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

Common People

As the great and the good once again descend on Davos, a small town in Switzerland about the size of Bridport, intending to iron out the world’s problems and enjoy some old-fashioned networking while they’re at it, here at Pilsdon our affairs have been rather more humble in nature.

For instance this week ushered in the annual Pilsdon Snooker and Pool championships. Played over a weekend, the matches are conducted in the august surroundings of the Pilsdon sports hall, which can comfortably accommodate an audience of ten at any one time. Operating a simple knock-out structure and with just one frame played to decide who goes through, the tournament allows for no off-days - participants are required to be at the peak of their game right from the offset.

A chunk of tasty brawn (made from pigs heads)

I entered the Snooker tournament. Some of you may remember that two years ago I somehow won the Pilsdon Snooker cup but knowing that that was some kind of bizarre fluke, I wasn’t overly confident of winning this one. I found myself drawn against Tom* for my first match who claimed to have spent large chunks of his youth in the snooker hall pulling all-nighters on amphetamines, and it showed. I managed to get quite a few balls into the pockets to my credit but his cueing was accurate and the scoreline decisive. Tom went on to win the championship and will be receiving his prize at the presentation ceremony tonight.

It is also the time of year to wander past the kitchen only to be drawn in by the wafting fragrance of oranges boiling on the stove. Yes, marmalade may be going out of fashion in the wider world (although the new Paddington film may give it a boost) but it has never lost its allure here at Pilsdon. Half a crate (5kg-worth) of Seville oranges appeared last week which were quickly sliced and boiled up with a tonne of sugar and a bit of lemon juice and pectin to make 30 jars of delicious and tangy breakfast spread.  As this is unlikely to last us long we will be buying another 10kg of oranges today but will have to wait until more sugar arrives next Tuesday with our fortnightly food delivery from Booker Wholesale before marmalading can recommence.

The 1958 advert for Pilsdon Manor which is when Percy Smith bought it (but not with the 803 acres!)
 and began Pilsdon Community

Out in the garden the last of the main beds have been dug over and only needs some muck spreading now, apart from an area with a few giant parsnips still lurking in the soil - we’re a bit scared of pulling them up. Two new strawberry beds are being dug out of the turf and will need timber edging fitted. The countless soft fruit bushes (gooseberries and blackberries) are slowly being weeded and pruned, the raspberry canes have been ruthlessly chopped down, and the polytunnels and glasshouse are getting a bit of TLC, which is only fair as they are currently bursting with vegetable life - we are harvesting broccoli, pak choi, kale and salad leaves, and there are cauliflowers, cabbages, broad beans and peas coming along, to be munched in the next few months.

Life at Pilsdon is the ‘common life’ - common in that we eat and share things in common, but also common in the ordinary sense. We carry on with the tasks necessary to feed ourselves and keep ourselves warm and clean in a way which we hope doesn’t damage our environment. People the world over need a few basic conditions to do the same, such as peace, health, liberty and enough money for their needs; in so many countries one or more of these essentials are lacking. It’s the type of people who go to Davos who have the influence and money to make real change for the better - let’s hope that it’s more than a chinwag this year. Perhaps we ought to host them at Pilsdon next time which should be grounding for them all, especially if they have to milk the cows (though they might miss the alcohol I suppose).

The completed jigsaw in all its glory - minus 7 missing pieces :-(
The next jigsaw, of London Looking North, is well on its way already

*Name changed as usual.

All Brawn and No Brain

Snow on Pilsdon Pen this morning

This was the week that five of Pilsdon’s eight “weaners” (read: young pigs) reached the culmination of their lives. 

They had, in fact, already had a stay of execution. They had reached the appropriate weight for slaughter by late December, but Christmas and New Year activities and holidays (for the humans) meant that they were able to enjoy an extra couple of weeks of piggy life, until last Wednesday afternoon three females and two males were shepherded (pigherded?) onto the trailer. There they spent their last night wondering, one assumes, why their accommodation had changed for the worst and agreeing to complain about it in the morning. 

Unfortunately they were never given such an opportunity, as at 6:30am the next day three men got into the truck their trailer was attached to and drove it west for half an hour until they reached C Snell’s, a small abattoir near Chard Junction. It must have been a relaxing drive as they were asleep on arrival. The early hour meant that they would be first in the queue, and there wouldn’t be any distress caused by a long wait in an unfamiliar place. 

I wasn’t there for the drop-off, but it fell to me to collect them on Monday. The intervening days had allowed time for Mr C Snell to kill them, slice each one in two down the middle, remove the intestines and offal, and hang them to let the blood completely drain.  So when Stephen* and I arrived just before 9am the half-pigs we received looked just like meat, not the animals that the community had looked after since they were tiny piglets.  I backed the trailer up to the cold-room door and two Snell-ites brought them out one-by-one, passing them to Stephen who was standing in the trailer, laying them in a pile on a clean blanket, then covering them all with another blanket. We hadn’t brought anything to weigh the top blanket down with, so had to improvise using a pig-half and the bag of offal. A third Snell-ite checked that we weren’t planning to sell this meat; apparently if we were we should have had a refrigerated trailer.  As it’s for our own consumption, on our own heads be it.

Apart from a tricky moment on the return journey having to reverse back to a passing point to let a truck past, I got them home safely and parked up by the new butchering room where a team of Pilsdon folk were primed to begin. The pigs were brought in, two halves at a time. One half of each pig had kept the whole head. They were laid on large wooden chopping boards next to hacksaws, sharpened knives, cleavers and a small axe, and the fun began. We chopped, sawed, hacked, rolled, weighed and bagged. Arthur, an ex-farmer with decades of experience, directed the operations. Out of these weaners came a plentitude of shoulder and leg joints (up to 15lb each), bagfuls of loin chops and cutlets, rolled bellies, and racks of spare ribs. All these have filled a chest freezer.

Heinrich decided that the heads have to be used as well, so he has boiled them up to make brawn, (known as “head cheese” in the States), a delicacy which it is fair to say has not generated too much enthusiasm amongst the community.  And Barry has stated his intentions to make soap from some of the fat we discarded. Waste not want not, I suppose.

A pot of heads

The three remaining weaners are enjoying the extra room in their pen, although wondering where their siblings have got to. We’re giving them a little more time to fatten up more till they’re a suitable size to become bacon, hams and sausages, all of which processing we leave to Mr C Snell and his associates as we don’t have the facilities here. The pigpens will be bare, apart from Truffle the sow, and she is due to give birth in less than three months so the cycle will begin again.

Canasta is making a comeback as an evening activity...

...as are 1000-piece jigsaws

* All names changed in this blogpost.

The New Normal

A beautiful weedling

Every now and again at Pilsdon you find yourself doing something you had never imagined anyone doing, let alone yourself. For example on Sunday I had to search in the workshop for a crowbar to attempt to jimmy out of a freezer a five pound bag of minced beef that had become ice-welded to its neighbouring bags of meat and the freezer floor.  Last week I was trying and failing to keep an effective head-lock on a boisterous calf to stop him eating the feed of the younger and slower calf, Oscar. And on Monday I had to drive four eight-foot-long wooden stakes back to Axminster, attached to the truck like rocket-launchers, only to have the ratchet snap give way whilst driving at 60mph along a single-lane B road (thankfully they stayed on, I was able to re-attach them, and reached Axminster in time for Grainne* to catch her train, just).

The main polytunnel has broccoli, cabbages, salad leaves, kale, pak choi, spinach, chard, broad beans and peas growing.
Not bad for January.

A single day can encapsulate such varied activities as milking the dairy cows and mucking out their quarters before the sun has risen, taking communion before breakfast, making pats of butter from our cows’ cream, preparing soup for 22 people from a tray of recently dug-up turnips and an obscenely large parsnip, marking out two new garden beds for strawberries, showing a four year old boy how to find middle C on a piano, driving to Bridport as the bright low sun lights up the whole of Marshwood Vale to collect those who have been to an ADCAP meeting, chatting to Stan** who joined Pilsdon recently who says he’s happier now than he has been for six years, and preparing this blog post.  That was just some of yesterday.

The obscenely large parsnip

After the extended celebrations and feasting of Christmas and New Year, things are now returning to normality. The three-course candlelit meal of New Year’s Eve followed by a terrifyingly tricky quiz (sample question : “Which country would be the second largest in the world if you don’t include their lakes?”) and a hilarious selection of homegrown talent offering songs, skits, poems and musical numbers, is sadly now just a memory. All those who went away over the festive period have now returned. The weekly rota has settled back into its usual routine. People are breathing a collective inward sigh of relief. 

Outside is a different story, but there's still some parsnips, swedes and carrots out there.

It’s time to face the fact that 2015 is really upon us. The things we hope to achieve this year, we had better start to make them happen. The lessons we think we’ve learned from 2014, we need to begin to put them into practice. Whatever befalls us all this year, both good and ill, the attitude with which we face each day will ultimately affect how we experience it all.  

One thing we do know, at least those of us living in the UK, is that we will have an opportunity to elect a different government. As I’m on the electoral roll in West Dorset but will be living in my caravan in Wales in May, I've arranged to have a postal vote. As West Dorset has never had anything other than a Conservative MP, chances are slim that my vote will topple Oliver Letwin from his comfortable seat but I’m still ready to have a go. How about giving the Green Party a shot at power, shall we?  Or at least a bit of media coverage please, BBC.

* Real name used by permission

** Not his real name