A Christmas Carol

Rachel*'s birthday cake featuring a huge pile of manure, as one of her jobs is stacking it

Over the last four weeks the season of Advent has been scrupulously observed at Pilsdon. Inside the church appeared a holly-wreathed podium bearing five large candles, four of them red and arranged in a square with one white candle placed prominently in the centre. Back on 29th November, the first Sunday in Advent, young Carl* lit the first red candle at the evening service with a long taper and raised a smile from the congregation by accidentally blowing it out again as he blew out the taper. A second attempt was more successful. In each subsequent service throughout that week (there are three a day in the church) that candle was lit for the duration.

The following Sunday marked the beginning of the second week of Advent and so two candles began to be lit for each service. You can guess what happened on the Sundays of 13th and 20th December. In fact on 20th December not only were the four red candles lit, but also all the other candles in the large double-ringed chandeliers suspended above our heads along the length of the church.

A meal of beef brisket and roasted vegetables being prepared

That was the night of our carol service and the Broadoak choir filled the front space while the congregation, swollen far beyond normal numbers by visitors from the local area, were packed in on wooden chairs and on the straw bales at the sides. I was accompanying the choir on the electric piano, and four other members of the community had joined the choir for this occasion – we had spent the last five or six Wednesday evenings with them in their rehearsals. There were a mix of well-known carols that everyone sang, interspersed with choir-only set-pieces which sounded superb in the echoing chamber of the church. Afterwards everyone trouped up to the manor house for a supper of soup, sandwiches, stollen and mince pies. I made a valiant attempt at eating the whole of a nut-free Stollen loaf baked especially for me but ended up having to share it. Bah humbug.

The theme of Advent is all about expectation. Waiting and preparing for the moment of Christmas. Which apparently was not originally about having time off work, or tacky songs, or meeting up with family members, or buying gifts, or bringing pine trees indoors, or fat men in red and white suits, or multi-coloured flashing lights, or gorging on chocolate. Who knew?

I missed the lighting of the fifth candle as I travelled up to Lancaster to be with my folks over Christmas. But being at Pilsdon during the build-up to it has, as always, been a welcome escape from the grinding commercialism of the modern Christmas season that of course now starts way back in November. That’s not to say there were no Christmas decorations, lights or trees but these were not put in place until 19th December (much to the chagrin of a few who just love all that tinselly stuff.) Pilsdon Community opens its doors to anyone who wants to join them from Christmas Eve till the 29th, much as it does every weekend throughout the year, so I’m told the place is packed full of people at the moment. Offering hospitality and love to all – I’d say that’s more in the spirit of Christmas than the Boxing Day sales.

Lancaster's river Lune is high but not overflowing unlike in recent weeks

*names changed

Stall For (Christmas) Time

Our local town, Bridport, somehow manages to have two street market days a week - Wednesdays and Saturdays. Who knows how a small town can support that? I’m pretty sure some dedicated stall holders are the same at both, although I don’t get to see either very often. The weekly Wednesday shopping trip gets us in at 2pm by which time most of the stalls are being packed up, so we must content ourselves with the shops and cafes. And my day off each week doesn’t often fall on a Saturday.

Last Saturday however a number of us thrillingly got a chance not only to check out the market but actually participate in it. It was the day of Pilsdon’s annual market stall! It was the first time I’d been part of it. My main job : minibus driver. Although everyone else was either on the early or late shift, shuttling back and forth in cars, I had to be there from beginning (7:30am) to end (3pm) to transport the tables, gazebo, tinsel, chairs, signs, bunting, cloths, and all our produce. Plus a few people who managed to squeeze on.

Our new "bug hotel". So far one ladybird has checked in.

This year was our biggest yet in terms of sheer amounts of stuff to sell. There was just tonnes of it. The two tables held only a fraction, the rest being stored underneath. Lots of beautiful pottery, fired in Pilsdon’s kiln. Bottles of golden apple juice from our orchard. Hand-sewn(!) Christmas cards, hand-drawn and lino-printed gift tags, pottery angels for Christmas trees, the Pilsdon 2016 calendar. And then there was the food. The front table was piled high with brownies, fudge, stollen, challah bread, poppy-seed bread, cakes, truffle tortes and jars and jars of lemon curd, jams, jellies, chutneys and chilli oil. The tables creaked with the weight.

Everything was done proper, like. The designated brownie-seller wore an apron and disposable plastic gloves and used tongs. The brownies themselves were covered with a transparent plastic sheet, the better to prevent particles of dirt to alight upon them. Money was handled by someone else so as not to allow the grubbiness of coins in any way to mar the perfection of our confection.

The huge oak tree (see blogposts passim) that I am to saw up

Despite having got ourselves all ready and in position by 9am, people didn’t really come by in any numbers until about 11. To further attract attention to our fine stall, a motley threesome of musicians (myself included) played and sang Christmas carols for a time. It did actually seem to work. It was going to be just me on guitar and Rachel* on violin but she successfully press-ganged a reluctant Tarquin* into singing who very quickly rose to the occasion and was belting out pitch-perfect Joys to the World across Bridport. Tarquin acted and sang in London theatre productions prior to joining Pilsdon. It showed.

The approach to Bettiscombe church, a couple of miles west of Pilsdon

By 2:30pm the gusts of wind were blowing five-pound notes across the street with me in swift pursuit and threatening to take our gazebo with it, so we decided to call it a day and pack up. We had sold an awful lot. People had been very generous. One man had paid for a £9.50 pottery jar with two ten-pound-notes, telling us to keep the change. Many customers had heard of Pilsdon but didn’t know much about what we do, so they left better informed clutching the latest newsletter. To top it all, once the counting was completed we found we’d broken our revenue record with a grand total of £658.18. A thoroughly successful day out and a whole lot of fun to boot!

* names changed

Break That Fast

One of the remaining six pigs not taken to market last week

Breakfast is one of my favourite meals. My other two favourites are lunch and dinner. But if forced to rank them, breakfast might just make the top spot. There’s something about the very name, to be breaking a fast, self-imposed throughout the long night, which I find appealing. Provided I’m eating at a sensible time, i.e. after 8am, my appetite will have kicked in and I’ll be very ready for the first mouthful of Shreddies, accompanied of course by the initial slurp of hot tea.

It’s the comfort of the ritual probably. Breakfast should always consist of a bowl of cereal (an exception can be made if porridge is available) and one or two slices of toast bearing butter and marmalade. Not Flora. Not jam. Certainly not Marmite. And all the better if the marmalade is home-made. This morning I reached the point in the ceremony where marmalade should be spread on the buttered toast and to my horror I couldn’t find orange marmalade on any of the tables. The thin toast was rapidly cooling and if not eaten soon would become cold and unpleasant. There was a jar of shop-bought lemon-and-lime marmalade but I’d been put off this by someone remarking that it smelled like floor cleaner. (We have particularly fine-smelling floor cleaner liquids here, I suppose.) Thankfully Matt spotted on a neighbouring table a small and nearly empty jar of orange marmalade made by someone’s mother, which by a stroke of luck had just the right amount for my toast. Crisis averted.


We are fortunate enough to have yogurt-makers amongst us, who use the milk we get from the three Jerseys to create a delicious natural yogurt that appears each morning in a big metal pot, accompanied by a dish of prunes for plopping on top. Some pour yogurt on top of cereal, others take it neat. You get to see other people’s breakfast habits, not all of which are fathomable. Leonard* likes to prop his two slices of toast together in a tent formation until they’re cold before spreading anything on them. Freda* will not eat her toast and jam unless she’s covered it with a layer of salt.

The broad bean plants push their way out of the earth

On Mondays poached eggs are also available. Wednesdays there are sausages, beans, tomatoes and fried bread. But Saturdays are the most popular of all as people rarely seen before 9am emerge blinking for their weekly plate of bacon, eggs and tomatoes.

Unlike the other two meals which at Pilsdon seem to be an exercise in how quickly food can be shovelled from plate to gullet before dashing off for another cigarette (at least for the smokers amongst us), breakfast has a more leisurely air. It’s the only meal which people are not obliged to attend so it tends to attract only those who enjoy breakfast and intend to make the most of it. Some sit quietly munching, others chatter about anything and nothing. An exchange of “Morning!”s erupts each time someone walks in the room. People tend to drift off once finished, leaving different combinations of seated eaters from the beginning of the breakfast session who then spark up new conversations. Sometimes someone is left stranded on a table by themselves when people leave, and then move to join a more convivial table.

Weeding, digging over and spreading muck on this heavy clay bed took over a fortnight's hard labour

All this is very different from my old way of doing breakfast when I had to commute to work five days a week. This was normally eaten either alone or with a flatmate. I wouldn’t gobble it down but the sense of being required to launch myself at a certain time into the fray of London’s transport system would definitely diminish the enjoyment. Only at weekends would breakfast become again what it should be - a savoured morning edible ritual, preferably conducted out on the balcony in the sunshine. Here’s to the Most Important Meal of the Day!

The Kids Are Alright

A "bletted" medlar, about to made into a beautiful golden jelly

In my first few months at Pilsdon there were no children in the community. In fact the community was mostly middle-aged and male, with a few exceptions. Although this seemed OK at the time, when River was born in May that year (2012) the change was very noticeable. Tough men who rarely smiled began to put on goofy grins and waved across the room at him. At break-times in the Common Room there was a new centre of attention when conversations flagged, as River was placed in the middle and learned to crawl, walk and break toys.

Once again Pilsdon's parsnips have grown to enormous proportions

River and his parents have since departed but the community has been enriched with more little people as families have joined. Right now we have three of them. Carl (5) and Henrietta (3)* arrived last December from America bringing their parents who became community members, and immediately won everyone over by their utter lack of bashfulness. They both seemed very easily to adapt to having about twenty-five adults to play with. And Matt and Mary brought their firstborn Rowan into the world in February who is now able to crawl and bring himself up to standing position. In fact when I moved his legs alternately whilst he was held in an upright stance I managed to get him to walk, as he repeated the leg movement without assistance.


Henrietta had her 3rd birthday last Sunday. She is a girl who knows her own mind. When asked what she would like on top of her cake she said without hesitation that it must have a bird with a pancake in its mouth. No one is sure where this came from. I suspect it might stem from Pilsdon’s Shrove Tuesday games which include “Toss The Pancake over the Manor House”. Of course no pancake makes it further than about a third of the way up the roof so birds do get quite a feast. Whatever the provenance of her birthday wish, it was granted and we all admired the marzipan bird with a tiny pancake inserted into its beak, perched in a nest of Cadbury Fingers.

The posts and wire are going in for the old espalier apple trees to be re-trained against. 

Somehow having kids around allows the adults to be a little more carefree too. Some miniature water pistols turned up which Carl and Henrietta were playing with, on strict instructions not to fire them at people. They both obeyed but sadly the adults did not, as an after-supper wash-up descended into an all-out-water-warfare.

Carl is quite the dapper dresser. Quite often he turns up to meals wearing a shirt and tie, his own preference not his parents’. He’s on a one-boy-mission to smarten our collective dress sense. Only very infrequently does the community rise to the occasion, such as the Christmas or New Year’s Eve’s feasts, when shirts are dusted down and fingers try to remember how to tie ties. I shall miss the Christmas occasion as I’ll be up with my family in Lancaster, but will be back in time for the New Year’s Eve shenanigans. Already people are planning what acts to prepare for the party - songs, skits, musical numbers, games. I can’t reveal here what my plans are of course, everything must be a surprise on the night. If the last three are anything to go by, it's going to be an awful lot of fun. 

An old cedar has blown over on our neighbour's land taking some fence posts with it

* names changed

Bully for You

The happy couple

If you happen to be reincarnated as a baby animal on a farm, should such a thing be possible, then I hope you are born female. This gives you a better chance that you will be allowed to live for a few years assuming that you have no problems with your reproductive organs or milk glands. It’s only the very very luckiest of the males who are plucked from the slaughter-cycle to become, not to put too fine a point on it, a sex machine.

Spot the ram?

At Pilsdon for instance, all our animals are either female adults or adolescents. Five ewes, four Jersey cows (though we need to sell the eldest, Angelica, as we can only need three milking cows really). The cow’s offspring live about two years before going to the abattoir - at the moment we have three big ones born last year and three smaller calves from this year. The sow Chuckles sadly died after giving birth but we’ll select one of her many piglets to become our next sow. Our thirty chickens are female for their egg-laying ability. Only amongst the ducks do we make an exception, with one drake amongst the six Indian Runners, and last week we accepted two new “Jemima Puddleduck” Aylesbury white ducks, one male and one female. Although the incomers share the same duck pond and coop with the Indian Runners, they are definitely not making friends.

There he is

Pilsdon has currently on hire one ram and one bull. Bringing a ram in amongst the sheep is the accepted way of getting them pregnant and this ugly pitbull of a ram is mostly doing his duty although he seems to have neglected one of the five. We can tell which sheep he’s “tupped” because he wears a blue necklace which leaves a mark on the back of the ewe. The females only let him do so when they’re ready for it which is on a strict 17 day fertility cycle, so we make sure to leave him in there long enough for two cycles in case he doesn’t get round to all of them the first time around.

But having a bull on site to serve the cows is unprecedented. Normally we pay a vet to put a glove on and insert some semen into the cow at the proper time. This should be pretty failsafe but the last few tries have been unsuccessful with all three cows for some reason, leading Pilsdon to resort to hiring this mighty Hereford bull. If this doesn’t work it is a big problem for us because the cows’ milk will dry up eventually if they’re not having calves.

On top of Pilsdon Pen, our nearby hill

Daffodil, Snowdrop and Angelica have all been out in the field with the bull and we believe he’s had sex with them all. No blue necklace for him but we look for telltale muddy marks on the sides of the cow. The poor dears have never seen a bull before. The bull seemed surprised when the cows tried to mount him from behind, as they do to each other when they’re “bulling” at the point in their 3 week cycle that they want sex. We’ve brought the bull inside now as he was churning the field into a mudbath, and his quarters are right next to the cows so they can at least make small talk across the wall. The idea is to keep him long enough to have another crack at all of them, just to make sure. I’m sure they’ll be sorry to see him go.

A short video of Pilsdon's new sewage processing unit! Just what you've all been clamouring for

Hibernating for the Winter

Pilsdon's espaliered fruit trees next to the rebuilt but much lower wall. The trees will need training against wires.

I picked the wettest day of the year to drive 200 miles south to Pilsdon through rainstorm “Barney”, towing a tarp-wrapped trailer containing my luggage for the winter. My mud-splattered jeans were also quite wet by the time I'd finished taking the awning down and preparing the caravan for its lonely freezing nights ahead but as my other clothes were all deeply packed away under the tarp I just set off and turned the Jimny's heating up. It was a tired damp Swan that pitched up at Pilsdon's doors five rainy hours later but the welcome of a Common Room filled with friendly and familiar faces, not forgetting the tea, cake and roaring open fire, made up for it in spades.

I'll be spending the next fifteen weeks here, my fourth winter at Pilsdon Community. What will I be doing? I have an idea but Pilsdon is one of those places where the unexpected crops up regularly with the everyday. On Wednesday I found myself going into a hairdresser's in Bridport and asking for a bag of hair. I could see them looking at me thinking that I surely have enough of my own. There are plans for a “bug hotel” in one of the polytunnels for which human hair is apparently an essential ingredient.

My land as I left it, veg removed and dolomite lime added

Yesterday I was wobbling precariously across the roof of the cow shed which actually had no roof. In its place was a criss-cross of wooden battens nailed to the rafters covering a membrane not strong enough to support the weight of a clumsy foot. Matt was laying large rectangular slate tiles at the far end and my job was to haul them up from the ground, six at a time, totter across to where he was without falling through and stack them so they wouldn't slip off, ready for him to use. The blustery squalls only added to the challenge.

I have also helped to shake and pick seventeen pounds of tiny crab apples off the laden tree by the church, which shall be turned to jelly by the weekend. I have accompanied the local choir rehearsal on the piano, exquisite harmonies for the Christmas carol concerts. I have sown broad beans in long rows in the big glasshouse slightly too close together due to misunderstanding of what distance a mark on a stick signified. I have driven the new minibus, both longer and wider than the previous one, into town twice, squeezing it past huge tractors on narrow lanes (luckily the wing mirrors fold in!)

The new bull

A few things have changed since February, apart from the natural comings and goings of residents. There are now six Indian Runner ducks in our pond replacing those which were savaged by some wild animal last year. The sow Chuckles has died, just a few days after giving birth to eleven piglets which then had to be hand-weaned by the community, being bottle-fed every few hours including throughout the night. Solar panels now adorn the office roof providing up to 4KW of energy. The dangerously-leaning Victorian brick wall in the garden has been rebuilt with a much lower wall, which the espaliered fruit trees now tower over. The badly over-stressed reed bed sewage system has been replaced with an underground processing unit with revolving discs whose output is apparently clean enough to drink (no one has actually been brave enough to try it!) 

But the most exciting development is the Hereford bull which arrived on Wednesday. His sole purpose is to get our Jersey cows pregnant, recent artificial insemination attempts having all failed. This is the first time any of our cows have ever met a bull, even ageing Angelica. Whatever happens I'll keep you updated right here.

The bull gets acquainted with Daffodil

New Life

Pilsdon's "Hay Field" with the manor house and church in the distance beyond the polytunnel.

My third sojourn, and my third winter, at Pilsdon Community is drawing to an end. On Monday I’ll be stuffing my car and trailer full of luggage and seed potatoes and driving north back to Wales to pick up where I left off last November.

The difference from last year’s migration north is that this time (a) I don’t know where I’ll be living on my return, since a planning officer has decided that I am “in breach of planning control” by living in my caravan on my land, and (b) a girl is waiting for me in Wales. For it is true, shortly before I headed south last November, I began to date an Irishwoman, another veg grower near Machynlleth who I found myself spending quite a bit of time with over the last two growing seasons. I suspect we will find even more time to hang out together amongst the runner bean frames this year.

The blackboard is used for broacasting important messages to the community.

The winter has been a good one. This place has been buzzing, full of energy, laughter, comradeship, good food and Scrabble. To be back amongst these friends during the cold months, sharing my joys, hopes and planning woes, and getting to know new folks recently joined, has been a privilege. 

I have been helped in innumerable ways - Frank* has fixed my trailer door hinge, put my greenhouse heater up for sale using his EBay account and gave me a book on how to speak Welsh. Kyle got my chainsaw running a bit better. Bernie gave me a nice large carry-bag as he saw mine was falling apart. Arnold gave me a brand new single duvet cover that was going spare, and his wife gave me some tent pegs she found. Two people have given me lots of seed potatoes they didn’t need or want (Casablanca and Winston varieties, if you are a potato geek.)  Nathan lent me a copy of an RS Thomas anthology, the great 20th century Welsh poet. Alfonso gave me two bags of rather good coffee beans, and when I admitted I didn’t have a grinder he let me use his top-of-the-range electric burr machine which instantly zapped them into powder. Others have helped in all sorts of little ways. I’m not sure what I’ve done to deserve or can do to repay all these generous gestures, but people seem to like me to play the piano. Which thankfully I also love doing.

The denuded oak tree

Not only do we live communally but sometimes there are large tasks which we achieve communally. This winter was no exception - the removal of the huge fallen oak tree (or its many branches at least); clearing and burning all the brambles that had covered much of our stock fencing so we have access to replace the rotted stakes (still ongoing), and clearing out Brook House to name but three. Brook House was Pilsdon’s “Halfway House” until recently, a large residence in Dorchester with up to ten bedrooms which had a zero-alcohol policy and shared evening meals. For the last fifteen years or so people have had the option to move there from Pilsdon, and so retaining community life whilst getting reintegrated into the world through local work. Unfortunately it had been chronically under-utilised for some time so Pilsdon was unable to keep it going financially. The last remaining residents have been re-housed and we are making trip after trip there to empty it of furniture and clean it before handing it back to the landlord, who has in fact already sold it on. 

I’ve saved the best bit of news until last. In the early hours of Monday night Mary and Matt rushed off to Dorchester hospital, leaving the whole community on tenterhooks. Just after 2pm the call came through - it’s a boy, eight-pounds-worth, and they’ve named him Rowan.  She stayed in hospital last night so we have yet to meet the young chap. Welcome to the world, Rowan, and to Pilsdon Community! Congratulations to his exhausted mother. And ok Matt, you can be congratulated too.  May God's blessings rest on the three of you.

This being my last post from Dorset, if you want to follow my progress up in Wales check back next week on my other blog : mattswanoffgrid.blogspot.co.uk. 

*all these names are made up (except those in the penultimate paragraph!)

Sign O' The Times

Over the weekend there were five children at Pilsdon, the most I can remember being here at one time. Admittedly two of them were still unborn and hence nice and quiet. One of them, currently residing in Mary’s womb, is expected to be born any time now.  The other, visiting us from Northumberland encased inside the body of its mother Catherine, has a few months (non-)breathing space before being welcomed into the world. Both sets of parents have elected to be ignorant of the gender of their unborn children, a fairly common thing here in the UK I believe but almost unheard of in the States according to our resident Americans - they had also asked not to be told what sex their two children would be, to the astonishment of the midwives.

 

Truffle, heavily pregnant, being taken on her daily perambulation

Over the nearly six decades that Pilsdon Community has been communing there have doubtless been much pitter-pattering of small feet around these hallowed corridors. Some of them still live nearby. Clive*, in his thirties, who lives in Broadoak down the road and sometimes comes to Pilsdon church on Sunday evening, was born in and grew up at Pilsdon. The cheerful chap at the garage a mile or two away at Marshwood who does my car’s MOT used to hang out with friends here when he was young. There must be many others with early memories of this place - very occasionally someone drops by who claims to have old links with Pilsdon and wants to rekindle those old memories. We give them a cup of tea and let them get on with it.

Jedekiah Sykes and Nathaniel Goodfellow in front of their woodpile

Meanwhile I’ve been knuckling down to the jobs that need doing before my departure in twelve days. Ever since I first arrived here in spring 2012 I've been irked by the illegible Welcome sign perched on an old plough at the entrance. It was weatherbeaten and without any paint, so the carved letters could barely be made out. So I finally got round to giving it a good few coats of Cuprinol paint and picking out the lettering in white (an undercoat and then gloss). It went back to its plough yesterday morning, so hopefully visitors from now on will feel that little bit more welcome.

A rather larger job has been the chainsawing of the fallen oak. Or more accurately its branches, as the width of the trunk is almost my height so as we don’t have a chainsaw with a one-metre-long bar, I’ve left it be. Over this winter I have kept returning to it, sawing more huge branches into chunks that could be lifted onto a trailer and carted back to the woodstore where I would saw them further into chunks that could be split with an axe. The end is now in sight, one more session should see to it. I have without doubt gained more confidence with the chainsaw through such repeated use, mostly because not a single limb has been severed in the process.

It's disappointing when a jigsaw turns out to have a hundred pieces missing

My thoughts are often on my patch in Wales and in particular where and how I will live on my return. As the planners are still saying that I will not be allowed to continue residing in my caravan on the land I must find somewhere else to live nearby, at least until a One Planet Development planning application can be submitted, if that’s the route I choose. Wherever it is, it will be difficult to cover any rent from the veg business income. I’m considering various options including offering labour and veg in return for accommodation, or parking my caravan on a caravan site for a season. Something is bound to turn up. 

* not his real name

Attack of the Drones

Logs from the fallen oak that I've been chainsawing my way through 

Imagine a world where someone in another country, say China or Indonesia, can get up early on Monday morning, drive to work, get in front of a computer which provides them remote-control of a flying machine based in France, send it humming over to where you live in Sussex or Manchester where it is still late Sunday evening and you’re just thinking about retiring for the night, and fire a rocket straight into your living room.  It would not be conducive to a peaceful and happy existence. 

Change the names of the countries and there's no need to imagine it. A 13-year-old boy in Yemen was killed on 26 January by an American drone. He had been interviewed by the Guardian newspaper the previous September because his father and brother had been killed the same way in 2011.  “They tell us that these drones come from bases in Saudi Arabia and also from bases in the Yemeni seas and America sends them to kill terrorists, but they always kill innocent people. But we don’t know why they are killing us” he had said.

Seed potatoes on their way to be "chitted" - left to sprout a bit before planting

There is something I find abhorrent about war drones, more so even than fighter jets dropping bombs. At least the fighter pilots have to be in the same geography as their targets, and at least in theory be at risk of being brought down by opposition firepower. But the people who pilot these drones lead a very safe and comfortable existence. They can go home to their loved ones at the end of each working day, happy in the knowledge of having successfully carried out their killing orders.  

A derelict horse-drawn hay-turner we found on our walk to the coast

This is a new type of warfare where “combatants”, in the loosest sense of the word, are in completely different parts of the world.  A country (or in some dystopian future, corporation?) which owns such machines can define who they regard as enemies, specific individuals living in other countries, and decide to eliminate them with zero risk to themselves.  And tough luck if you happen to have popped round to their target’s house for tea when they do.  The war-zone is where the rockets land, not where they are controlled from, so one side in the “war” need never enter the danger territory at all.  

The military are even beginning to phase out the human element altogether, allowing the drones to fire on people according to pre-set criteria.  

Proud to have lost 21 pounds over her time at Pilsdon

The US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey, Russia, China, India, Iran and Israel all have Unmanned (but certainly Armed) Aerial Vehicles according to this 2012 report, and three of them (US, UK and Israel) have used them in combat. No doubt many other countries are looking to play catch up.  I expect many of these same nations who happen to have enough cash in their so-called Defence budgets are also building anti-drone technology in case anyone should have the temerity to use drones back against them.  Those without such means will just have to get used to the fact that their citizens may get blown up from time to time by other countries who feel they have the moral imperative to do so.

More info on UK drones here and various UK campaign events listed here.  There is a petition to stop the deployment of UK drones.

Next week, back to the more wholesome subject of rural community living!

Turf from our field cut out to form...

...a firepit for all the brambles we've been hacking down from around the field fencing

The Long Arm of the Law

The stakes for the edging for our two new strawberry beds

The long arm of the law reaches all the way to Pilsdon. Last week we welcomed a trainee Police Community Support Officer to stay and work with us for four days, and this week we have a trainee Police Officer for the same duration. Either the police are seeking to ensure their new recruits are exposed to forms of community life and active rehabilitation, or they’ve just decided to keep tabs on us. 

Our PCSO, let’s name her Sally, was in her early to mid twenties and had left her native South Wales for Exeter, a city where she knew no-one, because she had found a job there answering the 999 emergency line. Even during the couple of years she did this she found working conditions deteriorated with more pressure exerted on them to deal with calls in a certain time. There was no flexibility allowed to let them deal longer with elderly or confused people. She said it had become like a call centre, so she got out and onto the trainee scheme for PCSOs for Dorset. The training programme is based in Bournemouth but she has asked to be assigned to Beaminster in West Dorset (not far from us!) so she can still feasibly commute from Exeter, still over an hour’s drive each way. She loved it at Pilsdon and plans to pop in from time to time - we hope she will! 

The police officer in training, who we shall call Steven, is perhaps a few years older, in his late twenties. He’s from Dorchester, just 45 minutes drive from Pilsdon, and has also requested to be stationed in West Dorset somewhere, presumably so he doesn’t need to move house. Given that all his spare time is taken up with organising his own wedding in the summer, this makes perfect sense. He’s previously worked in the prison service but has followed his kid brother into the Force who apparently already has something of a superstar reputation, so he’s having to get used to that. Apparently Steven’s been sworn in (“attested”) to the police so he is already a bone fide Police Officer with all the powers that go with that, but doesn’t yet know how to wield them as he’s only three months into training. A slightly scary thought but he calmed our fears by saying that if a trainee constable did go and do something silly they wouldn’t be a copper for long. 

Both Sally and Steven got stuck into community life with gusto, making meals, hacking back brambles, hefting wood, and chatting with everyone. As they weren’t wearing their uniforms they could have been anyone, visiting Pilsdon for a few days for a break. With luck they will have taken something away with them back to their jobs when they finally go on the beat. We’ve certainly enjoyed their company. Maybe the other emergency services could start sending their newbies our way too! Young firefighters, paramedics and lifeboat rescuers all peeling our spuds for us, can’t wait.

Ready for the strawberries!

First Contact

The Rubicon has been crossed. The gulf between State Apparatus and Private Individual has been spanned. Verbal communication has been established. On Monday I finally spoke to a planning officer from Snowdonia National Park Authority.

We had exchanged emails in November, by which I had been requested to cease and desist from living on my land and my attempts at justification dismissed, all in a very polite and formal manner. Since then I had been in touch with my neighbours and friends who were all sorry to hear of my predicament and supportive of my enterprise. One of them had spoken about it to her neighbour, who also happened to be a local councillor for the National Park, and she suggested that I contact him directly.  This I did, by email late one evening, and within twenty minutes he had fired a Blackberry message back saying he would have a meeting with the planning officer about the situation! I began to harbour hopes that somehow he would magic a solution that would make all my planning woes disappear.

As good as his word, a week or so later he got back to me to say that he had met with the officer. On the plus side, he said that the polytunnel wasn't too much of a problem. However, regarding me living in the caravan there wasn't any such hope. The officer still wanted me to move it off the land.

The same day the officer herself emailed me to ask me to contact her to let her know my intentions. I felt it would be more constructive to speak to her than just to respond with another email. So I began trying to reach her on her office phone which proved harder than expected for some reason  but finally, late on Monday afternoon, we managed to speak.

Count the church attendees by the number of wellies

She appeared to be keen to try to help me within the constricts of the National Park's Local Development Plan.  My polytunnel, greenhouse and (as-yet-unbuilt) storage shed could all be included in one application rather than in separate ones. There was no need to include a tree survey (contrary to what the 'planning portal' website seemed to be demanding.) She suggested I get it in before April when the fee increases. 

As for living in my caravan however, she was unbending. I explained all about my veg-growing business, how I was supporting the local economy, and how it was only financially viable if I didn't have to pay rent. I said I had to return in March to begin the growing season and build on the hard work of the last two years. All this was to no avail – she saw my caravan as a “caravan site” and there is a zero-tolerance policy on new caravan sites in Snowdonia.

Planning issues bore Jamie. This is his latest favourite spot to trip people up

However she did suggest I consider making a One Planet Development (OPD) application, which was a bit of a surprise.  (Check out my past blogpost about OPD – it's a Welsh-only self-sufficiency planning law that allows new residences in the open countryside provided the occupants are working the land. There's a lot of paperwork to prepare for it).  No one had ever made a OPD application in Snowdonia before so she has no prior experience but she was prepared to involve her colleague in Policy who might be able to help me further. Of course there is no guarantee they will approve my application, far from it. But it seems to offer the only glimmer of hope.

So I'm left with a stark choice – prepare a OPD, or quit. 

Or become a giant parsnip