Get Me To The Church On Time

Saturday just gone, it was the event of the year in this neck of the woods. Literally. The annual "Sioe", or Show, was held in the flat field just below the Brigand's Inn, overlooking another lower field where the sheepdog trials were run throughout the afternoon. This being rural Wales there was a distinct emphasis on sheep, with the speed sheep-shearing competition and the stall advertising all manner of evil brews for your sheep-dip needs, but other animals were also celebrated - a number of ponies being ridden round a small track by straight-backed immaculately-dressed girls, a sad-looking long-eared donkey from the Donkey Sanctuary offered rides to whoever would pay, and of course competitions to compare and contrast canines of all shapes and sizes.

Not many stalls at the Sioe

I had been invited by the organisers to set up a vegetable stall so I duly went along at 11 with my current range of crops and a miniscule table from my caravan and pitched up. Luckily the stall next door belonged to some friendly neighbours of mine who offered me a spare table so my display didn't look quite so ridiculous. They were much better equipped, having proper gazebos erected over their tables, which is where I retreated to whenever one of the clouds scudding above decided to empty themselves upon us. They did so with depressing regularity.

My first harvest of carrots ready for bagging up

For the first two hours there were simply no punters. Nobody was there. It was a ghost town, a macabre ghost fete where all the rides are working and coconuts being thrown but nobody is to be seen. We assumed everyone had checked the weather and decided to stay in bed, and were resigning ourselves to a pointless day of standing in a field. However around lunchtime a few started to drift in, the ponies showed up eventually, and things lurched into gear by about 2pm. I even began to make a few sales between rainbursts.

Courgette, carrot and Crown Prince squash, chopped and ready for roasting

One woman rather dismissively eyed my runner beans and remarked "So if I were to stand at the side of the road and sell my beans I could charge £1.20 for them could I?" I replied she could charge what she liked for them. Fortunately most of my other encounters were more positive and often ended up with a sale. A couple conversed with me for a while, or rather he did, about vegetable growing and how it was difficult to sell veg at the Sioe because all the prize veg that were submitted for the various competitions ("One Brace of Ridge Cucumbers", "One Dish of Parsley"...) were then auctioned off at the end. My argument was that my veg were bred for taste not size or uniformity and I think he agreed although he still didn't buy anything, having his own large veg garden. His parting shot was to inform me that he was the local vicar.

Spot the lonely ripened tomato. What's holding the others back?

I knew that the village had a church, an ancient squat stone building with what appears to be a mammoth's tusk hung above the entrance, and had even nosed around inside but had found no evidence of a regular service being held. There was a sheet pinned to the notice board informing anyone who cared of a few special services throughout the year at this and other churches, but nowhere that I could see did it say "We meet every Sunday at 11:15am". So it was left to the vicar to tell me that in person.




Two mighty walls of runner beans


A regular reader of this blog may be forgiven for not being aware of what religious beliefs I may or may not hold, although the fact that I had previously been volunteering at a Christian-run community in Dorset might have given a clue. The fact is I try to follow the way of Jesus Christ and had been rather missing the chance to meet up with other like-minded souls for worship. So I went along the following day at 11:15am and sure enough there was an actual service, led mostly in English although the occasional hymn and reading were in Welsh. There were perhaps fifteen or so there, a couple of whom chatted to me afterwards, and the vicar invited himself over to see my vegetable garden.

So despite Saturday's rain, having a stall at the Sioe proved useful not just for the thirty quid I made but, primarily, for the new connections with people I've made. I'd better harvest some cucumbers for sandwiches ready for the vicar's visit!

The garden as of yesterday

The Podfather

Making a start on the new beds.  The one on the right already has the winter stuff in -
kale, cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli

 It was a Wednesday afternoon, around 4pm. The market stalls had mostly departed, a few shoppers were still around, kids in small groups drifted home from school. Then the limos began to arrive, purring up to the unmarked entrance to a side alley from which men in expensive suits and dark glasses stepped, quickly making their way up the alley to a door which opened to allow them in. Some of the men seemed to be bodyguards, thickset thugs who scanned the street and alley. Inside, the heads of the six major local-food-growing outfits met around the table for the first time. The various groups, or "families", had been at war ever since a misunderstanding over the correct size of a courgette ten years ago, and the violence was rapidly escalating. This meeting, which had taken three months to arrange, had been called by the new head of the Barlottis to attempt to iron out the differences and end the bloodshed.

The very first tomatoes to ripen. Unbelievably most of the rest are still green.

OK so perhaps I embellish a little. There has been no violence, no courgette feud, no bodyguards or limos, and the meeting only took a couple of weeks to arrange. Nevertheless it is a fact that last Wednesday at 4pm the very first meeting was held between the six main growers around Mach who provide produce for the Green Isle Grower's weekly veg bag scheme. We all knew each other to varying degrees, but this was the first time that we had sat down together. The agenda was mostly about the veg bag scheme itself and gave us all a chance to air our views on how the scheme and hear what customer feedback there had been, as well as to hear how the financials were working (or not working).

The Podfather

Maybe it was the excellent sponge cake arrange on a three tier pedestal that we began the meeting with that set the tone, but overall everyone was very positive and had many encouraging words to say to the two running it, with good reason. The scheme provides us growers with a way of selling more produce at retail prices, and we had all been accommodated very flexibly when the veg wasn't available when we had originally planned it to be. Customer feedback was very good. The scheme had reached the maximum of 45 customers fairly quickly. Logistically it was now running smoothly enough after some initial hiccups. The only major headache was the balancing of the budget, so we agreed to set up another meeting to discuss the prices we would charge for next year's veg, align them across the group so next year's budget could better reflect reality, and hopefully be able to pay the people running it!

Cabbage, carrots and courgette, all from the garden!

I look forward to that discussion as I have found it very difficult to price my veg. I've tried researching the prices of vegetables and fruit from various organic and inorganic outlets but there is often huge variation and to complicate matters it was the "per kilo" weight whereas the scheme was often asking for "portions" of certain veg, like six carrots or four beetroot, not a weight. This week's delivery to the scheme is my biggest yet – 30 portions (250g) of runner beans, 20 portions of carrots, 10 courgettes, 5 cucumbers and 10 large green heads of cabbage. Thankfully Shauna was still here to help me harvest, weigh, bag, label and then transport it all to Machynlleth. Next time I'm back on my own again!

To clear our heads and stretch our limbs a few of us went out walking the windswept hills north of Machynlleth. We were trying to get to the pub in Ceinws but as usual on walks the footpath vanished and we found ourselves having to head in roughly the right direction over wide barren hilltops. Finally we saw the hamlet in the distance but we were much higher than it and there was a wood covering the slope down ahead. Gamely we plunged on and downwards, and found ourselves in a magical oak wood entirely carpeted in edible bilberry bushes and other beautiful and purple-hued shrubs. We had never seen so many bilberries. We ate a few but had no basket to harvest them in. Katie's sandalled feet became purple with juice as we staggered through it searching for a way down which never materialised, eventually forcing us to give up on the pub and retrace our steps all the way home, tired but happy in the shared knowledge of our magical bilberry wood.

Katie's bilberry-juiced foot

Tea For Two

Ding ding! Round Two. Back into the ring of market stalls after a brief month of furious growing. I was back at Dinas Mawddwy farmer's market with a table laden with the finest fresh vegetables in the valley and sales expectations at rock bottom given the weather forecast of gales and torrential rain. Only five other sellers had bothered turning out, the hall seemed empty. The chap who runs the market had already given up on the whole affair due to the poor attendance in previous months and presented us with the unfortunate news that this would be the last one.

But the rain held off and the wind never really picked up till later. People began to drift in and mosey around the goods on offer, or have a chinwag with other customers. One or two people took cucumber slices I was offering as a taster (since the cucumbers themselves are a bit offputting being fat and warty) and complimented me on the flavour, even buying some. Bags of chard, spinach, salads and french beans began to disappear from the table, my bag of money accumulating coins accordingly. The hall rarely emptied completely as it had done last month.

5 Aug : First harvest of runner beans, for delivery to veg bag scheme
I just managed to scrape together 5 portions (1.25kg)

The other difference was that this time I had double the number of employees – instead of one there were now two of us looking after the stall. Not that the pace of selling quite warranted this vast workforce but it meant I had someone to chat to while she knitted a series of interlinked woollen rings.

12 Aug: Second harvest of runner beans for delivery to veg back scheme.
There were more than enough to fulfil my 5kg quota (20 portions)

Shauna* has come to help me for a couple of weeks, living in a tent on my land and mucking in with the gardening, cooking, watering and the hundreds of other little tasks that make up my days, in return for which I keep her alive by feeding and watering her. It is the first time I've had someone stay and work with me for more than a couple of days, apart from my very first week here last year when Matt and Mary stayed to get me settled in, and it certainly does make a number of differences to the life I have become accustomed to. For a start there's the extra labour which allows me to focus on digging over the new beds while she keeps on top of the weeds in the existing garden. And then there's the actually being with someone else for much of the time, who has thoughts other than my own and expresses them with words of her own choosing, and who listens to and understands the words I might choose to utter. Conversations are conducted. Tasks are discussed and shared. Pheasants are simply not up to this level of communication - it makes a nice change.

Back in the village hall the customer flow had dried up, it was after 1pm and everyone was tucking into their Sunday lunch, except us. Sally** who runs the organic pork stall was not prepared to take the final closure of the farmer's market lying down and took it upon herself to push for it to continue, under new management. All the stall holders present wanted it to carry on. A couple of local community members agreed to take it on under their wing, provided Sally herself did the legwork of encouraging more stall holders to come and collected the rent from them each month. More posters advertising the market are to be made and put on display the week leading up to each event to promote more custom. I left feeling positive, and over twenty quid richer. And who knows, maybe my tomatoes might have ripened sufficiently to try selling by next month!
　
*her real name
**not her real name.

CAT's In The Cradle

The first beetroot

The seven of us stood silently in the abandoned quarry. There was no birdsong. Stillness reigned. The words of a poem just recited that spoke of the awful reaches of time that these rocks had existed still fizzed amongst the synapses of our brains. The sheer slate cliffs towered around us, our collective weight adding nothing to the enormous pile of fragments under our feet. Birch, rowan, laurel and fir were recapturing the landscape, slowly reverting the barren gash in the earth back into a biodiverse woodland.

The first carrot

Forty years ago a few hippies had arrived here, fifteen years or so after the slate mining operation had been shut down (it was uneconomic, the slate wasn't as good as the stuff further north).  They somehow won planning permission to start a community that aimed to generate its own energy needs using new-fangled technology such as wind turbines and solar heating. Locals were bemused, not that long ago having got used to dependable mains-supplied electricity. The hairy idealistic pioneers were way ahead of their time. The Centre For Alternative Technology (CAT) was born.

The first cabbages

In 2014 it is still here, showcasing renewable technologies that have since become, or are becoming, mainstream. No longer a community but remaining a place of education, it offers a whole suite of courses in hydro, solar, wind, and sustainable building techniques, as well as being a day out for the holidaymakers to drag their kids around. A new CEO was brought in this year, previously the deputy leader of the Green Party, and the hope is that he can point CAT in the right direction as my sources tell me that in recent years it has got bogged down in financial difficulties and been suffering from a lack of vision. 



The first runner beans, being sorted into 250g portions



Still, on this sunny 40^th birthday celebration, the place was busy and full of things to see and do. The current leader of the Green Party, Natalie Bennett,  gave an inspiring talk. A documentary capturing the views of local people about the site, mixed in with archive footage of the early days, was fascinating, particularly as some of the people in the room watching it were those very same pioneers from forty years ago. And ours was the first group ever to be officially allowed into the old quarry, venturing with hard hats through a narrow tunnel over disused rail tracks to emerge blinking into the peaceful wooded sanctuary.

The first ripening tomato, finally!

Back in my own wooded sanctuary, the first summer cabbages have been harvested and sold to the veg bag scheme, nice big green heads. The first fat knobbly cucumbers have been picked. The first tomato has finally ripened. The french beans are now supplementing my meals. The runner beans are just now becoming big enough to consider eating. Some of the beetroot at least have swollen to a decent size. Courgettes are coming thick and fast. And on Monday, my phone network jolted back into action after nearly a fortnight's rest, so I'm no longer quite so uncontactable! It's all happening here in mid Wales.

A dinner made almost entirely from my own veg - courgette, potato, french bean, beetroot, lettuce, beetroot tops.
Just a tin of tomatoes, an onion, a bit of blueberry balsamic vinegar and some harissa sauce was added.