’ve had to harvest most of the potatoes a bit earlier than we’d like because they’ve been heavily attacked by slugs and click beetle larvae, again we blame the wet conditions. Beautifully plump carrots, leeks, cabbages, beetroot and onions are being pulled out of the ground whenever cooks need them. The first turnips didn’t grow so well but we have high hopes for the second batch. We also have parsnips, swedes, pumpkins, squashes, peppers, chili peppers, aubergines, melons, kale, brussels sprouts, celery, lettuce, basil, chard, spinach, beet, french beans and runner beans, all at various stages of growth. Never a quiet moment for us gardeners.
Given the wet cold spells during April and May we didn’t have high hopes for our fruit trees but in the last couple of months they have come on in leaps and bounds. On Tuesday morning I went out hunting for blackberries but came back instead with a bowl-full of decent red and green windfall apples that we stewed and added to some freshly made panna cotta for dessert that evening.
A month ago one of our neighbours discovered a swarm of bees on his property and kindly offered them to us, seeing as we had some unused hives (we did have bees but last year they were killed by wasps). So a couple of brave souls (not me!) donned the full bee-keeping body armour, fetched the swarm and placed them in their new home where we hope they will be happy and remain, and of course in time provide us with lots of delicious honey! There have definitely been a lot more bees in the vegetable garden since their arrival so I guess they are finding enough pollen and nectar here.
And best of all we have a human baby, now three months old, who seems to be doing something new every week. His latest trick, rolling over, earns him a huge cheer from the twelve or so people who happen to be in the same room. He is a born performer and loves to work the crowd; he’s destined for stardom one day. I know it.
2 comments:
Sounds like a fabulous sustainable community Matt. Would love to hear your thoughts on how we might build inner city communities more like this.
Phil Stokes
I think the essence of a community like this is living in a shared space and working and eating communally. If you have some land, even just a garden, it can be put to work in growing food to put on the table. Or find some unused land and work together with neighbours to turn it into a community garden (this is happening in Lancaster at the end of my parent's street : http://www.aldclifferdtriangle.org.uk)
I've seen and heard of various attempts at creating urban communities, usually in a large shared house with people sharing a similar ethos. Sometimes these can come unstuck, particularly in London as the turnover rate for residents can be too high, and people tend to have full time jobs which means they can find themselves not together often enough.
Then there are communities that cater specifically for homeless people, such as Emmaus (www.emmaus.org.uk) - the focus is on providing people with skills, not necessarily about sustainability or growing food.
Anyone else seen working examples of inner city communities that grow their own food?
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