Category: How did we get here?

We had a mad weekend at cousin James’ wedding. A few new second cousins, lots of beautiful people from the barrister class, dozens of lovely Jains including the bride plus renewed acquaintance with Scottish, Kentish, West Country and Geordie close family. I got all of the last set to say, “Baked hake”, at dinner on Friday; how can they all be related? Both the English and Jain weddings were perfections of their respective traditions, conducted in balmy sunshine in my Uncle’s old house in the grounds of Christchurch Canterbury College. A few of James’ school friends were distraught because, when Michael retired and moved from this servant-tended heaven, a bit of their childhood was lost to them, too. 

Lots of food, mainly Indian, was consumed throughout a long day of polite chatter and observance. Cousin Jane, sister of the groom, was very kind to me in remembering our one previous meeting, sixteen years ago, and praising my efforts to get her dad off his arse. James and Jane both have houses in londinium so I hope to see them regularly, perhaps staying with them to attack Neil’s ramparts.

Sister Jill and we were invited back to Aunt Margaret and Uncle Michael’s present house on Sunday morning. Jill, a garden designer, came over a bit funny when she found us planning some tree plantings with Margaret to get the house ready for sale. Lots of family political subtext but I’m a bit cheesed that she’s trying to take over and get them to spend thousands more than they want or need to. Still, I doubt she and Steve will be there for the hard yakka so we’ll be able to plant what we like. An expedition for the looming autumn.

On the way home we made an opportunistic call on my half-brother, Chris, near Reading. Turns out he’s quite like me in terms of his pragmatism and plain speaking.

We stayed at Una’s on Monday, loitering until the afternoon on another perfect late summer day, then continued our wending way through the A and B roads. Earlier, on such a road in Kent, we were jealous of the piles of sweet chestnut logs by the roadside. I spent the previous weekend making a shave-horse for green wood work and those logs are the perfect raw material. Checking last night, it turned out they’re all for sale so we could have loaded the roof rack.

I made the horse on a course run by one of our tree-planting friends. He’s only just ahead of me on his learning curve but I got to use his tools and finished a project in a weekend that I’d delayed for a year. Now I have the machine I need to make… another shave horse! Plus chairs, barrels, pretty much anything, really. There’s a whole branch of woodwork that can chop, scrape and hew pretty much anything that a cabinet shop could produce; it just takes a bit longer and the results looks more rustic. Take a look http://youtube.com/watch?v=RTb2zVpQGg4. When I unloaded the shave horse, Kevin, Daddy, Mammy and Monica all had to have a go immediately; it’s a simple, friendly machine and very satisfying to use.

I’ve had an obsession with de-rusting the tools that have lain about the shop waiting to be sorted into a home location. Mental preparation for getting the workshop up and running, I hope. Dirty work but it is very satisfying to excavate a ball of rusty swallow poo to discover a handsome, hand forged hammer or pliers inside. I gave myself a rain check on renovating the couple of dozen wooden planes but they’ll be a delight to bring into service. I even have a big jointer plane like in the video above.

I owe Aunt Sylvia, in Redcar, a visit this month; the tree-planting in Canterbury is scheduled for November and I plan to visit the clan at The Stank after the first snows.

Monica is up to her sticky elbows in pulped fruit. I’m delighted to say she’s become a fanatic for jam and wine-making. Rowan jelly is in production now; she has sacks of apples and damsons from Una and a freezer full of brambles. A good effort, given we’re not really set up for such industry but it’s great to see such enthusiasm before the forest garden avalanches us with produce.

Monica has become a mad forager and winemaker: elderflower, strawberry and bilberry brewing; rowanberry and bramble on the starting blocks. I’ve been scything the meadow and, today, collected a truckload of horse manure for the forest garden. Now I have to barrow it all up the hill. This week, we’re going to take cuttings from a beautiful lavender in the pigsty. We want to turn the one bush into a couple of hundred plants to put in front of the house. Dunno if they’ll like the field but they could make a dramatic impact at this time of year. The bees would love them, too.

No kids this summer. Archie has too many other engagements and Rowan can’t come while Neil is pissed off with me.

The recycling was disappointing in Enniscrone: they only took glass and drinks cans so we had to find a bin for the rest. Still, we had a fine week and a lovely drive back. The north coast of the island has world-class scenery. Highly recommended.

The Bear Coop in Tod has been bought out by the café upstairs after the coop went bust. We’re on tenterhooks because it’s a favourite of ours. Saker’s bread gets us in but they didn’t have any yesterday. I might have to start baking again.

So, we’re enjoying our first proper summer, back in England. Looking forward to getting the fire on, though!

Kevin called, this morning, to beg a garage in which to fix Molly’s scooter. I thought maybe she needed it to get to some new job but I was, sadly, mistaken. He arrived at 11 and I set him up, discovering yet another use for Monica’s invention (see picture). Used the one nearest as a ramp to get it up there.

While he was working, I moved the new firewood somewhere tidy, rescued the plastic mulch, again, and put more varnish on the kitchen clothes hoist. I also fed him and Ralph with pea and ham soup and tea. Kevin helped me carry the windows over behind Angela.

Ralph came to beg a couple of screws for the cellar door he’s spent a week making. This is the last step of a job he hasn’t enjoyed in a damp environment. Karin had just visited to tell him she didn’t like his work so he was a bit down. No after effects from Thursday evening, though. They’re going for a day visit to Susan in Keswick; it’s all she can handle just now. I suggested they arrive with a shopping basket of food and essentials.

Around 4 o’clock, Kevin asked, “How am I going to get home?”, meaning he always planned to cadge a lift. As we arrived in Bacup, he announced that his car was in Stackie so I had to take him further. Hey ho. At least he tidied my tools away.

After that, Bandit and I surveyed the canal signage for the Trust because they want to know how many wrong logos they have to change.

Tonight I’m trying out Blackbark’s firewood. It’s wet after a few nights of rain but seems to be burning ok. It’ll be nice to get rid of all this rubbish and back to solid logs that burn long and slow.

Bandit cleaned a lot of pea and ham bowls yesterday and today so she’s happy.

We were talking about truffles today. I think we watched a TV programme and it has turned Monica on to the idea. I looked at it last year: the trees are about £50 each but, given we have a hazel coppice underway already, we may only need a few to start the (fungus) balls rolling. Not only that but, while we were considering whether we’d get another dog if dear old Bandit woofs off, the Lagotto Romagnolo came out in the top three. I strongly believe that the fates speak to us like this so I’d best order those trees. Mind you, the woods are probably full of trubbs anyway because no-one has been harvesting them for a hundred years. Some people have a good nose for the wee beasties so maybe I should get out and look myself.

I discovered this picture, taken in May, on my screen saver today. It clearly shows this year’s woodland plantings: Sweet chestnut on the left, then ash and oak coppices, then sparser mixed woodland up behind the house. Look closely and you can see last year’s plantings, too. The white line around the buildings is the edible hedgerow which passes some of the forest garden trees up near the wall. In front of the barns, there’s the orchard in neat rows; over the wall is Monica’s allotment with the apple arbour at its corner. Invisible are 500 ash trees that were spare but couldn’t be taken off site: I bunged them in as short hedges and clumps in that very top field which we have designated as a heath. Looked at like this, there does seem to have been a lot of work! Thankfully, that big-looking burn at the far right didn’t affect many trees though we’ll have to deal with the threat next spring. The shot was taken on a knoll below the hill opposite, where you’re as close as possible and still able to see all of the farm.

The barn, above us; one of the flats to the right; and the house below are all for sale at the moment as some elderly residents move on. Our immediate neighbours are starting to have romantic dreams of living in the Yorkshire Dales so lots could change around us in Warland.

Today, the canal folk drained our pound so that they could bung loads of expanding styrene foam into the lock approach walls. Not sure how environmentally- or canal wall-friendly that solution could be. I grabbed the opportunity to extend my fence, by the side of the aqueduct, out into the water so that the sheep are less able to sneak into the orchard through the mud if someone leaves the pound water level low.

Monica has established that DEFRA do not own the marshy field at the front of us, over the canal, and that it has no special environmental status despite the information we have from the Calderdale Wildlife Association. We’ve asked for a search to establish who owns it so that we can ask what their intentions are. The pub’s conversion into a house is in full swing: nice to observe because it’s an important element in our view.

I spotted a grey squirrel at the top of the hazel coppice a couple of days ago. They’re often around the house, stealing the bird feed, but I haven’t seen them up the hill before. That’s probably because I’m not up there enough to observe them but I guess we’ll have to start trapping if they get a taste for the bark. Still, the kestrel was patrolling the same area yesterday; perhaps Nature will lend a hand.

Using my recently-made shave horse, I carved a nice handle on our new hand-powered hay baler. A month ago, I asked Calderdale Wildlife Association to survey the grasses around the farm; they identified sixteen species with wonderful names like Yorkshire Fog, Creeping Soft Grass, Crested Dogs Tail and Sweet Vernal Grass. The idea was to understand whether we need to re-seed to establish a viable meadow ecology and the conclusion was to, “Just mow it.” An improved pasture would have only half a dozen species so we were happy to confirm that Warland hasn’t had any modern farming attention. Based on their advice, I shaved the field below the farmhouse with my scythe and Monica, her brother Kevin and her Daddy helped with the tedding and stacking. In a 1950’s YouTube video, I saw a Swiss farmer carry a mountain of hay home from his steep pasture on his head, using only a length of string to hold it all together. When I had successfully hoisted my first load, Monica exclaimed, “I’m living in a f…ing Breugel painting!”

At this point we had no real use for the hay with only one pet rabbit and one pet ferret to keep bedded and fed. My best idea was to lay it between the orchard rows to suppress the grass there. Thinking things through, though, I realised that bales of hay, straw etc would be a valuable resource for building in the garden and for insulating against frost. A quick Google later and I was gathering offcut lumber to construct the hay baler. We tested it on Saturday, before the weather changed, and it’s a simple joy: the bales are sound and solid and we got seven out before M got bored. I’d already improved the design to make it safer and efficient for one-person operation so, when the sun peeps out again, I’ll be back in the field, squashing grass.

I’ve also mown half of the forest garden, at first with the idea that the mowings—mainly soft rushes—would stay in place under the plastic mulch but now there’s a demand them to be baled. In Monica’s allotment, we’re thinking of shuttering along the contour and then dropping in bales to create a level base for planting into. As the material rots to compost, we’ll throw more bales in to build up terraces. Hopefully this will be easier than cut-and-fill digging.

Once again, the Smithy is cleared out. Three times, it has been the convenient dumping ground for junk in transit but now all that junk has found its proper home. Not only that, all the rusty tools that I inherited from Ralph and the in-laws have been cleaned, waxed and filed away and the shelves in the wood shop are getting tidied. I’m at the point of ordering 3 phase wiring and getting the wood shop machines into place. I also have two clear workbenches in the wood shop, two more upstairs in the loft, one in the smithy and one in the barn. Why all this non-productive, preparatory work? Because my head has been processing a ton of information and impressions generated at my cousin’s wedding a fortnight ago and I had no spare cycles for project thinking. Instead, I’ve been treading down my bed like an old dog.

We got the invitation after visiting my Aunt Margaret, near Canterbury, in the spring. It’s she who found me after, I discovered, years of trips up to Yorkshire in search of the long-lost cousin. I got to meet a brother and cousins I’d never seen and I got to pick up threads with a sister and a few other relatives whom I’d met only once, sixteen years ago. Poor old Monica, who has always been the one with the family events, had to meet them all in one sweep. Needless to say, she coped and has all their life stories already. The wedding itself consisted of a very traditional C of E affair in the oldest church in the country (580 AD) followed by a very modern Jain Hindu ceremony. This was all in the grounds of the college where Uncle Michael was Principal for decades.

My sole contribution to the event was to put a stone against the coconut the Indians had placed under the limousine’s tyre, so that it would break rather than shooting again out to injure more members of the throng. It was fun, though, being a man of mystery for the day. I doubt if I would have enjoyed it, even a few years ago before I mellowed into the Warland that I am today. I look forward to becoming friends with my young cousins, both of whom are London lawyers.

On the way home, we paid am impromptu visit to a brother I hadn’t met, near Reading. I was told by Neil and Gillian, when I first met them sixteen years ago, that this brother, Chris, and another, Jonathan, had refused to meet me and so I left them alone until now. Again, it was Aunt Margaret who made the link and, so far, we’re very grateful.

While wending through the Kentish A roads, we saw piles and piles of sweet chestnut logs which made me wish I’d brought he truck. After building my shave horse I’m in the mood to build a chair or two, just to keep me from getting bored. I was so enamoured that I checked to see if I could buy some roundwood off the Internet and, blow me down, all that we saw was for sale and we could have loaded up the roof rack. I have agreed to help Margaret plant a windbreak over the winter so perhaps I’ll be able to bring some timber home, after all.

Monica is keeping on, keeping her bees. The new hive appears to be well into storing enough honey for winter but her original swarm still struggles. She surprised us both by developing an instant passion for foraging, making jam and brewing country wines. This is a very good sign for when we start producing our own fruit.

I’ve just, this morning, moved my desk so that my computer and the server are in different corners of the living room. The server is also our telly, you see, and I need to be able to work while it’s on. I have the building designs to research and draw up; plus I have a budding photography hobby/business with cousin Chris that needs attention and space. If this works out, I hope Chris will be able to give up his trips to North Sea oil rigs on dodgy helicopters and we can make up for a lot of lost years.

After a long, dry summer (hooray!) autumnal showers are sweeping the valley, interrupting my hay-making. It’s dry for a moment so I must step out to check that our amateur haystacks are staying dry.

Next Sunday, we’ll have lunch at The Crown. Once a year, they have an almost secret gathering of the best local clog dancers, morris dancers and players. They get in their own booze and there’s plenty of hilarity as they interfere with each others’ acts.

Last weekend we carried out our plan to spend some time in the South. Aunt Margaret and Monica enjoyed each others’ company, which was good to see, and we helped her attack some of the weeds around the front lawn. Monica also gave uncle Michael a few nudges about getting ready to sell and move on. He hasn’t even begun to think about what kind of place he wants. We’ll go back in the autumn to plant a new tree screen at the back. I don’t think it would take much to get the gardens looking good but the work needs to start soon to meet their schedule. Such a shame they didn’t work towards Jill’s design; by now the place would look wonderful and be under control.

Neil suggested we meet at Dover so that he could show me some of his old life there. It seems you all must have mixed memories of the place as your parents went through their separation while you were growing up.

After coffee then lunch, we found our way through the new ferry roads to the beach and then set off to see if Neil’s shack was still there. We hopped the rocks around Shakespeare’s Cliff and ground through the shingle along to the new Channel Tunnel entrance. The shack was gone but there was a newish one just down the beach which Neil decided must be the replacement. I could see he was having a fine, nostalgic time.

On Wednesday, I cycled >100 miles to see my cousin’s family who were gathered for a farm holiday in the west of the Lakes. Monica drove out on Thursday to bring me back so we feel we’ve had a complete week’s holiday, ending with a slow cycle along the canal to Hebden Bridge yesterday. Today I have to fire up the computer and remind myself of the next jobs on my list. I hope to have the main sections of the forest garden marked out by the weekend to give us all a better idea of its shape and size.

We’re taking care to protect our ash plantation for as long as possible, asking guests to wash their boots before they kit up.

I wonder how our established forest gardens will cope with heat like this. My fruit trees are mainly unaffected though a sheep did sneak around the canal mud to strip leaves off the apples. Because they were planted late, a few were set back but I’m sure they’ll put out leaves next spring. Martin Crawford just wrote to ask for payment for my autumn delivery. 

I’m supposed to have the plastic mulch down by now but a bike crash has put my left arm out of heavy action for a bit. I re-assembled all of my bikes and, with the Tour de France on telly, was inspired to get some miles in. Just as I was nearing home, I misjudged a pot hole, burst my front tube and landed on the deck. This reminded me of an invention I made when I last fell: a fabric that absorbs the first drag of the road and so reduces road rash. Lightweight armour for road cyclists. I think I’ll visit the patent office with that one because lots of newbie cyclists will pay anything for the latest fashion.

Still, I survived to the end of the Tour and, although injured and infected with a cold, made it across the finish line last night with Monica. If I had my wits, I’d use this physical down time to start sketching the building designs I want to put up for Council approval: barn interior, lean-to barn, Monica’s shed, brick oven and solar panel-supporting cloisters. If I can keep that stream of activity on schedule I hope to start building next year.

It’s clogging season in Calderdale, with lots of pagan rituals every weekend. Yesterday was Littleborough’s Rushcart parade, complete with rushes from Warland Farm. Ostensibly to please the pope, they bring rushes to carpet the church but the accompanying drunken ribaldry is distinctly unholy and has had the event banned in the past.

There’s a pleasant mist in the valley, today, making the world a lot less harsh than it has been, recently. A drop of rain would be nice. 

A new half-brother, Chris, has made contact and wants to meet.

I’ve made a mark on the farm, at long last. I started to plant the forest garden trees when some sheep crept up and laughed at me so I had to get this fence in place first. The stretches in this picture will keep out the wooly jumpers that come over the meadow walls. Another stretch, uphill from that far gate, will enclose a paddock where I’ll keep the wife, her bees, her shed and her potato beds. I managed to include a couple of tree shelters in the fence design—you can see one near the gate—and I avoided ruining the kids’ toboggan run. I’m very happy with the shape and look of the post and rail fence. The final section is now in place and follows the immediate horizon up from the gate. It gives a pleasing sense of perspective on a field that was hard to understand from this angle—our normal view of it. Kevin walked away from us, through the gate, dropped out of sight over that horizon and then appeared, surprisingly small, at the far end. I consider it handsome from across the road, too, and the residents of the houses that overlook it seem pleased by the addition.

The late Spring has been a boon for us because the sheep didn’t wreck the trees. Only a few got nibbled and they’ll recover. Also, the trees to be planted are late into bud so I have time to get them in, now that they won’t be uprooted by the sheep. Monica and I went out, just now, to chase out any squatters but it appears that the shepherd has taken his stock somewhere else for lambing. So it’s on with the planting. Woo-hoo.

We may have a different kind of intruder, soon. A young bloke, Adam Entwhistle, was put in touch with us by Incredible Edible because he wants a patch of ground to grow tea flavourings. Turns out he studied graphic arts at Canterbury before getting into a foodie life so we have lots in common. As we have newly enclosed the field below Monica’s paddock, I was musing on what to use it for and was considering oats and barley patches. Now Adam will take an area to terrace in a tasteful way for his plants; and we’ve agreed to try lavender in another section for its beauty and the bees.

Monica just descended from the land of Nod to point out how delicious my onion soup smells. Unfortunately, by the time you can smell what’s in the Aga, you’re generally too late. We’re going out for tea, now.

We’re continuing along our Warland plan-lines. Monica has just opened up her hive for the first full inspection of the year, to happily discover a healthy, expanded swarm. I started to plant the forest garden fruit trees but, after the first three filberts, a couple of sheep appeared and sat next to them, menacingly. So, I’ve moved the fencing up in my priorities and have been banging in posts and straining wire for a few days and am happy with progress and the quality of the results so far. Another day’s effort and the sheep will find that, even though they jump the wall into the meadow, they can’t get from there to the rest of the fields. In addition, Monica’s allotment and apiary will be protected and we’ll have a good-sized area to try out some experiments such as small-scale oats and barley. In the design, I’ve managed to create a 6ft-square protected tree enclosure for something wonderful; and I avoided fencing right across the best toboggan run. Yesterday I met an enthusiastic youth who wants space to grow tea plants; mainly hippy teas but, after seeing the SW-facing plot he’s thinking of looking for some tea-camellia hybrids that might survive here. 

Everything stops for a few days because we have a funeral and associated events today and tomorrow; then I have to visit Jill in Swindon to collect a cabinet and some plants from her nursery. I hoped that by using her nursery I would be helping her garden-design business but it appears not and, as I’ve discovered that they’re not growing some of the plants themselves, I won’t use them again. This trip has also been delayed several times, most recently by the mysterious disappearance of a pair of rear brake shoes from the truck. Al & Kevin used it to take some motor bikes to a jamboree and when they returned it the brakes were misbehaving. As there were no leaks, I almost drove south last week but I’m glad Kevin sent a mechanic mate to check first. All better now.

Monica has been manoeuvring her Dad into accepting respite care for her Mum but is getting very little thanks from him or anyone else. Fortunately, she isn’t very invested in seeking his appreciation and will probably ease back on her involvement while he gets used to having a couple of days of freedom each week. She’s also moving Kevin’s house restoration along and has just seen the roof replaced and scaffolding removed.

I’ve been getting back up to speed with photography after getting a few bits of kit. I hope to pick up where I left off when my graphic design business closed its doors. Back then, I decided that I didn’t want to join the race to discounted skills and was hoping to create a high-value, high satisfaction niche for myself in image creation using photography, 2D and 3D graphics. It’s more of a hobby, now, but I’ve invited Chris to share the journey with me and, who knows, we may find a way for him to give up working on the rigs. Apart from cameras and standard glass, I’ve grabbed a 17mm tilt-shift lens, an A2 printer and a slide-capable, hi-res scanner. I feel some industrial history images are in order.

The rotten weather is fine for me because I’m well behind schedule in plant ordering and fence installation. This is the week for all that. The plants will be growing only slowly and the sheep will be less adventurous.

Mike Smith, from Incredible Edible, seems to be fully engaged now, which makes the delay worthwhile. He has walked the fields with me and my plan, made suggestions and improvements to the plant list and is considering how we can use their polytunnels for propagation. When the plants arrive and we have our planting days, the crew will be a lot more confident under Mike’s direction because he’s quite nonchalant about his knowledge of plants and ecology. So, that project is gaining momentum.

Having read Brunskill’s books which lay out the components of vernacular architecture, Alexander’s theories on architectural pattern languages are informing my design for Warland Farm. Much of his mathematical analysis and hypothesising is hogwash but I like:

• design according to proven patterns
• design for the events that are to take place
• complexity provides interest
• recognising the nameless quality of good architecture

among other bits.

Here’s the initial sketch for the One Planet building, based on that crab concept. I pushed the architects up the hill to this location because, even without Alexander, I wanted a venue for teaching about farm processes and working with its products. This will be one, the pigsty bakery will be the other. 

One area I’ve been persuaded to look away from but now will turn back to designing is the yard. I envisaged a cloister along the barns and a matching structuring tucked under the opposite wall; the first to offer work and relaxation space in inclement weather, the latter to shelter wood, car bonnets, bikes etc while supporting photovoltaic cells. These would be linked, in style, to the nearby pigsty bakery including opportunities for whimsy such as platforms to view over the wall. I think whimsy is under-rated in creating that nameless quality.

Marriage hasn’t changed either of us much but it’s been a good excuse for being nicer to each other, especially when today’s budget review blew holes in some of our projects and could have turned ugly. Fortunately, by being lazy we have reduced the burn rate so we won’t get to the big-ticket item, the Great Barn, for a while. When we do get started, we’ll just have to take it steady and scavenge more of the materials. If there has to be a hiatus then I’ll write that book. Happy, twirly pictures attached.

Our discretionary, personal projects survived although I ditched “Build a Caterham Seven” in order to replace the camera kit I used to have in my design studio. I was just about to become a real portrait and landscape photographer when my gear got pinched. The sports car, an ambition held since I was twenty, sits uncomfortably with my eco-Warland life whereas creating art and craft pictures based on the area and our activities makes sense and might make some money. Another advantage is that I can tell everyone that I’m a photographer rather than my current profession—layabout. I’ve offered for cousin Chris, who can take a picture and is comfortable getting people to pose, to join in the learning process in case it turns out he could take pictures instead of going to the rigs.

Yesterday, we moved Dave-next-door’s lathe and milling machine into place in his shed using the truck’s mighty lifting power. Soon, his metalwork shop should be functional so that’ll be a great advantage in making fittings and fixtures for the projects. I’m wondering what he’ll use the machines for, himself. He’s a lighting designer, for a big concern, with a racing car hobby but has just sold his car trailer. Might be that he just wanted to get his Dad’s machines into his shed but I hope he uses them and teaches me how to use them.