Out of office

I'm temporarily back on-grid, spending the winter down in Dorset volunteering with the Pilsdon Community.

Check out my Dorset blog to catch up on my whereabouts.

I'm Like A (Migratory) Bird

Can it really be? Already? It's my last week living off-grid, this year at least. Six months have ripped by faster than a pheasant escaping a shotgun volley (an everyday occurrence around here at the moment) and it's nearly time to pack up and head south for the winter – no not South Africa or even Seville, but sunny Dorset where I will be picking up my volunteer duties at Pilsdon Community again. I'm hoping that the art of hand-milking cows is like learning to ride a bike, as no doubt I'll be rota'ed to get up before sunrise on Monday to be reacquainted with the Jerseys.

So much has happened here since I first inched the Suzuki Jimny nervously down my narrow steep windy track with caravan in tow and a sheer drop on the right. It's time to take stock and cast one's mind's eye (does the mind have only one eye? like Sauron from Lord of the Rings?) back over the half-year gone, to assess, compile, summarise, and otherwise make up a compelling narrative from the myriad events both small and great that have happened (to me at least) since April. What have I actually achieved? Have I learned anything? How have I actually survived this long without radio, TV or internet? Have I lost my grip on sanity? 

Let's start with the achievements. And these are not things that I can blow my own trumpet about, as much of it has been down to other people's generosity of spirit and open-heartedness. In no particular order:

–        A growing area (700 sq metres) with twelve large raised beds and space for twelve more has appeared, replacing a jungle thicket of juncus.  This was in fact all my spade-work (it's what I've mainly been doing) apart from the tree stumps removal which my neighbour's digger made short work of.

–        A pheasant-proof fence and netting is being constructed around this growing area by the pheasant-keepers to stop their birds eating my crops, in return for which I am letting them use my land again next year for rearing.

–        My “test” potatoes have successfully grown which I am steadily working my way through every dinner. However salad seeds came to nothing, possibly due to the acidity of the soil so I am adding lime to the raised beds to try to fix this.

–        With help from Mary and Matt a beautiful compost loo, a gracefully proportioned greenhouse and a sublime wood-store have all been erected.

–        I have made contact with a veritable host of friendly people both close by and over at Machynlleth, many of whom have provided help, advice, manure(!) and even the possibility of working together in the future (e.g. raising pigs to sell the meat locally, and a veg-box scheme in Mach). I have even made actual friends (not invisible ones).

–        I got a local ecologist to carry out a “Preliminary Ecological Appraisal” on my land before I did anything, to check I wouldn't be destroying the habitat of any protected species with my spade.

–        And not least, I have survived six months of living alone in a tiny caravan with no mains supplies and no radio, internet or TV. It has been really quiet. No distractions at all. During the day I have generally been digging whilst listening to the birds and the rushing river, and at night after a meal I'd read a book or write a blogpost. I have found it particularly calming to know that I can't be interrupted from my tasks by anyone and nor do I have the ability to interrupt myself, by checking the news headlines on my phone or switching on the TV. I imagine I must be in a tiny minority in the UK who can say this.

What have I learned? Well, I like it here enough to want to come back next spring. The people are welcoming and open, the surrounding mountains, rivers and valleys are stunning, and Machynlleth is a fantastic small town with an independent spirit. I've found that I am quite content to live solo, at least for these six months (winter in a caravan might be more depressing) but would consider getting a volunteer or two next year to help with the work. On the financial side, by keeping a careful eye on expenses since I got here I've found that I've been spending £28 average a week on food, £24 a week on other consumables (petrol, toiletries, propane, travel, gifts), and a total of £1650 on other stuff I've needed. So next year I'd better start earning some money! I've got to know the land quite well, at least during the more pleasant months – where the sun falls during the day, which direction the wind tends to come from, what new streams form during a deluge, what plants are naturally growing here. I've seen toads, frogs, grey squirrels, bats, some kind of shrew, moles, mice, butterflies, all kinds of birds – heron, robin, woodpecker, blackbird, buzzard, red kite, crow and many others I couldn't identify. I've heard owls after dark, and maybe they've heard me.

On the question of my sanity I'll leave that for others to judge.

This Saturday I'll drive off leaving my caravan locked up and “winterised” (drained of water to prevent pipes bursting in the cold). It'll be March before I set foot in her again and start the next chapter of off-grid living in Wales. This is my last post on this blog for now, thanks for tuning in everyone!  Those who want to continue to follow the remorseless saga of Matt Swan's life, service resumes next week on the mattswanindorset blog. Those who don't can go and watch Homeland instead. Bye!

Mr Writer

My raised beds beginning to take shape

Rooting around in an old suitcase I have stashed at my parent's house, where I spent a few days last week to celebrate my mum's birthday, I discovered an old newspaper clipping. It was an article from the Guardian written by George Monbiot, undated but I believe from the 1990's, which expressed the fact that humanity is not living within its means. We are chewing up resources at a faster rate than they can replenish. Unless we make some pretty big changes this is not going to end prettily. This was the first time I had encountered this rather troubling problem and it made quite an impression on me, enough indeed to cause me to make the only newspaper cutting of my life.

I hadn't previously heard of George Monbiot, and didn't come across anything else he had written for some years hence. In fact it probably wasn't until the Guardian went online and I began reading it more often that I realised he was a regular columnist, a hard-hitting investigative journalist, a controversial environmental spokesperson and an author of several books. I liked how his (always strong) points of view were rigorously backed up with lots of references to authoritative sources, e.g. peer-reviewed scientific papers. I read his book on how Britain can massively reduce its carbon emissions to combat climate change (“Heat”, 2006) and another on how the UK government allows itself to be swayed by corporate rather than the public interest (“Captive State”, 2000). And in the last couple of years I've met environmentalists deeply angered by his switch to a pro-nuclear-energy stance (his reasoning being it's the least bad of a bunch of options for keeping the lights on – in his view renewables alone can't provide enough energy, and at least the nuclear industry doesn't emit much carbon.)

So when he walked into the kitchen yesterday as I was weighing vegetables and introduced himself, it was quite a moment for me.  Admittedly it was his kitchen so perhaps it was more a surprise that I was there rather than he. No, I haven't become a stalker of well-known Greens, breaking into their homes to effect a meeting. It just happens that he lets the local veg-box scheme grow some produce in his back garden and box it up in his kitchen, and yesterday I was volunteering some time to help them with their weekly harvest. All quite plausible really, m'lud.

Suffice to say he was very pleasant to us despite us getting in the way of his making dinner, admiring the bountiful veg on his table and making small talk. This was the second author in two years I had met by chance whose books had made a significant impression on me (the first being Tobias Jones last year.) Both their works have actually caused my direction in life to change. Having spent fourteen years in London where you can't move for writers and hacks, it  seems strange that I had to leave it to meet two of, at least for me, the most influential ones. I'd be predicting that next year I'll be bumping into Douglas Adams (my childhood, teenage and perhaps also adult favourite writer) in some out-of-the-way country pub were it not for the fact a heart attack took him 12 years ago whilst running on an exercise machine. Gyms are dangerous places.

If I Had A Hammer

I have less than three weeks left before my first off-grid season is up and I head back south to Pilsdon for the winter. When I arrived in April I set myself six months to determine whether this is the right step by answering three fundamental questions: is the land capable of supporting a small land-based community; do I actually want to live in this manner; and if so do I want to live in this particular area?

By the time I return to Dorset I will need to have all three points answered although in fact I’m fairly sure already. It is with an odd brew of emotions that I will be leaving Wales in October. I have made some good new friends here these last few months and look forward to building on those relationships next year. The openness and friendliness of people in the local villages of Mallwyd, Dinas Mawddwy and Aberangell have made me feel very welcomed, something that I absolutely do not take as a given as an Englishman arriving in the Welsh heartlands. The craggy beauty of the area has made a deep impression on me. And the work itself, although often laborious and completely unpaid, is nonetheless rewarding because it's not someone else's project I'm labouring for. Yet I do look forward to rejoining the Pilsdon community for the winter, to catch up with friends there, to participate again in their rhythms of life and crucially to warm my digits by their beautiful open-hearth log fire.

If I had decided not to return in the spring then I don’t think I would have erected a greenhouse and a firewood store last weekend. Yet this, with the invaluable help of Matt and Mary who came all the way from Dorset for two days and Grainne who came from Machynlleth on Saturday, is what I did. With the principles of reversibility (the ability to return the land easily to its original condition) and sustainability (using local and/or recycled materials) in mind, we managed to put up both buildings within the weekend and still had time to spare for an evening’s cosy campfire made from a huge fallen ash branch.

The greenhouse I had bought second-hand from someone in nearby Ruthin. For its base I decided to buy twenty interlocking “Ecobase” tiles made from recycled plastic instead of using cement, sand and slabs – more expensive but less damaging to the environment (cement production releases tonnes of CO2) and easier to remove cleanly. Below the tiles is just earth that I had removed bracken roots from, which we then packed firm and levelled off using wooden boards, a spirit level and some synchronised jumping. The glass panes will be put in next spring so there's no risk of them being blown out over winter. The end result looks great, and the pheasants love it too as a high perch.

I had designed the firewood store around the odds and ends I have accumulated for free from locals wanting to be rid of them – two large MDF boards, two pallets, two corrugated iron sheets – and four upright posts made from my own Christmas trees. Mary had studied architecture and Matt carpentry, and I’m pretty good at holding things still in the right place, so we had the perfect mix of skills. It just needs some side walls (a couple more pallets should do the trick) and then I’ll fill it with chopped firewood to see me through the ravages of winter 2014. Incredible what a few extra hands for two days can achieve!

 

 

 

Gone Fishin'

With the purchase of my land came the right to fish in the small river it borders. Being a tributary of the River Dovey, a well-known sea trout and salmon river, it seems reasonable to expect a few of them to hang a right on reaching the junction and come swimming past my banks.  This assumption is lent weight by the fact that the Prince Albert Angling Society owns fishing rights a bit further upstream. 

I find it odd that the act of luring a fish to its death should so blandly be termed “fishing”. People don't go “deer-ing”, “fox-ing” or “rabbit-ing”; in the 19th century wealthy colonial types didn't spend time in Africa “big game-ing”. No, hunting and shooting nicely sums up these activities. It seems unfair to fish to name the art of destroying them after themselves, and unfair also to those who simply want to go and observe them or even swim with them – why can't these more benign pursuits be called “fishing”? So here and now I propose that we change the term to “fish-hunting” and be done with it. I am sure it will catch on.

So I have the right to fish-hunt along a 400m stretch of river. What fun to be had! I had never before been fish-hunting but the primal glamour suddenly appealed. I would pop down there before supper and land myself a 4lb trout, gut it, grill it and have it with new potatoes and foraged sauteed nettles. Hardly any need to go food shopping at all.

Even before arriving on the land I had bought my “spinning” rod, the type that is supposed to emulate a darting small fish and which is purportedly easier to use than a “fly-fishing” rod which mimics, well, a fly. I had paid for my fish-hunting license, allowing me to catch as many trout and salmon as I like between 20 March and 17 October. I had had a couple of lessons from a gruff northerner at Pilsdon in a field in which I managed to catch the hedge. I was all set.

The reality began to dawn pretty quickly. Firstly, the river is about five metres down below the bank and there are only a couple of places where you can just about scramble down, and hope you can scramble up again. Secondly I learned that fish only bother to come up this river when it's in speight, i.e. after a downpour so the river is running faster and deeper than its usual shallow self. Thirdly, the opposite bank is only five or six metres away with branches hanging everywhere so it is perilously easy to get the bait stuck high up in a tree before it even reaches the water.

Notwithstanding these difficulties, I have on several occasions these past months put on my fish-hunting gear and strode off to catch myself a whopper. The other day it was even the right conditions for it. But whoever claims that fish-hunting is calming or pleasurable in some way is clearly doing something different. Catching a blinking fish, for instance. I have learned to count it a success if after several minutes I haven't got the hook caught on some twig or rock, or got the line horribly tangled somehow around the reel. After the last session where I caught just two wet leaves, I was still glad that I hadn't lost the spinning bait and for once hadn't let my mounting irritation get the better of me and stormed back vowing to leave the fish forever be.

But I think this season at least, the local trout have little to fear passing by my land.

I Feel Like Pheasant Tonight

It has finally happened. In my thirty-ninth year I have performed a rite of passage that ushers me into true manhood. I have killed a living beast with my own hands, cooked it and eaten it.

True, in many cultures across this planet this would be seen as nothing out of the ordinary. In places where people have not been divorced from the source of their food as we in the West have they know that if you want meat you have to kill one of your animals. No wonder meat is generally considered a luxury in such parts of the world.

The story of how I ended up with grilled pheasant breast for dinner on Monday is not for the faint-hearted so if you consider yourself such I suggest you skip this blogpost and spend a few minutes instead thinking about small lambs gambolling on the side of a grassy knoll as fluffy clouds scud past above...  There, I think they've gone. On we go.

The unlucky bird in question I found by the side of the A-road at the top of my track, sat perfectly still as cars zoomed past. When I approached it didn't move so I picked it up and brought it down the track. It must have been hit by a car; there was some blood on its beak but no other obvious injuries. Setting it down it still wouldn't move, and coming back an hour later it was still there. I sat with it a few minutes. It seemed alert for a bit but then slowly its eyelids drooped and it sank lower until the sound of a car passing brought it back to wakefulness. I offered it a leaf to nibble but it showed no interest. It was clearly going to die, if not of starvation then of internal injuries or by being attacked by something, none of which are pleasant end-scenarios. The moral imperative was on me to end its suffering.

How to do it exactly? Consulting a friend by text I learned I had to hold its neck and pull its head very hard, to break it. I worked up my courage over lunch, then put on some gloves and returned. It probably viewed me as its saviour having rescued it from the road. It did however begin to struggle when I grasped it below the neck with one hand. Quickly before I lost the nerve I took its head in my other hand and yanked hard. It didn't work, the bird was still alive but silently writhing and flapping with a newly-elongated neck. I tried again, the neck extended again and bled but it still flapped. A third time, and now it looked like some kind of horror-pheasant, an evil parody of a swan, but it had not died. This was terrible, I was supposed to be putting it out of its misery but was instead causing it grievous injury. Figuring that no animal can live without its head, I decided to tug so hard that it would probably sever it from its body, and that's exactly what happened. I threw both pieces of the pheasant on the ground and watched the body jig and kick for another minute or so until it finally rested. In peace, I hope.

Once my heart had returned to a more normal rhythm I took the bird and hung it from its legs from my washing line and got on with my afternoon tasks. Around 6pm it was time to make dinner, which on this occasion meant slicing up a fresh pheasant carcase to extract the breast meat. I sterilised my Swedish hunting knife in boiling water, laid the pheasant on some newspaper, shooed the flies away as best I could and began hacking at it. I have no doubt there is a tried-and-trusted technique for doing this but without the internet, relevant books or knowledgeable friends to hand and a growing appetite, I just figured it out myself. Before too long I had the breast meat on a tray, and the rest of the bird in a bin-liner. I know there's more meat there but one step at a time, OK?  Having rinsed the meat under the tap and dried it, it was just a case of grilling it and re-heating some veg and pasta I'd made earlier. The flesh wasn't as tough as I had expected, and tasted slightly stronger than chicken. But, free meat! I couldn't get over it.

As it happened I had just finished reading the new ZeroCarbonBritain report which sets out a scenario for how the UK can reduce our net carbon emissions to zero by 2030, one of the factors being a massive reduction in how much meat we eat (to allow grazing land to be converted to other uses). The report is thought-provoking and definitely worth a read. It got me thinking how eating pheasant is pretty low-carbon – the birds don't take up any land exclusively, and don't require too much feeding. Then I remembered that they attract the likes of Michael Schumacher and Dame Kiri te Kanawa, flying here in their personal jets or helicopters for a day of shooting before zooming off again, and realised the true carbon cost of the humble pheasant.

In The Line Of Fire

My very own potatoes

The shot rang out across the narrow valley. Instantly everyone hit the ground and there was an awful second of silence before the screaming and shouting began. It was impossible to tell at first if anyone had been hit. I was by the tent where my sister lay sick with diarrhoea, and had been trying to explain to one of the visitors what was wrong with her. Now we both lay almost on top of each other, shaking with fear. A little way across camp a group gradually converged around a prone body, it looked like Maria. I suspected the worst but then she raised an arm, gripped her leg. Another two shots burst across us. We were suddenly galvanised and everyone made for the two 4x4s, running low. The visitors at first tried only to take Maria but six of us managed to force our way on and the drivers, yelling in anger and desperation, floored it out of there.

In case you are concerned that Wales has recently and dramatically spiralled into a chaos of refugee camps, armed bandits and NGO's, let me assure you that this is by no means the case. Wales is as placid as ever. Neither have I moved in the last few days to Kandahar. This was merely a training simulation, mocked up to place some charity workers in a scenario they may one day discover out 'in the field', or in layman's terms, abroad in a danger zone. The training was taking place not far from where I live, a friend of mine was involved in running it and someone dropped out so she drafted me in at short notice to play an 'Internally Displaced Person' living in a refugee camp, tucked away in a gorge below Cader Idris.

During the day we had four groups of delegates visit us, each presented with the same nerve-wracking situation and each handling it slightly differently. They had had to negotiate their way through two checkpoints, one governmental, one rebel, to be with us, neither of which gave them an easy time.  Any of us refugees who managed to get a lift out of there were summarily executed by the rebels back at their checkpoint, being of a different tribe. I died twice. The point was, I think, that every decision taken has its consequences so you must prepare for every eventuality in detail beforehand. It was all captured on camera and the highlights were screened that evening to various people's embarrassment and merriment.

Back in the rather less charged atmosphere of my plot of land, I am proud to announce that the soil has produced its first cultivated vegetable under my diligent management. Having planted about twenty humble 'seed' potatoes (i.e. just small potatoes that are supposedly guaranteed disease-free) in May, I noticed a couple of weeks back that four plants were wilting and going yellow so I cut the stems off at the base and left the potatoes underground for a while for the skins to harden. Yesterday I dug these ones up. They're on the small side, probably as it's a bit early to dig them up yet, but they haven't been nibbled by any creepy-crawly which is a reason to celebrate (last year at Pilsdon most of the spuds had holes from eelworm). Time to distil a batch of vodka with my land's firstfruits... or maybe I'll just boil them up with butter, salt and spinach for dinner.

On the left, the potatoes from double-dug soil.
On the right, those from non-dug soil (with bracken roots and all).

The Show Must Go On

The bored young woman, sitting with her legs folded and a clipboard perched on them, looked at her watch and gave a nod. Immediately two gates were raised, two nervous sheep were shoved out, two burly farmers grabbed them and with electric shears began to divest them of their wool in an exceedingly brusque manner. The animals wriggled and squirmed but were unable to release themselves from the grip of their determined barbers as they were held first upside down, then flipped over, then on their side.  The shearing on the right finished first after only a minute or so, the demon barber releasing it, standing straight and carefully keeping a grin of triumph from sliding onto his face.

I was at the Dinas Mawddwy Show. Every village here holds their annual Show around this time of year, some large affairs, some more low-key like this one. Being a sheep farming district, these woolly ruminants form a fairly central element of the Show what with the speed-shearing and sheepdog trials but there was also an archery competition (the target placed just below the hedge of the lane above making the mere act of walking along it something of a suicidal act), horse-riding competitions, dog competitions, vegetable competitions, and when you're tired of all this competing you can simply peruse the stalls of local produce selling herbs, honey, beeswax soaps, jewellery, and the like.

The week just gone has seen several of my niggling concerns put to rest, or at least on their way to being resolved.  One of them, for instance, is: if I grow fruit and veg next year, where am I actually going to sell it? The weekly market at Machynlleth has a local cooperative stall but is thirteen miles away, you have to stay there all day to take unsold produce home and the stall possibly has enough veg to meet demand already. Ideally I would sell my veg more locally, to the inhabitants of Mallwyd and Dinas Mawddwy. I asked the owner of the shop at Mallwyd's petrol station (the only local shop) if she would be willing to sell some of my veg next year, and her reply was yes, she would try! Can't say fairer than that. 

And as I walked into the Show the first person I saw was a big dreadlocked chap called Peter* who had once picked me up hitch-hiking back from Mach, and the first thing he said to me was did I want to help him start up a local cooperative growing and selling fruit and veg, possibly with a veg box delivery scheme? Um, yes!

The big news of course this week is that the local pub, the Brigand's Inn, has re-opened. Those of you who have avidly followed this blog since April (yes both of you) will remember the shock of its unexpected closure back in May as I lost my nearest social meeting hub and WiFi access. The new manager has smartened it up a little more, including the food prices which do make your eyes smart, and seemed open to the idea of buying in locally grown veg when asked about it by Peter and myself. However I can't get my laptop to connect to the internet on their WiFi for some reason.

More of my worries answered:

1) Where to get enough cardboard to mulch my rapidly enlarging growing area? The friendly shop manager at the petrol station said I can take as much cardboard as I need each week from now on.

2) Where can I get an affordable greenhouse from? I found one for sale on eBay only forty miles away that I won for the princely sum of £38. So last week I drove there with Peter who'd offered to help and together we dismantled it and brought it back in my trailer.

3) How will I stop the pheasants from eating all the veg seedlings as they grow next year? Johnny* the chief gamekeeper offered to construct a huge fully enclosed cage, with netting across the top, around the whole area.

It all begins to seem a little more achievable.

Caravan in the woods

*Not their actual names.

Cat Got Your Tongue

As I reluctantly jigged around with the others in a circle, jerking my elbows and singing the Chipi-Chipi (a Spanish nursery rhyme translated into English on the hoof by a student from Barcelona) I reflected that the best way to shed oneself of an excess of dignity is to enrol on a course. It doesn't really matter what course as long as it's taught by someone who believes that getting everyone to make a fool of themselves will naturally unlock any inhibitions they may have had previously, thus provoking a free-flowing conversational style of learning. It seemed to work.

The course in question was a three-day Introduction to Permaculture, hosted at the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) and led by an external tutor called Angie Polkey. Thirteen of us from various parts of Britain and Spain, including a family of five from Barcelona who had made this part of their holiday, gathered together to be educated in the ways of permaculture. If you aren't sure what this is (and I first heard of it only last year) then you are in good company as even on this course it was admitted that there are as many definitions of permaculture as there are permaculture practitioners. It started life in the 70's as a more environmentally-aware approach to farming (the name is a contraction of "Permanent Agriculture") and has since become an all-inclusive philosophy of sustainability which can apparently be applied to any and every situation. I'd say my interest probably remains primarily with the agricultural side of it.

Day Two saw us making an excursion out a few miles east of Machynlleth to a remote seven-acre plot belonging to Tom and Lisa Brown, a Quaker couple in their late fifties who have lived there the last twenty-three years. Over that time Tom has beautifully restored a tumble-down stone farmhouse and old kiln house using their own timber and locally-sourced recycled materials. Lisa grows veg and sells it at Machynlleth market, and Tom makes and sells honey from their six hives of bees (the homebrew mead they keep to themselves). Holiday guests can come to stay in the caravan that the Browns used to live in before the house was habitable. They both came across as thoughtful, gentle and extremely able.  We were all very envious.

For the duration of the course I was staying at a nearby house of a friend, perched dramatically on top of a hill across from CAT. She had gone away for the weekend leaving me in sole charge of a tabby cat called Esme and her four cute kittens, a responsibility that weighed rather heavily as I had somehow never before had to look after any pet animal. After each day of the course I would get back and find the kittens scrapping on the kitchen floor or in a sleeping bundle on the couch while the mother would approach me and mew politely for their next meal. On the last evening however I opened the door to an absence of cat. Searching all over the house proved fruitless. This was better than finding five furry corpses but I was still perplexed. I didn't think they could get outside, but then found an open catflap in the back door so headed out myself and soon saw Esme walk nonchalantly across the courtyard and back through the catflap. Where were her charges? After hunting outside for a while and checking with the neighbour I went back in and there they were, leaping and tumbling around as usual. Who knows where they had hidden themselves earlier, the rascals.

Back on my land, the digging continues. Greg came down again and finished off the rest of the tree stumps with his five-tonne excavator which are now all dumped higgledy-piggledy in twos and threes. I'd say some of them would make a great still-life if any artist out there fancies the challenge.  Not sure what else they're good for, but I might try to eBay them just for a giggle. You never know, there may be a wealthy tree-stump collector out there willing to pay good money for forty prime examples of twenty-year-old Norway Spruce stumps.

A few stumps placed carefully in an artistic arrangement

The digger responsible

Play The Pipes Of (Green)Peace

The email came through on Thursday morning marked Urgent. It was from Greenpeace. They needed someone to be at a music festival this weekend in Shropshire and were willing to pay for the ticket and all expenses, in return for manning the stall with two others. It sounded like a job for me.

And so it transpired that on Saturday morning I donned the Greenpeace vest in a field owned by Farmer Phil (whose festival it was) and began to work. The point was to sign up as many people as possible as "Arctic Defenders", essentially a petition to protect the Arctic from oil drilling and industrial fishing. This year's Arctic sea-ice minimum, which tends to be smaller each year due to climate change, is expected to be on September 15th. On the same date in London there will be revealed the world's largest polar bear puppet, the size of a double-decker bus, controlled from within by a team of puppeteers, and wrapped in ribbons bearing the names of the millions of Arctic Defenders. If you're in town feel free to join the parade!

We too had our own polar bear outfit and so for the second time this year I found myself taking on the appearance if not the essence of a wild white furry and probably doomed carnivore. I received more hugs from men, women and children in those two days than previously in my entire life. If you're feeling hug-starved now you know what to do. I even found myself on the main stage between acts, waving my giant white paws as my fellow Greenpeace volunteer had the harder job of announcing what we were doing there.

It's been a good week for live music. Last Wednesday was the monthly folk music night at a pub in Ceinws to which some of my new Machynlleth friends were going so I tagged along too. In a back room were about ten musicians with a variety of instruments - violin, saxophone, Irish pipe, accordion, Irish drum and a few acoustic guitars. The sound they drew forth from these, usually accompanied by a lone male vocal, was enrapturing. They each played as if they'd been doing nothing else their whole lives. There was no chat in the room, the focus was wholly on the music. People who weren't playing just sat with a wistful expression.  At one point in the evening a guitarist put his instrument down and sang a haunting melody in Gaelic, completely unaccompanied.  No one wanted to leave, we were all still there at midnight.

On my land I have the music of the birdlife to accompany my labours. Sadly most of the more tuneful birds who tweeted their way through May, June and July have now moved elsewhere but I still have the raucous cawing of the crows, the hoots and squawks of pheasants, the shriek of a circling buzzard, the occasional honking of geese. OK it's more John Cage than Mozart but it's something.

More practically, the tree stumps are nearly all out after a two hour blitz by Greg and his digger, quite a wonder to behold these massive gnarly artifacts being torn out of the ground as if they were mere weeds. The final few will meet their end on Thursday. I've already made a start on the first couple of raised beds, marking their dimensions with string (10m by 1.2m) and digging them over extracting any remaining root systems of soft rush or other similarly nefarious weeds. I have room for 23 raised beds so I've got a fair bit of spadework ahead! Hi ho, hi ho...

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead Pheasants

I gazed out of my kitchen window distracted from washing-up by the death-throes of a pheasant hen. It made no sound. Lying on the earth near a pile of rotting aspen shoots, it arched its neck right back until its head disappeared behind a wing, its claws jerking and scrabbling for a while then pausing as it lay still but for a shallow pulse in its breast. There was no obvious wound that might have caused its demise. It could have contracted a disease of the gut which apparently they are susceptible to, or maybe it was simply starving since their feeding stations have now been removed to the other side of the valley, where the shooting will begin in October.

Another bird, a cock, approached the twitching hen and began pecking at its back. I banged on the window and it stopped and peered at me. I banged again and it ran off up the slope, only to return a minute later to continue its torment. A third knock had little effect, but by now the poor hen seemed to have died. The male pheasant enjoyed eating its feathers, plucking them out one by one and gulping them down. Another hen wandered close but contented itself with pecking at a shrub, perhaps aware that the cock would chase it off if it tried to join in, or maybe it didn't share its taste in cannibalism. Rather than having to witness the slow consumption and decomposition of the corpse over the next few days, I put on my gloves and carried it over to the track entrance where I tend to leave the bodies for collection, one or two a day being the current mortality rate.

Apart from dead pheasant clearing, my other tasks at the moment include Christmas tree clearing (the ones I felled last week, from which I've been hacking the branches off with a billhook), couch-grass clearing whose dense white root networks occupy areas where I want to create raised beds for veg growing, and tree stump clearing. These stumps, perhaps forty or so of varying diameters, are the remains of trees felled to make way for the electric lines, installed eight years ago right through the centre of my land. Like the couch-grass the stumps and their roots are just where I want to be growing vegetables. Having dug up six of the small ones armed only with a spade, a fork and a pickaxe, it was clear that I would be here until my dying days digging the other  ones out.  There's a time and a place for fossil-fuel power and in the absence of a willing chain-gang, I've decided now is the time and place.

I was tipped off by the pheasant keeper that the son of the lady at the petrol station down the road has a digger, so I enquired there and got his number. He was willing to do it but was booked up for the next couple of weeks, so suggested I try a chap who lives at Groes-Llwyd (Grey Cross in English), a house just up the road from me. There I went and met Greg*, a builder in his thirties who was friendly enough considering he knew some stranger had been living in a caravan down below the road for a few months. He came the next evening to have a look and I showed him round. The land used to be part of Groes-Llwyd Farm, stretching up the hill above the road, and his house was the old farmhouse. The previous owners had sold off most of the land; when Greg and his partner bought the house two years ago it came with just two acres, which they keep a horse on.  He offered me a few tonnes of free horse manure which I gladly accepted!

So we agreed that he'll bring his five-and-a-half tonne digger (the small one) on Thursday evening to have a crack at it. It's going to make a bit of a mess but I can't wait to be rid of these stumps. Step by step progress is being made.



April 2013



Now



*Not his actual name.

I'm A Lumberjack And I'm OK

A normal week will see me trooping into Mach (as we locals fondly call Machynlleth as it involves less spittle ending up on each other's faces) only once, to stock up on food at the Wednesday market and to post the latest exciting installment of this very blog to keep my vast global readership from rioting in frustration and possibly stalling an already wobbly world economy. The week just gone has been anything but normal as I have for one reason or another graced Mach with my presence every single day (except Sunday, the day of rest). Last Wed, I hitched there. Thurs, cycled. Friday, drove. Saturday, hitched. Sunday, rested. Monday, my friend drove me. And Tuesday, I drove, but petrol expenses were paid. 

What precipitated this extraordinary turn of events? How is it I have suddenly become so Mach-centric? There is no simple answer I'm afraid, no unifying and illuminating truth, it's just the mutual congruence of a multiplicity of factors and forces that so determined my fate this week. Possibly.

Two of these trips, Thursday and Tuesday, I decided to go and volunteer with the local food growing outfit, Green Isle Growers (as featured in last week's posting). A few of us were sowing, planting and weeding on Thursday on one of their three plots, halfway up a hillside to the north of the town. Tuesday found us at the garden of George Monbiot's house which he lets them use, harvesting courgettes, spinach and blackcurrants in time for their weekly veg bag delivery that evening. I'd like to say George was out there with us getting his knees dirty but I hear  he tends to live elsewhere now, writing his provocative but compelling books and articles (I've just finished his excellent book "Captive State").

One of the other volunteers invited me to a fancy dress party on Friday with the theme of Album Covers, so in I went as Johnny Cash's The Man in Black and was glad I hadn't tried anything more elaborate as most people hadn't bothered to dress up at all. Pretty good party though. The following day was Mach's Carnival which I hitch-hiked in for. It turned out the hitch-hike was more interesting than the carnival parade, not that it was a bad parade (brass band, lots of floats, costumes and strident encouragements to applaud from the too-loud PA system), but the guy who gave me a lift turned out to be a local carpenter who has a whole load of timber in his yard he offered me for free, and who even suggested I work with him in the workshop sometime for cash. I told you hitch-hiking is the best way to travel.

What with my friend Adam coming to visit for the weekend, with whom I visited Mach again on Monday and bought a splitting axe and a billhook, it's really getting quite familiar. So much so that today I'm posting this from the pub in Dinas Mawddwy, the next village along from me, which I've discovered has WiFi - happy days! 

With Adam here I took the opportunity to don my luminous safety gear and take the chainsaw out for a spin, something I don't do solo in case I slice a limb off (Adam could just stitch it back on). Twenty of my Christmas trees have bitten the dust so if you want one, come and get one. OK it's not quite the season but as I'm not going to be here this winter, there seemed no reason to delay. The area I like to call the vegetable garden has now opened up a lot and is less shaded. Adam enjoyed hacking the branches off with the billhook. And the pheasants are loving to perch on top of the fallen trees for some reason known only to them, so everyone's happy.


P.S. The answer to last week's brain teaser is millipede. Well done.