What we brought back from Lammas

Souvenirs
A wheelbarrow!
That's correct. We brought back a wheelbarrow. Not actually from Lammas, but from a supply shop in a nearby village. It was one we worked with while mixing the cob and I noted how strong it was and how deep it was. It also had the price on it and where it came from.
Last holiday we brought back a ditch spade as our souvenir. There seems to be a pattern developing.

A Wheelbarrow Full of Inspiration
But we brought a lot more back from Lammas. We brought back ideas and inspiration by the bucketload (or even the wheelbarrowfull)

We have to be realistic about our age and the nature of our smallholding. It is probably too late to start over again. I may have the energy now, but it has diminished even in the eight years since we moved out of London. I have to think about eight years time when I will reach the ripe old age of 60.

Our current jobs are good and rewarding. Giving up everything and starting again, though tempting, is probably just one step too far. If I were leaving university and had been exposed to all these ideas it may have been a different story.

Volunteers required
The most obvious thing we can take from Lammas is how they shared what they did with others, one benefit being that they got a lot of their work done for them too. We are not in the same position, but it is certainly possible that we could attract a couple of volunteers. Not only would this give us the opportunity to share what we do with others, which is my one big regret about the lack of community feel in our area however hard I try to get things going, but it would also enable us to undertake bigger projects and release us to learn and practice new skills.
I am particularly keen to develop my basketry skills  - if I can become good enough these could be skills I could share with other people at some stage. Sue is becoming more and more interested in woolcrafts too, especially felting.

Flirting with Permaculture
Secondly, we brought back inspiration. Inspiration to keep pushing forward with new projects and ideas. I am becoming more and more interested in permaculture. I don't necessarily agree with all its ideas about growing food, though I probably incorporate more of them than many others, but I am becoming more aware of permaculture in its wider sense, for it is about sustainability, about sharing and about people.
I have tried to incorporate a lot of this in the work I do for Fenland Smallholders Club, but we are linked purely by smallholding and not by our outlook on life.

Getting Started with New Plans
There are a couple of practical things I shall be looking into straight away. One is growing Elephant Grass. I have already fired off a few emails to try to track down a source of rhizomes. The other is to start a proper plantation of basketry willows. And the third (I know I said a couple) is to grow more willows for biomass. I have already adapted my composting system to make it easier to turn more frequently.
Of course, for the willows and the elephant grass I will be needing a proper chipper. I rarely purchase machinery and am most certainly not a consumerist smallholder (and believe me there are many), but sometimes the proper machinery is required to do things properly. At other times sheer determination, brute force and improvisation will do the job!

The Long-term
Bigger projects, which I may never get round to, include looking into generating our own electricity (unlike Lammas, we do  not have the advantage of a spring or a hydro system), looking into a borehole for water and, of course, building a round house and maybe even a cob greenhouse.

The bigger projects will depend on our success in attracting visitors and volunteers to Swallow Farm. I get the feeling that repeat visits to Lammas and other similar places will be sufficient to give me the knowledge and inspiration to keep moving forward.

So there you have it.
Big plans.

I got a lot more from this one week holiday than I could possibly have hoped for and more than I would from a whistle-stop tour of some foreign clime. I have done my fair share of that in the past and it has broadened my horizons and my appreciation for nature and other humans. But now I feel it is time for something more meaningful.
All these principles and beliefs which I have basically held and developed through my adult life are beginning to form into a workable plan.
The next eight years may just be even more exciting than the last eight.

Lammas Part Five - Inspiration - The Lammas Earth Project and One Planet Development

I was a little confused about the Lammas EcoVillage before I visited. For on the web there seemed to be two websites, one for Lammas Eco-Village and one for Lammas Earth Centre. It was hard to work out how they linked.

I now know a lot more about the project though. It started about ten years ago. There had previously been a history of people and communities building low-impact houses on land in this part of Wales. These had inevitably come into conflict with the authorities, in particular rules on planning.

One of the people who spent all of his adult life in these alternative communities was Paul Wimbush(now known as Tao). It must be said that Paul's appearance is between that of Robin Hood and Jesus! But at the heart of it he is a true visionary. He lives in the smallholding along from Cassie and Nigel with his wife Hoppi and a coule of teenage children. We were treated to a whistlestop tour of their place by Tao and it was truly inspirational.
As far as I can work out, just over ten years ago Paul decided to start up a low impact eco community but determined to work within the rules of the planning authorities. I don't know quite how, but at some point Pembrokeshire Council adopted a scheme known as One Planet Development. This allows for people to build on a piece of land as long as the house is low impact and you go back to working the land.

'The aim is ambitious: in a small country where people on average use three times their fair share of the world's resources, Wales wants its One Planet people to use only the resources they are due. Which means a simpler smallholding life, spending and travelling less, growing and making more.'

An old sheep farm came up for sale, 70+ acres. The original idea was to divide it up into over fifty plots, but that ended up being nine, so about 7 acres each. Apparently the rules get a lot more complicated when such co-operative ventures go into double figures of participants.
And so the project started. One Planet Development has now been rolled out across Wales. It is not seen by the authorities as a model for wider society, but it does give permission for a niche to exist. If only Fenland Council would do the same! The chances of that are probably less than zero, but if I ever work up the enthusiasm maybe I will sound them out. I'm sure there was a time when it seemed as if Pembrokeshire Council would never entertain such a thought.

Anyway I said that Tao and Hoppi's place was truly inspiring, so I will leave you with some images and some more information about their plot.

A celebration of Tao's carpentry and design skills, this was built to house his milking cattle,

now sadly gone due to the complexities of selling raw milk.

From a distance Tao's newest project, the temple-like Earth Centre, rises imposingly above the smallholding.

A retreat space

A goose house to envy!

Being on a hillside means that water can run from pond to pond.

Incorporated into this is a grey water harvesting system which runs into an S-shaped reedbed.

As with my smallholding, Tao uses the animals as helpers. The geese are in charge of keeping the grass down in the orchard.

Elephant grass growing as a biomass crop for shredding into compost and as mulch.

You can never have enough biomass in a  productive garden, especially a permaculture one, 

capturing the sun's energy and putting into the soil. The polytunnel contained a small pond

and rocky landscaping to store the day's heat and to provide a home for friendly predators.

It was an ideal spot for a touch of warm relaxation and reflection.

Both these ideas will be coming to Swallow Farm in the near future!

Tipis act as a venue for events and doubtless go back to Paul's time in Tipi Valley.

There are many buildings and places for volunteers to stay. 

Tao had about half a dozen volunteers staying while we were there.

Our place may not be so famous or so idyllic, but volunteers do seem like a good idea 

and I think we still have a lot to offer at Swallow Farm. We have big ideas for the future.

Lammas Part Four - A Greenhouse Made of Mud

The cob greenhouses which Nigel and Cassie had constructed were both charming and functional. Of course they had glass in too, for solid mud does not make for a good greenhouse. But the glass frames were encased in cob and the back wall was entirely made of cordwood and cob. The overall effect was of a light, warm growing environment, but one where the natural properties of the cob regulated the environment, stopping it from overheating during the day and releasing its stored warmth during the night.
Inside there were grapes and peaches, tomatoes and peppers as well as medicinal plants, for Cassie is a herbalist too.
One had a hügelkultur bed - a permaculture system where a growing bed is started off with logs, sticks and brushwood before being covered with layers variously of manure, rotting grass, straw and soil. It is supposed to provide long term fertility and a rich, living soil. It is an idea which I intend to try out in my veg plot.

Two sections of the greenhouse were already built. We were completing the structure. On the other end of the greenhouse was a cob room which had been given over to Cassie's daughter. What a wonderful space for a teenager.
I worked initially on the back wall which was not quite so straightforward as it seemed, having a bit of a lean and a bend going on. We were working on ladder staging with one person on each side of the wall.



Meanwhile others were working on the fill in between the window frames. This was the slow bit as there was not space for cordwood. The cob was sagging too, so we added straw to give it more structure. There was lots of banging in of nails too, known as spragging. These nails give the cob something to key into and hang on to.




Progress on the first day was slow. It was day four before we came back to the greenhouse with a determination to make faster progress. The A-team were on the job today! Progress around the window frames and over the top was faster. We were going through cob mix like nobody's business. There were occasional deviations for creative sculpture in the walls. There were troll-like faces, fertility symbols, a lizard and, of course, a cob-web.

















A cob greenhouse would be lovely back at Swallow Farm, but it is a huge project and one which I am not sure will ever happen. We'll see.
Maybe if the cob was mixed by animals and I had a team of volunteers to help out...

Lammas Part One - A Busman's Holiday

Once a year, thanks to a good friend who comes and looks after Swallow Farm and all its inhabitants for us, Sue and I get a week away together.
This year I had arranged to do a five day cob course at Lammas Eco Village in deepest West Wales, followed by a one day basket-making day. In between I planned to visit The Centre For Alternative technology, further North, which I last visited two years in a row when the University Green Society used to visit and do voluntary work - a few years back now!
This was to be a real busman's holiday.

Initial online impressions of the EcoVillage were mixed. Information on the web made some of the community seem a bit hippy trippy. I don't mind alternative trains of thought, I am hardly traditional myself. But I do think that such establishments set themselves up as an example of sustainable living. They are a little like high fashion, not particularly for everyone, but a high end example on which more regular folk can hang their ideas.

The village certainly seems to contain some pretty amazing self-builds, though one straw bale house did tragically suffer a serious fire not so long ago.

Originally Sue and I planned to camp in the village and use the community hub for our cooking etc. In the end I decided to book a little cottage just down the road - we are a little old for roughing it now.

Initial impressions are important, so I was a little hesitant when my first email 'disappeared'. But not all types are as technological as others - though funny how the same people manage to have Facebook pages, twitter accounts and websites.
Anyway, I went ahead and booked everything up.

Fast forward a few months and last week, just a few days before the actual course, we received a long email with further information. The 'provided lunch' had turned into 'an informal rota for preparing lunches' and the hub kitchen which 'has everything you will need' now has no electricity or hot water and 'bring your own plate, cup, bowl and cutlery' to avoid issues with washing up'. There would be thirteen of us (seems like a lot to share a bucket cold shower, a compost toilet and a couple of gas rings for cooking and heating water for washing up).
All of a sudden alarm bells were ringing. The eco-community seemed to be suffering a crisis of eco and a crisis of community. Sure, we have had a drought and growing has been difficult, but an exemplar eco village should not have energy systems which crumble due to just one adverse weather condition. We have, after all, had sunshine by the bucketload and wind energy should come fairly easily in Wales.
There was also a special note about privacy - 'many of the people here are very private...'. Now obviously we don't intend to go traipsing through everybody's houses and gardens or to gawp over the fences at them like zoo animals, but this community is suddenly starting to seem a bit fragile.

Smallholders can be a pretty antisocial bunch. By nature we are independent, determined (aka stubborn) and happy with our own company. But most of us don't choose to live in a specific eco-community.

And so the big day came. We said goodbye to the dogs - the first time we have both been away from them since we got them. We loaded up the car. Being dedicated smallholders, we did a last minute veg plot and freezer raid and loaded the car up with provisions.

The drive was a fairly long one and traffic was slow on the Midlands motorways as we passed through some protracted bad weather. Eventually though we were winding along some very small country lanes, up and down hills and valleys, a novelty for fenlanders, and we pulled up at our self-catering studio cottage. It was delightful and very well appointed. We quickly set about making the place feel like home.

ed - lots of post-production edits at the moment as I am now back from what turned out to be a truly inspiring and re-invigorating holiday. First impressions were wrong.

All will be revealed in the next post.