Permission To Land

Pilsdon's spire and a comet. Or more prosaically a plane trail.

In the same year that saw the birth of the NHS, the British Parliament passed an Act that prevented its citizens from living wherever they liked. We’ll look after you but you have to live where we tell you to. According to the Town and Country Planning Act, no longer could you simply go and build a house on your own land to live in, you must first ask permission from the local council. Who will probably say no.  The growing population was to be kept within the boundaries of land classified as “residential”, a relatively small proportion of the total landmass. Even today, only 10% of the UK is built up according to the Office for National Statistics. The rest is farms, forests and lakes. 

Pilsdon's quad with the re-built Loose Boxes on the left, and the North Barn with its slate roof being fixed

Is this a good thing? On the one hand it means the country, although having a large population for its diminutive size, still manages to have large swathes of open countryside, much of it accessible to anyone who chooses to go rambling, cycling or hang gliding across it. Unlike California or Mexico City the urban sprawl has not been allowed to spread unchecked, and so the countryside is not on the whole gobbled up by speculative property developers building huge bland housing estates. On the other, we apparently don’t have enough houses for all the people living here and we’re not building new ones quickly enough. 

Perhaps surprisingly, the law that stops semi-detached houses springing up all over the Lake District also prevents people from living on their own piece of land in a caravan. Regardless of the fact that the latter is on wheels, planning law says you should not stay more than 28 days in your own caravan on your own land, unless the land is classed as ‘residential’. Neither are you allowed to build yourself a simple wooden hut and live in it whilst working the land for veg or livestock, unless you are a Scottish crofter for whom special provisions are made. 

Some of Pilsdon's red cabbages about to be chopped,
blanched, bagged and put in the freezer

We made 5 big bags, 6lb each, for the freezer

I was aware of these facts when I moved onto my land in April last year and was always prepared to hear from the local planners asking what I was doing. Breaching planning law is not an offence. (Not leaving when ordered to do so by the council, is.) In my case however, as I am not staying the whole year round, but working my market garden as a 'seasonal agricultural worker', I am not in breach. Seasonal agricultural workers may stay in a caravan on-site without the need for planning permission, although this should be confirmed by the local council. 

This argument is about to be put to the test. The local planners, Snowdonia National Park Authority, have sent me a letter saying they have been informed of the presence of a caravan and polytunnel, and have even been to visit in October (I was out). They would like me to explain what is going on. I replied by email last Wednesday, outlining the justification described above and asking if the polytunnel and greenhouse require planning permission since they do not have concrete foundations. No response from them yet. I continue on the assumption that I will be allowed to remain and develop my business, providing broccoli to the un-broccoli'ed in the area and so forth. But my future on the land at this moment is not assured.

A shoulder of an ex-pig is slowly transformed into a lovely pork and bean casserole that we ate last night

Back To The Farm

Returning to Pilsdon community after months away is like slipping on an old favourite pair of brogues that had got lost under the bed for a while, a comfortingly familiar fit after an initial wriggle to ease the contours of your feet in again. 

Wandering round the site to reacquaint myself I found the three calves in their pen, Cuckoo, Julian and Oscar, all of whom had been born since my last brief summer visit. Apparently Cuckoo, the eldest and largest, is prone to mounting anyone or anything that comes near her so great care is required never to turn your back when entering the pen to feed them or muck out.  There are eight weaners in the pig pen, still fairly young and boisterous and all with a pink band around their midriffs, their mother on a dirty holiday visiting a boar. 

Pilsdon's four ewes have been killed and eaten leaving more pasture for the cows next year (three beef cattle and three Jersey milkers). The youngest of the Jerseys, Dandelion, has only recently begun to be milked and has swiftly gained a reputation for being naughty as she kicks and jostles and generally tries to avoid milk being drawn from her tiny teats. Glancing in the duck enclosure I found it empty. The story is that one night no one shut them away in their duck house and some feline assassin, probably a cat, came and massacred them all without mercy. But the chickens all seem to be doing fine, at least. 

Pilsdon's lush garden is still producing raspberries, unbelievably

Various bits of the buildings and fencing have been fixed and improved, either by talented residents or paid contractors. The milk pasteurising room (grandly called “The Dairy”) is undergoing a complete overhaul so all the equipment has been temporarily shifted into one of the new rooms in the Loose Boxes, the recently completely re-built west side of the quad. The roof on the North Barn is being re-tiled, and its entrance renovated. The boiler room has seen massive changes with the huge temperamental wood-fired burner replaced with a spanking new pellet burner which is automatically fed from a huge climate-controlled external hopper, through which Pilsdon qualifies for the Renewable Heat Incentive that should pay for it all in just a few years.

One of the beef cattle looking menacing

Yet in all fundamental ways Pilsdon remains the same.  There have been a few changes in the community itself, some having moved on, others arriving and settling in, but the majority are still the same bunch who were here in my last visit in June, and it is great to see everyone again. The daily rhythm of life here carries on, of meals, of prayer, of work, of rest, of play, of sleep, of countless cups of tea. The garden still needs weeding (but not, thankfully, as much as last winter!), the cows milking, the meals cooking, the piano playing.  It is a profoundly restful place to abide despite, or perhaps because of, all the work that must be done to keep things rolling. Work that is tangible, meaningful - all of what is done serves either to put food on the table, keep ourselves clean and warm, or to maintain the stunningly beautiful environment we are lucky enough to be in. 

Well, that’s what I had to tell myself when I dragged my sorry self out of bed at 5:35am this morning for a rendezvous with the three Jersey girls.

Oscar, Julian and Cuckoo. Julian appears to be admiring one of his wall stains

It's A New Dawn, It's A New Day

A woolly beast

So my second sojourn at Pilsdon draws to a close. Although I would love to stay longer and enjoy the onset of spring with my friends here in this beautiful place, Wales is calling me back. More specifically, the small patch of Wales that I’ve paid to become the caretaker of. The raised beds I laboured last year to create are ripe for sowing. The greenhouse needs its glass panes putting in. A polytunnel must be erected. In short, the growing season beckons.

It’s a very good thing I didn’t try to last out the winter in my caravan given the extraordinarily vicious gales and rainstorms that have beset our country these last few months. At this moment it does seem that they have abated which could make it a fortuitous time to return although the temperature does now appear to be plummeting. Here's hoping my caravan heater still works.

The recently reconstructed "Loose Boxes"

This last week I have been making some vital purchases for the year ahead - seed cell trays, watering trays, a potting tray, capillary matting, ten metres of fine netting to protect the cabbages from butterflies, plastic labels and a waterproof pen, clear polythene bags for mixed salads, and 25kg of blood, fish and bone whose rather macabre contents are said to be the best for adding organic nutrition to soil. Later today I will be ordering large quantities of rhubarb and asparagus crowns, and a 49-foot polytunnel.  These I will have delivered to my plot in Wales, hence why I’ve left it to the last minute (ordering stuff actually from my land is hampered by the lack of internet and patchy mobile coverage).

A crucial step has been taken in the formation of my fledgling world-class fresh vegetable production business - the name was chosen, and subsequently printed on hundreds of sticky labels with accompanying logo. A name reminiscent both of fresh starts, and of nature. You heard it here first - I’ve called it “New Leaf”. 

Two calves give Boris a lick as they enjoy their newly built quarters

I am keenly aware of the comforts which I am shortly to be deprived of. Every time now I toast my cold toes by the open hearth, or tuck into a slice of someone’s birthday cake, or soak in a hot bath, or chew a tender lamb chop, or simply wander round my room without cracking my skull on something, I make sure I savour every last ounce of delight these pleasures afford.  My personal austerity measures are returning for the summer. That’s not to say I’m not looking forward to it - I can’t wait to get cracking. It’s the excitement of beginning a new project, and being back on the soil I have begun to call home. And the knowledge that Pilsdon will have me back next winter provides a little extra security.

Otherwise this week has been marked by some bad news - Mary’s brother Paul contracted cerebral malaria whilst on a work trip to Ghana and on return to his home in Brazil fell severely ill and had to be put into a medically induced coma.  He almost died on Monday but somehow pulled through and although still in the coma, is showing signs of recovery. The doctors were amazed that fifteen people from a Sao Paolo favela took a bus ride to the hospital to give blood to top up the blood bank needed to keep him alive. I remember Paul from a visit he made to Pilsdon, full of energy and words, he was bursting with enthusiasm for my new venture in Wales and donated me his gravity water filter. We continue to pray for his return to full health, along with many in Ghana and Brazil who know him.

Time to sign off on this blog. Thanks for reading! My next report will be on my other blog - MattSwanOffGrid. Powering down... Click. Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzt.

Weather With You

Oak tree down 

You know there’s a strong wind blowing when you can feel your beard tugging your chin around, a sensation that’s worth growing a good beard for, if a reason be needed. Another indicator of greater than average breeziness is when a huge old oak tree is blown right over into your field. We reckon that that single tree might provide us with a quarter of our annual firewood needs - a literal windfall.  Pilsdon has otherwise escaped fairly lightly from the February maelstrom, with only a few broken panes in one greenhouse and some cosmetic roof linings being ripped off a cabin. No floods here thankfully, apart from the occasional bursting of the banks of the stream onto our approach lane (but it tends to do that on the slightest provocation, and never stays flooded for long).

It could have been a couple of centuries old.

On Wednesday I made a foray onto the beach at West Bay, on a seaweed reconnaissance mission. Seaweed makes a wonderful natural garden fertiliser and I supposed that the recent storms might have dredged up large quantities from the ocean and deposited it on our shores. In this I was mistaken, but instead found the awe-inspiring remains of a recent cliff-crumble, the ancient layers of sandstone succumbing once again to the driving rain and gale-force winds. An impressive enough sight to get onto page 7 of last week’s Mail On Sunday, no less.

Not the best site for rock-climbing

A break in the weather found a group of us yesterday making a concerted effort to make a dent in our huge pile of firewood.  It had already been chainsawed into chunks but needed splitting and storing under cover, so three of us got to work with splitting mauls while the others filled wheelbarrows with the chunks, pushing them through the gate and the mud to the large multi-chambered wood-store out back. Some logs split cleanly with a single stroke, another sweet sensation that you don’t need to grow a beard to appreciate (but it helps). Other logs were made of sterner stuff, requiring several hard blows even to get the axe to begin to make a dent. At this point we tended to ask someone else to bring a mallet over and whack the back of the axe head (the splitting axe is designed to allow this) - a couple of fat whacks is usually sufficient to cleave the block in two.

A mighty swing about to be brought to an abrupt halt

The wet weather tends to bring out everyone’s favourite garden pest, so every night after supper I grab a torch and a fellow gardener (often a chap who would like to be known here as Max Dangerous) and head out to the large glasshouse to hunt slugs.  Each young cauliflower plant and broad bean stalk we carefully inspect for the slimy gastropod molluscs, as well as the soil below. All those that we find, whether tiny and large, are picked off and placed together on the doorstep. The garlic seems to offer no attraction for the slugs so is left out of our inspection regime. Any Jain Buddhists reading this should skip to the next paragraph now. We finally dispatch our daily collection of silent slithering munchers with the swift downward application of a brick.

In just ten days time I will be leaving Pilsdon and setting off back to my caravan in Wales. It’ll soon be the start of the veg growing season. I have no idea what I will find there. Will the river have burst its banks and washed my raised beds into flatness? Will trees have been blown down? Will the 100mph winds have knocked my caravan over? I’m wishing now I hadn’t raised up its stabilising legs to prevent rodents climbing in.  When I arrive I’ll be updating my mattswanoffgrid blog so keep an eye there to be kept abreast of news from a bog in mid-Wales.

Failure to Launch

Chuckles

Don’t you just hate it when some new thing in your life full of potentiality and excitement, utterly fails to deliver? Like this morning when you stood there by the door as the postman walked up, certain that an intriguingly anonymous pink card perhaps smelling slightly of some exotic perfume would flop onto the mat, only to be greeted with a garish circular promoting the virtues of Zumba.

The failed spinach

There have been a few false starts at Pilsdon recently. The spinach seed I sowed in the glasshouse last November has resolutely failed to grow, whilst in that same bed a forgotten un-harvested potato is impertinently pushing up its shoots instead. Bill* is back at Pilsdon after an attempt at starting afresh in Bridport last week didn’t work out (we’re glad to see him back though!)  And our sow Chuckles** was due to produce her first litter earlier this month but the day passed without incident; after five more days the vet announced after inspection that the pig was not in fact pregnant. This was bad news - for us as we’ll soon be running out of pork in the freezers, and for Chuckles whose very future hung in the balance. On a farm a sow has to come up with the goods. We think she somehow reabsorbed the foetuses (foeti?) which we know she had a few weeks previously. Leniency prevailed and she has been given one more chance, and we’re also buying in some eight-week-old pigs (“weaners”) to make up for her non-existent piglets.

Chuckles enjoys a nice quiet nap without any pesky piglets

Another promising beginning which has swiftly and sadly come to nothing has been my attempt to teach piano to Rupert. His previous piano experience was zero unless you count his deep appreciation of the works of Frederic Chopin and Keith Jarrett. As for personally tinkling the ivories himself, he was a complete newbie. Yet a newbie with an enthusiasm to learn. His eyes lit up as I handed him the book “It’s Never Too Late To Learn The Piano”, and then and there I gave him an impromptu lesson, by the end of which his right hand was slowly and falteringly picking out the tune of “Four Note Tango” (the world’s least danceable tango tune.) It was a fantastic feeling to be initiating someone else in the dark arts of playing the piano.

Rupert talked about practicing but by the time of the second lesson, a few days hence, it was apparent that he hadn’t got round to it. Nevertheless we got his left hand going and I was quite willing to believe that he would spend some time going over the tunes before our third lesson. Without practising in between, lessons would be much less fruitful. Yet it became a joke between us that he somehow never managed to get down to it. Maybe I was too harsh when I said I would only give him a third lesson after he’d done some. Maybe not, but it was sufficient for him to call the whole thing off. 

Apparently it wasn’t my teaching style, which he said he liked. His excuse, and perhaps there’s something in it, is that he is also learning to do pottery which requires his hands to form flippers and move his digits all together in gentle motions - quite the opposite from a piano where each finger must be moved independently from the others. The part of the brain controlling finger movement was, in Rupert’s case, being overloaded with taxing new demands and something had to give. He’s decided to try the trombone instead, an instrument which could be played by a man with hooks for hands. A clever choice no doubt, and I hope it works out for him, but I have to admit I’m sorry to lose a pupil so soon. I’m going to have to find some more willing subjects to work on...

Our baby cauliflowers wrapped in sheep's wool to ward off slugs. Here's to their success!

*Not his real name

**Believe it or not, this is her real name

Breakfast at Tiffany's

Sheep's wool around our young cauliflowers to protect against slugs.
It doesn't work, last night we found several tiny slugs munching away.

It’s fair to say I’m not a morning person. Not that I lounge in bed till noon because I do drag myself up for the daily morning service at 7:30am, but it takes me a little while, and a cup of strong tea, to get my neurons firing on all cylinders. Not everyone is like me of course, for instance Bill* takes it upon himself not only to issue a cheery Good morning! to everyone who walks into the breakfast room but also to ask each individual how they are. My replies tend to be non-committal as I haven’t by that time acquired enough evidence to ascertain exactly how I am. 

Young River’s entrance to the dining room is usually heard before he appears as his mum or dad carries him through from the outside. You can tell what kind of mood he’s in before he even enters the room. Loud screams might indicate that his breakfast period will be foreshortened as his parents withdraw him again for the sake of the community - luckily this is not a frequent occurrence. He might be calling for “Dawdy”, his name for his best friend. But usually it’s Nummy (honey) that he’s requesting, in a new and not altogether welcome whiney tone.  Whatever noises he’s making he is the centre of attention, and sometimes rewards us with some hilarious antics such as yesterday’s use of a scrap of toast as a telephone on which he was conversing with Granny (apparently the only person who ever calls his household on the landline). 

The usual spread for breakfast is hot porridge, home-made yoghurt, a range of breakfast cereals, and toast. On Mondays there are poached eggs. Wednesdays the porridge is replaced with sausage, beans, fried potato and fried bread, and on Saturdays a full English is served. No prizes for guessing which is the best attended. 

A ritual has developed around the toasting of bread. We had been bequeathed a four slot toaster which turned out to be notable only for the incredible tardiness with which it toasts. Perhaps its manufacturer decided to focus on the quality of its toasting rather than with brevity. With twelve or fifteen hungry toast-lovers, it makes sense never to leave a slot empty, and so when putting in a couple of slices for oneself you are obliged to call out “Anyone for toast?” to which someone will call back “Yes please!” Then the call-out “What colour?” to which the response is either “Brown!” or “White!”. An optional third call is to enquire how many which elicits a reply of either “One!” or “Two!” (the default is of course two). Recent growth in the number of breakfast-takers has prompted some, myself included, to resort to toasting on the top of the Aga which does take longer but at least you don’t have to wait for a slot.

Once the toast makes its way to someone’s plate, it is interesting to observe how many variants of spreading there are even amongst the small sample of toast-eaters that live here. Some lay the butter on thicker than the jam, taking pains to ensure every square centimetre is covered. Others mix jam with peanut butter (a practice which Dante somehow overlooked when describing how people get assigned to the inner circles of hell). Even the temperature of the toast at buttering stage is important - some such as myself slap the butter on as quickly as possible to ensure it melts, while at least one person allows them to cool a little by propping the two slices together to form a tent so that the butter won’t melt once spread. 

Leaving cake for our favourite Bruderhofs

Sadly breakfasts will be quieter affairs from now on, as “Good morning!” Bill left the community yesterday to start anew in Bridport. Not only that but another guest (known here only as “Mr S”) left on Monday for Brook House, our “halfway house” in Dorchester, and our Bruderhof couple are leaving today after a year of volunteering at Pilsdon. Rather than returning to the Bruderhof community they are striking out into the world, having got themselves jobs looking after an elderly couple and their large house and gardens in the New Forest. 

The community will be the lesser for their absence. We will miss them all. 

*Not his actual name.

Brake On Me

Brakes are handy things on vehicles. Millions of us put our utmost faith in them, our very lives, every time we climb into a car or board a bus. Most of us don’t break into a clammy sweat as we accelerate above 20mph with the nagging fear that nothing will happen when the brake pedal is depressed. A lot of very clever engineers and some very risk-averse quality assurance managers over the last ten decades have made brakes so utterly and tediously reliable that we don’t give them a second thought. And so we hurtle around in our metal boxes, staying alive only through a heady mix of engineering guile, our own instinctive reactions, and luck.

Of course if we think about brake failure at all, we think of the worst kind - the brakes not engaging when required. This is the type of brake failure depicted in many Hollywood films of a certain genre, with shots of the driver’s foot stamping on the pedal cutting to shots of their horrified face as the edge of the cliff approaches. Seldom do we concern ourselves with the second-worst type of failure of a braking system, which is when the brakes decide all by themselves to engage when NOT required. I’m not aware of this scenario ever having been dramatised (although it’s possible that the car Kit in the 80’s TV series Knight Rider may have occasionally decided to jam on the brakes by itself for some very good reason.)

So when this exact thing happened to me on Tuesday evening as I drove the minibus home from an outing to Dorchester cinema to watch Twelve Years A Slave, I was momentarily taken aback. We were pootling along a dark country lane at 40mph when all of a sudden the vehicle was braking hard all by itself. I was able to bring it safely to a stop after several seconds of bemused deceleration, engine still running. It appeared to be the handbrake that had engaged, not the regular brakes. The handbrake lever was rendered useless - it would not even pull up.  The back two wheels were held fast by their drum-brakes.

It was good fortune that we had been on a straight section of a quiet lane, only four miles from home. Had it occurred fifteen minutes earlier we would still have been on the A35, a mostly single-lane, winding and hilly trunk road. 

The AA was called, as was Pilsdon’s rescue service (a.k.a. Craig in the Citroen Berlingo) to collect the rest of the passengers leaving Clive and I to await the AA. The incredible usefulness of mobile phones was duly noted. By bashing the back wheels with a heavy object we had managed to loosen the drum brakes so we could park the bus at the side of the lane and let the occasional car past, but we thought the burning smell was an indication that we shouldn’t attempt to drive it all the way back. 

Forty-five minutes later an alien spaceship descended on us, covered in red lights, and two bright tractor beams switched on to draw our vehicle up the ramp which had unfurled. Out of a door which opened up in its side stepped a figure, which wobbled its way towards us and introduced itself as Alan.  We said hi. Alan tied the minibus wheels to his truck, we climbed into the cab and off we drove back to Pilsdon, somehow negotiating the thirty-six foot-long beast down twisting lanes which were no wider than it. I then had to reverse the minibus back off the ramp taking care not to slip off either side, and it was done. Home safe and not a single casualty. Alan vanished into the night leaving only an A4 carbon copy of a rescue service form to prove his existence.

The bus was fixed the very next day by Pilsdon Autos across the way but I have yet to hear what precisely had gone wrong and how it has been rectified. For my own peace of mind I hope to find out the details before I get behind the wheel again.