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