The Idler

Country Diary 79

IT‘S BEEN A LONG COLD miserable summer. We took a three week road trip around the UK, putting on events at festivals, visiting friends and family and staying for a week on a fruit farm in Norfolk. On arrival home in mid-August, the weather stayed bad. The problem with going away is that the veg patch suffers. Earlier in the year I had made huge efforts to tidy it up, and it became a pleasure to go to and to potter around in. But three weeks of neglect and everything falls down. Lettuces bolt, grass invades the raised beds, weeds cover the nursery bed. I keep postponing the work that needs to be done because I can’t face it. And while I postpone, the weeds invade more and more poles and things fall down.

Having said that, the beans worked well again. In addition to the Blauhilde French climbing beans, which grew up willow poles, I sowed a load of Scarlet Emperor broad beans around ten bamboo poles arranged into wigwam shape. If you can bother to fight through the jungle, then there is plenty of food to be had. Another nice thing was a visit from Andy and Leanne, a couple I met last year at Shambala, a festival, and who have quit their jobs to go Woofering around the country. Woofers stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms, and it’s a great scheme for people who want a cheap holiday and to learn about farming and husbandry into the bargain. Andy and Leanne house-sat for us while we were away and did a great job.

ON ONE OF THE FEW warm days in late August, Michael the bee man brought round a nucleus of 10,000 bees for our hive. We had worried that they might not settle in well because of the height of their position, but so far, so good. On sunny days, they whirl up in ever-widening circles form the hive, but on cold days they stay in. However much honey we get form the bees, it seems a highly sensible thing to do: one reads in the papers that bees are in crisis around the world, and that if we lose our bees, then civilisation will grind to a halt because there will be no more pollination. We should really put more effort into saving the bees and less effort into saving the collapsing banking system. I can’t help thinking that these billions that are being poured into the economy could be better spent by giving everyone an acre of land.

I’VE BEEN THINKING A LOT ABOUT WOOD-BASED HEATING SYSTEMS. It seems to me that we could replace our oil-fired Rayburn with a wood-fired one, and save ourselves a fortune in oil bills. Right now we spend over £2,000 a year on oil. To buy a decent replacement Rayburn would cost anything from £250 to £1,500, and you would have to burn a hell of a lot of wood to go through £500 worth in a year. In fact, I would say that it would be impossible. And much wood, in any case, can be got for free, from skips and dumps and woods and roadsides. So it seems to make a huge amount of sense. In my study, I am installing a wood burner. I have bought a shabby second hand one from a friend for fifty quid, and I am going to scrub it up, replace the glass and stick a flue up the chimney. This will be infinitely preferable to the gas bottle heaters I’ve used in the past, or indeed the pathetic but costly electric radiators. Plus I’m hoping that to keep the fire going will offer a pleasant diversion from work. The heat from wood is by far the most pleasurable of all kinds of heat, plus you have the treat of the smell of woodsmoke. Keep checking in to see how we get on.

ONE OF THE HENS retreated to the farmer’s big barn and found a corner of the haystacks where she could sit on her eggs. We decided to follow John Seymour’s advice on the raising of chicks. ane leave well alone. Sure enough, a month later, eight chicks hatched. Two immediately died, but six lived. That is, they lived until I interfered. I decided that they probably needed a water source, and so I left a small child’s bucket full of water nestled in the straw. The next day I went to say hello to the brood, and found four dead chicks in the bucket, drowned. What a foolish man. So that left two chicks. The poor mother hen, she has had to put up with a lot of pain. One day Poppy ran around in the barn after the chicks, and the hen absolutely flew at her, wings out and claws at the ready, bold indeed. And yesterday we went to see her, and one of the chicks had simply vanished. That leaves one survivor.

WE HELD A SUMMER PARTY. The intention was to have a sort of camping weekend, with outdoor frolics and merriment. But the weather put paid to that idea. Eventually we decided to have the party in the village hall. We bought a barrel of beer from the micro-brewery in Barnstaple. We laid out the trestle tables in a L-shape, put white sheets on them and two vases of white lilies which I bought in Lynton. Victoria collected a load of crocosmia from the hedgerows and spread them around the tables as well. She cooked a giant pork roast in the Rayburn, which we carried up at the appointed time (very late as I’d forgotten to put it in the oven). The entertainment was me: I handed out songsheets and we had a big singalong, with Justin Welch drumming accompaniment on plastic bottles. Neighbours and friends came alike, and I hope we provided a little bit of cheer in the middle of a very gloomy summer. Certainly the hall looked great, like a country wedding, and I reflected again on how lucky we are to have access to this wonderful building. As far as the hall goes, we have spent some money on roof repairs, and my next project is a website and a new programme of events for the winter. I’m also thinking that it would be good to get badminton and table tennis up there—it’s the perfect size.

I RECENTLY PURCHASED A SCYTHE. Scythes are the new strimmers. Mine came from the excellent Simon Fairlie, founder of the Tinker’s Bubble community in Somerset. In his magazine The Land, Fairlie rightly points out that muscle power is a sustainable and enjoyable alternative to oil. Scything, though, takes some practice. I scythed the lawn and while much grass was removed, the end effect reminded me of the time when I cut my own hair as a teenager: long bits, short bits, shaved bits. And as well as the scything technique itself, you need to get the hang of sharpening the blade, which needs to be done every five minutes or so. The scythe comes with sharpening stones and with a little water carrier that rests on your belt, and keeps the sharpening stone wet. The whole process is hugely enjoyable and satisfying. There is none of the noise of a strimmer, the scythe is cheaper and of course it’s self-powered. Plus you get to feel like a pre-Reformation peasant, or some kind of Arts and Crafts-era poet-woodsman, the spirit of Vaughan Williams, William Blake and William Morris made flesh.

ENDS