O Little Town Of Pilsdon

The view on the way up to our reservoir for its fortnightly maintenance visit

Advent is reaching its climax. Pilsdon's fourth Advent candle has been lit in the church. The Christmas trees are up in the Common Room and in the church. We have been decorating them all today, twinkling lights, baubles, stars and the like are everywhere. As I type this I can hear the holly-hunting expedition returning from the hedgerows.

Last Sunday's carol service filled the church as usual, lit by the flickering candles suspended above everyone's heads on three large double-ringed candle-holders, each attached to the high ceiling by slender cables. It can be counted a successful evening if none of the candles falls off or drips a splodge of wax onto a worshipper's head. 

The Broadoak choir sang with much gusto and rich harmony, both the regular congregational carols and the set pieces, some of which I accompanied on piano. “Shepherd's Pipe Carol” was one such, a fiendish piece by John Rutter, requiring me to practice my part daily for the last several weeks to get it up to performance standard, more or less. Three other Pilsdonites were in the choir, of whom two were complete choir-novices who found it a steep learning curve but very much rewarding in the end.

Our two grapevines received their winter pruning on Wednesday

Some people have already left the community temporarily for their Christmas break with families and friends, as I too will be doing today (back next Thursday.) Sadly two residents have recently left without warning, the temptation of alcohol proving too much. More new faces are appearing every day as wayfarers appear by foot, bike and taxi, to spend their Christmas with us. Plans are in place to house a lot of extra people in various rooms around the site. The large meals to come are organised with military precision. I shall be back in time to help cook the New Year's Eve banquet (I've had a sneak peak at next week's rota!)

Completed our leaf mould container and shoved a load of leaves in to rot down for a couple of years

In what seems to have been a particularly bad-news year, Pilsdon Community continues to offer a small piece of good news buried in a corner of West Dorset, a place of welcome, sanctuary, healing and hope as it has been since 1958. May it inspire many others to stand up against the tide of intolerance and hatred with compassion and love. 

I wish you all a peaceful and joyful Christmas season!

One Flu Over The Cuckoo's Nest

Pilsdon's birthday cakes are incredibly creative and always unique

Shortly after Pilsdon's chickens all met their demise simultaneously a couple of weeks ago (see blog post from 3 Dec), the Government's Chief Vet (a post I had previously been unaware of) announced that everyone in the country must keep their poultry indoors for 30 days. The reason for this draconian measure is the threat of Highly Pathogenic Avian Flu which lurks on mainland Europe. Infected wild birds popping over here from the Continent could easily transmit it to their British counterparts, wild or tame. Anyone not complying can be fined up to £5000 and thrown in prison for 3 months.

Unlike almost every other poultry-keeper in the country this bad news had a bit of a silver lining for us. Since we happen to be in a brief non-chicken-owning period we don't have to worry about keeping them all crammed into their coop for a month. And it means that we actually have a bit more time to finish off the chicken fencing, at least up till the end of the 30 day period, rather than by this weekend when the next platoon of ex-battery hens would have been coming. A jolly good thing too as their enclosure is not yet in place. We have banged the posts in all the way round the woodland and dug a small trench between each post in which to bury the bottom of the fencing, but the actual fence is still lying rolled up on the ground.

This was a cake in the form of a logfire. Most of the logs had been eaten at this point.

Our ducks though are a different story as they happened to be alive and in residence when the DEFRA control measure came into force. Our four Indian Runner ducks, the thin ones that hold themselves particularly upright as they waddle around, lived in an enclosure in the main yard. Our two Aylesbury ducks, the white “Jemima Puddleduck” variety, were kept separately over by the orchard. We had to separate the two breeds when we discovered the male Aylesbury liked to terrorise the Indian Runners.


Their respective coops were too small to keep them in for an entire month so we had to re-purpose the Donkey Shed to house the birds instead. Luckily no donkeys live in the Donkey Shed (the last one I helped to bury in my first month at Pilsdon in 2012). But which ducks should go in? We couldn't keep all the ducks together for a whole month, the male Aylesbury would cause havoc. It was no contest really. We get more eggs from the Indian Runners than from the sole female Aylesbury.

And this was a joint birthday cake for Mary and Anna, decorated with home-grown chilli peppers.

I got quite a shock one morning as I went into the veg storage shed to get some onions for lunch and came face to face with two dead ducks, hanging upside down. These have since been plucked, butchered and cooked and the meat will, I believe, be converted into pate.

Hopefully the Avian Flu embargo will be lifted after 30 days, the remaining ducks returned to their more comfortable quarters and we can buy some new chickens. But unfortunately a Lincolnshire turkey farm has contracted the disease which has placed that whole area on lockdown. There must be a risk that if more cases are discovered the restrictions could continue for longer. Spare a thought for all the poor imprisoned fowl this Christmas!

I've moved rooms recently and struggled to move my bed in

I had to get down to the bottom of the steps

Even for me it was a tight squeeze

Made it!

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye

My new passport photo (pre-cropped)

The Pilsdon Community just shrank.

We had to say a sad goodbye to Matt, Mary and their young lad Rowan on Sunday. They've been an integral part of the community for about two years, and Rowan has known nothing else, being born here in February 2015. Matt has been a Pilsdon Member, helping to keep a semblance of order about the place, keeping the drains unblocked, the water hot, the machines repaired, the bulbs replaced, the computers whirring, the firewood sawn, and generally stopping the whole fabric from falling apart. His heavy mantle has temporarily fallen upon me, it seems, at least till I scarper off in February. So if you don't hear any more on this blog you can surmise that something has gone terribly wrong and it's my fault.

Since Rowan was born, Mary has been a full-time mother but still found time to make delicious meals for the community upon occasion. Rowan has grown into a very cute toddler. He is forming some words now. For some reason he has learned “manger” before “cow” which impresses me no end.

Decided against this one - you're not supposed to smile.

We will miss all three of them very much. They are moving up to live close to Mary's parents in a village near Bath and return to a slightly more “normal” existence. Matt has found a full-time I.T. job, with actual weekends off unlike the one day off per week at Pilsdon. And with Mary's parents able to take on some of the child-care duties, they should both have a little more free time on their hands.

Another departure came on Thursday. Sue has been connected to Pilsdon for a long time, having been a Member in the past, and has often come in to lead church services (she's an Anglican priest), but most recently has been staying here as a part-time volunteer. Now she's found a place to live only a few miles south of Pilsdon, so it's not so much a sad goodbye as a cheery “see you soon”! We will, in fact, as she's leading the evening service this Sunday. We're not letting her go that easily!

And this one. 

Chicken Run

Oink. This is not a chicken.

The Pilsdon woodland is eerily silent. Where once there were chickens strutting about, clucking, squawking, scratching and pecking, there is now nothing but fallen leaves. Our chickens have departed, ushered into chicken heaven where no human steals their eggs. Their bodies, too old and tough to be considered for the table, have been incinerated on the “burn pile”. Their enclosure lies fallow.

The chicken coop

This is a periodic event at Pilsdon. We get our chickens in a batch of about thirty from a factory farm where they have already outlived their usefulness, and would otherwise have been killed already. Here they get an extra year or two of life, and what a life! Instead of being crammed inside a large shed as their entire existence had been to date, they find themselves in a small wood, their natural habitat, and left to roam. At night they have a big coop to roost in. They are fed twice a day. Their bedraggled scrawny bodies gradually assume a healthy gloss and they plump up. Their egg production, whilst not at peak levels, nevertheless returns a useful number for Pilsdon's kitchen.

Eventually they do get too old to lay enough eggs to warrant keeping them and at that point they are replaced with another set of lucky “rescued” birds. We are in the interim period right now and have taken the opportunity to replace the entirety of the fencing that encircles the woodland, and the internal fences that supposedly subdivided it into separate areas, although now it was all so decrepit that the chickens could get anywhere they liked.

The pigpen is at the edge of the small woodland

So this week we've been out there in the cold, snipping the fencing from posts with wire-cutters, yanking the posts out of the ground and hauling them onto the burn pile, rolling up the mangled fencing and taking it to the tip. It's been a revelation to see the woodland opened up. It's a beautiful spot, especially with the sun lighting up the young birch trees and the leaf litter beneath. For so long it's been off limits to anyone who isn't a chicken or a chicken-feeder, and now for a little while we can reclaim it as our own.

The new fence posts arrived yesterday, and soon we will begin banging them in all round the perimeter, before starting to attach fresh fencing. It's a large rectangle, my guess is about twenty metres by thirty. We'll use movable electric fences for the subdividing partitions rather than fixed ones, the idea apparently being that grass will grow in the areas where the chickens are not. (I have my doubts as to whether any grass will grow at all under these trees!) And before Christmas a new platoon of fresh-beaked hens will arrive to occupy our woodland again. Lucky critters!

New posts and fencing ready and waiting

What's Cooking?

Hundreds of chilli peppers drying in the polytunnel

As the winds batter and howl, shaking window frames, blowing open doors and tearing greenhouse panes from their sockets, the indoor duties seem more preferable to the outdoors.

Most of my work here at Pilsdon tends to be outdoors - I've been digging over the heavy compacted clay in the garden, banging in corner posts for a new leaf mould container, weeding the rhubarb bed, scraping off the mud from the lane that had been deposited by the recent floods, creating a new set of straw-bale compost bays, and milking the cows. But the Rota, which allocates duties to all and sundry, must be obeyed, and I am occasionally required to get myself to the kitchen and cook a meal for everyone.

Rainbow chard leaves in the glasshouse are huge

Last week I was on with Gerry*, a chef by trade, to make an evening meal from minced beef (so sayeth the Rota). We decided on lasagne with garlic bread, and naturally agreed that he should take the lead on any culinary points. However it was simplest to split the tasks so that he made the lasagne and I made the bread. A Paul Hollywood recipe book was my guide which proved to be a reliable one. A huge electric mixer with a kneading component was my assistant so no need to knead. The many garlic cloves I roasted in the Aga with oil and balsamic vinegar and inserted them whole into the eight baguettes just before baking. Perhaps my beginner's luck has not yet run out because they did turn out very well, to general acclaim.

Grapevine leaves turning autumnal 

Yesterday it was my turn to make lunch with Barry. Lunches are always vegetarian and come accompanied by Rory's home-baked bread with a selection of confitures, plus fruit, so even if what you make is a disaster people don't leave the table hungry. He suggested pasta which we hadn't had for a while. We had mushrooms in the fridge. I was thinking tomato-based sauce but he wanted to do cheese-based white sauce, which of course is a little trickier but with a Delia book at hand I was happy to go for it. Timing is always critical to get it ready for bang on one-o'clock, and for a moment it seemed like we'd left it a bit late as I stirred and stirred this huge panful of milky cheese sauce but it thickened in time, we chucked Barry's beautifully fried mushrooms in and served it up. The gluten-intolerant and/or pasta-hating people, of whom there were four, got jacket potatoes.

Not a canal - this is the Pilsdon lane after the stream burst its banks

Tomorrow, the Rota informs me, I am to make a pork supper with Neil. As it happens three of our pigs are being butchered as I type this, having just been fetched from the abattoir, so having got permission to use the fresh meat rather than frozen I popped into the butchery room earlier and asked for the pork chops not to be put in the freezer. I was a fraction too late, most of the chops were already bagged and popped in there, but I ran over and grabbed three bags out (thirty chops in total), they hadn't frozen yet thankfully, and put them in the kitchen fridge instead. You can't get much fresher meat than this. These pigs had not that long ago been romping around on and manuring the very same garden clay that we are now having to dig over due to their heavy trotters compacting it all in the rain. It's all connected here.

"Resurrection Soup" Stage 1

Stage 2

Stage 3. We will be eating this for lunch today

* all names changed

A Room With A View

I have swapped one reality for another. From being a caravan-dwelling nurturer of a patch of soil in mid-Wales, I have become a volunteer resident in an intentional community in south-west England. This transformation has happened every winter since 2013. Each time I flit south I am welcomed by a whole crew of friendly and familiar faces, good people who are for a while living and sharing their lives together at Pilsdon. For a few months I swell the numbers by one.

My room is on the ground floor of the East Wing, originally the stables for the manor house, that runs the length of the central quad and houses the male residents. The quad is put down to pasture, with a diagonal fence across it which forms two small fields, so sometimes my window looks out upon a few sheep or a couple of calves, but right now it is empty. The two calves are indoors now, in the stables directly opposite me, next door to the three beef cattle who I can see right now munching their hay. Their stables form the top end of the long single-storey block called the Loose Boxes which also contains a number of single-bed rooms for those who visit at weekends (in Pilsdon parlance, “the wayfarers”).

A squirrel lay on my land's entrance track, still warm but definitely deceased

In between these bedrooms and the cows is a long room used variously for more formal meetings, for the watching of important sports events on the wide screen TV, and for the laying out of large collections of second-hand clothes that are occasionally donated en masse. Such a donation happened recently so today all those who wished to extend their wardrobe a little could be found in there trying on extra-large jumpers and comparing socks. I myself came away with a natty pair of smart black shoes which fit perfectly. May the soul of their previous owner rest in peace (I assume).

A huge Angora rabbit, one of many at my friend's rabbit farm.

The Manor house is off to the left, out of view of my window, where all the meals happen and where I spend many a happy hour murdering Beethoven on the piano. But if I lean and look right I can glimpse the milking parlour and the “North Barn” (there's only one barn and it's to the north) which houses a mountain of hay. Next to that, out of sight but closer still to my room, is the winter quarters of Snowdrop, Daffodil and Cuckoo, the three Jersey milking cows. Their summer quarters, which they find infinitely preferable no doubt, are the surrounding fields. Still, part of their winter quarters is an external yard so they have daylight and fresh air when they want it and they get as much delicious hay as they can eat.

As I write it's approaching that important time of the day, 4:30pm, which Pilsdon marks with a daily ritual known as Tea and Toast, whose key ingredients can easily be gleaned from its name. Yesterday we celebrated two birthdays so it was temporarily upgraded to Tea and Toast and Cupcakes. Today there's some grape jelly I want to try, made from the grapes of the two vines I planted back in early 2013 so I think I'll leave you now to join the others in the Common Room. Till next week!

The End of Winter

The bit between Pancake Day and Easter is known by Christians as Lent. Originally a time for new entrants into the church to prepare themselves through fasting and penitence, eventually all Christians came to observe it. The forty days (not including the Sundays) was a reminder of the time Jesus spent hungry in the desert at the beginning of his public life. Today it tends to be very much an individual decision how Lent is observed. Sometimes people cut out something from their habits like chocolate or box-set bingeing.  Others may take on a particular discipline. Lent is still a powerful corrective to the widespread belief that we must deny ourselves nothing in the pursuit of self-fulfilment.

Here at Pilsdon some people have given up meat for Lent, no small feat at a place where nearly every meal contains some delicious home-reared and -butchered beef, pork or lamb. Personally I have kept the meat but just given up the second helpings that are normally offered each meal. 

Priscilla* has chosen a more unusual Lenten discipline - to be nice to me. Ever since I neglected to mention in my blog the fairy wings that she sported on New Year’s Eve she has delighted in having little digs at me (my “hippy hair" being one of the targets), in a jokey way of course. At least I think it was a jokey way. During Lent however I can enter a room and be greeted by her cheeky smile and pink hair and “Hello Matt Swan! I like your socks” or some similar compliment. I’m getting a bit too used to it.

Soon enough though I will sadly no longer be receiving Priscilla's tongue-in-cheek remarks or sharing in any other aspect of Pilsdon's community life. On Tuesday I head back to my plot in Wales! Spring is fast approaching and seeds must be sown. It’s my last week of my fourth winter at Pilsdon and I’m celebrating it with a virulent cold, like many others here. I reckon I’ll have shaken it off by the time I go. I need to be in tip-top condition for the travails of caravan living in a freezing bog in Wales. 

I'll be updating my other blog, Matt Swan Off Grid, from there so I'll see you there!

* name changed, and chosen by herself

Broken Machines

1-week-old Ashley is taken out for his first walk

Alcohol may be banned at Pilsdon but nicotine and caffeine certainly are not, and many of us indulge in one or both of these addictive substances to one degree or another. Smokers of cigarettes (electronic or otherwise) congregate in the “smoker’s TV room” or the “smoker’s hut”, the two indoor places where smoking is not forbidden.  The smell of stale cigarette smoke tends to deter all but the most socially-minded non-smoker from hanging out here.

In addition to the provision of tea and instant coffee at the 11am and 4:30pm breaks, there is a hot water dispenser in the Aga Room that is kept permanently on to allow people to make hot drinks at any time of day or night. That is, until last weekend when its thermostat broke and it started to boil over before Matt noticed it and pulled the plug. 

While we wait for a replacement thermostat, clearly we couldn’t simply stop drinking tea and coffee or life as we know it would end, so our provisional solution has been to keep ready large kettles of hot water on the Aga top plates. Leaving the top plates open with the kettle on for too long would cause its oven temperature to drop too far so we tend to heat the water to boiling then close the plates and park the kettles on top with thick towels over them in an attempt to retain the heat. Arguably this system is more favourable to community life as people hang out together waiting for the kettles to heat up again for their brew.

The new "garden scales" being put through their paces.

As far as I know cream is not classed as an addictive substance yet I’m sure it’s near the borderline based on the fear I’ve seen in people’s eyes as they’ve been told that we’re also going to be out of cream for the time being. Another vital piece of machinery, the Separator, has given up the ghost. This is the cunning whizzy thing into which our full-fat Jersey milk is poured every morning and spun so fast that the cream is removed leaving the skimmed milk, or more accurately low-fat milk. (The term “skimmed milk” of course comes from the days when the milk was just left to let the cream rise to the top and then skimmed off.)

The replacement Separator arrived yesterday but it wasn’t an exact replacement - it was made of plastic not metal and was deemed unlikely to survive the rigours of daily separating for long. It’s being sent back and we’ll have to wait a few more weeks for the metal version to become available, which means two things. No cream and therefore no butter unless we buy some from a shop. And our milk will be full-fat for a good while longer, which actually I rather like on my breakfast cereal. I think we’ll survive.

My first scones (and Rachel's)

It also means that cheese-making becomes easier, which needs full-fat milk. Previously anyone wanting to make cheese had to ask those in the Dairy change the routine and skip the separating process, just pasteurising it. Ermentrude* and I have had a go at making something called Lemon Cheese which is a soft cheese created by warming the milk to 77 degrees C, adding lemon juice, stirring, waiting for it to curdle, then pouring through a muslin cloth and hanging for a while. The results were not quite what we hoped for. It was extremely crumbly and had a kind of powdery texture, which we’ve improved a bit by mixing with more milk. At least it was more successful than our attempt to make Buttermilk Cheese which used the buttermilk (obtained when making butter) in place of milk - it simply didn’t form any curds at all.

The soft cheese winner so far has to be the Yogurt Cheese, and it’s also the easiest. We make our own yogurt from the milk, and then we just take some and put in a muslin cloth to hang over a bowl, no heating required. The next day, the liquid will have drained out and what’s left is a delicious cheese, especially when mixed with garlic, salt and pepper. All our adventures in cheese-making find their way to the Saturday evening cheese platters, and so we await the reception of our latest creation with bated breath.

The sea is a bit slopey here

* names changed

Ashes to Ashes

Our first animal of the year was born on Ash Wednesday, a beautiful doe-eyed bull calf, and has been aptly named Ashley. He is the firstborn of his mother, Cuckoo, who has been transformed from an unruly temperamental teenager into a model of maternal calm. She now emits these soft short “moos” from time to time as if comforting her calf, or perhaps just expressing sheer contentment.

Ashley was born about 3pm while most people were out on the shopping trip to town. He was on his feet by 3:30pm and suckling by 3:45pm, although he was given a helping hand getting to the teats.  Now that Cuckoo is producing milk we have started to milk her which is something she is just going to have to get used to. At present we’re not milking her dry of course, as Ashley needs to feed. We just take some out twice a day to relieve the pressure on her udders.  At these early stages her milk is full of colostrum, full of goodness for her calf but not pleasant for us to drink, so the milk is discarded. In a week or so it’ll be OK for us to drink and we will start milking her fully. She will be separated from the calf at that point so we’ll begin to bottle feed Ashley - still with his mother’s milk of course.

Wood fungus near Pilsdon's defunct reed bed system

Life begins. Life ends. On that same Ash Wednesday afternoon my good friend Lou passed away. She was just two days shy of her 90th birthday. I had got to know her whilst living in the same block of flats in central London close to Waterloo station from 2004 till 2009. At that time she, her husband and her uncle all lived in one small flat. Lou had lived in Waterloo her entire life, having been born in 1926 just a few blocks north (an area subsequently flattened to make way for the South Bank.) She had met Len after WW2, married and moved into the block of flats in which she was still residing nearly seventy years later. 

Despite seeing huge changes to her neighbourhood over the decades Lou always remained open and friendly to new people regardless of race or religion. She had a quick wit, a knack for telling stories and a keen interest in other people. She told me and my flatmates of schoolfriends lost to a German bomb which hit a shelter where the Young Vic theatre stands today. She told us of her wheelchair-bound mother who lived with them for most of her life; of her tireless work running the Waterloo Action Centre (which still exists today) helping local people in need, and successfully campaigning against cuts to local hospital services. We heard about how she was sent to south Wales as a teenager to escape the German bombing raids but quickly returned to be with her mother.  

Her uncle died first and more recently so did her husband. They had had no children. She was housebound with deteriorating health. She was very short of breath, she had had a heart operation, she was losing her sight and her hearing, and she could barely walk. She was in and out of hospital regularly. She refused to move from her home although her niece had arranged a place for her near to where she lived. Lou had been waiting for death for some time and it has finally arrived, with her niece and a friend at her side. I had spoken to her just a few days before. She was an inspiration, a piece of living history, and a good friend. Rest in peace Lou.

Ashley stands for the first time

Have Cow, Will Travel

A pak choi basks in the sun

Despite having 23 years of driving experience under my belt I have somehow never had the chance to tow a trailer containing a live cow. Until this week, when I got to do it twice. 

The first trip was to the livestock auction way up off the M5, forty miles away. Chester our 8-month-old calf was becoming too much of a handful for us. Mucking him out twice a day was no longer easy as he enjoyed headbutting our legs till they went dead then prancing round the straw in glee, hoofs flying. And he is still a relatively small animal - when he gets to adult proportions it would be a dangerous thing to be around him. So the difficult decision was made to sell Chester. We still have the other two calves, Molly and Bernard, but we are sad to see Chester go.

Sunday lunch dessert - Eton mess with soft fruit and chocolate

He spent the night in the big metal trailer with straw, hay and water, so we could straight off at 7:30am after a snatched breakfast. Tully* and Rocky were with me in the pickup. I drove as carefully as I could over the bumpy exit lane, and switched into low-geared 4WD to get up the very steep and narrow lane leading to the B-road. Thankfully we didn’t meet anyone coming the other way. The journey to the market was quite long as I wasn’t driving quickly, but we got there uneventfully. It appeared shut but then I noticed other pickups with trailers slipping through a side gate so I followed them.

We entered a large concreted area with lorries everywhere, and the back of the huge building on our right, looking like a hangar as there was no wall on this side. Instead there were a whole series of gated entrances, some marked for cattle, some for sheep, etc. We found the section marked “Stirk” which basically means teenager calves like Chester, and as one pick-up pulled away, I reversed the trailer back into the space. There was no one around to speak to so we wandered around looking helpless for a while until a chap pointed us to someone else, who eventually got round to dealing with us after he’d managed next door’s bay which had filled up with about twenty stirks. We opened the trailer doors and out walked Chester into the pen, no doubt a bit nervous but acting tough. He was shepherded through some more gates and into a small pen with three other stirks, and there we said our goodbyes. He was probably the only animal in there with a name. Good luck young chap!

Training the new wires for the espaliered apple trees

Although we couldn’t stay for the auction itself we found out later that he had been sold for £240, a bit lower than expected. His being half-Jersey counted against him we suspect as Jerseys take longer to put on weight. 

The second trip, three days later, was to take Jasmine to slaughter. She was exactly two-and-a-half years old. We left in the dark at 6:30am, after quite a job persuading her into the trailer. She got spooked and wouldn’t follow the feed bucket into the dark space. It took a fair bit of pushing to get her up the ramp. She’s a big black cow and does what she wants. Off we went to Snell’s abattoir the other side of South Chard, arriving just ahead of a few other livestock-towing trucks. I hadn’t been looking forward to the reversing. You have to do a sort of S-bend, first reversing to the left and then to the right to end up with the back of the trailer facing the open doors, all the while with impatient farmers waiting for you to get out of the way.

But I did it, with help from Tully and Arnie. The real struggle began then, to get Jasmine to go through the gate into the brightly-lit corridor. She had left the trailer but just refused to go any further.  The bucket of soy nuts was not enough to tempt her. Shoving an unwilling beast of that size  is nigh on impossible. It was all we could do to stop her getting back in the trailer. Eventually we got help from the staff and the farmer behind us in the queue, and we all managed to push her through the gate without having to resort to an electric cattle prod. It was all quite unexpected and distressing. Tully, who has seen countless Pilsdon cows go through these gates, said this was the most difficult unload he could remember.

So we are now two cows less, but not for long. Cuckoo is due to give birth to her first calf in just a few days time. Yesterday she was separated from the other milking Jerseys and put in her own chamber. The cycle of farm life continues. 

* human names changed :)

(What's The Story) Evening Glory

My first attempt at a man-bun, just as I hear that they are on their way out. 

The evening meal at Pilsdon begins at 7pm and is generally wolfed down in about fifteen minutes. There’s a certain formality to each mealtime. People do not slope in when they feel like it. We file in when the cowbell is rung, stand behind whichever chair we feel like, and wait for whoever is officiating to say a short prayer of thanks before sitting. Those on the two long tables have a bit of trouble at this point because the heavy wooden chairs are quite packed together there, requiring a certain amount of careful pausing to allow neighbours to pull in without trapping their fingers.

Also no one leaves the table before everyone has finished. Again, the one officiating will judge when this is and stand to thank the cooks for the meal (who always receive applause, although the warmth of the applause might vary depending on the food - usually the standard is very high). Any visitors or new residents are welcomed by name, any general service announcements are made (“where have the new mop heads got to?”, “bring baskets back to the laundry”, etc) then a “Go when you’re ready” dismisses everyone. Those feeling kind might go and help the cooks with the washing up, or make a cup of tea for them. Currently there’s often a post-wash-up chill-out in the Aga room to chat, laugh and drink tea.

Rachel* cleans the big glasshouse with an enormous water-spurting brush

And then, the evening is free. Some go back to their rooms. Others head to the TV room where smoking is allowed, or to the smoker’s hut, or to the Sports Hall to play snooker or table tennis. Still others might retire to the library to use the computer or read, or to the Common Room where the hearth is lit and someone (normally me) might be playing the piano. 

Just occasionally though there might be something more organised. Wednesday was a case in point, when a few of us decided to have a story-telling evening around the fire in the Common Room. This has never been attempted before, at least in my time at Pilsdon. The whole community was invited to attend if they wished, with or without a short story to tell. 

About twelve of us plus the two young kids Carl and Henrietta* gathered, candles were lit, a high-backed throne of a chair was designated the Storyteller’s Chair, and we began. The first story was read by the kid's mum, a fabulous Dr Seuss book called “Horton Hears a Who!”. I followed with a comic Japanese folk tale called Mangu that I had more or less memorised which had actions to keep the children, and hopefully some adults, entertained. After another short children’s story, they were taken off to bed by their mother. The stories continued. We had a very short and very old Turkish fable about the moon in a well. We had a longer German folk tale about two children getting lost on a mountain, narrated completely from memory and thankfully also translated into English. There was a real-life tale from Arnie’s own past about his struggle to defend his small urban farm from an army of rats. Albert read a hilarious excerpt from “The Good Solder Svejk”, a darkly comic Czech novel from the 1920s. A short thought-provoking poem from Rachel concluded the evening.

Gretel follows suit with a mop. I was holding the ladder

It was a delightful way to while away the night and as there are always more stories to be told, will no doubt be repeated soon enough. All it needs is someone to take the initiative. Living in a community makes it all the easier to organise as we’re all just here already - no travelling to get to anyone’s house, or finding babysitters, or clashes with other events. But I’d recommend it to anyone, just get some friends together, turn the lights low and entertain each other with tall tales into the small hours.

* names are all made up

The Birthday Boys

Patched jeans are pretty much de rigueur at Pilsdon

In a community of around 25 people such as at Pilsdon you might expect a birthday every fortnight on average. However there’s nothing very average about Pilsdon and birthdays often seem to come in clusters. This week for instance has clocked up three birthdays - Tuesday was Tarquin’s, yesterday was Fred’s and today is Charles’*. 

Pilsdon celebrates everyone’s birthday the same way. The night before, an announcement at dinner simply reminds everyone to come to Tea and Toast at 4:30pm the following day (Tea and Toast happens every day without fail), without mentioning any names or even that a birthday is about to happen. A card is left semi-hidden in the Aga room where people can scrawl their names and appropriate (or inappropriate) messages.

In the last two weeks we've made about 160 jars of marmalade from scratch.
It'll all get eaten.

On the day itself at 4:30pm the Common Room is fuller than usual and the two young ‘uns are hopping about in a frenzy of anticipation. The other difference, slightly more subtle, is there is less toast on offer than usual.  The birthday boy or girl is trying to act like this is any other Tea and Toast.  If it is winter-time, which it is, the fire is roaring in the hearth and dusk is gathering outside.

Then someone enters the room bearing a magnificent home-made cake with candles lit and the usual song is launched into by everyone. Often the cake has been carefully decorated to reflect some aspect of the recipient’s personality or lifestyle. Tarquin for example is known for his singing ability and his love of performance so his cake assumed the form of a speaker complete with microphone. When he cut into it, I pressed a button on my phone which was wirelessly linked to a real speaker hidden within the cake inside a small tin, causing the cake to burst into life and play an infectious samba tune. His jaw dropped. For a second or two even Tarquin was lost for words.

The cake is then divided up amongst everyone. Woody* our five-year-old makes sure he sits with Charles on what Charles has convinced him is the “Cake Chair”, which somehow entitles both of them to extra-large portions. He’s too busy eating his cake to figure out whether his portion actually is greater than other people’s.

Ice bubbles forming beautiful feathery fronds in a tray in the garden earlier in the week

Each cake is different, and each has an enormous amount of loving devotion to detail lavished upon it. Individuals are made to feel special by the thought that has been put into its creation. The type of cake will be their favourite too as they are asked beforehand what they would like it to be. Charles has asked for a Battenburg cake for this afternoon’s birthday celebration, which I will be unable to eat due to it having almonds in. However I spotted earlier today a piece of cake in the food store with my name on it (see the pic below!) so I don’t think I’m going to go without. Even the non-birthday’ed among us are thought about. Happy birthday indeed!

A cake with my name on it

* All names are made up