Gateway to Paradise

Recently Amber looked over the back fence as the burn flowing at the foot of a steep bank, and noticed a little glade. We all thought about sitting there by the bubbling creek. The voice of the live water can bring inspiration, peace, and open even a door to another dimension. But how to navigate the steep and slippery incline down to the water? Here's the solution I came up with--- steps cut into the hill and framed with treated wood. It's a typical technique when building a mountain trail; heavy work but with Jehan's help we banged it out in a day.

 Jehan is here from France, working as a WWOOFer. Under this program,Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms, kids volunteer to work at organic farms throughout Europe for their room and board. It's a great way to see the world on a limited budget and learn organic gardening/farming techniques. Jehan has been in Scotland since May, on the Isle of Skye,Perthshire, and now at Cottarton. Click on this link for a walk up the hill to the gate. Turn up the volume for the sound of the water. The steps are muddy, but soon a news layer of grass will make walking easier. My nephew Juan Bleggi plans to replace our old Gateway to Paradise with one worthier of the name.

The Weather Report for Scotland

Last night after the local news,  instead of the familiar well-dressed weather-man standing by the map of Scotland and presenting the same dull weather, there was this wild-eyed chap in wellies, with long, white hair, a loose shirt, half-unbuttoned. When he spoke it was evident that he’d lost half his teeth. This is what he said, at least until a couple of men in black appeared and marched him off camera.

Good evening. In case you haven’t noticed it’s rather cold and rainy out there. Temperatures are holding around 12 degrees Celsius, a bit disappointing considering that this is mid-July, normally the hottest time of the year. (A toothless smile) Also, if you’ve been watching the earlier news you’ll have seen the floods in England and Wales, also very unusual for this time of year. (Long Pause) It’s been raining fairly constantly, with only short breaks since April. Gardeners take note: Earth is still barely warm enough to germinate seeds. Grains are growing slowly. Elsewhere around the world: record heat waves in the eastern United States along with a loss of lives. In southern Russia, the death toll from the floods is expected to be more than 150. (His stare was serious this time).

So, what is going on? They tell you that the Jet Stream is doing something or other. (A dismissive wave). Empty words. The truth is that the Earth is very sick, and that she has a high fever. She’s alternating between shivering and sweating. Over the past few hundred years she has been poisoned and she can't take it for much longer. To resist the toxins, she must withdraw from her normal activity and take care of herself. Wrapping herself in a blanket of clouds she’s lying in a dark corner away from the glare of sunlight. With little milk with which to feed her children, she must wait until she's better.

And now for the forecast. Well, to some extent that depends on you. When was the last time that you were sick, seriously sick, in hospital having to eat hospital food. Nurses bustled in and out, stuck you with needles. Took your blood pressure. Doctors strode in, wiseacred about what might be wrong with you, shrugged their shoulders, affected a smile. A bit like our politicians and weather scientists. What made a difference to your day? It was the people who visited you. The ones who brought you grapes, oranges or a book to read. They told you how much they missed you. The wife who talked to you, held your hand,stroked your hair,or the kids who kissed you and asked when you were coming home.  Just seeing them made you feel that you needed to get better. That you couldn’t just roll over and die. At least not yet. And maybe that’s when you decided to live. That too many people depended on you.

Ah yes, the actual forecast. You want to know whether it will rain during the Olympics. More importantly whether the nearby river will crest. I’m very sorry for those of you who have lost your homes and your livelihood. My house was flooded yesterday. While I sloshed through the water in my sitting room, trying to rescue my pictures, I thought of the land. She’s sick because we poisoned her. Even while she’s trying to shake her fever, we still pump her with toxins. And we expect her to heal? She loves us and misses our love. It's time to think about her welfare, make her feel appreciated so that she knows that people still love her. Don't dismiss her because she is sick. She wants us to touch her with our bare feet, to caress her, thank her for giving us a home and for feeding us. Tend her fruits and her plants. Grow close to her. Acre by acre  help her regain her health. She needs your help. Let her know that you appreciate the bounty that she freely bestows.

Do it and you'll see her smile.

The Kin Domain

When Amber and I moved to Cottarton people often asked, “Why are you moving to such a remote place?” “What are you doing there?” Truth to say, we weren’t sure, except that we  wanted to be closer to the land, partially supported by her bounty. So did our friends at Coldhome, though in addition, they decided to build their space from the foundation up. Next to our cottage stands a field: one grassy hectare that we’d no idea what to do with. For four years we developed a vegetable and flower garden --- but what next?

Recently I discovered that we’re part of a greater movement throughout Russia, Australia, the US and Europe, of families establishing themselves on a hectare of land with the vision of building a home for their children, and their children. A place that will provide food, energy, water and most importantly good physical and mental health through work with the land. In Russia such a smallholding is known as the family hearth, “Rodovoje Pomest’e”  or the Kin Domain. 

In the UK,  the movement of families to the land is slower because of high land prices and obstructive planning regulations, but it is growing. There are a few eco-villages --- communities of energy efficient houses made of natural materials. The Findhorn Community for example. Not all houses have enough land for self subsistence. The concept of a family home passed down through generations isn’t yet in the UK zeitgeist. Mobility of family members is taken for granted. Generations are often separated by large distances.

The concept of the Kin Domain was developed in Russia, following the publication of books by Vladimir Megre,  The Ringing Cedars. The books, presented as the teachings of Anastasia, a Siberian recluse, became best-sellers and inspired thousands of people to move closer to the land. Within five years of the books’ publication over 150 new eco-villages took shape. In Russia, the Kin Domain expands on the Dacha (country cottage), and is made possible by the high availability of empty land in central Russia; Siberian ghost towns waiting for people to revitalize them. See the reference article Ecofarming and Agroforestry for Self-Reliance for how micro-farming works in practice.

These days, the nuclear family is on shaky grounds, the family table disappearing fast, children are ferried rapidly from one activity to the next, food is grabbed on the fly. In the Kin Domain, families work together to build their space, promote a sense of cohesion, an appreciation for the land and how it works. Unrealistic, nostalgic, a step backwards or all of the above? Perhaps not. As our social fabric continues to disintegrate with crime, high unemployment, violence, mental and physical illness and the breakdown of the family, it seems to me that the prospect of people working together to build a healthy life has much to commend it. If it becomes a mass movement it could emerge as the force that turns the tide for the better. Green shoots of a new civilization.

 One can be cynical and assert that Kin Domain people will booze and fight each other just as much, as folk living in council flats. Isn’t alcoholism worse among country people? Haven’t we seen it before in the sixties with people moving onto the land and growing weed? This movement appears to have a different ideology. There’s less talk about getting high and having fun,  and a lot more  about what the Earth needs: an emphasis on clean living, hard work, a spiritual connection to the land, natural healing, home education of children and building a solid foundation for a family through a monogamous relationship. Each topic could be a separate blog.

Here's the plan of Cottarton.

We’ve already dug a pond and plan to plant 600 trees early next year. Within 20 years they’ll form a forest that will break our winds, provide homes for birds, squirrels, a wood supply to keep us warm, and building material.  Our present plague of slugs suggests to me that our ecology is out of balance. We need to restore it, increase biodiversity so that the land can not only support us but a wide variety of flora and fauna (deer excepted --- they’re NOT welcome). We'll also have herbs, perennial vegetables, and one or two cereal crops to support us. All for not an unreasonable amount of work?

To be continued…..

The New Journey

A couple of days ago Mama embarked on the Journey. She’d been talking about it for a while, about the Train that she had to catch. But she hesitated for a long time on the platform. The idea of getting on board and leaving everything familiar behind must have been more than she could contemplate. Scary, because though you hold a ticket, you can’t read the destination that’s printed on it. Our material brain, wired for survival at all costs, fights the notion of embracing the unknown.

Rose, her sisters Tosia and Marynia 1928?

Children of Polish gentry in their daily garb








 Finally she opened the door and got on the train. In the preceding months, during her more lucid moments she talked more often about the coming journey.

 “Those are my things,” she said pointing to the chairs in the room, the photos on the wall, the dining table and the china plates hanging on the wall.

 “Yes,” I said.

 “I will not be taking them with me.

 “You won’t.”

 She looked at me steadily. “I won’t need them.”

 At another time she called me urgently to her side. She knew who I was.

 “Where is Theresa?”

 I told her that my elder sister was in Edinburgh. She’d be coming over in a few days.

 “And Munia?”

 “She’s in Ecuador.”

 “When is she coming?”

 “In mid July.”

 At that, Mama grew more agitated and said, “That’s far too late.”

 The conversation wasn’t a one off. She'd had it a few days earlier with Amber.

 Sometimes she opened the door of the train but then drew back. A month ago, dehydrated from not drinking enough she was admitted to hospital. She had a bad infection. The doctor felt that she only had days to live. We called Munia and asked her to fly over from Ecuador.

 I felt that Mama needed to be aware of what was going on. While she lay in the hospital bed, smiling at me, I said, “Mama, you are seriously ill. You’re dying.”

“No,” she said, emphatically, adding silently that I was talking nonsense. Imagining some rubbish.

 “You ARE dying,” I said.

 She gave me a wave of her hand to say, “Oh rubbish. There you go again, you silly."

 Did she know something the rest of us didn’t know?

 A few days later she staged, yet again, a miraculous recovery. Started eating and drinking. The doctors were left scratching their heads. She didn’t talk much after that, lay quietly looking at another world. Sometimes she’d return, smile at us, and even say something briefly.

 She always reacted to Father Jim MacManus who visited her when he was in town. She greeted him with the broadest of smiles and reached out to him. Her last words to him were, “I am very, very happy.”

Munia, Mama and the great grandchildren









 And so on Monday morning while Munia recited a few prayers to her, Mama took a last breath. She got onto the train. The door closed behind her. When Amber and I reached her house, we saw her lying on her bed, apparently asleep. A beautiful aura filled the room, a feeling of blessedness that did not appear to emanate from a human source. The oppressive atmosphere of fear and anxiety that had hung around her bed in previous weeks was gone. I sat beside her as before and drank in that benediction.

Building the Anastasia Hive

I’ve always wanted to keep bees. I want the honey, the wax and I need to have my veg flowers pollinated. Bee numbers are in decline. Our pesticides, and Varroa Mite are just two reasons.  The Earth needs more bees now, if it is to heal. I'd like to keep happy bees who feel at home the way they would in the wild. That way they would grow stronger, more resistant to disease and parasites. Then I read about Anastasia, a Siberian recluse, the subject of several books by Vladimir Megre. She’s a fountain of information on  gardening, homesteading, education, spirituality, aliens and yes, bee keeping. “A lot of what you do to maintain bee colonies just gets in the way,” she says. We need a natural hive, the way that bees live in nature i.e. a hollow log with no internal sharp corners, of a deciduous wood. Let the bees roam freely in their log, build a natural honeycomb. They keep themselves clean and healthy, don’t require the place to be cleaned out. Make the hive properly and they’ll spend their energy gathering nectar rather than fixing up a hive that’s the wrong shape.

The advice made a lot of sense to me.

Curiously, everything I needed for the Siberian hive turned up without having to hunt far afield. Charles at Coldhome had an elm log, rotten in the middle, that was just about the required dimensions (120 cm long, a potential 40x40 cm cavity and walls 5-6 cm thick. The log was already rotten on the inside and would need minimal carving out. I cut the log covers out of a stump I found by the side of the road on the way to Rhynie. Other scraps of wood I just had at home.

After Charles delivered the log on a trailer --- it was a heavy bugger, I hollowed out the rotten wood and some more, mostly by chainsaw. I replaced the chain oil by rape-seed oil (in the US that’s Canola oil), so as not to contaminate the wood with hydrocarbons. Chain-sawing required using a curved stroke with the saw, a twist of the wrist and a pull to get the cleanest cavity.

The top lid was screwed on and covered with a layer of cob (adobe in the US) to seal all the holes. We want the hive to be draft free and to retain the bees scents. Anastasia recommends fitting the bottom lid inside the log, and seal it there by cloth or grass. Since the log’s opening is such an odd shape, I made a cardboard template of the opening, and transferred it to the lid. Then I jigsawed out the excess wood. I plugged extra holes with cob. The access slits for the bees are 10-15cm thick. I cut them first with closely spaced drilling, then cleaned them out by chainsaw.

Ready for Occupants

Finally I placed the log on pilings, at an angle of 20 degrees, the slits facing due south. The little roof is made of plywood, to keep the hot Scottish sun ( ha ha!) from heating up the hive. I think that the bee colony should be comfy, even in winter. Later I'll add a screen for wind protection.

Before sealing the hive I rubbed lavender and lemon balm scents on the wood to attract passing bee scouts. I also left the bees a chunk of beeswax inside. 

I’m waiting for some bees to move in. No deposit necessary. I've also asked around the glen among local bee keepers for anyone with an extra colony. Here's a video. of how they might look.

Once a colony is established, the queen flies to the highest point where she starts to lay eggs and build the brood comb. Meanwhile the workers work at the lower and to build the comb for their winter food. The cloth cover is to prevent the honey laden comb from sticking to the cover.

Natural Honeycomb

For the first year I won’t harvest any honey. The Russian method is to harvest the honey in August. I'm not sure if that timing would work in Scotland, because the length of our winters are very unpredictable. In a long winter the bees could get hungry. This year for example, wintry conditions dragged on into May. Perhaps harvesting in early summer might be a better plan.

Does anyone out there fancy sticking their hand into the log and pilfering some honey? Do you think that the bees will mind?

Kissing's In Season

When gorse is out of bloom, kissing’s out o' season. These days our hillsides are covered in gorse which, thanks to the warm spell we had in March, is in full bloom. Kissing's also in season, and so I embarked on making gorse wine. For years, the thought of pricked fingers from picking gorse flowers dissuaded me from making gorse wine. One evening at Coldhome I tasted Fi Thompson’s wine. Something absolutely heavenly hit my pallete. The wine had captured the essence of sunlight; warmed the heart. It also had magnificent and complex body. Wow! The sensation was like a long and tender kiss.

The next day I was out on the land, in a gorse patch, pulling at the flowers with my bare fingers. It was a zen sort of exercise that required total mindfulness, at all times. Inattention was punished by getting pricked, sore fingers. I picked the brightest bushes, those with large, rich flower clumps, pulled them off. The rain dribbled on me, but what the hell. After a couple of hours I had amassed at almost two gallons of flowers. No blood on the fingers either.

Fi sent me her recipe. Here it is.

Ingredients:

 1 gallon gorse flowers
 2 oranges
 3 lb. sugar
 1 gallon water
 2 lemons
 Yeast; yeast nutrient

 Method:

The best plan is to put your flowers in a calico bag, which can then be dropped into the water and simmered for a quarter of an hour, afterwards making up the water to the original quantity. When you remove the bag, squeeze it well to extract the liquor, and return this to the bulk. Then dissolve the sugar in the liquid, and add the lemon and orange juice, and the skins (no pith) of the fruit. Allow the liquor to cool to 70 degrees F.then add the yeast (a general-purpose wine yeast) or a level teaspoon of granulated yeast and yeast nutrient. Three days is sufficient a soaking period to extract colour and aroma, and for fermentation to get well under way, as long as the liquor is kept in a warm place (65-70 degrees F.), closely covered and given an occasional stir. Then strain it into a fermenting jar and fit an air lock and put it in a slightly cooler place. Siphon it off the lees when the top third has cleared (after two to three months) and again three months later. Put in a cooler place still (55 degrees F.); it will be ready to drink after another two months or so.

Apparently, with the bottle I tasted,  Fi  left her wine in the fermenting jar for five years before she noticed it there. All recipes emphasize the need to allow this wine the time to mature. My mixture is in the fermenting jar, bubbling away. When Christmas rolls around, ask me how it tastes.

Hunger Games --- The Scottish Version

In both Gaia’s Children, and the short story, The Lottery, I speculate that in 50-100 years time Scotland will revert to being the land of small crofters, with most of the food grown on homesteads, typically a small house on a couple of acres of land. I surmised that the rising price of diesel would make large farms uneconomical. Farmers would then sell of their land, perhaps at a handsome price, to homesteaders. The same might also be accomplished through land reform : absentee lairds selling off their land to the locals. So, in the coming, warmer days, small scale food production will turn out to be more economical than today’s large scale, mechanized farms.

Science fiction? Maybe not entirely. In fact Russians demonstrated the effectiveness of small scale food production. I was recently startled to learn that in 1999, 35 million small family plots produced 90% of Russia’s potatoes, 77% of vegetables, 87% of fruits, 59% of meat, 49% of milk.

How else did the average Russian survive the transition from communism to capitalism in the 1990s: the years of crippling inflation, stagnant or non-existent salaries and sky high food prices? Most middle class people, including residents of Moscow and St. Petersburg had a country home --- the dacha, where they worked the land on weekends. In 1995 while on assignment in St. Petersburg, I visited one --- a small cabin with a woodstove for heating, no electricity, a composting toilet, and water drawn from a nearby well. It was on an acre of land planted with root vegetables, potatoes, cabbage, every vegetable that grows. I didn't see cereal crops; those still are mostly raised on large farms.

During July and August, city offices close their doors, the employees take off for their dachas where they tend their gardens, harvest their crops and preserve them for winter. Any excess is carted off to the city and hawked by little old ladies on street corners. Russians also are avid wild mushroom hunters, and have every recipe for preserving their haul.







Dachas in Omsk






Doesn’t the idea of small scale food production as a means for sustaining a large population, fly in the face of accepted economical models? What makes dacha farming work in Russia are several factors:

1. The existence of abundant cheap land. Russia has a very low population density.
2. Limited globalization. No access to farms in Africa for example, where these days most of UK vegetables are grown.
3. Low overhead. Dacha farming needs no mechanised equipment apart from a rotavator, often shared communally.
4. No reliance on oil-sourced energy.
5. Large numbers of people doing it (35 million families).

Is this the future face of Scotland? Except for access to cheap land (Point 1), and one could argue that there’s plenty of land, just that it isn’t accessible yet, the other factors could all become the new reality once global warming kicks in, and the price of oil soars out of reach. At least in Scotland which has a lower population density than England.

I believe that the Earth is not only growing warmer, but it will continue to do so, regardless of our best efforts to change the course. If that is the case (and I wish it weren't), we need to adapt to the coming, warmer environment. Securing a reliable food supply would be a priority. Kenya's vegetable farms won’t always be there to grow our food. If not, a new paradigm is called for: communities of small scale crofters, growing their food sustainably. The Russian experience demonstrates that it is much more than a pipe dream.