Friday The Thirteenth

A few seed potatoes purchased at Potato Day in Bridport which I have begun to "chit"

Before dawn this morning of Friday 13th I inched the truck gently across the ice sheets that had formed on the concrete yard. Towed behind me in the large trailer were three pigs nestled in a thick carpet of straw where they had spent the night. This new day was certainly an inauspicious one for them. Our destination : the local abattoir.

I also had two humans but they chose to sit in with me in the truck. We hadn't been to this slaughterhouse before. Pilsdon normally uses one up by Chard Junction but that was booked up way into February and our pigs had reached the right weight. Any more and they'd be putting on too much fat.

This large veg bed we are slowly covering in semi-rotted manure/straw combo

An over-reliance on Google Maps led us to shoot straight past the abattoir as it had the nerve to be on the right not the left side of the lane. A mile or two further down we found a place that a large trailer could be reversed into, and we came right back. The pigs had had an extra few minutes of life, not that they were likely to be savouring them, bouncing around in an unlit box.


So we drove down into the complex which had parked vehicles everywhere but no people. The full moon sat just above the western horizon whilst the eastern sky glimmered. A lone man directed us to a ramp which I reversed the trailer up to. We were seemingly the only customers around. Where were the slaughter-people? Nobody in the little white office. No one in the large hall that the ramp led to, full of little fenced pens. We shouted our hello's to no avail.

A fellow volunteer wields her axe

Disconsolate we wandered outside again, to find a man approaching up the ramp. “Have you not met anyone?” he asked, mysteriously. “No”, we replied. His call brought someone else along. No more information was forthcoming though. “Tell us what to do” we pleaded and were told we could release the pigs. So release them we did, they came out and up the ramp slowly, grunting, a little unsteady from car-sickness. They were shoo'ed up into the echoing chamber, the door was shut and I was left to close up the trailer.


Cameron* went off to find someone to sign his official piece of paper recording the movement of the pigs from A to B. He was gone a long time, evidently because of an absence of any employees to deal with him. Eventually he returned with tales of witnessing live sheep being hauled up by a mechanical grabber two stories high by their hind leg, off to their deaths. Abattoirs are not fun places, especially on Friday 13th.


The bodies of our three pigs will be ready for collection on Monday, when we'll take them to a butcher in Dorchester to be miraculously converted into hundreds of sausages and rashers of bacon. People at Pilsdon who had fed and loved these pigs while they were alive, giving them scratches on their necks, even giving them names, do not seem to be squeamish about feeding themselves from their flesh. They were well looked after and led a pretty enjoyable, if short, life. I wish though that they could be slaughtered at home rather than taken to an unfamiliar and unpleasant place to die. Time to research mobile slaughterhouses that come to your farm...

And the pile is getting smaller. Honest it is!

* name changed

Hedging Your Bets

What a wonderful substance is wood. Its source is a host of diverse living organisms which take root where they can and grow silently into beautiful and graceful structures, many times larger than us, soaking up our carbon dioxide emissions, releasing oxygen, providing us with shelter when it rains and shade when it shines. A myriad other beings, insects, birds and mammals also find their sustenance and homes within these natural edifices that we call trees.

The many broadleaved varieties that are native to these shores have a kind of zest for life not shared by their conifer cousins, in that if you hack one down but neglect to pull all its roots out of the earth, it will grow back! Not as a single big trunk of course, but with lots of small shoots rising from the stump that given enough time will each become a big trunk. Hazel and willow are particularly renowned for producing wonderfully straight rods that can be snipped off and used for any purpose you can think of. (My runner bean frames are partly made from my own hazel rods, as well as salvaged wild bamboo).

A hedge is just a row of small trees planted close together, their branches growing into one another to form an impenetrable barrier. You need to keep on top of it or it'll grow into an unmanageable mess quite quickly. I've occasionally been delayed when driving down narrow country lanes by a very slow tractor wielding a hedge-cutting attachment like a demented claw, savagely shearing back the hedge on one side.

A more natural and environmental approach is, of course, to “lay” it by hand. Not just hands - you need a saw or bilhook too. A broadleaved hedge produces new growth at various points, each one a small sapling which given enough years will become a proper tree in its own right. To lay a hedge is to hack the base of each of these small trees, a three-quarters cut diagonally downwards, then bending it over completely horizontally. Provided its tip is kept slightly higher than the cut, the sap will still rise and it will continue to live.

Do this with all the new growth, weaving them amongst each other as they're laid horizontal, stuffing back in anything that has been cut off completely, and you have yourself a well-laid hedge, pleasing to the eye.

How do I know this? Because yesterday we were laying the hedge next to Pilsdon's church, my first experience of hedge-laying. It took a small group of us all morning to do a third of it but in our defence we were nearly all complete beginners, it was covered in brambles and hadn't been laid for at least four years so there were some thick saplings in there! The satisfaction was worth all our scratches.

In With The New

My January task: take a chainsaw to this huge pile of wood

A new year dawns.

Here at Pilsdon we welcomed in 2017 in our usual manner. A candle-lit three course meal for everyone at 8pm. A quiz in the Common Room led by our Warden (my team won with precious little help from me) then the floor was open for homegrown entertainment - songs, sketches, poems, even a masterful yo-yo show in which Cameron* amazed us all by attempting to depict the Eiffel tower and the Union Jack by creating cats-cradle-style pictures with the thread. I was on piano duties.

At midnight we went outside, shared a large bowl of warm cherry punch and cheered as we launched three rather spectacular rockets one by one. Cameron and I were responsible for setting them off from our chosen launchpad out on the front lawn. Just before midnight I walked straight into one of the picnic benches in the darkness so 2016's parting gift to me, as if Brexit and Trump and a stinking cold weren't enough, was a throbbing knee.

The evening ended with clearing up and a short “Compline” service in the chapel.

It's fair to say that for a lot of us there's a certain amount of trepidation about 2017 as the big electoral decisions made in the UK and US start to play out. In my own life too there's a healthy slice of uncertainty about the future to deal with. But I have a lot to be thankful for and each day this year I hope to be constantly learning - how best to love other people, how to trust in God, and how to grow a decent head of broccoli.

So let's wave 2016 goodbye and put on a brave face for whatever this new year might bring. Let's make positive changes in our lives when and where we can (once I'm back in Wales I'm going to try to stop eating and drinking dairy products due to their massive impact on the environment). Pursue your passions. Seek justice for the oppressed, give to the needy, stand up for what's right, you know the drill. Let's make this year one to remember for the right reasons!


*name changed

This is what I do over Christmas

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