whose land is it, anyway?

At the climate camp last week there were discussions of what to write on a banner to drop off the side of County Hall. ‘Get off my land’ was a popular choice: after all, whose land and whose council is it anyway? 

The Climate Camp passed peacefully and met its main aims (see this sweet short video): to practice and demonstrate living lightly together on the land as well as carrying out peaceful direct actions against nearby climate ‘offenders’. But, as one interesting column asked, is that all that Climate Camp is for? Is there a call to work more deeply with locals on their issues? And a Lewes academic reminded us of the role of local in preserving things we value when democratic routes fail.

A consensus at the closing of the camp agreed that a group of people – activists, homeless people and local residents – stay on the site as long as possible to buy time for Lewes residents and councils to allow us to have a say in the future use of the three acres of prime ground in central Lewes. We put in some Freedom of Information requests, with the help of a government employee codenamed Puffles, for information about what has been discussed, planned and surveyed for its future. Rumours abound from within County Hall that demolition of the buildings had been imminent. We need to know. Whose land is it to dispose of for building, car parks and the like? STAND – St Anne’s Diggers – is forming around this issue and will be putting a call out for participation. The grounds are open for any resident visitors or campers as well as every Sunday a picnic from noon and community meeting at 3pm.

Last week, as I was scouting St Anne's boundaries with County Hall, I came across a little sign hidden in the undergrowth  next to one of County Hall’s car parks: ‘Designated Biodiversity Area’. This was a thin strip of cow parsley and long grass, a portion of which acted as a dumping ground for the clippings from the lawns. The huge County Hall site itself is probably 98% buildings, car park and lawn. It says a lot about the mentality of our council that it even trashes, unopposed by any employees, the tiny area allocated to ‘biodiversity’.

Because biodiversity means ‘wild’. It means the place that many other beings live, because they can’t live on concrete and lawns. That’s what’s so lovely about the St Anne’s site: it has been kept secret and virtually unused for seven years, allowed to grow and stretch into itself. Having spent 10 nights on this land, belly to belly, I have started to fall in love with it, as have other Lewesians coming onto it for the first time. Strong words, but a completely natural response to a gorgeous terrain. It’s this visceral response that helps us to care about natural places, especially wild places which are inhabited by the other beings such as trees, bats, birds, hedgehogs and bugs and which makes us grieve when those places are ripped up and turned into money. 

I’ve seen a strong desire to interact with this place, to tame it, plant it, inhabit it with treehouses – turn it into something for our use – and County Hall says it has a fiduciary responsibility to make the most money possible from land. But my personal sense is, for now, let’s leave it, let’s visit it lightly, let’s go gently and leave only footprints. Because, whose land is it, anyway?

the wasteland

A little pleasure garden is rising out of the rubbish and brambles on the North Street industrial estate. In the marginal land between a building that used to house the fire brigade and the walled-in river, a patch is being tended, tenderly, by a few people thrown together through the love of it. It’s a community garden in the making, so everyone’s welcome. On the first day we picked up the litter and cut back the brambles. The stronger among us hoisted logs to make a hexagonal raised keyhole bed. At the next session we planted strawberries, raspberries and an artichoke in it and made some paths using an old pile of woodchip. A little boy pitched in with his bucket and spade. An artist made a path around a welcoming mound by the entrance, on which we’ll plant crocuses, primroses and forget-me-nots. Soon we’ll make a swing, a fire pit and somewhere to sit, and a willow dome for the children, all out of scraps and unwanted things. A friend is running a biodynamic compost making workshop there soon, which will help revitalise the polluted soil. It’s becoming a place of beauty and intention.

Last week’s Costing the Earth spent 30 minutes covering the New Diggers, a new wave of people reclaiming unused land all over Britain in order to feed themselves. It’s a visceral collective response to climate change and peak oil, a move to empower ourselves in the face of uncertainty.

We all garden for different reasons, and this patch is special to me because of the people I am working with and because I love marginal places, derelict land where nature shows up through the cracks. That’s the reason why I never pay to visit National Trust gardens and the like; to me they’re sterile, forced arrangements in comparison. No, the wild places, the edges, are where it’s all happening. Last night’s totally gorgeous Natural World focused on the Wild Places of Essex. And there are plenty all around Lewes, when you start to look. From the moss on a wall to the tall grasses on the mounts and the wild patches near the castle, nature is constantly reasserting herself; you can never keep her down, never tame her. So we’re helping her along, a bit of Earth repair in our little Pop-Up garden, a place where people can be together and do what comes naturally.

Knowing our onions

Despite the background chatter, news of the world crisis/opportunity is deepening daily. The future scenarios vary from apolcalyptic to idealised, so I stick to comment by deep thinkers and visionaries. Richard Heinberg, who visited Lewes recently, describes this time as the calm before the storm and encourages us to appreciate what’s around us. When he was in Lewes he spoke of the need for the world to develop resilient, localised communities, which are flexible and able to respond intelligently to shaky economies, resource shortages and climate impacts such as flooding.

In this recent video, he notes that we’ve already missed several opportunities to do so but that we still have the luxury of time and relative wealth to prepare ourselves and our communities. In terms of a risk assessment, it seems sensible, however surreal, to respond even to a small risk with a big potential impact.

These days I’m developing my food growing skills, since I’ve always had a latent smallholder in me. I’m already outgrowing my tiny garden and am planning next year’s experiment: a medium plot of potatoes, onions, beans and pumpkins. I’ll grow leafy greens and herbs at home and am looking for a plot near enough to commute to for those staples. Robin has offered me a corner of his field, or perhaps I’ll look for someone who wants to share their garden in Transition Town Lewes’s Garden Buddies scheme. One of the most radical positive acts we can do in these times is grow our own organic vegetables or buy them from a local grower.

Getting oil out of our food

In Transition Town Lewes we’ve been asking for a while how we will feed ourselves in a world after oil. Now it’s a relief to hear this question go mainstream. The answers that arise are varied and often exciting. The Food Programme last week featured communities growing their own food and ended with an interview with the eloquent Kath Dalmeny from Sustain. ‘We’ve got to have a vision of what we want to world to be like when the oil prices become too high,’ she said. ‘There are some examples of this already: there are park deparments who are allowing land to be used as community gardens, Crown Estates, training up small producers. There are community supported farms such as Tablehurst and Plawhatch in East Sussex issuing shares. We’ve got to get serious about this stuff if we’re going to grow enough food to make a difference.’

She pointed out that we cannot wait for government to take the lead and suspects a lot of initiatives will come from local people demanding them. ‘If you look at the carbon footprint of the food we eat, it makes most sense to grow our horticultural produce - perishable salad leaves and so on - very close to where they are consumed. That way you can take away the need for refrigeration. We need a growing policy for the UK, a kind of vision that would genuinely take oil out of the equation.’

Monbiot, too, writes about how small farms and smallholdings across the world are far more productive than broadscale agriculture. Almost all commentators, other than the Monsanto gang, are pointing in the same direction: in a world with less oil we will feed ourselves locally. It’s common sense. Last weekend a group of us planted a small urban edible garden in public view just opposite St John’s Sub-Castro. A quick covering of foraged cardboard, compost and straw excludes the weeds in this no-dig garden and provides a mulch for the pumpkins, squash, cucumbers, sweetcorn and marrows (by request of the owner).

Lewes must be at least 20% garden. And we’re blessed with a number of excellent local farmers and growers. We can feed ourselves, sooner by choice or later by necessity. I know what option I prefer.

The alchemy of compost

It’s the time of year when, seeds ready, buds swelling and air warming, the growing season beckons. The ancestral memory stirs in our bones, drawing us outside into the garden. Though our ancestors would never have grown lupins or petunias – silly floozy bedding flowers that have no use at all. Being a permaculturalist, I like to eat my garden.

Each year before I plant I go through the ritual of emptying the compost heap on to the beds, to add to the soil that will feed my food this season. I’ve been hooked on composting since my twenties. It’s the ultimate closing of the life cycle loop, death feeding life. Like most living things, compost improves with age. What goes in the compost heap a mess of waste - vegbox peelings, Guardians, hair, hooverings, wood ash, old clothes, cardboard and whatnots from the bathroom - comes out sweet smelling, crumbly, fine soil.

My preference is for an open bin, about a metre cubed capacity. The compost doesn’t turn sour or smelly and you can make the bin out of natural things like pallets. As a result, I have a rat issue. I don’t say, Problem, because the rat is brilliant at turning the compost. But my neighbour’s son saw the rat climbing their back steps the other day. Sorry rat; you will have to die.

Insider information: for free composting advice contact the Compost Doctor

Whatever the weather

This morning John Humphreys said on the radio that the weather forecast “is not very nice at all”. Yesterday he said it was “gloomy” and the day before he said that “rain threatens”. I shall be writing to him in person. Following the driest April on record, with about one hour of drizzle, and predictions of drought, the rain this week came as a blessing, to me. When the first drops spattered against the window at the Transition Town Lewes HQ I gave a great cheer and threw the window open to savour the whole at-long-last event. I hurried home and planted out all my seedlings in waiting, and the herbs from Wellingham Gardens and the bushes from Goldcrest Nurseries.This is what you do before rain - you plant out your plants and then let the rain come - April showers, it used to be called - and after a day of rain I mulched with grass cuttings from the Ham Lane dump. I went there on Sunday, in the community car, on the off chance I’d find mulch (and not minded to buy a bale of straw, my usual mulch of choice, being in a non-buying mode these days). I got four sackfuls of someone’s sweet, fresh first-of-the-year grass cuttings, and four more of hot, rotting grass cuttings from another woman about to lob them into the bins. I went home and mulched the newly planted forest garden, safe in the knowledge that I am preserving the rain in the soil for the rainless times ahead.

Earth to belly to earth

My husband dug our garden over to vegetables at Easter. Underneath our four-metre square patio, the soil was squirming with earthworms. We kept a few brick paths, so as not to step on the crumbly soft soil. The rest of the bricks were carted off by a variety of Freecyclers. Manure came in thanks to Raystede Animal Sanctuary. The organic seeds, from Tamar, have been growing in pots in our kitchen, now ‘hardening off’ as they go out for the day and come in for nights. I’ve started to plant out the beans, up a wigwam of young coppiced chestnut from the woods.

The whole amazing sacred cycle has started again. Five of my friends are growing vegetables for the first time this year. Latest figures from the Horticultural Trade Association show a 31% increase in the sale of vegetable seeds and a corresponding 32% drop in flower seeds. A combination of disillusion with what’s on offer and a renewed appreciation for the soil, our land and food, are making veggie growing a compelling pastime.

A few tomato plants, year round herbs and an experiment to find the best drying beans is not going to feed my family. But what I love, what I deeply passionately love, is the anticipation brought by seedlings, working late on a summer’s evening, listening to the blackbirds; smelling the earth; feeling the rain; harvesting the food; co-creating with nature and the universe. I’ve rejoined the blessed cycle of earth to belly to earth.