thebeginningofitall

The old Travis Perkins site on Mill Lane, Newbury in its current desolate, adandoned state, has a hidden beauty before it’s inevitable face lift.  In its current untamed state, it for a second, symbolises our thankfully still remaining fagility against nature.  Machete in hand, a 30 minute frenzy of sweat and exhaustion in the sub tropical jungles of eastern Bolivia outlined a refreshing human helplessness in me against nature.  I had done little to tame the Chusquea ridden thickets of impenetrable scrub. In a similar way, plants have so easily colonised the forsaken site on Mill Lane, thickets of Rosebay Willowherb in the expansion joints, clumps of Buddleia sprouting from the fragile tarmacadum edges and a beautiful dusting of moss on the northerly walls.

Driving past one day, struck by the emptiness and potential of the site, I was filled with an idea.  I saw an urban food forest, a haven of sustainable perennial crops, a community food source, an anti Tesco, a place where people could grow plants together, be educated and take home Newbury grown, globally inspired food.  A place where native crabs, thorn and sloe mingle with the likes of Szechuan Pepper, Siberian kiwis and Goji berry.  Anyone who’s interested could be involved in what would be our huge living grocery store, and what’s funny is, it couldn’t not work!  These plants want to grow, lots of them, given a little encouragment, can be, quite frankly, thugs.  The focus would be organic, perennial crops growing in relative harmony, cutting out the need for excessive labour, herbicides and annual re-planting.

Sadly, no doubt the site has already been snapped up by short sighted, capital hungry developers.  My ideas will be seen by many as bohemian and futile but when you think about it, they are educated, sensible, blindingly obvious and perhaps, just perhaps, completely necessary if Newbury wants to be a town for the future.  As coporate giants offset their carbon footprints with irrelevant, policy satisfying, box ticking ridiculousness, let’s do something exciting.  Who’s with me?

Our locally grown, locally sourced, locally scrumped, arduously pulped, pressed and pasteurised apple juice was toast of the day yesterday evening, mulled into a piping hot winter warmer, bubbling away on the stove for the crowds of food lovers and seekers of early festive spirit alike.  The crisp evening was perfectly apt for the turning on of the christmas lights, the sky was clear, decorated with stars, our first proper frost this winter season.

Christmas is an evocative time for many, the true meaning of this seasonal festival has become a bit of a fallacy, do gooders blame our materialistic modern consumerism, ‘christmas has become too commercial’, I say nonsense, the true spirit of christmas remains dear to us all, whatever it may be and that is what’s important.  The Pagan celebration of Yule, one of the traditional Celtic Fire Festivals welcomes the return of the light on the 21st December, the longest night of the year, some suggest christianity hijacked this ancient festival for the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ.

The hybridisation of family, paganism, christianity and an interaction with mother natures cycle are what makes this midwinter festival so important to me.

The frost was glistening white this morning, covering the fields and the hedgerows with a magical, silvery sheen.  The sun’s warmth was suprising, our hedgerow friends having endured the bitter night will have welcomed the breaking of the dawn and the sign of a new day.  Most of us are sadly, so far removed from the daily struggle that is the cycle of nature for the birds and animals that inhabitat our winter landscape we rarely spare it a thought.  I often think of the preparations of a safe leafy bed for the night, the detailed organisation of a winter’s food store, exploration of nature’s larder, dodging from bramble to toadstall, Winifred Mouse, Ratty, Moley, Badger the heroes of my childhood books, I secretly still hope its all real, why couldn’t it be?

My Peugeot groaned in second gear, the steep incline of Nuthanger proving as testing as it is on my calves on my trusty Trek 1800 or a name something like that.  The break through the trees that overhang the road revealed Ladle Hill, quite a spectacle, an ancient avenue of beech giving way to a beautiful nothingness in either direction, to the left a horizontal flat plateau extending toward Kinsgclere and to the right the anicent hummocking burial mounds of our Celtic cousins.

Taking all this in this afternoon I realised what a special place in my heart this area holds, deeply ingrained in who I am, its been the shaping of me, growing up here the beauty of the landscape has always been inherrent but I feel each day as I learn and understand to read it more its hold on me only gets stronger.  I may move away soon perhaps far, far away or perhaps merely a short distance, maybe for a while or perhaps for a long while either way I know one day it’ll call me back.

As I bundled bunches of Hawthorn berries from our native Crataegus into my container on Watership Down and a stones throw from one of my father’s childhood homes I didn’t feel what I was doing was special, I’ve done it many times before and so have many, many before me but I felt pleased that I was doing it all the same, satisfied in fact that I myself in my lifetime already haven’t been shortsighted enough to forego the wonders and abundance of nature and it’s larder.

Sadly for many this year’s apple crops have been low, stone fruit such as plums and gages have come in meagre quantities but our cultivated and native thorns have been laiden with fruit this year, current weather forecasts predicting a bleak winter  leads me to the old saying ‘many haws, many snaws’ a suggestion of the severity of the subsequent winter, but what would I know.