Back to the Future in Monmouth

At the end of March I left Cornwall behind once more and drove back to Somerset where I spent a night with a couple that I met through my earlier Somerset WWOOF host, who want me to do a paid farm sit for them in June when they go on their annual holiday. I have been toying with the idea of doing paid farm/smallholding/house-sits as a new career, but hadn’t made a firm decision about it – looks as if Fate took a hand in the proceedings and precipitated me into it. It will be quite nice to earn money again! My first-ever WWOOF hosts, who were quite money-oriented, couldn’t understand why I didn’t want to get paid to look after other people’s places, but in those far-off days I didn’t have the confidence to believe I was competent enough.

From there I drove back to Cheltenham for a few days with my Mum and also had the lovely surprise of not only my children visiting on the Sunday, but also my brother and his little daughter who came to stay for a few days during the Easter holidays. My WWOOF hosts in Cornwall had generously given me the gift of a leg of Cornish lamb (their own) which had been wrapped in bubble wrap and newspaper so that it would be OK overnight in my car on the way back, so we had that for Sunday lunch. It was absolutely delicious, and made me realise all over again, just how much I miss being self-sufficient in meat production.

On 2nd April I sallied forth once more and headed for a new WWOOF host just outside Monmouth. Luckily she had emailed me some very comprehensive instructions on how to find her, which was just as well, as I seemed to be driving for a long time down narrow lanes with very little in the way of habitation! Eventually, I came upon a small hamlet with a cluster of houses around a tiny green complete with waterpump and a tiny church, which is now a private house. From there I had to drive a further half mile down a no through road before arriving in the farm yard. The farm dates back in part to the 16th Century and was obviously quite important at one time as it had its own mill down by the stream to which other local farmers would bring their grain for milling. It is thought that this mill was not for grinding flour for human consumption but more for milling grain for livestock feed, but very little is known for sure. However, there was evidence of several cart tracks coming from different directions to reach the mill. I spent my first day off poking about in the woods surrounding the mill and trying to make sense of the layout – behind the mill was an obvious flat channel (the mill leat) that ran for several hundred yards back from the mill ending abruptly at the stream. However, I could not make sense of this as the stream level, even allowing for the fact that the water level was low due to the dry winter and early spring, was far too low to have ever fed into the leat. Eventually, I waded across the stream and had a look on the other bank where it soon became obvious that I was standing in what had once been the mill pond, confirmed by the finding of a very well-built overspill weir in the remaining stone wall. This made no sense at all and it wasn’t until I spoke to my host that things became clearer – in the early years of the twentieth century there had been some very wet and stormy winters and it is thought that during one of these the stream, that had once flowed into and out of the mill pond, dramatically changed course and cut a much deeper bed slicing straight through between the mill pond and the mill leat and effectively making the mill redundant. It is certainly true that the records show a Miller still present in 1896 but no record of one after that date.

My host is heavily involved with the Transition Movement in Monmouth and is Chair of the Food Sub-Committee. The Transition Initiative originally started as an academic investigation at a college in Ireland, into what could be done to lessen the impact of less and more costly petroleum products after Peak Oil. It is also closely tied in with the movement combating climate change, and really took off in Totnes, in this country, before spreading worldwide. I read most of a book about the movement that Ann lent me(The Transition Handbook), and it was quite inspirational – instead of seeing the world as a worse place without cheap petrol, it is viewed as a much more community-based world with food being grown more locally and people being employed within the community, etc. It is far too complex to go into here but worthy of further investigation, if you are interested. It seems to herald a return to a slower, more community-based way of life, which existed everywhere before the middle of the 1800’s, and I, for one, would not mind that too much. Ann is already investigating the purchase of a house cow and also a pony that could be used for transportation but also as a replacement for the diesel-guzzling tractor! I think, if you know anything about the way the Amish live, this would give you a clue to how life could be after Peak Oil.

Ann is essentially self-sufficient year round in vegetables, which is an amazing achievement! However, this is the ‘Hungry Gap’ in terms of vegetable gardening in this country, when the winter veg are coming to an end and the new season’s vegetables are not quite ready. There was still some early purple sprouting broccoli, carrots, parsnips and leeks in the garden but little else, although there were a few salad leaves in the polytunnel so some vegetables did have to be bought, but not many. I was also treated to some home-reared pork and bacon which was truly delicious! Ann had just taken delivery of her next batch of weaner pigs, five Tamworth x Gloucester Old Spot, and they were settling into their new quarters out in the orchard. For the first few days they rarely moved from the area around the old chicken house that they had made Headquarters, but quite soon they were roaming all over the orchard rooting around and playing with old bits of polythene, etc. I tried not to get too distracted by their antics as my main job was to do some serious weeding and digging in the vegetable patch as Ann had a bad back and her 92-year old mother could only manage lighter weeding jobs! These two ladies were inspirational and I admired Ann tremendously for even trying to carry on the farm virtually single-handed – she could really do with a regular farm-worker but, alas, she lacks the money to pay someone. As well as the pigs and the vegetable garden, she had a small flock of sheep of whom thirteen were due to lamb starting during my second week there. They were mainly Ryeland ewes, a lowland breed, but Ann had decided to out cross them with a hardier native breed and had chosen two jet-black Hebridean rams with impressive sets of horns. We were intrigued to see how the lambs would look with such a cross, but the four that were born before I left looked just like their mothers – no black at all apart from the usual Ryeland speckling around the ears.

On another of my days off, I went for a walk starting at the mill and climbing up away from the farm on one of the old sunken cart tracks before heading off along a ridgeway. I then plunged back down another steep valley where I came across the remains of some more houses before striking back up onto another ridgeway and back around to the farm – a distance of about 4 miles. Again, the ruined houses by the stream in the wooded valley held some historical interest as the footpath that ran past them had been the original main route from Monmouth to Abergavenny and it is thought that one of the ruins was an inn and another was the old smithy where weary travellers could put up for the night and get their horses re-shod for the journey ahead. The ruin that was probably the smithy had a small stream running underneath it in a stone conduit so water was handy for quenching the redhot metal – ingenious! I sometimes wish there was such a thing as a time machine, just so that I could travel back to see what these places used to look like instead of having to imagine it and fill in the missing bits with guesswork. My knowledge of social history is abysmal – I really should make a concerted effort to rectify that at some point.

On a beautiful, sunlit Sunday morning I left the little sheltered wooded valley and meandered my way north, up the Border Counties once more, threading in and out of England and Wales so frequently that I was almost dizzy, to return to another Welsh valley, and forty-five-degree-gardening, near Oswestry.

Last days in Cornwall

For the last ten days of my stay at East Penrest Farm I was a lone WWOOFer as YaYa left on the morning of Mothering Sunday, but not before she had constructed Mother’s Day cards for Jo and I using scraps of coloured paper beautifully fashioned into 3D-effect pictures – mine was of a landscape with hills and a lake and a tree in the foreground, and Jo’s was of flowers – so clever!

Jo and James went away for a couple of days, leaving me in charge of the farm, as they wanted to go and stay in another Shepherd’s Hut to pick up a few ideas for theirs. I was a bit concerned that the ladies-in-waiting might pick this moment to start dropping their lambs even though it would be nearly two weeks early, but everything was OK and there were no incidents to report. I spent my time constructing raised beds in the greenhouse and barrowing in well-rotted manure from the heap outside the animal barn. I also decided to tidy the shed as I thought it would be a useful storage area for seed trays, etc and it had got to be rather a jumble – these WWOOFers never put anything away properly! I found a long length of batten and decided to screw it to the wall of the shed to hang tools from. I thought I’d do a proper job so took up the spirit level – luckily I stood back from my work before I’d fixed the second screw completely, as the wood was running downhill at a steep angle. For a moment I couldn’t quite understand why it wasn’t level when I’d carefully used the spirit level, and then it dawned on me – the shed wasn’t level! I adjusted the slope of the batten to follow the sides of the shed and soon had all the spades, forks, etc hanging neatly from nails – see, that controlling nature of mine is still only just below the surface!

When Jo and James returned they took me, and their daughter’s family, for a special tea at Endsleigh House Hotel. This had originally been the Duke of Bedford’s ‘country cottage’ and is set down a very long driveway lined with rhododendron and camellia bushes. The front door was opened to us by the French Maitre d’ who escorted us to a cosy sitting room complete with log fire and fine views down across the grounds to the River Tamar, and then took our orders for the type of tea we would like to drink. As I don’t have a clue about different tea types, I settled for Earl Grey and then we went into an adjoining room where a circular table was groaning under its load of delectable tea-time treats: there were sandwiches (no crusts) with smoked salmon, egg mayonnaise, ham, etc; scones (both plain and fruit) with bowls of jam and clotted cream; a jam-and-fresh-cream-filled sponge cake; a cake stand with small chocolate brownies and flapjacks. The amazing thing was that we could eat as much as we wanted for an all-inclusive price and a waiter just kept replenishing the plates! I was very sad that, despite the fact that I’d only had a very light lunch, I was full after a couple of sandwiches and two scones, jam and cream – I couldn’t even manage a piece of the sponge cake!

Next day it was back to work, at the bungalow this time getting it ready for some weekend visitors. I also started to cut down the beech hedge which had got seriously out of hand over the last few years and needed loppers and a pruning g saw to get it back down from about twenty feet high to about four! Over a period of a couple of days Jo and I managed to virtually finish it leaving us with a seriously large pile of brash that needed burning. There was also a large heap of brashy timber halfway down the paddock that had been there since last April, so I promised myself a bonfire once the visitors had gone home. The following week, while Jo and James were busy sorting out the garage at the bungalow, I dragged all the beech cuttings down to the heap and cut off all the bits that couldn’t usefully be used as firewood. When I was part way through this exercise the urge to light the bonfire got too much for me, so I got some cardboard and matches from Jo and lit it. Well.........it wasn’t quite as spectacular as The Great Pallet Fire of 2002*, but the whole lot went ‘Whoooosh!’, and by the time I’d walked nonchalantly back to the garage to return the matches, the whole enormous heap had virtually disappeared! Well, ‘if you’re going to have one, have a big’un’ is my motto!

On my last Saturday in Cornwall, I decided to venture off the farm and explore the Tamar Valley a bit. I thought of going to Morwellham Quay (where Edwardian Farm’ was filmed) but ended up going to Cothele House and estate instead. The weather was spectacularly warm and sunny and it was their Daffodil Weekend. They have over 180 different varieties planted around the gardens and orchard and most of these were grown commercially in the Tamar Valley at some point. The Tamar Valley was a bit like the Cheddar Valley used to be, in that they grew strawberries and cut flowers for the markets around the country, but a few weeks earlier than the Cheddar area. A small mystery was solved for me while I was reading the display boards that they had in the daffodil marquee: I had noticed that there were lots of ‘wild’ daffodils in the hedges all around this part of Cornwall, but they didn’t look like the really wild daffodils that you find around Newent in Gloucestershire. Apparently, during the Second World War the market gardeners of the Tamar Valley were forced by the Ministry of Food, to reduce their daffodil beds by 50% year on year. Because, they still had a market for early flowers and because they didn’t want to lose their carefully cultivated varieties, a lot of the market gardeners dug up the bulbs and carefully replanted them in the hedgerows! I had great fun using my new camera (thanks, Dave!) to take close up photos of several flowers and some butterflies (have a look on my Facebook album, if you haven’t already) and had a marvellous day out.

Because I love this part of the country so much, I have been keeping my eye on the property market in case anything appealed to me, and I was intrigued to see a property actually in Launceston with a huge back garden for a ridiculous price, so made an appointment to view it. The cottage (Grade II listed) dated from the 1700’s and was set on quite a steep, but quiet road in the town. However, although I was up for a project, this was a project-too-far, I think! Jo came with me and we met the estate agent outside, but inside there was a tremendous amount of work that needed doing, including what looked like the replacement of a very large structural beam that was holding up the dining room ceiling. The roof also needed re-doing, but I think the biggest challenge would have been the garden. The chap who was selling it had lived there with his parents who had basically, run a market garden from there with every inch of space utilised for crops (as borne out by the aerial photos on the wall) but as they became elderly the ground had been gradually covered with paving slabs and gravel, all of which had been brought through the house as there was no rear entrance to the garden! This meant that, if the garden was to be returned to anything like its former glory, all that hard landscaping would have to be taken back out through the house! I’m sure someone will snap it up at that price and make a real gem of a property out of it, but I don’t think that person is going to be me.

*For all those that don’t already know the story: Back in 2002, Barry and I were renting a field that we subsequently bought. It had an old Dutch barn in one corner and leaning up against it was a huge mouldering pile of pallets that spread out and back from it and covered many square yards. Most of the pallets were sodden and rotten and overgrown with brambles and we asked the owner if we could gradually burn them up. Permission having been given we chose a still evening and I cautiously started a small fire on the furthest edge from the barn. The fire smoked and smouldered and did very little as this was where the most rotten pallets were, but a little breeze blew up and a few little flames licked up. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a red glow over by the barn and before Barry could get back to me (in the truck from the stableyard just a couple of hundred yards away) the whole stack of pallets by the barn was well alight. Luckily, there was nothing else around that could catch fire, but of course the flames were about thirty feet high, at dusk, on the slope of the Mendips and could be seen for miles! It wasn’t long before we heard sirens approaching from the direction of Cheddar! At this point, I legged it into the darkness leaving Barry, leaning nonchalantly on his pitchfork, to explain to the firemen that he was ‘just burning up a bit of rubbish’! I was not allowed to forget for a long time that a) I’d started the fire and b) I’d run away from the scene of the crime! The fire chief seemed quite happy with Barry’s story and assessed that the fire would be out in about an hour – in fact it was still burning the next morning and we never had any trouble with brambles on that patch of ground again.