Aunite Beryl enjoying the warm September sun while Bealers does a spot of carpentry

We have a neighbour who is a lovely lady called Beryl. She is the elderly auntie of one of the people who first bought the farm we live at almost two and a half years ago. Beryl is in her late eighties and in a wheelchair but lives here instead of in a old people’s care home.

She joins us each night at the communal meal in the big farmhouse kitchen, she is always happy to receive visitors for a chat and is taken her lunchtime sandwich by anyone of us who are around during the day. Beryl ran her own hair salon for 72 years and so is fully qualified to chat pleasantly about anything and everything with anyone.

Having her here provides us with extra diversity in our group but also another dependent person who along with our small children needs looking after (she needs someone to get her up, washed and dressed in the morning and in the evening requires putting to bed like a toddler does).

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Since our move here two weeks ago we’ve been enjoying the communal cooking and eating aspect hugely. It was one of the things I was looking forward to but I was also nervous about cooking for so many.

It feels a bit cheeky to have arrived at a time when there is a huge abundance of food waiting to be picked and eaten in the huge vegetable garden and also in the polytunnel but it has meant that for a newbie to self-sufficiency I am enjoying the ease at which menus for dinner present themselves by a brief wander around the plot to see what is in plentiful supply.

There is not yet a whole-community effort in growing the food and the practice of eating what is available before any additional extras are required seems ad-hoc and there isn’t quite enough of a glut of anything to demand a big chutney making session although a lot of fresh vegetables have been chopped and stored in freezers ready for use in the winter instead of having them and their parent plants go to waste (beans mainly). Potatoes have been harvested and sorted for ones that are blemish and blight free and have been dug into a ‘clamp’ (a shallow trough lined with straw), squashes are being harvested and put to dry in a small barn.

There is no work schedule and despite the huge number of vegetables becoming ripe and ready for harvest it is a case of one picking what one can and using as much of it for the evening meal. On Saturday a load of us are planning to harvest and preserve what we can (beans, tomatoes, courgettes, apples, plums) by making pickles and chutneys, freezing and even cooking some ‘ready meals’ and putting in tubs in the freezer. We will be so glad of them in the winter.

I’ve just had to add up the amount I owe the communal kitchen for all the delicious meals my family and our friends have enjoyed since we moved here mid August most of which have involved an enormous range of vegetables from the garden here and some I’ve even cooked or helped to prepare (despite my worries).

There is a simple tariff which ranges from 50p for a small snack or breakfast to £1.50 for a large main meal with an additional 50p for a portion of desert or a second helping of dinner. One writes the appropriate amount on a chart by the back door of the kitchen and settles up at the end of the month. Any food supplies I have bought for the communal kitchen (butter, bread, milk, oil, seasonings etc) are subtracted from the amount owed and receipts provided so an overall amount is due. As all three children and I have had meals in the communal kitchen most evenings since our arrival here we owed £110 but the shopping I had done came to £40 so I wrote a cheque today for £70. This system works well as one member of the community is a diligent administrator and bookkeeper.

Here we are enjoying helping Steve harvest the potatoes he planted outside his log cabin – a big thumbs up from permaculturists as the plot was walked past each day Steve could easily tend to it without having to go out of his way.

Spuds for storing in a clamp.

I will try to make this a quick update as I’m hoping to get some more sleep before the night is over having been up since 3.30 with too much on my mind to sleep.

The children and I have been having a wonderful time here on the farm since we arrived 8 days ago. We’ve unexpectedly had back-to-back visitors staying with us or popping over for day trips from their holidays which has made a huge difference to us. Not only have we had the comfort and good company of people who know us well but an additional benefit was having to show people round making the new environment instantly feel like we definitely live here and our friends and family are the new visitors seeing it with new eyes.

Thankfully the weather has been kind to us so despite some very heavy rain showers on the whole the two eldest kids have been out playing with their friends (comprising of other children living here but also the children who are visiting and staying with other residents here), we’ve all been on the beach a fair few times and happily harvesting fresh vegetables for dinners. My littlest child loves being outside to watch the ducks waddle around the courtyard, throw the pigs some tasty pea pods and visit the pet rabbit living in a hutch not far from us.

I keep finding myself signing up to be the chef for the main communal meal which is odd as it was the one thing I was really worried about but I guess you can’t keep a food lover out of the kitchen for long even if it does mean cooking for up to 20 people with an eighteen month old cling to your leg or exploring the contents of the recycling bucket. Last night we cooked ‘rainbow risotto’ with loads of different veg, I made a quick simple tomato pasta for loads of kids one night too. A massive joy of living in such a close community is eating the wonderful food that others cook with great care. On the night we had a utility bonfire to burn hedges trimmings we had such a outdoor feast of really simple but such delicious things – sausages made from the meat of home-reared pigs, macaroni cheese, fresh fresh salad and lovely bright purple beetroot.

The one thing that is totally wrong with the intentional community we have moved to is that my dear husband is not with us (he is sadly chained to his computer in Worcestershire while one of his client’s projects nears completion until the latter part of this week). The children are missing their daddy and keep asking when he will come. Bealers still has the settling in period to go through where I feel my transition to learning how the farm is managed and how the community ticks is well underway. But hopefully he will enjoy a few more summery days when he does finally arrive and enjoy spending relaxed cups of tea on sunny steps having random chats with the people who live here as they pass by as I have done since we got here.

A quick post on the eve of my leaving our home in Worcs/Herefordshire to live with several other families in North Cornwall on a 30 acre smallholding with the long term aim of becoming as self-sufficient as possible.

We’re all very excited but also sad to be saying farewell to some of the most lovely people we have had in our lives since moving here just 9 months ago. In some ways our move here was necessary for us to realise that the rural life was something we wanted long-term. The people we have mixed with here are all people who have livestock and a deep love of country ways.

My poor eldest daughter has sobbed herself to sleep tonight so very sad about leaving the nextdoor neighbour’s cat behind so I have said to her that she may have a pet rabbit when we get the keys to the cottage we will be living in.

I am going down to the farm without Bealers but with the three children and will be staying in our caravan which is all rigged up and ready to be stayed in (washbags, toys, books, cot, pushchair etc all there and waiting for us). Next week the cottage which we are to live in will stop being rented out to holiday makers and so we will be able to walk across the courtyard and start sleeping in it. I have a little sketch on squared paper of where I think some of our furniture will fit when it eventually finds its way down to Cornwall but I suspect I have been over ambitious and will need to revise these plans a little.

I’m so excited about having so many interesting new projects to get involved in (permaculture design and the soon to be launched LAND initiative, seed saving and swapping, building projects, insulation projects, reed-bed water cleansing, rain water harvesting, The Soil Association’s Community Supported Agriculture program) and of course a ready made new community to enjoy.

One member of the community – Steve happened to be in our existing neighbourhood this week and came over for a brief cup of coffee. He is lovely and funny. It was great to see him but also for him to see where we currently are and see what kind of place we are moving from to be members of the farm community.

Very happy to be starting yet another adventure with my lovely husband and my three special littles and hope to keep people updated with interesting nuggets from time to time.

Next week I shall be moving away from our current home to start our new life at the recently formed south west of England eco-village. It is really very early days for the community because up until now although they have had great ideas and plans on how to become self-sufficient in food, energy and water but there has been a lack of people to do the work and finances to help shift things along.

We will be among a large ‘new wave’ of new people joining the group. Since the original eleven people bought the smallholding in 2007, two have moved out, a new family of three has moved in to become ’stage one’ members and a new baby has been born.

At the same time as our move down, another young family of five will be moving in as well as another family of three so the new wave influx will double the original population and will hopefully provide new energy, new ideas, new ways of getting things done, new finance and also just loads more muscle power (to weed the veg patch, dig a reed-bed water purification system, insulate current houses against the brisk Atlantic winter winds and to build office spaces in one of the barns, think about wind turbines, allotments for the local community etc).

We’re really happy to be moving in. The decision process for us has been a long one but now we are hoping to make the farm our new home for at least a year while the other community members and we decide whether or not it will be somewhere we will want to live permanently.

This week a couple who were very serious about moving in at the same time as us made what seemed to be the very sudden decision not to join the community after all. They were kind enough to share the reasons that made them realise that this community would not be a suitable place for them to make their home in a long email to us all.

Most of the reasons were around the fact that the community was not yet operating in a self-sufficient, sustainable manner. At the moment meals that are cooked and eaten communally are often made using some fresh veg from thew garden but also augmented by ingredients from the local supermarket, these ingredients often include meat products from a questionable source (ie. not organic), the rain water harvesting and reuse system is not yet in place and although we have plans to build lots of composting toilets for people to use in order to save  flushing litres of drinking water away each time the use the loo the system is still only in the planning stages. The couple (who I was very much looking forward to being neighbours with as they have so many years of gardening and woodland management knowledge) are also very concerned with the way that there is not a community work ethos and various people work on various land-based projects when they fancy but there is not a need for everyone on site to ensure they have spent some time working on a community project. For this couple who have spent many years living lightly on the earth as vegans and commune members this would have been to hard to bear.

For us, however, the fact that the community is a work-in-progress project is very much one of the attractions.

We are hoping to learn how to be self-sufficient at the same pace as the others who have decided to live there. We are hoping to gain huge amounts of rich experience by partaking in so many projects and hope that very soon with so many great minds and so much human energy available the community will move from becoming self-sufficient to being truly sustainable and can proudly call itself a well functioning eco-village.

Photo by Mr Sardonicus

Ed Miliband makes no mention of peak oil in his review of his recent experience of being a ‘keynote listener’ at Transition Towns conference. In his review he talks of ‘climate change’ and ‘low carbon’ but to me it feels like a big important memo has gone round parliament telling politicians they are not under any circumstances allowed to worry the public by bringing attention to the small matter of fossil fuel dependency and how little time we have to prepare for a future without such an incredible resource.

I’ve been wondering for a while (since I first watched the very brilliant BBC 2 documentary ‘A Farm for the Future‘ made by Rebecca Hoskins – do please watch it if you haven’t already, it is absolutely brilliant and very thought provoking) WHY DO WE NOT HEAR ABOUT THIS IN THE MEDIA?

Surely surely surely if little old me can work out what’s likely to happen to millions of innocent UK citizens if adequate awareness programs and preparation programs are not started as soon as possible (errr I’m so sorry folks but we, you and our/your children are likely to starve, be very cold, go short on medicines and be without access to lovely clean drinking water) then SURELY the clever people elected to govern our country have also been tipped off on this trifling matter?

According to the Rob Hopkin’s Transition Culture website, his accompanying book ‘The Transition Handbook‘ was one of the top 5 books taken on holiday by *all* MPs last summer. I’ve got this book and there is little doubt that the subject matter is all about the very terrifying prospect that the one substance the whole of our society requires for most of things we do is not going to come out of the ground easily or cheaply anymore. The book aims to help towns across the country (or the world) to make themselves become ‘resilient’ to supply deficiencies which are inevitable as oil and its derivatives become less and less plentiful (and owned by Arab countries who may not want to sell their precious commodity to us nasty westerners).

So, this terrible fact is known to our lovely leaders. Yes it is. But, for some mysterious reason, ‘They’ are hell bent on keeping this knowledge to themselves. They seem to be going to really really great lengths to not have communities begin to prepare for life without global food distribution networks, without loads of nonsense high-tech jobs, without affordable heating, without affordable transport. Yes it would be of huge concern to all the electorate if the message started coming out but at least the electorate would have the opportunity to Do Something (like the electorate did in the war years when people grew food at home, adopted a ‘make do and mend’ culture and generally pulled together for the common good). For those of us who have figured out for ourselves what is likely to happen we all went through a period of shock, horror, denial, anger and worry but are also able to begin to take steps to mitigate disaster wherever possible.

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A ridiculous situation because I could write essay after essay on why western modern life is not sustainable (and how sadly for you folks and me that means IT MUST END), how far removed families have become from providing for themselves (food, skills, care etc), why Peak Oil theory is way more scary than climate change (and that’s pretty scary in itself), how thrilled I am to have the opportunity to help lead some brand new local food initiatives when we move to Cornwall, how inspired I’ve been by Sharon Astyk, George Monbiot, Richard Heinberg, Rob Hopkins, Barbara Kingsolver to name just a few of the writers I’ve been chomping up.

BUT

I almost feel I’ve got too much to write, too many different types of people to cater for (am I writing for people like my dear dad who is one of the few remaining climate change and peak oil nay-sayers left and trying to convince them that denial is a route which they may live to regret? am I writing for dear chums who have a similar view on what the future may hold for our cherished children but are wondering what they may be able to do to prepare themselves, their families, their neighbourhoods? Am I writing for people who like us have found themselves exploring an interesting new path leading them towards self-sufficiency? or am I writing for people who are intrigued by our opting to live in a newly established eco-village – or is it a commune with virtual strangers who are most likely to become the people closest to us in every sense as we live, work, celebrate and commiserate lifes’ events alongside one another?) and so am finding myself writing very little at all but with loads whirling round my head every hour of every day.

Perhaps just by ranting out tonight I have stumbled upon the answer (in permaculture we are told that ‘The problem IS the solution’). Maybe I just need to write whatever I fancy and then at the end will categorise it or tag it to be for one of the four groups above unless it is just random bimblings which may not be of interest to anyone apart from those just vaguely wondering how we are getting along.

The Introduction to Permaculture course Darren and I both took part in last weekend was brilliant and for those of you wishing to find a positive path in the heavy chaotic business of worrying about what the future holds for ourselves, our families, our friends and our societies and lifestyles this course delivered by Ruth O’Brien in Bristol comes very highly recommended by both of us..

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I came across this Mahatma Gandhi quote for the first time in the last ever printed edition of The Ecologist magazine yesterday. I like it a lot as it helps to quell the sense of  helplessness and ‘this problem is too big and too complex for little old me to do anything about’.

Even the smallest things get noticed and have an impact in their own way so by my buying eggs from the local lady with hens and our drastically reducing consumption of meat (and never eating cheap meat produced in hellish animal factories) and our decision to not fly and to drive only when necessary and to spend our money on food which has not had petrochemical fertilisers and pesticides used on them and by turning away from all household chemicals which are not derived from natural plant sources ARE actually all having an impact.

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