FORMER Reconnect editor MARTIN FOSTER takes off his wellies and fires up his laptop to bring us another everyday tale of off-grid smallholding folk…
DURING my time as Reconnect editor, I always really enjoyed putting together the Feb/Mar issue. With its preview of the forthcoming festival season, it has a sense of optimism about it – a reminder of the brighter, warmer times to come. Although most of the work has to be done in the thick of Winter, the editor’s inbox soon fills with stories of the community’s future plans, popping up like early snowdrops in Spring. Since moving out of the editor’s chair and more or less permanently into wellies here at Tigley Tump, I’ve hugely enjoyed living more in tune with the seasons. But that doesn’t mean just staying indoors with boardgames if it’s wet… There’s a very different kind of energy and rhythm to winterlife on the land. This morning it didn’t get light until around 8.15am and it will be dark again by 4.30pm this evening. Life is slower and somehow heavier, but while the combination of lower energy levels and bad weather would suggest throwing another log on the stove and filling another bowl with hearty, root vegetable soup, there’s still work to be done. If you produce some of your own food, as we do, and particularly if you keep livestock, waiting for fairer weather simply isn’t an option. Everything will have died by April. Professional fell-walker Alfred Wainwright famously said, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing…” But while ‘bad weather’ is definitely too subjective, getting into suitable clothing is definitely a pain in the arse. This morning, like most days recently, I laid in bed waiting for the sun to rise and hoping the rain, beating on the roof, would abate. Like most days recently, it was still wet when I left the house, so I first pulled waterproof trousers over my work jeans and slipped into my rainproof, hooded coat and cap (with peak to reduce the amount of rain that falls on my glasses – God, glasses are a pain in the rain) before heading off into the storm. Wet and windy weather means the animals and poultry (who apparently have more sense than we humans) spend more time indoors. They also eat more. And that means they need cleaning out more regularly. Shovelling shit and replacing bedding is just one of the jobs the livestock keeper takes in his or her stride – but add a few acres of mud to the process and every stride becomes perilously risky. The simple act of walking from A to B is… well, no longer that simple. Think shit-smeared ice rink and you’ll be getting close. Stick a 20kg bag of chicken feed on your shoulder, or carry a full bucket of icy water, and the potential for hilarious consequences is enough to get Harry Hill tightening his pursestrings. Bad weather (sorry, Mr Wainwright, but I definitely prefer clothing suitable for dry, sunny weather) not only makes it more difficult to perform what would normally be routine jobs – it’s a complete work-creation scheme in its own right. My day usually starts with letting the chickens out of their houses and topping up their food and drink, but last night was the windiest and wettest yet, so first I had to lift one of the chicken house roofs back into place (we bought the coop secondhand and I had kind of assumed someone had screwed the roof on); and then call on my friend Ivan to help me put our pig arc (a large plastic pig house) back on its base after the wind had ripped it from its fixings overnight. Yesterday I spent two hours replacing the roof of another chicken house which the wind had blown over, before removing, reworking and replacing a door which had swollen in the rain, putting extra strain on hinges and patience alike. Now this does all sound a lot moanier than I really feel. These first three months of the year are also an exciting time for planning; for reviewing how things went last year and deciding how we might improve things next time around. My wife Jenny and I have completely changed almost every aspect of our lives over the past 12 months and we are still only at the start of this new adventure. Clearly, I don’t have to live this way – but in truth I love every muddy-booted moment of it. Which, I suspect, is where Mr Wainwright and I do agree.