Hedvig’s permaculture diploma

In January you need a good boost of sun-filled goodness and cheer.  What does it better than an orange?  I try and eat as locally and seasonally as possible and believe me, in the depth of potato and cabbage season to eat an orange is amazing.  At Christmas, as a child, I would always find an orange/tangerine/clementine in my stocking and didn’t really get why they were special.  To be fair that might have had something to do with growing up in Africa, but I get it now.

So, I decided to preserve the month of January by making marmalade.  Seville Orange Marmalade.  So I order a good few kilos of organic oranges from Riverford and bought a whole load of sugar and went over to Naveena’s house.  Naveena had come to stay while she was between house moves and food and cooking created an instant friendship.  When she moved into her new place she decided to start growing some salad and other stuff on her roof terrace.  So before starting with the marmalade and I went up and found some good looking radishes, and picked them.

Then we started on the epic mission to de-zest, juice, measures, boil, wash pots, sterilise and fill.  But we had such a good time, made a lot of marmalade in the end, and shared it with different friends and ate some through the year.  An amazing smell rose right up to the roof terrace and look at the end product.  This point I gave to Tristan’s dad for Christmas.

Last year’s Christmas preparations were some way different from most.  I was in Naples, staying with Irene and her family, accompanied by two Canadians (Aaron and John) whom we had met while WWOOFing in San Fantino and encouraged to come to Noto.  All of us brought something to the Christmas table and day.  Aaron set about making egg nog, I was making glogg and pepparkakor, John was downloading the Christmas edition of South Park, the Muppets and other tv gems.  Each of us had our own traditions that we wanted to live and share. We also all brought a greater understanding of food, how it is produced and how it can be enjoyed.

Italy, and southern Italy (I’m totally biased but after three months of WWOOFing in Campania, Puglia and Sicily, I think it’s justified) is definitely a great place to develop this.  One thing I was struck by was the vibrant food culture, and how appropriate the Slow Food Movement is to Italy.  There are so many recipes that are particular to seasons and regions and families.  We discovered the ferocity of the secret recipes after roasting kilos of chestnuts to find out they hadn’t given us the right quantities.

But Christmas time at Irene’s was different.  Her mother worked so hard and produced this incredible meals that seemed to last for days.  One of the dishes I particularly remember is this amazing salad, insalata di rinforzo, with lots of different vegetables that are pickled over the autumn and then eaten at Christmas.  I love the flavours, colours, textures and also the concept.  Impossible to reproduce because the varieties of peppers and olives are from Naples.

This plus many more pieces inspired me to set about imbuing my next Christmas with more meaning.   I decided I would set about preserving something seasonal for every month of the year to then be eaten at Christmas.  What follows are the tales of that adventure.

I know, I know exciting stuff.  But, wow!  I came back from holidays feel ready to make this year a good one.   So today, being Tuesday, is permaculture day.  And first things first, I cleared my desk and it looks a whole lot better with useful things around: ‘hand relief cream’ from Tristan, some left over chocolates from our new year get-saway, plus the cyclamen bring some festive cheer.

Then I settled down to getting my diploma folder into order.  One of the challenges of doing something as all-encompassing as the diploma, is that is does really reach out into different aspects of my daily life.  As a result I had loads of bits of paper, notes, drawings, lecture notes etc all over the place.  But now, when I have done that I have gathered them in one place, they are certainly more useful and I feel much better about the volume of the recording I have been doing over the last year or so.  A lot of thought, time and energy goes into this sort of thing, and it’s good that it feels like my folder is beginning to reflect it.  I’m getting there.  And I’ve got a whole half a day left.  Happy new year everyone!

So for the last few months of silence I am have certainly been busy and continuing with my permaculture work.  I have apprenticed courses in Brighton and London, I have been doing more and more teaching on intros.  I was took on the people care role of the Training of Trainers in October that took place in London.

We have successfully completed our first year with Get Growing, and this years gardens are all complete and the funding reports are all in.  I am now trying to take stock of what happened and all the changes that have occurred since.  Plus beginning to survey the situ here in Brighton.

I have spent less time consistently working on my projects, and realised that coming back to them, that I needed to wrap up some of them so I could begin some of the new ones.  One of the issues with that is the you can continue to keep going round and round the action learning cycle.  And when actually does a project come to an end?

I went to a permaculture induction day yesterday.  I went to the last one that was run in March, and it is a good point to reflect on how much I have achieved since then.  I also chatted to Gillian who said she was working presenting her diploma at the convergence next year.  Sounds like a workable and yet challenging target for me.

So I am trying to wrap up some of my projects. I’ve spent the last couple of weeks working on different projects. They have certainly evolved and I have learnt a lot through doing it, been making lots of my own stuff and considered things in a different way.  And I keep going round the action learning cycle many more times, lots of learning.

Last Wednesday, I got a call from Colette from Ashurt Organics, to ask if I could possibly come in to work the following day.  She said she was down on help and people were sick.  I had just run out of veg, and had been meaning to give her a ring anyway to go and volunteer.  But this was even better.  I was going to get paid.  Okay, so it ain’t billions with bonuses, but it is money.  And these days, I ain’t complaining when that comes my way.

So I dutifully arrange a lift with Leif (often called Leaf), who also lives in Brighton.  Last time we went in with Leif’s girlfriend, and started the day off with lots of discussions about projects in London and Brighton.  This time, we were going by motorbike.  I haven’t been on a motorbike since I was a tiny, bare-footed young thing, and my cousin Max tore round our old summer place in Sweden.  Twenty years later, it was just as exciting.  Whizzing through town and countryside, relaxing into the journey.  The journey back was a little more scary, purely because I was carrying a large sack of veg and that affect my ability to balance.

I also left with a paper envelope with my wage.  I have also run out of my last batch of Samuel Close deodorant.  So I decided to take the plunge and go and buy rock crystal, essentials oils, pestle and mortar and an oil burner.  I feel so much happier for it.

My house is getting pleasantly scented of lemongrass.  Just as well as it normally doesn’t smell very nice (meat fumes rising from the kitchen, and two cats don’t help).  So I’m very grateful for my call from Colette, unexpected day of work and my smelly results.

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.

These are one of the strangest cosmetics I have made.  Now they aren’t connected to seeing plants in a new way, but still worth sharing.

Girls, forget your expensive exfoliating scrubs and moisturisers.  I have found the answer, again from Neal’s Yard.  But it’s through through sheer daring that I made and used these.  I know they look like falafels, but, they work (my new favourite saying, btw).

The recipe

1 slice of old brown bread (I know!)

1 handful raisins

1 handful almonds

Blend them, using a hand blender is definitely the easiest.  Then roll into small balls.

I washed my face with half a ball this morning.  You don’t have to worry about gross tasting stuff getting in your mouth, this is really good.  The bread is really exfoliating and then the almonds really moisturise it.   Incredible really.

My parents live in a very rural part of Northumberland (type Falstone in Google maps to check).  They bought the place a few years ago, and are slowly renovating the house, coach house and gardens.  As they have left the midgie-infested north for balmy southern Sweden I was left with the task of going up there to pick berries.  It’s a tough life.  I lived alone in the house for a year or so and spent a lot of time out in the veg garden, re-designing, pruning and generally caring for the place.  It is such a delight going back and seeing how things are going.

Falstone really is the perfect antidote to London. The vista are huge and all-embracing, the wildlife is abundant.  When I first arrived home I noticed something in the drive, it was the hedgehog scurry to safey.  There are deer that wander around the garden and fields, plenty of birds, the friendly cat from next door.  And the garden is beautiful and wild.

Picking berries sounds like it should be a relatively straight forward task.  You go to the berries, pick up, weigh them, pack them and freeze.  Easy.  Except in Falstone the first ‘go to the berries’ involves a real hunt for the red berries.  There are wild strawberries all over the garden: all around the pond, under the rose bushes, in the path, in walls, in holding beds.  The red currant I almost missed altogether as they were in pots close to the wall of the veg garden.  The raspberries are also all round the pond, there are massive cans where the lupins used to be rampant, and then all along the edge of the orchard.  The blackcurrants were much more obvious and I picked a lot.  The first few days things hadn’t quite ripened so I decided to change the thing I was picking… I went for leaves and herbs instead.

The garden was so abundant, it was just a delight to have the task of harvesting, and I hardly made a dent in it.  I picked a lot of peppermint, and had quite a few nasal enhancing peppermint teas there.  The oils in the peppermint are so strong you really do inhale the stuff, and it feels like your whole nose is opening up in relief.

A few days later, I reluctantly left our paradise to head back to Hackney. But my work was done: the pantry looked well stocked with hearty bundles of lemon balm, feverfew, lavender and peppermint; I have a good amount of lady’s mantle, elderflower, yarrow that are drying ready for winter infusions; and packed peppermint and wild strawberry cuttings for my brother’s garden.    But I still managed to get a good amount of berries.

Yesterday, I made the spur of the moment decision to invite a friend over to make some herbal products.  Wasn’t sure what we would or could make, but thought might as well give it a go.  Both of us are low income/unemployed, and so budget was important.

We spent the morning leafing through various books, exchanging recipe ideas and figuring out different herbs and ingredients.  I spent most of my time trying to get my head around shampoos and hair conditioners.  Michele, was researching toners and skin care products.

After a bit, we decided that we wanted to get on with something that we could do at home, and then we would go off and source other stuff.  So an easy one to get started with was lip balm.  We went for ‘Grapefruit conditioning lip blam’ from the Neal’s Yard Recipes for Natural Beauty.  It’s really straight forward.

1g cocoa butter

9g shea butter

10 drops grapefruit essential oil

We made a bain marie, with the butters in a citrus squeezer in a frying pan filled with boiling water.   Then poured the liquified butters in our sterlised containers.  Then when it was starting to solidify we added the essential oil.  It is really conditioning, but doesn’t make your lips tacky some lipsyl or stuff like that.

The body scrub was equally straight forward.

4 tbs salt

8 tbs oil (sweet almond would be good, we only had olive oil)

10 drops essential oils.

No heating with this one, but mix.  It is super effective, and cheap as chips.  Well worth it.

The other thing we tried was a real experiment, and I’ll let you know how that went when I’ve tried it.