A plum job

For the last few days I have been getting stuck in to the time-consuming though not unpleasant job of harvesting plums. We have several Czar plum trees in our old orchard, which have suckered all over the place, and every year they produce a phenomenal number of plums, which all ripen pretty much at the same time. If there is someone available to pick them all (sometimes a Wooffer) then there is still the job of doing something with them before they turn to mush, which can be a big job if you are suddenly presented with several buckets-full.

To make things easier, I have been picking them in smallish numbers every day, and cutting and stoning them at the same time (necessary anyway to avoid the occasional disgusting surprise of a maggot!). I’ve been laying them out on trays in the freezer overnight, before transferring them to bags the following day.

In this way I am hoping that we can save more this year from rotting on the tree or attracting wasps (there are already a huge number of wasps feasting on them – talk about Fair Shares!). We’ve already taken some fresh ones in to work (in some cases swapping for courgettes), and we’ll be hosting a group jam-making session in 3 weeks time (by which time presumably all the trees will be empty. They were a bit early this year, oddly, as it was predicted they would be late!)

The orchard that the plums grow in is the site for the new forest garden we will be designing on our course in August. There’s a possibility that we might be able to graft some different plums or other fruit onto the Czar rootstock, so that next year maybe harvesting will be a bit more spread out, with a bit more variety. Not that I’m snubbing the delicious plum crumble I’ve just devoured (thanks mum!).

Wasted

The current landfill cell at Waterbeach, lined with tyres and with pipes visible for collecting methane.

Yesterday I took a group of people to visit the local Waste Management Park, where Cambridge’s refuse is processed and landfilled, and garden and food waste are composted. I have visited before (I work in waste & recycling), but despite this I found it still made an impact on me. On the one hand, it was great to see the contrast with the last time I visited. Since then an enormous Mechanical Biological Treatment plant has been built which extracts as much recyclable material as possible from the rubbish, and then composts the leftover mainly organic material in two gigantic composting halls. This meant that the landfill cell which by this time last year would have been full up was only perhaps three-quarters full – great progress. But when we were shown through to a window overlooking one of the composting halls to see an area the size of a football pitch covered with half-composted waste (to exclamations of “Oh my god!” from a couple of the people in the group) I was reminded of how shocking and disgusting it is that humans still produce so much waste. Cambridgeshire is one of the top counties for recycling and composting, but we still send just under half our rubbish to landfill (albeit through this plant that attempts to salvage what it can – low-quality materials worth a fraction what they would be if they were put in the recycling bin instead). 400 tonnes of waste every day go into the plant, most of which could have been avoided, reused or recycled if people had taken a bit more personal responsibility rather than expecting someone else to deal with it at great expense afterwards.

Connections

We had our Introduction to Permaculture course here at the weekend, and it was lovely to meet people from both near and far who are interested in permaculture and low-impact living. It’s always fun to meet people who you’ve only corresponded with by email – you don’t realise that you expected them to be a certain way until you meet and find them different.

There is always a great energy when a group of people get together to learn about permaculture – it’s not so much a course as some kind of rite of passage. The connections that people make with one another and the conversations shared around the camp fire are just as valuable and intense as the teaching itself. I think that everyone goes away feeling a change. I’m looking forward to having some longer residential courses here in due course – watch this space!

Spin-off

On Saturday I went to the excellent ‘SkillsFest’ in Romsey organised by Transition Cambridge. I had offered to demonstrate spinning, something that I learned to do when we had sheep on the farm a few years ago. I love that it’s possible to create something wearable entirely from scratch – from tending the animals, shearing them (well, having a go anyway), washing the wool, spinning and plying, dyeing and knitting it. It seems that a lot of people share my excitement for this process, as another lady and myself must have shown around a dozen people how to spin in the space of 3 hours. For me it was a brilliant excuse to dust off the spinning wheel which I have neglected for probably a year now and get stuck into it again. The event actually went far too quickly – there were all sorts of interesting things going on – a packed roomful of people learning about herbal medicine, people making jam in the kitchen, Tunisian crochet, knitting and jewelery-making, bike maintenance, and probably some other things which I didn’t even see. It was all very well-organised, had a lovely friendly atmosphere and it was great to meet other people interested in the same things. I’m now resolved to go along to the spinning group in nearby Rampton when I can and keep my wheel from gathering dust.

Belonging

I have been meaning to set this blog up for a while, and now that I have finally got around to it it’s so hard to pick something to write about – there is so much going on at this time of year! But I thought I would start with the chance discovery of a book which I came across the other day in a rare half-hour spent delightedly browsing the Heffers Childrens bookshop.

It’s called ‘Belonging’ by an Australian by the name of Jeannie Baker, and it’s a wordless book of beautifully crafted pictures of a townscape as viewed from the bedroom window of a house. The bedroom belongs to Tracy, a little girl whose life unfolds through the pages of the book, and whom we learn a lot about without reading a word. I won’t spoil it for you as its a beautiful book which I hope you will seek out, but I felt it was a powerful illustration of permaculture ethics and guerilla gardening in action, and a brilliant positive book about transformation.