The Idler

A Country Diary - 44

24 April 2006

EVERY NOW AND THEN you read a book which is so inspiring and such a pleasure to read that you feel impelled to buy multiple copies, give them to your friends, and stride down Barnstaple High Street shouting “read this!”. You want to tell your girlfriend, the postman, the landlord and your neighbour. Well, I’ve just read The One-Straw Revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka, and I urge everyone to buy or borrow a copy without delay. Published in 1978, it’s one of the books that inspired the Permaculture movement. It is a description of one man’s simple farming methods during a period when farming in Japan, as in this country, was becoming more and more industrialised and chemical-based. He calls his approach “do-nothing farming”, and it really is the idler’s way. Instead of using chemical fertilisers or digging or ploughing, or even bothering to make compost, he simply spreads straw and poultry manure around the rice and barley, and lets clover grow in the winter. He just throws vegetable seeds onto the ground higgledy-piggledy and lets them get on with it. Following these methods his yields of rice and barley are equal to anything produced either by chemical farming or by traditional farming, and the quality is superior. His thesis is that most of the world’s problems arise from man’s insatiable urge to meddle, tamper and improve. Much better, he argues, and much easier, to let nature get on with it, and therefore to refrain from interference as far as possible. He goes far beyond the idea of organic farming and the all the try-hard effort that various farming systems involve. His system is a no-system, and like the Tao, he goes beyond trying to do anything or making an effort and instead just lets things happen.

FUKUOKA’s approach to life, a sort of joyful nihilism, came to him when he was a 25 year old chemist, working by day and gadding about in the nightclubs by night. All this activity made him ill and he was confined to hospital. On his release he took to night-wandering, and one night he collapsed and experienced a flash of insight, which he puts into the following words: “Humanity knows nothing at all. There is no intrinsic value in anything, and every action is a futile, meaningless effort.” Proceeding from this basic thought came his theory of “do-nothing” farming: sit back and watch nature do the work.

A NEW SET of hens are installed. We have a Dorking cock called Combusken, and three hens which are called Blaziken, Torchic 1 and Torchic 2. Any readers with young sons will instantly recognise that these are all names of chicken-like characters from Pokemon, the Japanese trading card game. Dorkings as a breed are an ancient one, apparently dating from Roman times. They are not copious layers but are a hardy breed that will last long, and according to Fearnley-Whittingstall, they make good eating. Meanwhile our neighbour has rescued ten battery hens and installed a cock called Helleborus. This means that there are hens and eggs everywhere.

THERE IS also straw and poultry manure everywhere. I suddenly realised that everything we needed to begin to implement the spirit of The One-Straw Revolution is on our doorstep. I gathered up barrowfuls of straw from the floor of the hen-house, and spread it all around the strawberries and fruit trees on the vegetable patch. I also spread it around my new lettuce and strawberry bed. I dug out a ring of turf around a tree stump on the front lawn, and forked in a couple of barrowloads of straw and cow manure. Then I transplanted nine strawberry plants into this ring. In this task I was helped by our visitor, Mr John Moore. Well, when I say “helped”, he actually just watched me work while he leaned on gates, smoked roll-ups and made sarcastic quips about me not being an idler. I suppose he didn’t want to get his white suit and kid leather loafers dirty., Anyway, there is now a nice ring of strawberry plants, and in between each of these I have planted a lettuce seedling, and over each lettuce seedling I have placed a jam jar for a cloche. So far this has been a success and the seedlings are undamaged by slugs. My idea is that the lettuces will come out at a point when the strawberry plants need the space. And in the meantime this practically motivated move has the welcome side-effect of looking quite pretty. It has inspired me to dig up more of the lawn and plant more vegetables and salad.

HAVING FELT LIBERATED by The One-Straw Revolution, I wandered up to the vegetable patch with a pile of seed packets and no particular plan. I sowed a short row each of radish, turnip, beetroot and carrot. At the bottom of the tin there was an assortment of seeds which had fallen out of the packets over the years. So I simply scattered them on the surface of one of the beds, and look forward to seeing what sort of vegetable jungle - if any - emerges. I inspected the peas and was delighted to find that they have all germinated. So I dug a second trench and filled it with unrotted waste from the compost heap, and covered it with a layer of soil. Then I scattered some more pea seeds on top. I had a packet of sunflower seeds, so I went around making little holes in random spots and dropping one or two seeds in each hole. I sowed a few among the potatoes along the side bed. I sowed some among the weeds at the foot of the wall. I sowed some near the composting bins. It will be interesting to see where they come up and how they fare. Finally, I went around making little holes with a finger and dropping leaf beet seeds in them. I’ve already forgotten where they are so again we’re in for some nice surprises come the summer. Idle farming here we come.

THE FRUIT TREES and raspberries all appear to be growing. They have all sprouted and now boast a few little leaves. I put more straw and manure around the base of each plant. Despite his loud vocal protests, I managed to get John Moore to help me lug a load of uncomposted nappies form one side of the patch to the other so with any luck they do not wreck the view. “The gypsy encampment” is what my mother called our place on her last visit three weeks ago. In between hoovering and telling the children to go to bed, she helped turn the Green Man, which she called the “worst pub in the world” into a music room. We had taken delivery of a great old honky-tonk piano and put it in the pub. My mother cleaned it out and we put down some of that coconut matting flooring. Now it looks quite smart and what’s more, there is a view out to the sea from its little old wooden window. Now I love to sit there in the evening, with a bottle of Adnams, and a roll-up, and gently strum my ukulele as the sun goes down. Yes, the ukulele. I was inspired by a correspondent to take up this easy little instrument, and I was given one, costing just ten pounds, for my birthday. To add the joy, the brand name is “Lazy”. Once you get the hang of the tuning, they’re terribly easy to play and they’re the idler’s instrument par excellence: cheap, portable and fun. Don�’t get me an i-Pod, get me a ukulele. We are going to go big on ukuleles in the Autumn issue of the Idler.

POSTSCRIPT

LAST WEEK we heard the very sad news that our friend Jago Eliot has died aged 40. “Only the good die young,” they say, and Jago was one of the good guys, a great supporter, patron and instigator of avant-garde cultural activity and weirdness. A positive force, in other words, in the tradition of grand and generous bohemians.