Matt Swan Slightly Less Off Grid

A hill as if drawn by a child

If you are a strict pedant then you may find reading my blog from now on rather uncomfortable. Because although it is titled Matt Swan Off Grid, only the first half is still 100% accurate. My living conditions have, in the last week, altered somewhat, becoming slightly more On Grid. I now lay my head in a slate-roofed two-room building, once a cowshed, then an office, then a storeroom, and now my home. It has (gasp!) mains electrics. There are BT sockets in the walls. And if I perch my laptop on a metal cabinet at the far corner of one room, I can pick up a weak WiFi signal emanating from the main house 15 metres away.

This house is owned by a couple with two kids who took pity on me when they heard that I was being rendered homeless by Snowdonia National Park Authority and offered their outhouse for me to reside in, in exchange for occasional work. For they own a goodly number of acres of fields and woods surrounding the house upon which they graze a small herd of tiny but hardy Scottish sheep (Soay breed) and thus having someone around to fix a broken fence or feed the sheep (and chickens, pigs, dog and snake) when they're away comes in handy.

The dumper truck had been towed out of my bog and up my track, and was back in action

What the outhouse lacks in cooking facilities or plumbing it makes up for in roominess. Unlike my caravan, which may be internally traversed longways in two strides, here I have space for a large sofa and comfy armchair, and coffee table, and a dining table and chairs, and a fridge and lots of cupboards, and that's just one of the two rooms. I sleep on a futon in the other. 

This is the wood that I and my friend had to bring onto my land using my trailer (at least ten loads) because the dump truck couldn't negotiate the steep track.

The rest of it is stored temporarily on friendly neighbours' properties

There are plans to install a sink, with cold water provided from an existing outdoor tap and a drain out to join the main house's drain, and a cooker powered by Liquid Petroleum Gas. There's also an idea to put in a wood burning stove since the existing electric storage heaters cost a fortune to run. (And if you read last week's blog, you'll know that firewood is now something I'm not short of). All of this will no doubt involve drilling holes through the walls which mostly seem to be one-foot-thick slate, so until then I will have to continue to make all my meals in the caravan. Likewise due to lack of a toilet in the outhouse, I'll be timing my bowel movements for when I'm down near my compost toilet.  I will still be spending every day, pretty much, down on the land. It's just a mile or so down a narrow steep lane to my land from my new abode.
  

An old chapel or schoolhouse now used as a haybarn

So these are my living arrangements for this year at least. I'd say I'm still more off the grid than most. But what's important is that I am able to carry on growing quality vegetables on my plot, selling them to those who live around here. The first tiny green shoots of peas, lettuce, cabbage and kale have made a welcome appearance in my compost-filled plastic cell trays. Out in the beds I've sown straight into the soil the seeds of turnip, mange tout and chard, plus seed potatoes and onion sets (basically baby potatoes and onions). Give 'em all a few months of sunshine and showers and they'll be bursting into maturity, becoming plants that offer delicious food for the picking. I can't wait.

I've Got That Sinking Feeling

It isn't every Monday morning that a six tonne dumper truck appears on your doorstep with a load of sawn wood ready to be deposited on your command. It was the first delivery of my larch that the council had asked my permission to fell so they could improve the road barrier. I had been expecting the foreman to come down to discuss where to put it first, but here was a young chap ready to tip the orangey-brown sawnwood right now.

Now my land is beautiful but flawed. One of its flaws is its  bogginess and in particular the patch of swamp just to the right of the parking area. Another is the nature of the access track, being narrow, muddy and very steep slope down.  The truck driver had managed to negotiate the track, at least.  There isn't much room by the parking area for lots of wood but he put the first load there, up an incline. The only other possibilities were a) on the left, down past my polytunnel and caravan to an open area, and b) on the right, through the bog to a clear dry section. I had been advised by the council chap that a dumper truck would make a real mess of the ground so was not keen on option (a), as this is where I spend most of my time. So I suggested (b).

He was all for just driving straight through it but I suggested we check it out first. We stomped around in our wellies, it seemed mostly shallow with one or two deep bits. I asked him what would happen if the truck got stuck. “Good question” he mused. Nevertheless he was prepared to try it. I assumed he, as the dumper truck professional, would have a better idea than me what it was capable of driving through. Unfortunately this confidence turned out to be misplaced as he immediately became mired in the thick black gloop, unable to go forwards or back. There it remained until Tuesday morning when a big tractor appeared driven by an angry man who turned out to be the owner of the dumper truck company.  It failed to pull out the recalcitrant vehicle after many attempts. Later in the day an excavator rumbled down my track and effectively dug the machine out, first the front wheels then the back. “I'll be getting my P45” remarked the young driver.

Hazel catkins

I thought that would be it for bringing wood onto my land but the driver still seemed keen. So I suggested option (a) which at first seemed to go well. The wood was safely tipped onto a big tarp I placed by the caravan in readiness, and the tracks it left in the ground were not too deep. But when he tried to drive up the track and out, a few metres up the huge yellow contraption began to slip off the track sideways. There was a real possibility it could overturn. He extremely cautiously eased it backwards down the steep bank to the side of the track towards the bog, and after the tree surgeon had popped down to fell three young birch that were in the way, he managed to maneouvre it back onto the parking area. When I left this morning to come to Machynlleth to post this blog, it was still there, awaiting something bigger to pull it out of my land.

A tree has fallen into my river over the winter

And finally... I have found somewhere to live! My neighbours a mile up the lane, Stan and Vera*, made the kind offer of the use of their outhouse in exchange for occasional labour. It has mains electricity and electric storage heaters, two rooms, four walls,  two windows and a roof. What it currently lacks is any cooking or washing facilities, or a toilet. The intention is to install a gas cooker of some kind, and a sink plumbed into an external cold tap and to a drain, and possibly a wood burning stove. I'll be moving in before all this is done, but at least I can continue to prepare meals down in my caravan for the time being. This should keep the planning officer at bay!

The early rhubarb forces its way into the open

I've spread the horse muck onto most of the beds that need it

* names changed as usual

Wood Wood Glorious Wood

Disinfecting Pilsdon's bee-keeping equipment the oldfashioned way

I'm back to it. Working the soil, sowing the seeds. The broken panes in the greenhouse have been replaced, the tattered remnants of my winter veg have been removed from the garden, the thirsty soil in the polytunnel has been given a dousing.  Rotted horse manure, the good black stuff, I have tipped barrowload after barrowload onto the long narrow vegetable beds, spreading it evenly then forking it in.  After a winter away I'm putting things back in order, it feels good.

This week is also the time that Gwynedd Council have decided to begin their work improving the safety barrier by the roadside at the far end of my land. This means the felling of eighteen of the larch trees that line the road at that point so that they can extend the concrete base further into my land to support a better barrier. I am rather glad they are doing this as several of those trees have branches overhanging the A road, and the liability rests with me should any branch fall and cause an accident. Not only that but they have agreed to give me all the timber, driving it down and dumping it onto my land. As they are sectionally-felling them from the top down, I'll get them in short-ish pieces so I doubt I'll be able to make planks from them, but it's gonna be a lot of firewood!  I've got a couple of areas cleared and ready for them to dump it all.

The consultation period for the planning application I submitted for my polytunnel and greenhouse ended last Friday. I got an email from the planning officer saying that she had heard from the North Wales Trunk Road Agency asking me to submit all kinds of details about the access to the land, but she thinks they've misunderstood and thought I wanted a new access, so she's told them it's an existing access and hopefully they will relent.

Popping into the Brigand's Inn last week to upload my blogpost using their WiFi, I bumped into the local vicar who I had got to know quite well last year. He introduced me to the new manager of the inn, and I ended up being offered work managing the grounds on an occasional basis! I'll be mowing the front lawn there tomorrow. He also seemed interested in taking my veg, once it's grown. Also the waitress there said she had another job at a cafe in Corris and she believed the manager there would be interested in taking my fresh salad in the summer. Quite a useful trip to the pub all told!

I've also been on the lookout for somewhere else to live that's close by, as I can't stop for long here in the caravan before the (same) planning officer will begin to issue threats of formal action. Talking to neighbours and friends around, there are one or two possibilities. Someone in the local village, Dinas Mawddwy, might have a spare room they'd be willing to rent out. And some neighbours up the lane have offered me something in return for a bit of labour each week, which I'm discussing with them further tonight. I don't think I'm going to be homeless.

p.s. Apologies for the lack of pictures of my land, it's due to technical difficulties (my laptop deciding it doesn't want to charge up any more in my caravan). 

Hi Ho Hi Ho It's Off to Work We Go

As I drew up to the entrance to my land after fifteen weeks away I was met by two neighbours of mine out walking their dogs. We had got to know each other fairly well last year, they grow quite a variety of veg for their own consumption and have a stall on the weekly Machynlleth market selling homemade crafts, him from slate and wood, her from cloth. It was a warm welcome back, having an impromptu natter with these good folk and catch up on the local gossip.   

When I finally made it down the track it was heartening to find the polytunnel and caravan looking just as I'd left them. The greenhouse had a couple of panes out, presumably blown out by the wind. But when I entered the garden enclosure it was obvious that pheasants had managed to get in. All that remained of my winter veg – beautiful kale, purple sprouting broccoli and cabbage – were the stalks, jutting forlornly out of the beds at regular intervals. There were also pheasant feathers scattered around indicating some kind of feeding frenzy or death match. It transpired that the netting had pulled away from the fence at the far end, allowing the hungry birds access to the finest organic food for miles around. The only consolation for me is the thought that the culprits have been shot, although I have already spied at least three still alive and well. Not for long.

The day was spent getting my caravan up and running again – lowering the four legs, filling the water barrel from the stream, refitting the taps, wiping off the mould where it had accumulated around the kitchenette and generally giving it a spring clean – and unpacking my belongings from the trailer and car. Unfortunately rain had managed to creep under the trailer's tarp making some things damp, but this is where having an empty fifteen metre polytunnel comes in really handy. It's like a giant wardrobe-cum-airing-cupboard.

My leaving hamper

So begins my third season alone on my land. I had had a wonderful send-off from Pilsdon, being presented with a leaving card and a hamper full of goodies (home-baked bread, home-made butter and marmalade and crab apple jelly, etc) decorated with real ivy, moss, daffodils, and little Easter eggs. At breakfast the two American children (aged 4 and 2) each gave me a card that they had made, one of which read “I'm really looking forward for you to come back. I love you. I like playing piano with you. How long are you going to stay there? I wish you well” (which the budding pianist had apparently dictated word for word).  I got to hold baby Rowan for the first time, not yet a week old. Everyone came out to wave me off with tea-towels as I drove out of the courtyard, as is the Pilsdon way. People have been extraordinarily generous and kind to me in all sorts of ways.

The "site notice" pinned to a post outside my land

It is with a heady brew of emotions that I return to Wales, as I will very much miss the community of friends that is my winter home but I am also excited to be getting stuck back into the season that awaits me here, to all the challenges I face (not least where I am to live, as the planning officer won't let me remain long in the caravan). It's the sheer sense of being alive that comes from working for myself in the great outdoors, having to tackle problems with my own ingenuity and bare hands yet more and more relying on others around who are offering help. Let's see how these next few months unfold.

Say Goodbye

Podded runner beans ready for boiling up

This is it, folks. The growing season is over. My last leek sold. The garden is being put to bed for the winter. The polytunnel's doors will soon be drawn shut for the last time this year. In three days time I will lock up my caravan and venture south for the winter on the balmy shores of Dorset.

It has been quite an incredible experience, this first year growing vegetables for a “living”. Back in March I really didn't know if anything much would grow at all, in this soil which has never previously been used for growing. I didn't have a polytunnel or any panes in my greenhouse (though these were top priority and by the end of March they were in place). The fact that most things have grown reasonably well is encouraging; it can only get better as I improve the soil with lime, manure, compost and organic fertiliser. And before this year I had never actually sold anything to anyone, really, certainly not as a trading business, now my income depends on it.

Before

After

Through selling salad bags locally I have met nearly everyone up the nearby Cwm Cewydd lane, and some have become friends. By having a stall at the local farmer's market I've got to know all the other regular traders, as well as getting my face known by the people from the village, again some of whom have become friends, inviting me over to dinner occasionally. Beginning to attend the local church has widened my circle further, and given me a chance to play the piano! The Mach veg bag scheme has been a great way to meet the other veg growers in the neighbourhood, and we've all been able to encourage each other by cooperating in this way. And although I'm on the periphery of the Mach social scene, being thirteen miles out, I do occasionally get invited to parties!

Red cabbages

From time to time someone enquires whether what I'm doing is sustainable, by which of course they mean financially, not ecologically. It is a very good question. Everyone knows that there's no money in veg. Of course if you asked the same question to a large-scale farmer, you might find that their business is only tenable due to subsidies which sadly are not (yet) available to small-scale growers despite the fact that the environmental impact is tiny in comparison (and arguably has a positive impact on biodiversity if the right permaculture practices are followed). Also not many businesses are profitable in their first year, so the proper answer is “ask me in a couple of years time”.

But to give you an idea, anyway, here are some figures. This year (from June to November when I actually had any crops to sell) my veg business brought in about £1240, largely thanks to the Mach veg bag scheme. Business expenses were around £1500, but £1000 of that was the 15 metre polytunnel. I expect to be bringing in more next year, both because I'll have more growing space thus more veg, and because I'll be getting better at both growing and marketing.

I've broken down my earnings by vegetable. Runner beans win the prize for highest earner, netting me £305 (but then I did have over two hundred plants!). Second place were the salad bags, bringing in £179. Courgettes won bronze, with £176, and in fourth place were tomatoes at £85.

I keep tabs on all my daily expenses so I know that since I arrived in March I've spent around £2100 on non-business stuff – mostly food and petrol. Fortunately I've been able to balance the books by a combination of a) letting out my land for pheasant rearing, b) doing occasional odd-jobs for people, and c) registering for Working Tax Credit. 

So now it's time to say goodbye - till next spring!  I'll continue to blog on my mattswanindorset site over winter so you can't get rid of me completely. Happy winter everyone.

\the bog will survive the winter without me

 

Roaming Around

Mallwyd Hill looms over my winter brassicas

Not content with trundling down to Carmarthenshire last week to visit an off-grid bakery, this week I have ventured afield to four (yes, 4) places: Newtown, Birmingham, Derby and China.

Hold your horses if you are about to vent your spleen all over my comments box about how hypocritical of me it is to jet across to the Far East for what must have been a very short visit, all will be made clear.

Cwm Harry's veg beds

In Newtown there is a well-established veg box scheme run from a centre called Cwm Harry which both grows its own (providing opportunities for some with learning disabilities to get involved) and buys in veg from local people and through an organic wholesaler in Lampeter, which is then distributed to the doors of about 25 customers each week.  A few of us who help run the Machynlleth veg bag scheme got ourselves organised (with help from the Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens) and trekked over there to pester the manager with lots of questions as to how it all works, logistically, financially and emotionally. Nearly everything is done differently from how we do it, but that's fine – Machynlleth's scheme is explicitly aimed at supporting local growers (whilst providing customers with very local and fresh produce) whereas Newtown's version is more about providing customers with better veg than what the supermarkets offer, at a competitive price. An instructive day out.

Cwm Harry's raised beds (they sell them flat pack)

A sedum roof gathering spot at Cwm Harry

The attractions of Birmingham are legendary. Shop till you drop at the Bullring. Gawk at the paintings and old things in the gallery-museum. Look fashionably well-read by strolling around the new Library, sniffing the various herbs in its outdoor gardens on large balconies several floors up with a Wordsworth anthology under your arm. Shop some more at the Bullring. Yet despite all these extremely compelling features, it was actually something else entirely which drew me there – the confluence of two pairs of university friends with associated pairs of children, none of whom I had caught up with for a number of years, and a great couple of days was had re-acquainting ourselves and getting muddy playing football.

Derby being just a stone's throw from Birmingham, at least if fired by some military-grade missile-launcher, I decided to hop on over and see how Brian and Martha* were settling in there. Brian had been the Warden of Pilsdon Community when I was first investigating it and had made the decision to take me on as a residential volunteer, so it's largely down to him that my life has taken the trajectory it has over the last couple of years. He is now a chaplain at the University of Derby and enjoying getting his teeth into a new challenge (as well as drawing a salary for the first time in about ten years - even Wardens at Pilsdon don't get compensated much in actual money.) Martha is offering her (recently accredited) counselling skills voluntarily at a women's refuge.

It was great to see them both and they even took me out to the theatre to see the first night of a production of Little Voice, guessing rightly that such cultural opportunities come few and far between when living in a boggy field in rural Wales.

Some of the stones I've dug out of the garden

And China? OK so I haven't physically jetted there myself this week but what happened was this: a Chinese friend of my parents, who lived not far from them in Lancaster, came to visit to make a short documentary about what I'm up to, and why.  After editing the footage he took of me droning on about small-scale ecologically-aware farming, he plans to upload it to the Chinese version of YouTube and convert the entire population who, he says, are entirely devoted to the consumerist dream – everyone is moving from countryside to city, virtually no one is moving the other way. He took his wife and son back to live in Beijing this week; the documentary has gone with him. If there are more people like him in China there's hope that the tidal wave of consumerism and all the environmental impacts that go with that might begin to abate.

* names have been changed

Pat-A-Cake Pat-A-Cake Baker's Man

Trying my hand at baking 

Until last Sunday, the things I knew about bread could be counted on the digits of a four-toed sloth which had lost most of its limbs. I like eating it. I have seen it being made, particularly at Pilsdon. I have even made a moderately successful foccaccia or two in Pilsdon's Aga, so I know how to follow a recipe. But on Sunday I came face to face with a real baker, a man who has bread coursing through his veins (it does make his arms swell a bit). What this man doesn't know about sourdough is not worth knowing. And he was willing and very able to share his knowledge with those of us who had made the pilgrimage to his off-grid home-cum-bakery in the depths of darkest Carmarthenshire.

One of Rick's wood stores

Rick and Maggie have lived in their off-grid farmhouse for a couple of decades already, bringing up and home-schooling about nine children as they did so. They also ran an organic smallholding. A 2.5kW wind turbine, attached to two extremely heavy-duty 700Ah batteries, provides for all their electrical needs. Seven years ago Rick returned to his roots as a trained baker, building a brick oven that could take over fifty loaves, and hasn't looked back. His bread he takes to various outlets and markets all around, including the market in far-flung Machynlleth (which is how we heard about his Open Day this Sunday.)

These are the loaves we made

The entire day Rick never stopped talking, but neither did we tire of listening to him. He made sourdough bread seem the most important thing on earth, his manner being so infectiously enthusiastic and on a topic which he so obviously knew everything about. Not only that but he got us baking it too – he had prepared some dough which some of us moulded into the correct shapes, and then we slid them into the narrow oven entrance on long paddles, depositing the largest ones right at the very back and eventually filling it with loaves. The previous night he had lit a wood fire inside the oven until it had sufficiently heated the heavily-insulated bricks, and then scraped out the ashes and cleaned it ready to take the loaves the next day. Normally he would do several batches from a single burn, the oven remaining hot enough to bake hundreds of loaves. 

Looking over into my neighbour's land

Sourdough, I learned, is simply bread that has not had yeast added. There is natural yeast in wheat flour so sourdough bread should rise almost like 'normal' breads, it's just a bit trickier to get the starter going (which itself is just a mix of flour and water). The result is supposed to be more easily digestible than yeast-added bread, something to do with the gluten having stretched more. Or possibly less. It also has a distinctive sourdough taste. And Rick is pleased not to have to add yeast, the production of which he informed us is a dirty industrial process.

Incredibly he sources most of his flour from a real old-fashioned working windmill which grinds the organic wheat between huge horizontal stone wheels. The snag is it is in Boston, Lincolnshire, so every five weeks or so he makes the huge round trip, bringing back a tonne of flour in his truck. Since the windmill is run by his old pal, he doesn't mind so much.

The autumn sun finally breaks onto my land 

Rick's bread is possibly the most right-on bread in Wales. His mission is to bring proper bread to the masses, who are being badly let down by the bread industry as a whole, the loaves we find on supermarket shelves often not having nearly enough goodness in them, and probably causing the rising tide of wheat and gluten intolerances. He's also a really nice guy. Next time you find yourself in the vicinity of Carmarthen, make sure you search out some loaves made at Mair's Bakehouse, and treat yourself to the healthiest, most environmentally-friendly and tastiest bread this side of Offa's Dyke.

The mud bath approach to my caravan