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 Three - The Cob Nuts get to work

Tuesday saw us cob building in earnest. There was a cob greenhouse to work on and a timber frame building known as an Eco-pod.
The walls were made of cob, which is a mix of clay and sand. Often straw is added to give it strength. For the Eco-pod we were adding small amounts of lime. This helps to stabilise the cob, making it more weather-resistant, and also inhibits any fungal growth on the straw of the wood.

Chopping wood for the cordwood walls

The team making progress on the cordwood wall of the Ecopod

Both buildings were using cord wood as well as cob. Basically logs are placed across the wall and sandwiched together with cob. This means that faster progress can be made and a lot less cob is needed. For what I haven't yet told you about cob is that it is by far best to mix it with your feet!
It is hard work.

Traditionally it may well have been mixed by placing animals in enclosures filled with the mix ingredients. A little dung does no harm to the cob.

We only mixed one batch from scratch, taking the subsoil from existing heaps and adding in bought in clay. Where we live it would be the other way round, as our clay would need the addition of sand.

Mixing a clay 'slip' to be added to the subsoil

For the other batches, we were recycling a couple of old cob walls which had not fared well.
Cassie has learned about cob the hard way, by trying different mixes. Even if it has been built by volunteers, it must be desperately sad when all that hard work crumbles within a few years. One of the walls had apparently been mixed by digger, a short-cut too far, and one had been too thick at the base.
Personally I would rather do thorough research and learn by other people's mistakes, especially when so much hard work is involved.

I worked on the greenhouse that first day. Progress was very slow, especially round the window frames where we were using pure cob without the cordwood. The cob would do its best to sag too, so it was only really possible to build up about a foot at a time before leaving it overnight to settle.

While we were beavering away, we learned more about the community. It had been a difficult year with someone's house burning down (three years of hard work and commitment down the drain) followed by the drought.
But it did not sound as if the community was pulling together well either. There were hints at problems in committee (the usual story), obstinate individuals and those who just wanted to get on with things in isolation. This surprised me. The Ecovillage seemed more like nine disparate smallholdings. Yes, each smallholding was probably fulfilling the dreams of its occupants, but the community aspect seemed sadly lacking.
The same problems as afflict wider society seemed prevalent here too. This was a crying shame, as you would think that nine families with so much in common and such a similar set of beliefs and principles could be so much stronger than the sum of their parts.

More on the Lammas EcoVillage, how it started and how it works, in an upcoming post. More on the cob greenhouse idea too.

Lammas Part Two - A Gang Comes Together In The EcoVillage Hub

So, just to get a few things straight from the last post.
Much of the stuff about the hub kitchen, cooking and washing up for yourself etc, was due to an imminent inspection from a health official. While there was absolutely nothing wrong with the kitchen, you can imagine that a shared kitchen in an eco-village and a health inspector might not be a good mix.

Our host, Cassandra, quickly became Cassie. She was a warm, strong, knowledgeable and committed person, whose environmental principles were second to none. Cassie and her family shared their smallholding with us for five days.

The most notable element of this smallholding was the many low-impact buildings. Most were based on round timbers harvested from a patch of old spruce woodland. The roundhouses  (technical term: Reciprocal Roof Roundhouses) were amazing, either for human occupation, for animal shelter or for outdoor human shelters.

This delightful roundhouse is the family home until the proper ne is constructed. 

Something tells me that Cassie and Nigel are pretty happy in here though.

Reciprocal Roof Roundhouse constructed as an animal shelter.

You can see the slate foundation wall and the cordwood and cob walls.

Likewise the cob greenhouses, one of which was to be our main project for the week.

Before I talk about cob, a step back to our arrival at Lammas on the Monday. We weren't starting till 3pm, with a tour around and an explanation of hub kitchen rules (due to imminent health inspection as I found out).
I had been all ready to get going at 9 in the morning, but the pace of life here was slower. Instead Sue and I went into Aberteifi (Cardigan) for provisions before visiting a local waterfall.

By quarter to three there were only a few of us hanging around in the hub building, despite the rest needing to arrive and set up tents before we started. 

Gradually our fellow course participants and comrades for the week turned up. Three had plush camper vans, one other like us was using Air BnB. The last to arrive came at 3.30pm and proclaimed that they knew it would be ok to be late as 'these places are always disorganised'!!!! The fact that we were sat waiting for them seemed to go unnoticed.

The wonderful Hub, built to be the centre of the community

Everybody was very friendly though and from all walks of life. After the tour, Sue and I headed back to our studio cottage, not envying those who would be spending a week cob building (basically playing with mud) and trying to stay clean in a bucket shower with the hot water being heated on a gas ring.
Overall though, facilities were good.
Fresh spring water was in short supply and this in turn meant that there was no electricity. The recent drought, which has been exceptional but may well become a more regular pattern, had meant that the community's main source of electricity, a hydro scheme, was struggling.
I was surprised that there were not more back-up systems in place.

All in all though, I was warming to the place. Things may be a little disorganised, but maybe it is my fault for not being able to deal with that?

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.

Cats and dogs... and fish and frogs

Finally it rained!
A little at first, on my birthday. Just an hour or so, but enough to wake the grass up a little.

We had been enjoying temperatures regularly in the high 20s and even up into the 30s. As much as I like hot weather, the ground was like concrete and getting much work done outside was absolutely exhausting.

But then, on 27th July, two months since the drought began, the heavens opened. The temperature plummeted by 10 degrees and months worth of rain fell in a couple of days. The water butts filled within an hour, quite unprecedented. I got soaked unblocking a couple of gutters, but soon had the ponds full again courtesy of diverted rainwater.
The rain was the right sort too. A little heavy maybe, but there were gaps between downpours for the soil to soak up the moisture.

Within a couple of days the top 3 inches of soil became workable again and the air was cool enough for my old body to work outside. Only problem - I had one day before we were off on our summer vacation.

ed again... now back from our week away and we are pretty much back to square one. No more rain and temperatures back up in the 30s.
While we were in cool damp West Wales, Fenland was baking again.

A duck lost, a duck found, a duck lost

A few days back the guinea fowl were shouting at the tops of their voices. They are great guards, a little over enthusiastic at times. But this seemed serious. Their attention seemed to be on the somewhat overgrown soft fruit bushes.
I did investigate but couldn't find anything.

But that night the two old ducks, the black one and the white one, did not go away at night. I couldn't see them or hear them anywhere.
In the morning the white one appeared by her house, but there was not a sign of the black one, who has been quite weak recently and walks with a limp and a droopy wing.
No sign the next day either and I gave up hope.

There was more tragedy too. When I put the twenty young meat ducks away I counted them through the gate as best as I could. 1, 2, 3....19. 1, 2, 3....19. Four times I reached 19.  So I headed back into the veg plot where the sad sight of a dead white duck soon confronted me. It was just squashed up against the fence. No signs of being attacked by anything. I could only guess that it had basically been trampled by the others. So sad but completely unavoidable.

However, this tale has a surprise happier ending.
For while we were showing our friend around, the one who is looking after the smallholding for us when we go away, the black duck just appeared out of nowhere!

ed We are back from our week away now. The black duck and the white duck are no longer using their house at night and we don't really know where they are spending all day. The white duck has been seen twice and the black duck not at all. She is possibly sitting on eggs, but if she is they will not be fertile.

To Save A Chicken

Our newest inhabitants on the smallholding - 'rescue' hens

Read on and you may be surprised I've got these

A vast majority of chickens and eggs in this country are produced in extreme intensive systems. Even those which claim to be free range are usually not much different to the others. Battery hens may have been outlawed, but the replacement systems are not much better. Barn-reared as a description is a vile deception. This is minimum welfare standard. The chickens may not be in actual wire cages but they are caged in by their instincts in highly overcrowded sheds.

Some of the practices which go on sadden me. Overworking of laying hens. Genetic obesity in meat birds. High losses accepted as collateral. Routine drugging. 

Here is an excerpt from an article I found entitled UK Government Rejects 2016 Beak Trimming Ban.

It (BTAG, Beak Trimming Action Group) found that although other countries such as Austria and Sweden have implemented bans on beak trimming, the UK's larger flocks and different breeds mean lessons learned from these countries are not easily transferred over.

BTAG concluded that an imminent ban on beak trimming could result in significant welfare problems through outbreaks of feather pecking and cannibalism.

It goes on to say

The NFU supports and is actively involved in ongoing industry work to better understand what the trigger points are that cause injurious feather pecking.

Those 'trigger points' would not take a genius to work out. What they really mean is:

We are making a fortune from an incredibly inhumane industry which puts zero value on the welfare of birds. We will continue to strongly influence government through lobbying and will make a few right noises about having good intentions.

The chickens which make it out of the system are often in an awful state and need nurturing back to good health. I don't mean that they are hatching and executing elaborate plans of escape.  These are the chickens which well-meaning individuals, often smallholders though more often people with very little experience of keeping any birds, purchase as ex-commercial layers.

At least one of the charities involved in the rescue hen trade really pulls at the heartstrings.

Now the intentions of such charities may be good and I may seem harsh to say that I would rather the chickens' lives were ended at 72 weeks, when their production starts to dip, rather than go on to live a long and happy life in someone's garden.

However, hear me out.

The normal fate of the chickens, whether from caged, barn or free range systems, is for their carcasses to be sold off (presumably very, very cheaply) at the end of the most productive period of their lives. The meat would go for dog food, baby food or cheap processed food.

But now there is an alternative. For around £2.50 you can save one of these chickens. Nice idea.

But here's the rub as I see it.

The chicken-saving charities pay the chicken factory owners for the birds. By doing this you are propping up a cruel and inhumane industry which exists because there is a demand for unethical cheap meat and eggs by a public who prefer to close their eyes to the situation. If you pointed out how the chickens were kept, they would block their ears and go LALALALALA. Or just shrug their shoulders. 

And before you say "That's ok for you. You're not poor and can afford to pay a premium." I get that argument, but cheap meat is not a dietary necessity. In many countries meat is an occasional treat and it is valued. There are plenty of cheap, healthy alternatives, there is a different balance that can be struck.

The 'farmers' must be rubbing their hands in glee. Here are the people who know that their industry is cruel coming along offering to pay them to take the birds away which they would otherwise sell for pennies. They probably wish they themselves had come up with the idea for the scheme in the first place... 

"It's worth it to save a bird", I hear some say. Well, do you really think that no-one is going to step into the breach and provide low grade meat for unidentifiable food? It just means it won't be your particular chicken that won't end up in that part of the food chain.

So there you have it. My probably very controversial view. 

I guess the thing is I get that when the birds' production drops it makes economic sense to replace them and to use the carcasses for something. We cannot expect to have a bounteous supply of eggs available and for the farmers to look after the birds into their unproductive old age. Even I am not that unrealistic.

But there is a point where cost-cutting becomes unacceptable. I would argue it is about how the chicken lives rather than how long it lives. 

Having said all this, yesterday I picked up 8 laying hens from a big poultry shed. Hear me out.

The birds are equally 72 weeks old and I plan to give them one extra year of life, during which they will be productive enough for my needs. Next year I will replace them with birds from the same source and they will make nice chicken soup, pies or treats for the dogs.

But the place I acquired them from, for I did pay £1 each which probably helps out the lady who keeps them, came recommended by others. The chickens were kept in a large shed. I didn't see inside, but what I did see was lots of chickens coming and going freely and wandering over a large area. There were trees for them to gather under, dusty ground (probably moreso than usual with the drought) for them to scratch at and roll around in and space for them to stretch their wings and legs.

This I guess would count as a small scale commercial enterprise and seemed to be a system which I could accept as a means of producing fairly large quantities of eggs without compromising the welfare of the hens too much. I'll be honest, I wouldn't say everything was perfect. The chickens' feathers were not in great condition and they looked like they needed a bit of a rest. They were nowhere near as bad as those which come from more intensive systems.

In the back of the car the chickens clucked to reassure each other and when we introduced them to their new pen they entered confidently. They quickly found their food and water and started scratching around. They clearly knew how to behave naturally.