Free-Range Living

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'Flower Power ------- '

 'A green and pleasant land ---- Britain in bloom ---- '

  It's 'Britain in bloom' time hereabouts on the organic eco micro-holding (small smallholding) in the UK's midland region, June being the time of 'burgeoning blooms', both in the gardens and in the fields , and very nice it is, surrounded too with the 'green and peasant land'. there having been timely rains through springtime/early summer, along with a decent amount of sun. The flower garden here is of the 'cottage garden' type, in keeping really with the sort of place it is, complete with country cottage, or as it's sometimes known, 'the rural hovel'---  Maybe not anymore though, as the last piece of renovation work has not long taken place - the renovation of the conservatory. It was built approx. twenty years ago as a wooden-framed conservatory with a plastic sheet roof and double-glazed windows - a pretty cheap affair but then proving to be one of the best spaces in the house in the spring, summer and autumn, funneling warm air into the living rooms. It generally doesn't suffer the same limitation as a lot seem to , that of getting too hot in sunny weather, as right next door to it, along its length, is a high evergreen laurel hedge - about three metres high in fact, which has the good effect of shading it in hot weather, leaving it live-able in.

It's particularly useful in the UK's cooler spring and autumn seasons, giving an 'outside' space to comfortably sit in. In the winter the idea is to retreat into the living room by the woodstove fire, cosy, then as spring approaches,  to be looking forward in anticipation to being able to use the conservatory living space again - a good seasonal effect. It was showing signs of its age, and some wear and tear, so one or two quotes were obtained to replace it, but proved then to be pretty scarily expensive. Then, a bit of a 'micro' brainwave - there's a good small builder in the village - how about the idea of him carrying out a renovation? The upshot has been that this is what has taken place and there it is, virtually as good as new, with new doors and a new roof, and looking quite unique and splendid in different shades of stained wood, with also the advantage of the pleasant wood-lined interior and floor being kept - and all at a third of the cost of a replacement conservatory, plus 'keeping things local' - no corporate hassle or angst ---- Seeing things 'made good' again somehow seems too to give that bit of extra satisfaction - ?

 'Bloomin' good ---- '

 On the veg. growing front, it hasn't been too bad a season so far, pretty good, in fact really. The broad bean crop, disappointing last year, has been good this year, with three good bucketfulls of beans already picked, podded and in the freezer, and with still some to pick a bit later, There's then quite a bit of waste vegetation in the form of bean haulms to go on the compost heap, and the bean plants are busy still converting nitrogen from the atmosphere to nutrients in the soil - important therefore not to pull the whole plant up when the crop's finished, but rather to cut the stalks off at ground level - onto the compost heap again - leaving the bean roots in the ground so that the nodules of nitrogen can then release into the soil.

The spring sunshine ensured an early crop of strawberries from the new bed in the soft fruit area, then followed by what's turning out to be a bumper crop of raspberries - a bit of a struggle to keep up with them and taking some time to pick each day - still, shouldn't grumble ---- especially with 'grower's perks' to eat - strawberries, raspberries, raw garden peas (a danger of overdosing there), raw tender broad beans, spring onions, and along with bought fruit such as cherries (the birds get to get the home grown ones), tangerines and peaches, plus earthy-delicious par(t)- boiled fully-skinned early potatoes and lightly boiled freshly picked spring greens for veg on the plate, a 'bonanza of taste' time of year - can't beat it ---- Apparently good for the gut, too, according to a professor's article in yesterday's broad-sheet paper. He spent a period in Tanzania  eating 'au naturel', which improved his 'gut microbiome' (gut bacteria) by 20%  - eating berries, small animals, tree fruits, honey and the like. Reminds how artificial and 'manafactured' modern western diets courtesy of the fast-food outlets and the like, can be ---?

Other micro-holding crops such as potatoes appear to be yielding quite well - no blight disease yet, fingers crossed -  whilst growing crops such as peas, swedes and beetroot  all look promising. The one blot on the horizon has been the poor old onion crop, which went 'straggly and manky' very early on - only the bought-in sets ('baby onions'), not the home-grown onion plants - maybe that's the answer -just grow onions from h.g. plants from now on - ? They've had the nettle juice treatment and are showing useful signs of reviving, so hopefully a reasonable crop will still be had. The paper mentioned above also carried a piece relating that of all the global food produced, virtually half is wasted, via various stages of production, marketing and consumption, which seemed gob-smackingly high - ? Even once it had made it onto mainly supermarket shelves, apparently close on 30% was then wasted, either by the retail outlet or by the consumer, which again seems  a large percentage, particularly when measured against world human hunger - ?

Good, then, to be able to say that the wastage rate here at the eco micro-holding is virtually nil - not because there's no actual waste but because if there is, it's then used -some of it helps to feed good ol' boy Hipster Pipster collie dog, some is re-cycled back into food courtesy of the chick-chicks, who are laying like mad, and some of it finds its way onto the compost heap to then be of use as veg. area fertiliser. A form of 'super frugality' following the old admonition 'waste not, want not'- satisfying too ------? With such practices, and the self-contained 'permaculture' growing system, plus having wood as the renewable main fuel, the hope here even on the micro-holding's small area of ground (.5/acre, .2ha), is to have a very light eco footprint. Pretty much the same could be attained, for instance, via just a garden and an allotment (small area of ground for veg. and fruit growing) -----

 'Stem-ming the tide ---- '

 Talking of 'flower power' takes things back to the 1960's, and the 'summer of love', with the hippies wearing flowers in their hair - rather pleasant really. Their spirit may thankfully be not yet dead, looking at the Gastonbury festival goers on the TV the other evening, where their spirits were high and there was an obvious good fellow feeling and 'bonhommie' atmosphere. The younger generations here in the UK are said in the broadsheet papers to be rejecting the corporate culture as being too cynical and 'on the make', working overwell for the 'rich and powerful' and underwell for most of the rest, and presumably rejecting too modern culture's 'low collectivity' factor  - ? Anything 'social' appears to have become 'infra dig' in recent years here in the UK, even though, hey, societies are an actuality - people live in them --- It seems that in freeworld type societies, a balance needs to be struck between individual needs and society needs (known as 'social' needs) and that currently a re-balancing process has begun, with for instance many living spaces for so-called 'ordinary' people i.e. tower blocks, now being recognised as 'unsafe for human habitation' (the human being being quite an extraordinary mechanism and spirit, should mean that all people are extra-ordinary - ?) ( see Gary Zukav's The Seat of the Soul ) As a  'captain of industry (chairman of a giant firm) was writing in a broadsheet paper the other day, some of the large and giant corporate conglomerates who are reported to practice extensive and sophisticated tax paying avoidance maybe amongst those who need to get the 'balance' message and then pay their way - if they don't doesn't then an unfair burden fall on those - the so-called 'ordinary' folk again - who can't evade their due level of taxation - ?

Politicians here in the UK are making calls for a fairer society, presumably then one which, like the Scandinavian models, is 'inclusive' rather than 'exclusive and exploitative' and treats its citizens fairly and with respect - ? It'll likely though be a 'proof of the pudding' job, no doubt - with a current testing of whether the long period of austerity for so-called 'ordinary folk', seemingly brought about by the Uk's financial sector's malpractice, is actually ended - ? Some reports for instance indicate that such 'long-term' austerity may be counter-productive, in that, for instance, a shortage of nurses caused by their disadvantaged work situation, has had to be met by then employing high cost agency staff. A darker analysis had it that the 2008 financial crisis was 'man-made' by people who wanted to line their own pockets and then use the ensuing crisis as a 'bona-fide' reason for a power clamp-down on the populace, pointing to the exclusing 'theory X' 'zero trust' management styles that have proliferated in recent years, as evidence. ('theory X, theory Y' people management styles - see next month's piece). Such trends might also 'fit' with what Fritz Schumacher, of 'Small is Beautiful' renown, called the 'Giantisation' of society - the rise of large and mega-large commercial and governing organisations, and 'big' power. The EC has for instance recently levied a huge fine on a giant US firm, apparently concerned at the way such 'extra large' firms can and do practice monopoly type power in the market places  - 'power can corrupt', as they say.

'Well, petal ----'

 After some needed remedial heart reparations - at least they found one - it's time to start to gently ease back into the eco micro-holding lifestyle - can't be bad - the peace, the space, the isolation, the quiet, the 'green oasis' surroundings. And as Bette Midler, the American star, stated awhile back, (or words to this effect) : 'You get to the stage of needing the green retreat '. Maybe D.H.Lawrence, the writer, undoubtedly a 'freeranger' himself, lauding the concept of 'man as a thought adventurer', would have treated such an oasis as a retreat from his aversion to 'ghastly white idealism'. Maybe too, modern young people, recently reported as spending on average six hours a day on the internet, will experience something of  the 'information overkill' one author warned against : 'the amount of information coming the individual's way could squeeze out common sense', then needing 'the green retreat'------ ?