I have spent a lot of time over the last few weeks picking fruit and vegetables from the garden and hedgerows and preserving it for winter. Most of the mushrooms I picked in my neighbour’s field were dried, as were some of my cooking apples (the first crop off the tree in years!), and some apples and other fruits were bottled or made into jam, some of the elderberries became Pontiack sauce to enrich casseroles, and the eating apples my friend Marie gave me from her hugely productive orchard went into the steam juicer with a cinnamon stick to make a lightly spiced juice for winter nights, whilst most of the tomatoes were roasted with slivers of garlic and a dribble of olive oil before going in the freezer. So this
Became this (plus lots of boxes in the freezer!)
But I was also able to give lots of produce away. Most people had more than enough courgettes and green beans but tomatoes, mushrooms and grapes were welcome. In the days before freezers everyone in the neighbourhood feasted when a pig was killed on a farm because with only limited means of preserving the meat it made sense to share it and, in return, be given some of a future supply. The same ethos applies to garden crops now – anything surplus is shared out. But I realised I was making choices about who got what.
It set me thinking (there is lots of time to think whilst peeling and coring apples or waiting for jam to reach setting point!) about the amazing people in Todmorden (and other places) who plant unloved or underused public spaces with edibles and invite everyone to help themselves. I think that if I was one of them I would start with a pretty rosy picture of the benefit I would be bringing to the community. I would imagine helping those elderly or disabled people no longer able to tend a garden and missing having freshly picked fruit and veg. Those parents struggling to feed their kids and relying on the food bank could have freshly plucked salad for tea. They are the deserving poor.
But what if I see that lad from the rough end of town, the one who has never wanted, let alone had, a job picking ALL the strawberries I carried water to when the weather was hot and dry? Do I tell myself that at least he wants to eat fresh food and they will be good for him or do I worry that he will simply trash them and curse him? The ?underserving? poor.
Or what about that couple with two good salaries and a big house saving a bit on the Waitrose shop – is that OK? The ‘too lazy to grow their own’.
Maybe this is why Community Supported Agriculture and Community Farms are so popular – only those who put in cash or work benefit.
But that begs the question – Those parents using the food bank may be unable to put money upfront however economically advantageous in the long run, and may not have time or energy to volunteer. And the retired or disabled folk may have the same problem. Community agriculture and Community Farms can easily become middle class enclaves however worthy the aspirations.
All this linked back in my mind to a conversation with a friend earlier in the year. We were talking about birds taking our black- and red-currants. To net or not to net was the dilemma. My choice, because I have plenty of space, was to not net but to increase the number of bushes until even the most voracious of flocks cannot eat them all! Not so easy if all you have is room for one bush I know.
It all seems to me to be part of the same questions: How generous should I be? When am I being greedy or overly self protective? At what point do I give so much stuff away I am not being properly caring towards myself? And how do I cope if my generosity feels unappreciated or even abused? Despite reading a number of books recently on our attitudes to money and possessions I have no answers to these conundrums – but I would love to hear your thoughts!
A couple of years ago Mark Boyle, Guardian columnist and author of ‘The Moneyless Man and ‘Drinking Molatov Cocktails with Ghandi’, put into words a discomfort I had been feeling for a while. When John died I claimed the life insurance originally intended to pay off our mortgage. In the event it we had paid down the mortgage every time we had a windfall or an extra piece of work and no longer had a debt. Unsure what to do with the money I contacted an ethical investment firm and let them take care of it. It did rather well. Suspiciously well. Mark Boyle’s books made me look more closely. Ethical is a vague term – some of the money was invested in property funds. There was no reason to think this was unethical was there? Then I thought again. Were these buildings constructed using the most sustainable designs and materials? Maintained to the same high standards? Were the tenants vetted to ensure they were running ethical companies? Hmmm. I decided it was time to stop being lazy and shuffling the responsibility onto someone else’s shoulders. But what should I do with a sum of money which, by my standards, was quite large? I waited for an answer to present itself.
Last Saturday we had the Trust AGM and once the business part was over we had a celebration of the new fields. The furthest one had been called Cae Cornel (Corner field) because ofits shape and the nearer one Cae Gwaelod (Bottom field) because it was furthest from the farmhouse and the lowest. But in terms of the Trust land it was middle-ish. So I renamed them Cae herc (lopsided field) its older name found on old maps, and Cae Novello after the lady who, with her husband, sold it to us.
The first was ‘The Secret Life of Trees’ by Colin Tudge. I have a copy of his ‘Future Food’ which I enjoyed very much so I was looking forward to this one and was not disappointed. The first and last sections were particularly fascinating. The first grapples with the question of what makes a tree a tree not a shrub or other plant and how they came into existence. The third describes how trees communicate with each other, share resources thanks to collaboration with mycelia and why we should value them more. As I have a small area of woodland here, rent another few acres from an adjoining farm and did the 6 month, part time Woodland Skills course at Coppicewood College to learn how to manage them, I loved learning more about them.
‘I guess by now everyone has gone home, you have tidied up after them and for others life is getting back to normal. But you are probably wondering what normal is going to look like because it will certainly not be like it was. Waking up with a space on his side of the bed, making a mug of tea or coffee for one, having the TV remote all to yourself.. This stage of looking at the wreckage of normality is probably the hardest part of grieving, believe me. And you cannot order a new life on Amazon Prime for next day delivery! Nor can anyone else tell you how to get through it. For now all you can do is survive by whatever means you can – comfort eat or exist on tea and biscuits with the odd crisp sandwich; clean the house to within an inch of its life – even behind the fridge and oven! – or let the dirty plates pile up in the sink then smash them all and leave the bits on the floor; go for long walks in the pouring rain screaming obscenities or curl up under the duvet for days on end emerging only to go to the loo and feed the cats; start to knit something with a fiendishly complicated pattern that needs you to read the instructions every 2 stitches and stops you thinking about anything else or slob in front of daytime TV unable to knit a dishcloth without loads of mistakes; or an eclectic mix of any of the above and other ways…. None of it matters and it will take as long as it takes.
And which strategy did I choose? Well since John spent his days in the dining room listening to radio 4, reading and doing research on the laptop, I holed up in the kitchen for weeks with daytime TV for company (yes it was that bad!) and bought an iPad so I did not have to see what he had written. I gave myself a rigid timetable for the day with coffee or tea breaks and meals at fixed times to stop me lying in later and later and therefore going to bed later and later until I was out of sync with the rest of the world (other than teenagers!) It also meant each chunk of time that had to be filled was manageable. I accepted every invitation to go out and join things so that I built friendships which did not have old memories attached. In the evenings we went in the sitting room and watched TV and I did some crochet, so now I watched in the kitchen – no risk of looking at him to make a comment and seeing ‘his’ chair empty – and I knitted instead of crocheting. When I could I went in the garden and took my feelings out on the endless brambles. Exhaustion was the way to find sleep. We had already decided to have a new heating system and had asked a builder to do some jobs we could not tackle.
When they had finished I had to do some re-decorating and felt ready to choose new colours for the walls and put the furniture back in different places. With a new dining room table and ‘his’ chair gone from the sitting room I was able to use those rooms again but it took a year to get there.
Martin from Deans Carpets had been to measure up for vinyl to replace the tatty carpet and pointed out that I really needed to put hardboard or thin plywood over the conservatory floor before the fitters come. There is an inspection chamber for the drains in there and although the cover is level with the concrete the ‘handles’ could cause the flooring to puncture if something heavy – a castor or heel – put pressure on the wrong spot. I probably have enough plywood in the workshop to do the job and if not can easily get some but it needs doing. And I found that there is a leak where 2 window panels join. Again I can probably fix it but it is another item on the list. And it is not helped by the water butt just outside overflowing so I should install an overflow on that to take excess water away.
Then someone recommended a builder who has just moved to the area and I asked him to come and look at some jobs which are too skilled for me or just need more hands or strength. He came and can start on upgrading the chalet in the garden next week! Lovely but space had to be cleared. More on that project in future posts.
