Don't Have A Cow, Man!

Broccoli and spinach in our greenhouse

As I launch this latest missive into the great wide blogscape on Good Friday, the first day of the traditional Easter break, I harbour doubts that anyone will actually get round to reading it. You’ll all be too busy sat in logjams on the M25 whilst cramming yourselves senseless with chocolate ovoids. There’s barely any sense in wishing you all a Happy Easter since by the time someone bothers to read these words it will already have been and gone.

But what am I saying. I forget that we live in an age of Facebook iPhone apps to help pass the time in that motorway traffic snarl-up. Some of you early adopters probably have some Google Beta widget installed in your Augmented-Reality glasses that subtly manipulates the colours of everything you see such that the words of this blog are instantly formed on all the objects before you. If not, you heard it here first.

Like everywhere else in the UK, a week ago the temperature just fell through the floor and stayed there. Not too much snow fell here in Dorset but barren grey skies have presided over an Arctic chill. Unluckily for me this coincided with a weekend course held in the huge draughty ex-vicarage that comprises the main building at Monkton Wyld Community. No central heating here. The little wood-burners do their best to pump heat into the cavernous rooms with some limited success. We just made copious cups of tea and sat hugging them as the course progressed, apart from when we had to brave the weather and go visit three local smallholdings, our noses turning red then blue whilst the owners waxed lyrical about their fields, hay-barns and chickens.

For that was the topic of this course, “Strategies for Setting Up a Low Impact Smallholding”.  Six of us gathered to be instructed in the ways of creating a small and environmentally-friendly mixed farm, from scratch, from the mouths of Simon Fairlie and Jyoti Fernandes, both veterans and active practitioners of the low-impact movement. Given that the cost of buying an existing smallholding with all necessary buildings (house, barn, animal quarters, sheds, etc) has risen well beyond the reach of the average person, the only other route is to buy agricultural land and slowly build what you need, preferably using locally-sourced materials, generating your own power from wind, sun or water, and of course obtaining planning permission at some point in the process. Simple.

Of the six I was the only one who had already bought land, the others still being very much at the initial stages of mulling the idea over. One point repeatedly stressed was that you have to be, or become, very clear how you plan to make sufficient income from the land to cover your outgoings and then to encapsulate this in a business plan. This will depend on the size of the holding - if you want to keep dairy cows, for instance, you need a lot of land, but pigs and chickens need a lot less space. Doing a bit of market research to find what might actually sell is, of course, key. Building relationships with other local small producers, perhaps even creating a co-operative to share resources (e.g. processing facilities, cider press), all helps. It’s possible, Jyoti’s done it.

So forearmed and forewarned, I am gradually preparing myself for my emigration to Wales on 15th April. I want to gab all about my newly acquired caravan, solar panel and chainsaw but it looks like that’ll have to wait till next week. I’ve already gone way over the average attention-span duration for a single web-page, the cardinal sin of the internet generation. 3582 characters - tweet that!