Hedvig’s permaculture diploma

As I explained in my last post, I’ve just moved to Brighton.  In London our home was  brimming with food: growing in the garden, wholesale bulk deliveries of it, regular fruit and veg box deliveries.  We cooked it together, we ate it together.  It was pretty sorted and all shared.  An amazing home-share.

Now, I’ve moved in a house share, where I’m not sure who is in the house at any one time.  When shown round the house, it was explained to me that we each had a separate shelf in the fridge and cupboard.  A whole new world.

Slowly, I’ve been building up a bit of a pantry.  I had to make the immediate purchase of cereal, and then spent a few more days gathering the ingredients so that I could start baking bread again.  It is so satisfying to make bread and to fill the house with the smell of intention, intention to make people content.  I loved that first loaf so much I had three slices still warm with butter and home-made elderberry and blackberry jam. Since then my cupboard has been filling but the fridge was been pretty bare.  Till yesterday.

Yesterday, I went to go and volunteer at the local farm that runs a fruit and veg box scheme.  I took the train to Lewes, and then took the picturesque bus route out to Barcombe.   From there my journey involved a fair amount of just ambling along country lanes, and random encounters with people walking along them.  But I arrived at Barcombe Nurseries content to be there and ready to work.

And work we did.  We harvested two sections of turnips, trimmed them, bagged them and hauled them to the pack shed.  (So many in fact that we were asked if we had much more to bring in because it was blocking up the packing shed.)  Meanwhile, Jefferson was trying to devise a way to burn the weedlings.  Part way through we were called for a much-welcomed coffee break.  Fresh coffee and biscuits enjoyed on up-ended crates in the sun.  Adrian, the owner, had just come back from a trip to the Netherlands, checking out others farms, so he had brought amazing waffles.  We discussed his findings, including horse-drawn ploughing, a bike trailer built 150 years ago to transport milk churns and the pros and cons of horses vs mules.

We returned to the turnips and got the section cleared up.  Some of the turnips were so large we couldn’t get them out through the holes.  Just before lunch we had a change: hoeing the beetroot seedlings.

Lunch was a bountiful spaghetti with fresh pesto and vegetables, plus salad.  Then meringues, berries and cream.  We munched contentedly and prepared ourselves for heading back to the field.  We continued with a bit more hoeing.  And then got on with preparing the land for transplanting.

Now, I’ve done my fair share of transplanting.  I’ve shown many people how to do it.  But this was a first for me.  Transplanting using a tractor.  Two of us, Luke and I, were seated at the back, in front of two wheels, into which we placed the kale seedlings and two points on the wheel.  The machine made the farrow, placed the seedling, and pushed the soil over it.  Planted.  Success.  Such mesmerising and efficient work.  We had done sections of the stuff before we even knew it.

Then came the obvious pause in the planting in order to weed and rotavate the section the turnips had been.  I know!  Rotavate.  Ach well.  Adrian asked me if I wanted to.  I declined.  But soon thereafter I found myself seated on top of the bloody tractor, driving Jefferson and Adrian while they were doing the transplanting!  I was not expecting yesterday to be the day that I drive a tractor for the first time.  Anyway, I did better than the last person who went straight through the fence!

The day was amazingly rewarding.  I loved being out in the fields working on a market garden that grows a massive array of veg and fruit for its box scheme.  I enjoyed the chat, being out in the sun and being challenged with learning new stuff.  And at the end of it, I found a box with my name written on it.  Now, I can tell you it was a pretty hearty box, as I had to carry it all the way from the station.  So I have my weeks worth of fruit and veg.  I know where on the farm most of that stuff has been grown and my fridge shelf is now looking bountiful.

Plus, all of this sets me up on my next project… localising my food.  I won’t be eating a totally local food diet, like some of my fellow Brightonians but I do want to explore local food here in Sussex.  I want to meet producers, find out about local ingredients and produce, unique recipes.  Basically find the makings of a Slow Food Convivium here. And I’ll be delighted if a veg box from Barcombe makes it on my shelf every week.  Next week, I’m aiming to go to Ashurst, another local scheme, and to keep on survey my food.

At the end of July, I packed up a van half with stuff and half with plants, and with Maz behind the steering wheel we headed south.  After a few hours stuck in horrendous traffic we ended up a service station, we swapped over and I continued to our destination: Brighton.  Yes, I have abandoned London and made a run for it.

Made a run for the sea and the hills.  I always knew that London wasn’t the place for me, and that I have lasted this long is no small miracle.  Much of it is to do with Ire being around, but with her disappearing to Ecuador I soon realised this was my opportunity to leave.  I have been visiting Brighton for the last year or so, mainly because Tristan was done here, but also because I really liked the place.  I’ve loved being able to go for bike rides along the beach, have bbqs on the beach, walk in the hills.  Brighton is a vibrant town, with loads of festivals, concerts.  It is really international as well and feels alive.

Anyway, I left half my stuff in the garden and half of it in my room. The following day I headed back to London for a few days and nights.  It felt exciting to be back in London and to see its glories and lights.  But boy, by the end of the few days I was ready to come home.

So I haven’t been doing too much explicit permaculture, as the first Tuesday I was living down here was my birthday and so I took the day off from normal activities.  This Tuesday, to be frank, was just a bit dozy.  Wasn’t quite sure what to do with the day.  Had the intention to start a new project, but never quite got into it.  With hindsight I can see it layed some good foundations. More of that later.

Instead, I’ve spent much of the past two weeks mulling, cleaning and sorting.  Sara, my new flatmate, had a day off today and we got on with sorting the garden.  It is a real tip. There is a horrendous pile in the corner that keeps on accumulating like some rampant growth (most of it is hidden in the photo by the bush). The cats are littering in the garden, there are collections of pots with nothing but weeds in them, there are bits of bike, an old desk, broken chairs.  You get the picture.

So when I arrived with half a van load of plants, it made quite a difference. But I haven’t really done much since there apart from just looking after the plants.  I have repotted all the window boxes at the front of the house.  Replacing the dead marigolds with pansies, canary chard, sage, Spanish mint, apple mint, parsley, chamomile, nasturtium, round courgette, tomatoes.

But today was the day to get on with it.  Moving things, identifying things, making a huge pot of snail soup, cleaning.  It feels so much better.  You can almost sit at the table now.  The weeds have been replaced with tomatoes, rosemary, mint, wild strawberries, chilies, aubergines.  The bike will be fixed, the curtain rails I’ve used as a temporary washing line and more mischief will ensue.

But we’re getting there.  We’ll give the braai a good scrub and then it’s almost ready to go.  We still need a skip or a few willing friends to move the rubbish out and just keep on keeping on.  I’ve really needed to get stuck into the garden.  And quite a few times during the day I could see Mollison in the film ‘In Grave Danger of Falling Fruit’ saying that you should start at the end of your nose (at least I think it was in that film).  Anyway, today feels like the first day I have really felt at home.  After my mornings work, I had a late lunch out in the garden.  A great big salad (more about that later too).  Tasted even better for being out there.  Honest.