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Posted on October 7, 2024 | 75 Comments
I’m publishing below a guest post by Alice Holloway. Alice’s partner, Joel, is a regular commenter here and has mentioned the idea of a care home farm in a couple of his comments – here’s the full lowdown!
I don’t usually publish guest posts, but I’m short on time to keep writing this blog at the moment. Picking up on themes discussed under recent posts, I’m also interested in seeing how people flesh out their varied visions for agrarian local futures, and Alice’s post fits that bill admirably. I’m potentially up for publishing other guest posts along these lines, but only from existing regular commenters.
Hopefully, I’ll be back at my writing desk soon. In the meantime, over to Alice –
My partner and I are artist, designer, maker, and craftsman living in South London. We both studied craft based creative practices, and over the years since we graduated have run projects, had jobs, and made businesses in the urban art and design worlds.
This background is offered mainly to explain our particular context, with its insights and limitations. Art practice can often lead you deep into theory, and ours has been an exploration of ’embodiment’, the understanding of life experience as being primarily held ‘in’ the body, taken in through the senses, analysed through the gut, neuropathways and neurochemicals, and responded to with learned thought processes and movements (skills).
As a matter of personal self-development, stemming from how traditional creative practice was taught to us, we have sought inspiration in a broad selection of academic texts. However, it has often occurred to us that, as the popular criticism of Adam Smith goes, those writing on the subject of living are often well removed from the practice of living – more specifically the practices of creating the human lived experience. Whether it be the hidden labour of the women in their lives, or the modern way of letting the Global South do pretty much all the work, much contemporary thought lacks the practical understanding of objects that making things gives you.
From our perspective, the human project IS to make. On the most basic level, we could only survive in very few habitats without our objects of survival, particularly due to the helplessness we are born into as furless, immobile baby humans. Beyond that we are, amongst our animal cousins, uniquely physically adept to making, and emotionally attached to our objects.
As we mooch around the capital, drinking various overpriced lattes, chatting with various very important urbanite artists, and battling to produce various grassroots public spectacles to try and jolt our neighbours out of their gas guzzling malaise; we are constantly struck by one of the greatest confidence tricks of our society – all of us take part in the commercial world in order to earn the money that will meet our domestic needs, yet the domestic sphere is treated as peripheral to the commercial sphere. Professional activities like making spreadsheets, and pitching for marketing budgets carry status, feeding ourselves and keeping ourselves warm are just the lowly things we have to do to be able to turn up to our important (yet surprisingly abstract) jobs every day.
Our extensive reading and delving suggests to us that this is a post-enclosures perspective, although patriarchy (the idea that what men do is more important than anything else) has probably always existed with more or less seriousness attached to it. Pre-enclosures, work was very obviously focussed on perpetuating and building the domestic sphere. Most people were just getting on with it, day in day out, and the commercial sphere was very limited. But that way of life was deliberately destroyed. The enclosers were explicit (in their own pamphlets) that they were enclosing the commons in order to force the peasantry into reliance on the commercial sphere and working in the newly devised factories. Several hundred years later, most people are so embedded in the commercial sphere that they can’t imagine not being reliant on it for their every need. But Joel and I have been backstage, and it’s an absolute disaster behind the scenes.
It was during Uni at Central Saint Martins (I studied Jewellery Design which was a bench practice in 2006) that my Godmother gave me copy of The Ecologist magazine focussing on India’s cotton farmers, right when we were working on a fashion unit. The Ecologist dug deep into why Indian cotton farmers were committing suicide, citing the debts they incurred from buying GM modified seeds and pesticides, sold to them as wonder solutions by global north corporations, the lower prices they received at market due to competition from subsidised crops in North America, and the social shame of not being able to provide dowries for their daughters as they reached marrying age. I don’t know if I’m particularly, abnormally burdened with hysterical empathy, but I just can’t build a life or a business that tries to pretend that these issues don’t exist. I set out from the very beginning determined not to look away, and not to compromise on other people’s happiness. I set out determined to put CARE back to the front of what I was making.
This focus on care had unexpected consequences for product development. Of course, sourcing materials was an absolute nightmare, but it wasn’t just that. A lot of brands never deal directly with their customers, but I invited criticism, believing as Lean Startup had told me, that I could make the perfect product if I got enough input from the people who were using it. But all that happened was I encountered unique perspective after unique perspective, what worked for one person didn’t work for the next, I went round and round in circles before I accepted that to really meet someone’s needs I had to tailor my product just to them. I had to take the time to listen to their frustrations with the mass-produced options they’d struggled with, and work with them – taking into account their experience of their own body, their taste (the way colour, texture, and shape interacted with their particular senses), their aspirations (to be more comfortable, to be more sexy, to be more feminine, or more powerful) and using my talent and expertise to sew those threads into a garment.
I love doing it, but I hate doing it within the capitalist context. At every turn I would take a hit. To do the right thing, I would have to pay multiple times what my contemporaries would pay to continue with the ‘cotton farmers commit suicide’ way of doing things. And in the end I couldn’t afford to. Just like everyone else I had rent and bills, and debts and all the side effects of my ancestors getting forced off their land and into the city.
But the other thing we see backstage is that this theatre is crumbling. It’s fragile, it’s a couple of pence on a barrel of oil short of being unfeasible. Maybe there will always be a plastic bag of carrots in Aldi, the main issue is whether your labour will be worth enough to buy them. The debt economy has us all locked into a squeeze, the shareholders have got to get their increased profits by whatever means necessary, and recent world events are proving that it really is by whatever means necessary. It’s getting harder and harder to make this thing work, to make our money do what we want it to do – provide care for ourselves and those we love.
Care isn’t just about meeting a calorie quota. It has all the aesthetic and spiritual dimensions embedded in it. It’s about a subjective experience of beauty, and fun, and fulfilment. A business advisor confirmed my own experience (from various sustainable business accelerators) that investors aren’t looking for physical products to support anymore. They’ve shifted to the digital world. If you want to change how a snuggly woolly jumper is actually made in real life, don’t expect that anyone will back you. If you want to draw a picture of something that an avatar could wear, then sure, that sounds profitable. I don’t think we should be under any illusions that many wealthy individuals are looking for opportunities to put their money into a just transition.
So what options do we have? We have the option to utterly divest, and build CARE based opportunities outside the current system. Which is what CARE-HOME-FARM is. It’s a model, which we hope to test and explore in real life, for an inter-sufficient community. The model aspires to be independent of any global supply chains, because they are all unfortunately tainted by neo-colonialism, prone to opacity and corruption. The model aspires to be just in the resources it requires, i.e. it tests the quality of life possible if each individual doesn’t take more than they need. It’s a model for humans who know that they experience the most joy when their hands are completely dirty and they just failed at something a million times before finally nailing it.
We propose a village centred around a Care Home because we aspire to internalise all systems of care, including care of the elderly and care of disabled community members. All the research suggests that the Care Home and the school should be in the same space, share the same playground/garden and can be served by the same canteen where everyone can eat together when they want.
As you walk down the path from the Care Home you are flanked by ten or so ‘unretirement’ cottages, probably with competitively beautiful cottage gardens, where elders have bought the right to invest their boomer gains and contribute their wisdom. Here you come to a number of beautiful community spaces – a pub for rowdy discussions and roast dinners, a library with a log fire for being bohemian in, a laundry run on pedal power, a barn for weddings and young people music events which are both encouraged and frowned upon, a studio for, let’s face it, yoga, but hopefully also less serious exercise. Circling the town centre are a number of workshop spaces – a spinning and weaving mill/studio, a tailors, a cobblers, a bakers, a papermakers, a brewers, a coffee roasters, a foundry, a furniture maker, a tannery, a pottery, a creamery and a butcher etc.
This central acre is circled by one-acre homesteads You can grow whatever you want for your own family, autonomy is important, but many of us work out pretty soon that it’s probably simpler to just work together in the market garden and chat while we’re doing it. The homesteads are non-traditional, some of them cottages with parent and child families, some of them single parents with kids co-living with other single parents, some of them studio flats with big central living rooms and kitchens for housemates.
Outside the homesteads is a ring of managed grazing pastures and coppiced woodlands. Silvopastures that provide food, fuel and fibre for the community. We stack enterprises like we’re building the pyramids. The sawdust from our sawmill is the bedding in the hatchery, the mulberry trees feed the silkworms in the summer and provide tree hay for the goats in the winter. Every member is a grower and a maker, we all match our work to our physical aptitudes and our passion, but we also all dabble and muck in to process gluts or the sock rush just before the weather turns.
As I divulged at the beginning, my partner and I have only ever lived urban lives, and while we’ve grown small amounts of veg here and there, and kept chickens etc, we have limited experience of producing on this scale. To bridge this gap we have been visiting farms, learning from farmers and market gardeners, and spending our holidays volunteering in market gardens. We see our theories backed up by the experience of those going ahead of us. The combination of high buy-in costs and low food prices make commercial market gardening very difficult to sustain, added to which most farmers we meet are wearing plastic fleeces, which I’m not judging, but is exactly the kind of compromise (on both style and substance, lol) that I’m keen to design out.
On farms we have visited we see both the insecurity of volunteers who are keen to be of service but have no secure living arrangements, and the missed opportunities for enterprises that could make the land so much more productive, if only someone could input the labour and expertise needed to, for instance, make valuable herbal tinctures, or coppice the willow and make baskets, or manage the forest and turn desirable wooden bowls.
Of course, the major sticking point is our combined trauma. Generations of doing what we might in the future consider to be quite evil business, usually driven by our best intentions in providing our children with sustenance and opportunity, have left their mark on our psychology. Many people cannot fathom the relaxed mindset, ability to calmly take risks on others’ intuition, and sense of humour required to collaborate as deeply as our plan would require. Certainly, the idea of a busybody sneaking into the fold and asking thirty thousand questions at every meeting fills me with utter dread, but I also see that if we don’t start practising these new ‘technologies’ of communication and active learning now we’ll never have them.
For the past couple of years, I’ve been blessed to take part in a coaching collaboration with an inspiring wise woman in my Brixton community. I am utterly convinced of the power of targeted resilience-building and self-exploration to nurture the necessary qualities of patience, letting go, not taking it personally and not taking yourself too seriously, among my future fellow Care Home Farmers. I also believe in having a good time, not martyring yourself to the cause, not denying yourself out of misplaced righteousness.
In our respective fields we are up there with some pretty skilled makers currently working, the products we make are luxury items. An aesthetic of low-power luxury is, in my opinion, crucial to making Care Home Farm a future vision that can compete with what we have now. Beauty, warmth, and flavour nourish us, they carry us through trials. That’s exactly how capitalism is creating so many advocates, because it promises a nirvana if you work hard, and sacrifice enough. Well, I intend to grow, and process, and whittle and sew that nirvana for myself (and those around me). I intend to eat organic vegetables, and boujie ferments, and craft beer, and single barrel whiskey from my own pantry while I’m wearing cashmere underwear, and smelling fresh cut flowers in my timber framed cottage. These things are available to the craftsman, if they can be bothered… Otherwise they can happily decide to just lounge by the swimming pond and make do.
How do we finance it? Well, we have to have some secrets – we don’t want to prejudice our chances by showing our full hand! For now, that’s between us and our spreadsheet, unless you have a farm that you’d like to sell us – in which case, please get in touch. We’re not looking for freebies, we are realistic that money is going to change hands, we are pay to play people, but we hope that our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren won’t have to be.
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How very utopian … and desirable. I think this just about sums up my ideal vision of life as it could be. If I weren’t quite so old, I could easily be persuaded to throw in my lot with whatever emerges. More power to you, Alice.
Thanks so much Jeremy. We’re starting with high ideals, we’ll see what compromises are necessary/possible as we go!
I enjoyed reading more about your vision for a better way of being in the world and I hope you are able to make inroads into a project you both are passionate about.
I also lived in South London, just up the hill from Brixton, for almost 10 years, leaving in 2005 (just as it was getting even more bewildering!:), so I can kind of imagine where you are coming from, so to speak. Imagining your vision – it’s a lot more fleshed out than I’d assumed, as I simply had a care home/veg garden in mind – I am almost transported to a similar place, close to where I grew up (but I know there will be major differences that underpin the whole edifice). Briefly, in Nottinghamshire there’s the Welbeck Estate, acres of land around an old Abbey, with a quite fascinating history and lineage. Today, their Project shares a lot of your ideals – workers live on site, craft plays a big role (excuse me if you already know all this) as does organic food, artisanal cuisine using local ingredients, there’s woodland, a woodyard, a cheesemaker, a school of artisan food running courses, there used to be a coffee roasters but they seemed to have moved on, likewise a chocolatier, there’s a gallery, business premises for rent, a children’s nursery, houses for rent or sale, bakery, micro-brewery, a farm shop, cafe, and support for local growers like the social enterprise Rhubarb Farm, the miller at nearby Tuxford Windmill, etc. If you’re not aware of the place, it might be worth a visit (as would the windmill). They do great scones in the cafe next to the garden centre. About a decade ago, a large pasture became a solar park for the next quarter-century. Of course, the biggie is the fact that the current owners of the estate occupy a place on the top 200 richest list in the UK (or did last time I looked), though from some of the signage they are not averse to applying for and using EU funding for various building and renovation projects. Still, I admire the vision and have always had pleasant dealings with them as a visitor/customer. At my most enthused I did once try out as a bakery delivery driver for them, but it was not to be as I crashed the van on my third day, colliding with a bollard in Lincoln (getting up at 2am to start work was a rude awakening). I would have fared far better if that white van had been a pedal-powered bread delivery vehicle, but the world hasn’t caught up with me yet. Take care and good luck!
We haven’t heard of this project! We will definitely look it up and try and visit.
The financing will likely be one of the most creative parts, given how far away from the list both of us would register, haha. But we’ve got a few ideas to try that would ensure a low buy in for a diverse group of people, and hopefully mediate any tensions creeping in from class hierarchies and heritage wealth. As with everything we recognise how complicated these dynamics are and hope that seriously strategising, with the finest social technologies, rather than relying on optimism, will stand us in good stead.
Thanks for your kind words.
Welbeck dot co dot uk has all the info.
I believe Kimberley Bell, who runs Nottingham’s Small Food Bakery and also organises an annual ‘alternative grain network’ event, connecting local grain growers to local millers to … You get the picture, is an alumnus of Welbeck’s School of Artisan Food, where they run courses on breadmaking, ice-cream making, butchery, patisseries, etc, often tutored by some big names from the foodie scene.
The estate is surrounded by farmland, and some of the barley makes its way into the microbrewery, which runs visits for interested parties.
The farm shop is excellent, frequently award-winning (like the beer). I like that, as you enter it, there’s often half a pig proudly displayed, hanging from a meat hook near the entrance, blurring the line a little between regular butcher’s and Damien Hirst pretension. They do have a pub on site, but I think it’s for the workers. Last time I was there it was just me and the pool table, until a wood carver entered. He’d been making rocking horses and marionettes and reminded me a little of Silvester McCoy. Various craftspeople/makers occupy little workshops along one of the drives. It’s a multifaceted place, where I imagine lots of intellectual cross-pollination can occur.
Back to London, specifically Lewisham, and this article might interest you. It regards a self-build council housing project in the area that I was unaware of when I lived there, but may be worth a gander: https://www.architectural-review.com/buildings/walters-way-self-build-schemes-lewisham-london-by-the-segal-method
Yes! Ive seen that project in Lewisham, I think it was grand designs, my first intro to community self builds.
“Care” is, of course, the magic (and necessary) ingredient for many aspects of these plans, this vision.
A lot of us have been conditioned (by our upbringings, our societies) to not really care that much about some of those aspects. The self-selected participants who have overcome such conditioning can be the pioneers, the examples to inspire and encourage the rest of us.
There are some examples from the past of how, with enough “caring” involved, the aversion to “denying” or “martyring” oneself disappears.
Thanks Steve,
It’s been quite a journey coming from the fashion industry, which certainly seems to build it’s glamour on a mixture of snobbery, exclusion, and sniping, to where I am now; positioning clothing within a system of deep care! I stop it being to wholesome by keeping a South London aesthetic twist, and plenty of velvet, even in my gardening clothes :-))
Completely agree about the magic of Care. If we can demonstrate a system with Care at its core, I think there’s hope that the masses will join us. The desire to be accepted and nestled within the group is constantly reinforced to us in so many of our interactions.
We look forward to meeting our collaborators; my dream is that the connection to each other and nature will be powerful enough to carry us all through!
Alice, I forgot to thank you for sharing your vision, it would be very appealing to me if I lived in the UK, and I wish you the best of luck.
I’ve been inspired by the example of this guy (who was a Zen teacher) and his synergistic combination of initiatives:
~~~~~~~~~~~~
‘Bernie Glassman “bears witness.” In the ’80s and ’90s, Glassman, the founder of Greyston Bakery, lived for a week at a time among the homeless on the streets of Yonkers, New York. There, he experienced firsthand the suffering that his company was formed to ease.
“The people we were serving were my teachers,” says Glassman. “Dignity and love are big words that we sometimes take for granted. When you are on the street you don’t have any of that. And it hurts.”
…The business is best known for its open-hiring policy, which accepts people off the streets, no questions asked. And yet, “I didn’t start it to create jobs,” says Glassman. “I started it to end homelessness. That meant to me having homes, having child care, and creating jobs, simultaneously.”
So Glassman designed the bakery as the for-profit, job-creating arm of a larger nonprofit entity that, among other accomplishments, provides affordable housing to 530 Yonkers residents–35 percent of them formerly homeless–and cares for 130 children. Greyston supplies housing and support for 50 people with HIV/AIDS. It operates six community gardens….’
https://www.inc.com/leigh-buchanan/greyston-bakery-hires-everyone-no-questions-asked.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~
That article leaves out a bunch of details which I recall from one of Bernie Glassman’s books. IIRC, along with starting the bakery, he started a construction company which provided jobs (and job experience) refurbishing old buildings to create affordable housing, and childcare facilities (with more jobs) were created to enable more employment opportunities.
Applying his synergistic approach to a Care Home Farm initiative might include an imagined scenario like this, potentially with some government funding (at least at first, to get off the ground) for providing jobs programs, low-income housing, and specialized care:
An in-house construction crew specializing in natural building provides hands-on training as it constructs the homes and on-site facilities. An in-house childcare facility also provides some jobs while enabling parents to work at the care home and other on-site village initiatives. On-site farming of course feeds the villagers and could also provide hands-on jobs training. The village has a local currency which accommodates most of the necessary transactions. The provision of care and sales of crafted products outside the village could provide additional funds.
Oooo, some really juicy ideas in here. Incidentally we have a date with an expert in young people who’ve experienced care and is planning a farm project that could support them.
At this stage Joel and I are digging into numbers like acreage of coppicing. How much power could you get off of X sized hydro from y sized reservoirs etc etc. When it comes to designing things like social benefit or local currency (which I personally think would be excellent) we’re leaving it open to a co-design process so that our future collaborators can bring their own passions and also so we don’t become mini dictators.
The system you’ve formulated sounds superb, and if it came up in a co-design it would get big support from me.
I’m also really keen that we find ways to let people try out ideas, and prevent everything getting stifled in horizontal democracy. So I’m hoping that ‘Active Learning Cycles’ will be adopted as a founding principle, rather than too much speculative deliberation.
Were totally on board with the building crew, including ticketed electrician, hetas plumber, and mechanic. These skills are so valuable and you’re really beholden if you have to hire them in! The guys running the steam mill down south have been without a steam mill for a while because a part of it broke, making sure we cultivate these skills and pass them on strikes me as crucial!
Thanks so much, really appreciate this idea.
Is that the Steam Mill at Tinker’s Bubble?
Yes! The very same. Sounded like a very frustrating situation, but they must be a resilient and determined crew in the first place!
This brought tears to my eyes, a beautifully articulated vision. How can we get in touch and follow your progress?
Thanks so much Sue, this comment is a real blessing.
I suppose we should think about starting a blog!
If we do I’ll post it here.
Hi Sue,
We started a Care.Home.Farm Substack for the New Year!
If you’d like to subscribe its here-
https://alicesuzanneholloway.substack.com
And the first blog is scheduled to go out tomorrow
@Alice
Sounds like a great project.
Do you have a place in mind?
Will you be writing a blog about your experiences?
Would make for a really interesting read.
Good luck and keeps us all informed about your progress.
The place is something we’re leaving to the fates. But it’s probably Wales if it’s in the UK due to the planning laws. We had a wonderful three weeks farmsitting in the Arieje this summer and it would be a lie to say we weren’t tempted by the sunshine and views of the Pyrenees! Ha!
We wonder if we can find a supportive council that will grant planning based on the Care Home and affordable housing components. We have various self build contacts to give us advice on these kind of negotiations.
My instinct is a Farmer who gets it will get in touch at some point, and we’ll be able to buy their land and also utilise their knowledge of it.
Time will tell!
I’ll look into starting a blog. If we do Ill post it here so intrigued bystanders can follow along!
Thanks for your kind words.
I would definitely be interested in reading a blog about the entire process…
https://www.globalresearch.ca/agrarianism-transhmarchumanism-long–dystopia/5865602
A little dystopian reading for you .
Thanks D10.
I read the Sainsbury’s report linked in the article – like all these transhumanism-related futures, I’m part disturbed and part in disbelief, though I have read that neural networks are injectable, inferring that Musk’s brain chip (the first human-installed one malfunctioned after a few months) could be simply priming people to the outlandish idea of such biological ‘enhancement’, maybe so we all breathe a collective sigh of relief when it’s revealed that you don’t actually need a dime-sized hole drilled out the top of your skull after all.
Seriously though, as with synthetic food, lots of investment has been made into ‘transhumanist’ type projects, many scientific research papers exist on the technology, and DARPA (the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency), the military body that gifted us the internet, have been working in the bio/nano internet of things/internet of bodies field for decades (in fact they awarded Moderna millions of dollars to develop mRNA therapeutics, about a decade ago).
But much like a typical compost heap, I hold to the belief that nature is so ineffably complex, not to mention mysterious, that the best laid fiendish schemes involving AI and all the rest of it, ought to come to nought. That said, for anyone interested in this sort of ‘dark tech’ – most of it of military origin though often airbrushed as medical advancement – with a little time to blow their open mind, this talk might offer some more insight, sci-fi and unimaginably dystopian though it seems.
https://dhughes.substack.com/p/lissa-johnson-transhumanism-and-covid
Needless to say, I’m with Alice and Joel’s vision.
the military body that gifted us the internet,
really like the sarcasm of that ‘gifted’.
Thanks Martin! Much like Oscar Wilde with his comma, I could have spent the best part of a morning debating with myself whether to change that verb or keep it in 🙂 Thanks goodness I didn’t.
But finally (damn the internet!) this one’s for John Adams, though it will no doubt appeal to others here – it’s a link from a comment over on Gunnar’s site that provides access to read a book on sustainability in Edo Japan, complementing Azby Brown’s ‘Just Enough’ that John has championed. No doubt any sensible future will reincorporate some of the lessons gleaned here.
https://www.japanfs.org/en/edo/index.html
@Simon H
Thanks for the link.
I can never get enough info on Edo Japan!!!! 🙂
Look forward to reading it.
Kinda reminds me of the Borg , resistance is futile ……..
This is a lovely vision, Alice, and I do hope to hear more about it in due course.
In my experience nothing ever goes exactly to plan — but having a plan in the first place is a very good thing. And it potentially solves one of the conundrums I think about quite a bit, which is that I am nearly 44 years old and I expect my capacity for manual labour to go down, rather than up, from here, and ideally I would like to have somewhere safe and secure to spend my old old age (should I live that long) rather than attempting to eke out an increasingly meagre existence somewhere that I have few neighbours who could help.
A thought about market gardens: they mostly tend to grow low-calorie vegetables that are difficult to transport too far — if they were growing calorie staples they’d have to compete with cheap grains from wherever. But I think staple grains lend themselves to more cooperative models. I have grown wheat on a micro scale (about two square meters at a time) and it’s pretty low-effort if you can keep the birds off it, though relying on weather will mean variable yield (but that’s why it’s good not to rely on just one staple).
Thanks Kathryn, annuals is a really interesting question in the regen world ATM, most farmers focus on market gardens (loads of salads, which i find a bit disheartening haha) and pastured beef. Not many are trying cereals except our friends at Paddock Farm in Chipping Norton who have started experimenting with wheat in a former pig nursery paddock. Pigs as plough so to speak.
In my extensive spreadsheet, I put an estimate of enough acres or potatoes to meet calorie requirements in the event that everything else failed, apparently man can almost live on potatoes (and butter) alone. But I totally agree that diversity is really crucial, history seems to show that being cornered into only growing one staple is where disaster creeps in, either grain taxes for mediaeval peasants forcing them to put too much land over to grain, or colonialism forcing the Irish to rely on potatoes. Plenty of pickled cabbage for February and March flavour!
I was listening to back-episodes of the Winter Growers Podcast (I think) and there was an interview with someone who runs a “whole diet CSA” in Utah — they serve 40 families who do a weekly on-farm pick-up of pretty much all their food for the year, which is impressive . After starting with vegetables they branched out into meat and dairy and also work with a local grain farmer, it’s pretty neat. I think they also have a lot of on-farm events like a big breakfast on one Saturday morning of the month, and occasional “bikes, bands and burgers” events in summer where people can come by bike (motorbike or pedal cycle) and get a discount on a burger while listening to a band. It sounded really interesting… they do also go to farmers’ markets etc, and make some value-added products like preserves, because the only way to be absolutely sure they are providing enough food for those 40 families is to make sure they have some excess.
A further thought – you don’t explicitly mention religion in your post, but religious communities have been attempting to navigate some of the issues around living well together for a very long time. And personally I would want to have access to a worshipping community, or at least to know how that might fit in. I have no objection to others not sharing my faith commitments, but they are not optional for me and there are other people (of other faiths) for whom similar is true. Have you considered how or whether to design this in?
This has come up in some ways- we were involved with a group of shamanic dreamers who were trying to start a dreaming community for a while. With my Dad being an outspoken evangelicalish Christian and barely reformed 1980s sexist (god bless him) I wondered if they could inhabit the same patch without really winding each other up.
From my secondhand experience of out of town churches, I wonder if the real opportunity here is for community members to revive a local rural church. Presumable it would have a beautiful building that would need our flowers for wedding decorations. And our members would have the free time that these social infrastructures require for volunteering at soup kitchens, choirs, carols by candlelight, Sunday school, youth clubs and all that great stuff.
By keeping the worship off site we could foster strong connections with our neighbours without creating divisions within… Maybe… Would this appeal?
X
Apologies for lack of reply — I need to give this some thought but my mother has been visiting and I have not had a whole lot of brain cycles to spare!
Currently I’m the only member of my household who attends church. I also currently attend a church that is cycling distance, but not easy walking distance, away…. and this drives home to me the importance of being within reasonable walking distance if at all possible. (About three miles is probably my limit, though for that distance I would definitely cycle most of the time anyway.) I’m also at the very opposite end of the spectrum from low church evangelicalism, such that given the choice, I’d really rather attend a church where the sacrament is reserved, but this is not necessarily a widespread practice in rural churches.
More later — trying to reduce down some green tomato passata to make ketchup and if I don’t keep an eye on it it’ll burn.
Can’t take your eye off the ketchup!
The sacrament contriversies is fascinating for any scholar of the commons, or fan of Shardlake Tudor mysteries! As is walking/transport in rural communities. certainly it’s very normal to drive a lot ATM, we drove so much in France on our farm sitting holiday, which felt completely alien to a family that has a busstop served by 8 bus routes and a tube station 15 minutes walk away. This may well be the thing I miss most about urban life.
Joel and I talk a lot about how we could make transport between our community and local towns (particularly one with a train station) work. We’ll likely add a biodiesel bus route into the labour mapping and see if its at all possible. An osmotic boundary between our village and our neighbours is certainly what we would be aiming for.
Back to the sacrament issue, seeing as the mechanics of worship can be almost unique to individuals, perhaps a more creative approach to spiritual devotion is appropriate. Would you worship at a timely chapel or shrine? Would you need to be with others? Do you require an ordained priest to administer the sacrament? Is this for cultural ritual reasons or because you believe that this is what the bible dictates? All of this complexity causes potential rifts when people are militant, but may not cause issues at all if people are more attached to commandments like ‘love your neighbour as you love yourself’. Which perhaps allows for tolerance and flexibility?
Much love, hope your visit from your Mum has been restorative.
My own practice is such that I would like there to be a priest to administer the sacraments. Depending on how things go for the next few years, that might be something I can help with. (But then I would need a congregation, because in my denomination, priests do not preside alone.)
I would absolutely love a chapel of ease or a cute little open-air oratory in a woodlot or a stained glass saint or two in a greenhouse, but these are not things I have now, and I can (and do) undertake my daily prayers anywhere. I do generally attend a Eucharistic service twice a week (Sunday plus one weekday), and then there are days scattered throughout the year where I treat this as an obligation (Christmas and Easter being better known but I also observe, for example, the feast of the Ascension, and certain saints’ days, and so on). I’m also quite partial to religious observance of quarter days (solstices and equinoxes, roughly, though the calendar has shifted a bit) and also the old cross-quarter days: Lammas, All Souls, Candlemas and, er, May Day. I would be delighted for people to join in as much or as little of such celebration as they feel is helpful for them, but realistically I’d be lucky to find most of them at a random rural church; I only get some of them now at an urban one! I blame modernity, or crapitalism, or something, but here we are. In any case, for me these celebrations and observances arise out of love, rather than being an imposition for the sake of avoiding hellfire (which isn’t really part of my theological posture anyway, because I believe that the gates of Hell are broken forever and nobody need go or stay there who doesn’t want to.) Similarly I’m not about to tell anyone else what to do based on some literalist interpretation of a scriptural text; besides that often being annoying at best and off-putting at worst, it’s kindof a terrible way to relate to an anthology of work which includes multiple creation stories, allegory, recommended social systems, agricultural advice, poetry, letters, conflicting accounts of (probably) historical events, morality plays, and epigrams. My reading of scripture often brings me more questions than answers. I will say that the account of Jesus telling people which commandments are most important does inform my reading. (It’s Matthew 22:36-40, https://bible.oremus.org/?ql=259895825 ).
On another level, I’m already keenly aware of how helpful it is to observe some of these things with a wider community, and I wonder about what a general rhythm of life in an interfaith or mixed faith community might look like, because if there are 30 households with 30 different patterns of working vs feasting it could get difficult to get much of anything done. That’s probably something that would develop over time, rather than being set out from the beginning, but I feel like it would be important for me to be up front about it being a serious part of my life, not a private hobby or side interest — while also not imposing my weird religious preferences on anyone else.
I also feel like the current external trappings of Christianity (at least as it is usually portrayed, and sometimes observed) are very much conformed to a capitalist world view which I ultimately reject. That’s where a lot of the annoying proselytism comes from: seeking growth at the cost of integrity. Instead, I feel like part of what churches should be doing now is building refugia in which other ways of life, and other ways of relating to the sacred, can be explored or renewed. But I’m unlikely to be able to respond well to that particular predicament in the context of a comment on this blog!
Thanks for the details Kathryn. What I’m hearing is that you use a land based (seasonal) calendar of regular religious observances to foster humility and gratitude through the sacrament. And you would find it important to be in a community where this humility and gratitude was embedded through ritual? Which is why you prefer someone to only take communion if they’ve been confirmed, because this observes a right of passage and imbues the sacred… Would that be a reasonable reflection? In which case it sounds very healthy and very healing, and definitely compatible with our community as long as diversity and consent were always respected (which you’re saying would be your wish too). A stained glass window in a greenhouse can definitely be arranged, Harry Gesner has a beautiful rendition of this in one of his modernist Adobe buildings which happens to be on our mood board :-). Regular festivals is a must! At the moment we’re modelling a 4 day work week so I think it should be possible to celebrate 200 birthdays and 12 seasonal sacred days around that…
Not that we’re trying to recruit anyone… But I do find it fascinating considering how culture might play out in our plan, and that does depend entirely on what other people bring to the table.
That sounds about right, yes!
One small thing — in my denomination it is baptism, not confirmation, that is the usual initiation rite before receiving communion, insofar as all who are baptized and receive communion in their own denominations are welcome to receive. But first communion for children can happen before confirmation (subject to some instruction), and adults who are baptized and desirous of confirmation are also allowed to receive (though it would be usual to seek confirmation first). It’s all a bit tangy, because the Reformed/Protestant aspects of the Elizabethan settlement and subsequent Anglican meanderings only recognise baptism and communion as sacraments at all (the other five being relegated to “sacramental rites”), but the more Catholic strains were very concerned to practice infant baptism, which then brings questions around when a person baptized as an infant should rightly be receiving communion.
And then there are clergy who practice an explicitly open table where anyone may receive, whether baptized or not, because they feel this is essential for good welcome. I am sympathetic to this practice, though not sure exactly where I would find myself if ordained (canonical obedience is also a thing, and the theology of it gets very messy; in practice almost nobody is standing at the altar having an argument about this, instead it’s something that is worked out pastorally, in community. I could see a situation where, for example, baptism would be required to receive communion, but could be done on the spot if someone felt called to receive.)
Maybe we should go for a walk and a chat some afternoon.
Returning to my compost obsession……!!!!!!
Does size matter?
I’ve realised that Joseph Jenkins’ compost heap is 1.5m x 1.5m x 1.2m.
Mine is 1.0m x 0.9m x 1.2m.
So his is 2.5 cubic meters bigger than mine.
I’m wondering if it requires a critical mass to maintain the high core temperatures and mine isn’t big enough?????
I loaded mine with some new materials on the weekend. (Biochar/urine and kitchenwaste) . It’s now Day 4 and the heap is up to 43°C since yesterday.
Definitely got some thermophilic action going on but not quite in the “Killing Zone” of 50°C +.
Any of you composters out there got any thoughts?
Correction!!!!!!
Not 2.5 cubic meters bigger but 2.5 x bigger.
Size matters but so does depth.
Questions:
– how deep is your composting material now? I think you want at least 60cm, and preferably more, before you’re really in business.
– how deep is your thermometer? If you’re using a little meat thermometer it might not be measuring the centre of the heap. My compost thermometers are 50cm long which is quite a bit more useful.
@Kathryn
Yes, I’ve got a long compost probe/thermometer.
The compost bin is made from old pallets, so I can stick the probe in from all angles to find the hottest spot. (Which I do. 🙂 )
The bin is 900mm x 1000mm and 1200mm high. But it’s lined with about 150mm of straw around the sides and I put a biological sponge of about 18″ at the bottom when I started.
(I’m guessing the biological sponge has compressed quite a bit by now). The top is capped off with straw as well and I’ve started coving that with boards to keep some of the rain off.
So the actual “composting core” is actually quite small, I guess. Probably not quite 600mm deep and 600mm in diameter.
I added my latest scraps yesterday. Digging down into the existing compost, so that it is right in the centre and covering back over with the existing composting material.(as per JJ’s instructions.)
The material in the centre is breaking down well. (Some things quicker than others.) So, it’s creating compost but my main goal is sanitation rather than compost making.
I’m getting temperatures around the 35°C range but I’m after the pathogen killing 45°C and above.
Maybe it needs more content and perhaps a bigger bin?
It’s all interesting stuff. I check the temperature every day and and keeping notes.
I regularly get up to 70°C in my pallet-enclosed compost piles, but that’s about 3 days after filling them very full all at once. Little-and-often makes it much harder to reach those kinds of temperatures.
If I were you I’d see if you can get more material somehow. You could also try adding a bit more “party food” — something like molasses, green grass clippings, or chicken manure pellets — and see if that jumpstarts it.
Thanks Kathryn.
I might fill it once a month rather than fortnightly and see how that goes.
More inspiration, perhaps, from a mature community with Christian roots – some interesting takes on community living here:
“The members of this agrarian- and craft-based intentional Christian community aim to be as self-sufficient as possible in as many ways as possible. They have dozens of hand looms for weaving their own clothing (jackets included). There’s a blacksmith, leather workers, basket weavers, and furniture makers.”
From https://faircompanies.com/videos/ecovillage-settlers-living-off-land-craft-like-modern-amish/
Fantastic!! Joel already watched it and it reminds us of the Weald and Downland museum, which we love.
We watched ‘A Hidden Life’ recently and for us it’s the lack of tarmac that is particularly alluring in the old ways.
Thanks for recommending x
Hello Alice
A great vision, and I wish you all the success.
I’m giving up a small holding soon, it’s being swallowed by development. Though I would like to do the same again (nut orchard and coppiced woodland) age is against me now. One of my thoughts on venturing again into horticulture was to let a portion of a new site to allotment holders if close enough to an urban area. For me it would be to have more human company, plus a source of help through the year with the bigger jobs, and to act as facilitator for new micro businesses on the larger enterprise. With your care farm, having an allotment area would make big connections with the local community and access its social and enterprise network, hopefully making the project easier to establish.
Again best of wishes on your vision
Philip
Hi Phil,
Yes! A brilliant idea. We’re definitely not trying to create a hidden sanctuary, the more ways to invite the community in, and go out, the better!
I quite fancy a chicken shop in the local town, everything grown onsite… Or a chicken truck at the beach, if we’re near one. Demonstrating regen community ag through the power of the nugget :-). Maybe the paper we wrap the chips in could advertise the available allotments… People can donate their excess allotment tomato’s for our chicken shop ketchup and get chicken poo compost in return; the circle of life!
All the best with your new smallholding. Nut orchards and coppicing are dreamy, I’m sure you’ll find some willing braun to learn from your wisdom x
https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2024/10/14/uk-power-grid-blackout-system-activates-as-demand-outstrips-supply/
Time to get some candles in ….
Thanks for thinking about this. It sounds like a solid plan for a small scale future. As much as there are any solid plans. Any vision is better than mindless consumerism until the lights go out.
True. As I keep thinking about it, my question now boils down to ‘why start from scratch?’ I think both the reasons for why and why not can go deep.
I think you’re right Simon, that the arguments for and against starting from scratch are deep. Maybe this is a good anecdote that has shaped our thinking; we have a flat in Brixton that we have done a loft conversion on. To do the conversion you have to meet building regulation standards for insulation (u value). Joel did hours of research into how we could use natural insulation to meet this u value, but the thickness of wall and ceiling required would mean we wouldn’t meet building regulations for ceiling height. So we used foam insulation, which is a disgusting material. It’s not just the material itself that gets buried in a wall. It’s the Rockwall that you pull out from the previous upgrade that can only go to landfill, it’s the offcuts, and the tiny fragments and dust from when you have to shave it back, all of that goes to landfill. I have all that on my conscience damaging a living soil. Buried in the crust of a living earth. My beliefs about the world appear to be wholly incompatible with current ‘common sense’. I’m not sure we can retrofit the current mindset without making so many compromises that our mission- to live in a cycle of care, becomes just ‘carewashing’. And because I believe in a fractoral and diverse multitude of ingenious alternatives, derived from unique contexts, there can never be enough examples of what could be possible if we reimagine society. It’s time to not let seemingly entrenched paradigms hold back our visions of what the alternative might look like. We won’t really be starting from scratch, because we take so much hard won knowledge with us. In a way, by starting from scratch we believe we can shift the narrative on what’s possible (with others obvs) and that can make the retrofit less compromised…
Yes, you are right, and I agree with you about the disgusting mess that is a modern landfill dump.
Of course, the problem is our use of materials that don’t (easily) blend back into the landscape. Though I wouldn’t worry much about gypsum and paper drywall.
Even so, I can’t help thinking that in a thousand years, those landfills will be very interesting places.
Thanks for your efforts…
Thanks Alice, and ‘fair do’s’. Brings to mind another anecdote from the farming world – something along the lines of ‘the grandparent starts the farm, the offspring realise the idea and the grandchildren perfect it, or sell it, depending on one’s cynicism.
I understand where you’re coming from. My own experience, coming from a similar standpoint, has brought me to realise that ‘progress’ often feels frustratingly slow, but then you get used to that, by and large, and you also can’t help but wonder ‘slow by whose standards, progress meaning what, exactly?’ In other words, there’s just as much reflection as there is action, probably more if I’m honest. Not to say everything becomes merely philosophy, though it can on some days! That said, the manifestations of work, when they do come to fruition, feel like great, exhilarating leaps forward. I wish you many such leaps going forward.
When I was looking at modular housing solutions in the UK, a company making housing for the homeless in Bristol had a good ‘product’, basically wooden frame and wood cladding with strawbale stuffed internal cavity insulation (stuffed by prisoners, from memory, though I forget the name of the firm – Adept, Dwell??). There are no doubt many more turnkey solutions today.
The modular housing sounds great! I’ll definitely look and pass on to our architect…
🙂
Thanks Greg, we feel the same way. There’s no guarantees, only trial and error, but you may as well be exhausted and frustrated working for something you believe in :-))
You will be exhausted and frustrated working on things you believe in. Any time you give up the advantages and power afforded by modernity it will be harder.
The question for me is how much do we take advantage of those benefits ? I can buy a very nice scythe for a few hundred dollars. There are still people who could forge a blade but they have never done it and working forges are few and far between. The same with a deep well hand pump or even the pipe necessary to get the water to the surface. Of course I’m going to buy those things while I still can.
There are compromises and it makes no sense to beat yourself up for making the best choice available. I think keeping the larger goal in sight keeps you from going too far down the slippery slope.
@Greg Reynolds
I’ve been thinking about scythes too.
I’m not sure that an Austrian Scythe can be made by a blacksmith? Very thin blade.
It’s a product of modernity, just like a petrol strimmer is.
John, the continental European/ Austrian scythe blades were indeed made by blacksmiths centuries ago, and some still are being made. The linked page includes a drawing of scythesmiths from 1568, and a video link showing a modern-day scythesmith shop in Serbia.
https://scytheconnected.blogspot.com/search/label/Blade%20making
@Steve L
Thanks for the link.
I thought the Austrian Scythe was a new take on an old idea.
Makes one wonder why it never became universal as it is better/lighter than the “traditional” British scythes?????
Brexit??????? 🙂
Did they use the same snath/handle set up you see today with the Austrian, back in the day?
The different tool designs have pros and cons, depending on the intended usage. Which type is “better” may vary with the type of crop, terrain, regional preferences, availability, strength of user, etc.
Regarding the snath/handle set-up, it varies with time and place, as shown in these works of art from the Middle Ages and Renaissance (11th-16th centuries):
https://scytheconnected.blogspot.com/2010/05/scythes-in-art-middle-ages-and.html
Length of snaith’s makes a huge difference over design , I had huge problems finding a snaith for my 6
‘4″ inch frame , plenty for mid and upper five foot people but six foot and above are a pain to find . A snaith that ” fits ” you is a pleasure to use , one too short will kill your back in half a day .
I agree about the importance of fitting the scythe to one’s height. The traditional Anglo/American scythes generally have the disadvantage of not fitting people who are 6′ or taller. But the continental European/ Austrian scythes are available in different sizes, and the best ones have adjustable grips so one scythe can fit more than one user.
For example, for North American scythers, Scythe Works has these options:
~~~~~~~~~~
Well shaped grips have about a 6″ adjustment range. To accommodate the mower’s height the snaths come in three sizes:
59″ – approximately 1.35kg – for mowers under 5’8” – “short”
66″ – approximately 1.55kg – for mowers 5’8″ to 6’3″ – “medium”
70″ – approximately 1.65kg – for mowers over 6’3″ – “tall”
~~~~~~~~~~
For scythers in the UK, The Scythe Shop has these options:
~~~~~~~~~~
Kid’s snath. For people up to approximately 4 foot 10 inches The kid’s snath is currently sold with both full-sized and short right handgrips.
Size 2 Short snath. For people from 4 foot 10 in up to 5ft 9 in.
Size 3 Long snath. Ideally for people from 5ft 9 in up to about 6 ft 2 in. It can also be set for people of between 5 ft 6 and 5ft 9 in but a size 2 will be more nimble.
Size 4 Long snath. For people over 6 ft 2 in .
~~~~~~~~~~
Thanks so much for sharing your vision here, it was really intriguing to read about. I had these two questions that came to mind when I was picturing the process of getting this (beautiful) farm going.
(1) I was wondering what you envisaged the governance structure being for the farm? I guess I can picture such a community being fairly self-governing at some point (or at least appearing to be so), but I imagine that getting it off the ground and established would take a mammoth organising effort! Did you have a particular approach to governance/organising in mind, especially given the number of people and activities involved?
(2) I also really like the idea of having a care home as the centre of the farming community. You mentioned that everyone who was part of the community would be both a maker and a grower. Would everyone also be involved with the care home (and the school) in a ‘hands-on’ manner, or would they be co-located but run independently?
Hi Ashley, thanks for your questions
1) governance is a huge question. I think there are good models out there like sociocracy and the 8 principles for governing the commons. Where I think things fall down is in the poor mental health if people who have been raised in competitive not collaborative systems. My observations are that people weaponise ‘concern’ against each others ideas. And that essentially aesthetic decisions cause huge rifts. We really hope that by using plenty of ‘coaching’ well be able to embed two principles – respect the sovereignty of every conscious being- and – act out of love not fear- into a horizontal governance model. We will also try to use plenty of rotation and governance through sortition i.e randomness, to try and guard against manipulation and corruption. We also hypothesise that overcoming the enforced scarcity of the market can relax peoples anxiety and allow for, active learning cycles with plenty of mistakes, to replace to much speculative deliberation and stifling bureaucracy. This bit of the puzzle gives me the heeby jeebies, to enter into a horizontal governance is to give up a lot of the freedom that my privileged position in market based hierarchy gives me. But I don’t see us global north humans facing our demons if we don’t get to work on creating or re-establishing these social technologies.
2) I should have written everyone will be a grower, a maker, and a carer. We really want to redistribute care throughout every member of the farm. Like you say in the first scenario, actively taking on both inspiring and guiding the youngers whilst bathing and feeding the elders. Participating in this care will be non-negotiable (I know that statement goes against the above notion of horizontal governance but I will definitely leave if I see and gendered care burden creeping in). This is a part that I’m really looking forward to, taking part in care as a collective feels very freeing, and I believe it will be really fun and healing.
A commons and an associated number of fields/ allotments that are rotated among the families/ individuals so that everyone is interested in maintaining both their current allotment but also the allotment/ field you rotate into after your current tenure. Some broad common goals about what the commons are and what they and the allotments are to serve.
Management within a larger context of health soils, healthy foods, and health of your neighbors might discourage greed or cornering the best parts of the farm for personal enrichment outside the broader health goals that are community based. Agreeing on goals ahead of time saves much in arguing later.
Agreeing common goals does seem important, can you ever mitigate against disagreements as things unfold I wonder?
Love the idea of rotating allotments, if we want to grow any cereals it seems like we need field rotation for that as well.
Another interesting question comes up, what’s the boundary between individual (or individual family) responsibility and work, and collective responsibility and work. Your idea seems like a good way to create a link between the two.
Alice, https://www.jstor.org/stable/650159 This is just an abstract on Saxon commons and surround strip agriculture. It mentions a decision making group. I had read somewhere that the strips also were rotated , so not really an original thought.
The broader goals that were operating for the Saxons might have been written or assumed. What insures everyone maintains soil health and what motivates everyone to fallow ground or plant cover crops. In general if you are to maintain soil health without lots of outside inputs you need lots of well finished compost, cover crops and work that tractors and fossil fuel derived nutrients have supplanted.
I have been experimenting with subsistence agriculture for several years. Just my wife and I so the decision matrix is different. Power, water, most of our food, and septic are all ( mostly ) independent . I have spent many years growing crops and maintaining seed that I can grow , harvest, process , and store without fossil fuel inputs. Hard red wheat, soft white wheat, spelt, two kinds of high protein barley, buckwheat, early and late season dent corn, cassoulet beans , amaranth, tomatillos, with enough seed saved to plant one or even two years into the future. Learning which seed does well and when to plant are what makes local knowledge.
Raising enough to feed livestock is a whole other problem of storing enough feed to get through winter. Buckwheat , corn, and grains are manageable for year round feeding of chickens but any larger animals are problematic because volumes needed of hay. It is very dry here so maybe where winter pasture is possible this problem isn’t as difficult. Again I am speaking of a farm without fossil fuel tractors.
Growing and storing enough food isn’t as difficult as people imagine. It is the end of our growing season and the drying shed is well stocked and every year a little more diverse in its stores.
Wow! Sounds like you have so much embedded knowledge, we are really hoping to attract people with years of experimenting already under their belts. My friends in the Cotswolds (paddock farm) deep litter over winter and then windrow the straw to create amazing compost, but they aren’t fossil fuel free, and they buy in the hay. Our other friends in north Wales (Henbant Permaculture) graze their cattle year round and deep litter their chickens in the poly tunnel for compost- but then you need the grain! Certainly many vectors to balance. I assume we’ll get it wrong for a longtime before we get it right! Like someone has observed above, it’s a generational project, putting the beginnings of something in place, for our descendants to build on. Maybe this is the trade off with modernity that someone else has flagged above; As we stop being able to replace parts in our complex toys, the embedded local knowledge will come into its own…
I am not certain that moving plots each year gives best results , where is the incentive to do better when all improvements are handed over at relocation , why bother with perenial weeds ?
I learned this from my work experience , I ran several truck fleets based around the north west UK , some had trucks designated to a single driver , others were cart Blanche , given delivery lists already loaded , the driver designated trucks were cleaner, far less beat up and maintenance costs were lower ( 20%)and lasted an average of 2 years longer than those that anybody drove , designated truck drivers had pride in their vehicle , the others did not care
I think if the rotation is short — you’ll be back on the same plot in a few years — then the incentive to take care of the land is a lot higher. This is especially true if you know (and hopefully like) the neighbours you’ll be handing over to.
I feel like one of the disadvantages of a stable plot is that people start to think of it as theirs and that what they do doesn’t affect their neighbours. I certainly see this at the allotment, with the (relatively few) people who use pesticides not realising they are killing off the predators that the rest of us need, and the people who pile crop residues and food waste together without chopping things up well or making a properly hot compost heap not caring that the Rat Hotel is not really something I want next to my plot (though my plot certainly has plenty of habitat too).
But I suspect that the advantages and disadvantages of plot rotations would be easily mitigated by having some plots that rotate stewardship and some that are more stable.
@Dogenese10
I’ve had a similar experience with my van.
I bought it at auction. It’s ex AA. There where about 50 AA vans for sale at that particular auction.
All the low mileage vans were in a bad way.
The high mileage ones were in good condition.
Turns out that the low mileage vans were the vans mechanics used when their dedicated vans were in the garage for repairs/servicing.
Hence the low mileage ones being passed around and abused. The high mileage ones being looked after by their “owners”.
I am not living under the same rules that people of the past lived under. I do not know whether a manorial court would decide to rotate pastures or crop lands among its members . My point was some underlying goals needed to be agreed on first, like soil health of the entire farm holding. Under pioneer conditions cooperation would be the best defense against hunger + famine. How is cooperation encouraged and how do you pull people together ?
I farm totally alone, my decisions and whether my farm succeeds or fails will little impact my local village/ town. But in a group setting where one farmers livestock runoff, or weed abatement, or cover crops to control runoff or a whole host of decisions will affect your fellow farmers then I think motives matter. Both the success of your project and the social fiber/ camaraderie that holds it together will hinge on whether you all agree on where you are going. A group of stout individuals or something else. Of which I cannot offer personal experience.
Sometimes it would take very stout individuals , all land is not the same , over time we have lost field names that were very descriptive , I know one 12 acre field that was known as ” Starve all ” another as ” fluke ” ( fluke a liver eating parasite ) . Being lumbered with either would be a real stout job to grow crops .
https://miningdigital.com/sustainability/mckinsey-warns-of-critical-minerals-supply-crisis
Not enough minerals to carry the project thru .
And in other news VW is thinking of closing 3 car plants in Germany !
Oak Ridge national laboratory …
https://scitechdaily.com/scientists-were-wrong-plants-absorb-31-more-co2-than-previously-thought/
” Scientists have found that plants absorb 31% more carbon dioxide than previously estimated, improving climate predictions and highlighting the importance of natural carbon sinks”
Good news .
Too bad the current state of the climate isn’t 31% better than forecasted…
Just goes to prove the science ain’t as settled as they keep telling us .
Hey Alice, it has been a pleasure reading your article. You managed to put the thoughts beautifully into words to describe the dreams of many of us.
I hope we (as all people who dream about it) have enough compassions & ambition to make such dream come true and last long.
And I wish you that!