55> Learning from It (2)

The first lesson is that I Must get help on the hill.
I knew that all along really , but somehow enjoyed being the heroic lone  scyther.
Cutting the bracken and tending the garden are way beyond my physical capabilities at present. So I need to make and install a volunteer hut. Then when the bracken is really going for it, to organise a "bracken camp", to get a group of people to tackle the main clearings. The best time to cut the bracken is July, when it's invested a lot of its energy into growth, and hasn't got a lot of growing season left ahead of it to recover. It's also when people like to come on holiday, and this is a perfect place for that, being close to the sea. The growth rate this year, and last, has been amazing.  Now is getting to be too late. The stems are browning, and starting to go over.  Now I must go round and find the trees I planted this spring underneath before they get squashed by its collapse.

The second is more esoteric, but related.

My perspective of time is changing. In part I think, this stems from the nature of this pain I've been feeling, which has been a pulsing, neuralgic type, in my arm and shoulder, but not equating to any immediate physical activity. This has allowed me to think of myself as an impulse rather than solely as a being woven into a set of narratives.


I'd already been considering our individual mind sets within the past, present, and future, and what was the most nourishing balance, seeing for instance, friends for whom everything worthwhile derived from the past. The present is bad news.
Others put their lives on hold, until the weekend, or retirement, or an inheritance, or they eventually met their soulmate. The present was for them effectively, a waiting-room.

I concluded that the ideal was to be informed by the past, and inspired by the future, but embraced firmly in the present.

I came across some first edition Ordnance Survey maps last year, that show a pre-oil, pre-suburban, pre-forestry commission, pre- industrial landscape. Rather than just bemoan its loss, I find it exciting it was only two hundred years ago, and that what we do now can have just as rapid and radical effect on the landscape of the future.

But your impulse has firstly to let itself gain confidence, to overrule the rigour of precedent and conformity.
To some extent I've done that. 

Getting others to help me here could help them to get it too..

54> Learning from It (1)

It must be a lot easier to feel that you are a victim, or even a culprit, of events, than the way I've come to see things.

I have I suppose had a hard time recently though, however much I mantracise how much I'm learning from it.

We do like to recount everything in a causal narrative though, and this storyline is physical.
My body hurts.
My arm and shoulder, which is annoying as I have a Lot to Do.

I always have, in that my motto has been "We are what we do", so felt frightened by the idea of being worthless.
Also I didn't know the cause of the pain, so felt fearful.
It could have been Cancer or Heart Failure or any number or cocktail of Scary Ailments.
I went to the doctor, and that made it worse, as I no longer owned the pain, and was effectively on hold while they pondered, and organised Tests and Scans.

Time, they seem to regard, as a great healer. In the End I suppose it is, as we have either got better, or died.
Three weeks seems to be regarded medically as the optimum gap between a test, and it's result.

The low point in this train of events was finally getting an MRI scan, a great honour it seems, and then waiting for its diagnosis. It looks like parts of my neck are pretty'well-worn', and impinging on nerves.
Since then I have come to realise that there are limited strategies in how to ameliorate what is the damage and wear in the spine. Surgery has been mooted, which sounds like it amounts to gluing bits together so they don't rub on each on. It all sounds rather primitive and hit & miss. Like welding a rusty car.
Anyway, it's all still in the abstract. I'm just on another waiting list.

 Now I am having a weekly Chiropractor session, and am planning a regular massage.. Listening to advice from some friends who are, and know, amazing practitioners of healing skills.
Mainly though, I've reclaimed my own pain. I negotiate with it and make deals so I can get some useful stuff done.

I AM learning from it...

53> projection, clarity, & manifestation

These are all aspects of communication, and define our being. 

I was woken last week by van lights in the yard below at two in morning, and proceeded to explain them to myself as being the two girls who live in a caravan down there having a party. I excused myself from getting involved by deciding that neighbours more affected would intervene, and drifted off to sleep, thinking that they'd really blown it this time. At four in the morning, a chainsaw started up, and I elaborated my narrative by convincing myself that some guest had been sent out for wood for the stove, and sought to impress his hosts by using a chainsaw. I even started to feel compassion for the girls, imagine them being evicted for this outrage on other peoples sleep, and their homelessness. 

When I went down in the daylight, a different tale emerged: of the strong wind blowing high voltage cables against a tree above their caravan, causing sparks and the threat of electrocution, of  them being taken in by a kind neighbour, of fire engines attending, and then a team of tree climbers to remove the offending branches.

I had concocted a totally false reality, based on concern but also negative, judgemental  attitudes towards the girls and their lifestyle.

I found this a totally refreshing reminder of how the substance of much of our perception is based on confirming a personal or group bias. A closed and self rewarding mindset. I felt both humbled, but also excited to witness how much my perception is founded on projection. Like I'd tracked down a predator on my truth.

There are some people whose hearts are open, who suppress or hold no judgement. Others who adopt judgement with regret. Others who enter a feeding frenzy of communal moral scorn, some who forever look for an opportunity to leak out some of their own, old pain, or sense of not being recognised.

The biblical teaching about casting the first stone occurs to me.

I was the butt of a communal prejudice last year. At the time I called it a Chinese Witch-hunt, as the local community council fed each other more and more inflated rumours of what "that hippie on the hill was doing". It was so wide of the mark, I felt too aghast and wounded to try to engage with them, especially as none of them ever came up to see for themselves. It reminded me of a story  I'd heard of how a friend of mine, who was being hounded by the National Park for a string of planning misdemeanours, had in recounting this to a Welsh neighbour, been met with a strange look and the question- "you don't actually Talk to them do you?". I came to see this as feeling free NOT to engage with the ravings of a mad aunt, of not feeding a neurosis by acknowledging its content. 

Which is where Clarity comes in. 

I have felt for years a distinction between Tribal and Personal morality. Tribal morality is consensual- EVERYBODY does that! As if that justified a behaviour. The righteousness of Church groups does not escape this brush. Personal morality is intuitive,it just KNOWS at some deep level, the truth and rightness, or otherwise, of a matter.

Tribal morality becomes cloaked in law, and the definitions of the unlawful. 

If you feel a disparity between an accepted group moral view and your own instincts, you have been offered a precious gift.

It is the opportunity to learn to express your deep truth, in its own terms. I have found that it's when my intentions have been dismissed or rejected, that I have sought to express their impulse with an undeniable clarity. To express it in terms of what it's not diminishes it. Your truth when expressed clearly is Gandalfian in its power.

Just as you plumb deep into and learn to express your truth, so you change the nature of our shared language. You give it back its potency and true meanings. 

You manifest the reality of your heart.

52> Got It!

Got it

It's not really sunk in. There's details to discuss. 

My hut on the hill is now legal. Approved. I can stay here when I am working on the land, which is every time I'm here, even if I work leisurely.

A large part of me never expects to be heard, to be seen, and to be understood. I have watered my aloneness with self pity all my life. To be appreciated causes me to curl up in tears. I take that as part of the formula of dreams and doing that drive me.

Am planting trees. We are in that crazy dry bright spell we get nowadays at the beginning of the Spring. in many ways it's a mad time to plant them, as they are in leaf, but I get them at trade price from the local nursery. Also it's after the starving time for rabbits and mice, when they scratch away at anything edible.

My arm hurts. I think I've been too enthusiastic with the planting spade. I will try to use the other arm today, which will be interesting..

The rabbits are starting to chomp off their tips already. 

I concluded years ago that they think with their teeth. 

  Also that they are a reflection of the richness of their territory. The top land rabbits are a desperate crew, scratching up roots, and intolerant of planted trees. The bottom land rabbits are more likely to leave trees alone, unless they actually like eating their bark. My young ash trees are losing the battle.

  Also, that they are individuals. One adolescent bunny can shred up years of supposed accord in one night. 

 I am for ever learning. Painfully. 

  Some trees take one fatal chomp to become a dead stick. Birch and Hazel must be tasty and don't fight back. Rowan seemed pretty immune from nibbling, but today I found one totally beheaded. 

  One answer is taller trees. That though implies more cost, and larger rootstock, and a seedling perpetually rocked and chivvied by the wind. 

 I feel like a general, forever sending bright young recruits to the Front, to be slaughtered by a hail of rabbit teeth. 

 

I love my hut. This task would be hopeless without it. 

I feel a new lease of enthusiasm, after last year's despondency.

It's good to be seen. To be heard. To be trusted. 

51>Fearsay

The weather has a still icy deadness today. Like being in an abandoned fridge. This is not West Coast weather, which usually has a flow to it, of cloud and sky and showers and shifting winds.
I am weary of winter now. Its mid March, nearly the equinox, so when the sun shines it gives an appreciable heat, but then I wake to a day like this, and feel the chill cling like a shroud around my bones. I have little fight left in me. All too easy to feel edgy and poor.

I went to the hill yesterday, stopping to buy croissant in the local shop.The wind was an icy easterly, but I lit the stove and lingered over coffee until the day got some heat in it. I pottered. Things have shifted on then from the first fine days that were stifled in the blind panic of too-many things to-do.
Pottering is a fine and productive state of being.
I bet God potters. Sows a few galaxies, then goes in the God hut for a trowel, and ends up talking to his sister on the phone for an hour. But pottering breeds no panic. There are so many useful things to do, you can do no wrong, once you return to the garden.
In the autumn I had covered my raised beds in a thick, stinking layer of seaweed. I turned this in, hoping it will accelerate it turning into soil. The more I get involved in tasks on the land, the less my feeling of hostile eyes in the village below.
I met an amazing dog walker on the lane last week, who said that a friend of hers had talked of my hill "swarming" with hippies, and was this true? Her friend was adamant it was, and said that she would know, because she was on the Community Council.
It feels like there are a bunch of folk competing to project their fears onto me and my project. None of them have even been to look!
Carol, the dog walker asked me if I would address the local WI. I think this is a brilliant idea, and a strong antidote to the negative mood being spread by the others.

It's a strange honour to be demonised by such Fearsay, but I would like to clear the air.
 For the sun to shine, and the breeze to blow fresh from the sea.

50> Being Clear

Its nearly the anniversary of a mysterious phone message from a neighbour, warning that a National Park enforcement officer had been asking who owned my land, and thus the huts thereon...
A year of drawing plans and elevations, and writing down why I need a shelter on the hill to work from. It was stressful, dispiriting and time-consuming, wasting many key weekends that could have been spent on the land. Also though, it was an opportunity to step into and 'own' my truth. To put into words what it meant to me.
Eventually though, the application was refused, on the basis that I had not justified the hut sufficiently for agriculture, & that it wasn't an essential requirement for my conservation work.  This felt to me rather a glib response, and more evasive than decisive. It was positive though in that there was no hostility to the building in appearance, so I reapplied, and sent in a more detailed and considered management strategy plan, that is one that I hoped got over the vision and significance  of what I had been doing.

I am hopeful. I have a different planning officer who seems to understand what I have been doing. Again it reminds me that the best strategy is Clarity. Speak as clearly as you can from your heart and truth. No selfpity or righteousness or anger or despair, or that wily doublespeak that would only give you a hollow victory should you succeed thus. Speak in words that you believe in, not a cocktail of someone elses.
By such means, things happen. People get it.
Believe me.


MANAGEMENT STRATEGY


I acquired Allt Tabor in 2008. It is a 12 acre rugged hillside, overlooking the sea to the north, with Dinas Mountain above it to the south. It is thus often exposed to fast moving coastal weather patterns, and bracing winds.
The dominant vegetation then was bracken & bramble, with only occasional hawthorn, sycamore, willow and gorse, and one magnificent ash-tree.  It has outcrops of rock (rhyolite) at the steeper eastern end, and a scattering of post-glacial erratics. It has two reliable springs, and seasonal issues and a stream.  Historically it must have been wooded, and still hosts wood anenome, wood sorrel, bluebells, and occasional wood sedge. More recently it became rough grazing, and was burnt off sporadically in an attempt to keep the bracken and gorse in check.
There is evidence of some stone picking, and a small area that had been cultivated, probably as a field garden. It is unusual, as a large tract of largely uncultivated 'wild' land, and this is a special quality that I wish to retain.

My overall plan has been to optimise its latent biodiversity, whilst establishing useful food and timber resources, being aware of its context within the landscape and future of Dinas Cross.
This is thus both an agricultural and conservation activity. I wish to enrich the hillside, both as a wildlife and human resource. I do not feel these need be incompatible.

My establishment of chestnut and hazel coppice and pasture, the planting of ancillary woodland, and the garden, orchard and tree nursery, are all recognised agricultural activities.

An overall broad goal has been to maintain a third as 'scrub', clear a third as grass-ways and open clearings, and to establish a third as clumps of trees and coppice, and to make a garden and orchard.
I sought early advice from the local Wildlife Trust, who have observed the changes the land has undergone since 2008.
I have established a kitchen garden, an orchard of over fifty fruit trees, planted over 2500 woodland trees : Ash, Sweet Chestnut, Hazel, Rowan, Birch, Whitebeam, Hawthorn and Larch, and established pathways and clearings. There is still considerable work to do, but already the flora and grasses are noticeably increasing, as are songbirds, and many raptors have adopted the clearings as hunting territory. The retention of scrub has encouraged snipe, pheasants and woodcock to shelter there. Fungi are appearing in the grasslands.

I have found that the rugged nature of the land favours the use of hand tools, notably scythes, for initial site clearance, as they allow the piling rather than shredding of waste. These piles are significant habitats in their own right, initially as mammal and reptile shelter, and eventually as enriched soil areas.
The local scale of these incursions is resulting in a patchwork of habitats. Practically, the strenuous nature of this work and terrain necessitates short periods of activity with breaks, and so a convenient shelter has been crucial.
As well as maintaining and extending the existing areas of change, the next area I wish to work on is the steepest and least accessible.  I intend to enlist volunteer help for this stage, so the work shelter becomes a legal requirement.
Reliance on using my van for this purpose is impractical, as parking is at the top of the land, and so much effort and time would be thus wasted climbing the steep paths.

Observation of neighbouring lower lands has shown they are sheltered and capable of supporting timber trees, so I propose to establish about 2/3 hectare of Douglas Fir and Western Red Cedar, as a resource of durable timber, for eventual local use.
However, I have found that conifers need considerable nurture to establish in bracken areas, as they are easily overwhelmed and 'burnt' by its autumn dieback, so this is initially a labour-intensive task.

My working practice on Allt Tabor is to identify small and distinct pockets of land, such as naturally sheltered hollows, to clear these, to observe the effects, and learn and respond accordingly. This approach is a departure from more map-based, funding driven management initiatives, and is being observed with interest by the Wildlife Trust and an eminent local naturalist.
He observes that Allt Tabor is a valuable remnant of "Ffridd" land, that is, the fringe of land between the upper, open moorlands, and the lower arable and pasture enclosures. The RSPB recognise this "ffridd" or 'speckled' land as a particularly valuable wildlife resource, because of its variety of trees, pasture, shrubs and scrub. I see my technique of small interventions is a means to 'relocalise' this habitat.
Our current practice of large-scale mechanical topping of farmland, verges, and pathways, tends to severely restrict plant diversity, according to when in the flowering and fruiting cycle of a particular plant it occurs. This seems a rather arbitrary way to foster an already depleted biodiversity. I am exploring an alternative approach that could prove useful in a wider conservation context.      

Finally, I regard this site, with its aspect, its position above Dinas Cross, and its place within the wider Preseli landscape, as a human as well as natural resource, so much effort is invested in opening and extending pathways that allow safe but rewarding access. To encourage access, I have not fenced the land, and intend none.

THE WORKING YEAR

There are three main seasons of activity.
March to May.
Garden bed preparation,sowing, weeding and thinning. I already grow vegetables and have embarked on a programme of sowing and tending to tree seedlings. This is more cost-effective than buying in trees, as I have large areas still to plant. One critical factor in the success of this will be the impact of rodents, so I will need to be in attendance at key times until I have devised an effective strategy to control this.
May to August,
Bracken and bramble cutting, and tending to established paths and glades. The process of glade and path creation is ongoing, relying on regular scything. When I started this work, the hillside was covered in bracken and bramble. However there are now a labyrinth of grass rides, and increasing areas of restored native grassland, with its attendant flora. I also scythe areas in which I intend to plant trees in order to suppress the vigour of the bracken.
October to March.
Ground clearing, tree planting and pruning.
When the bracken dies back and collapses is a critical time in which to find and tend to trees that grow within it. Also to plant and mark tree seedlings, which are easily lost and thus inadvertently cut in later scythings.

My time on the land is curtailed by the need to earn my living, and by periods of extreme weather, but I usually visit and work on the land every week. I am due to receive my state pension in a years time, which will give me more scope to be there.In the main bracken cutting and gardening season, I spend up to 50 hours/week working there in the height of the summer when the bracken is growing fast. I average 20 hours work on the land/ week.

Use of shelter.
It is a warm comfortable place to rest and prepare food and hot drinks, a tool store, for biodiversity related research and recording, and training student volunteers, seed setting, and to store harvested crops.
I keep my larger, muddier garden tools like mattocks, spades, forks and hoes; also my chainsaw, strimmer and scythes under the shelter, smaller tools such as trowels, secateurs, and sickles inside or hanging under the eaves, and general tools, screws etc, a crate of dry clothes, and my seeds concealed in crates under the rest platform. I also store seed trays, flowerpots, bamboos, posts and horticultural fleeces under the shelter.

Non-residential use of the shelter.
There is no intention to use the shelter as a residence as I have a permanent home six miles away. I do not want to commit to never staying overnight in the future, within  agreed limits (28 days/ year) as I value early and late work in busy seasons. If I find that I need to stay more often, I shall sleep in my van nearby.
I do try to rest by lying down at intervals during a days work. I broke my back twelve years ago but have adapted to this, continuing to earn my living, and learned through experience that if I follow a burst of work with a short rest, I can achieve a lot in a day without undue pain. I also observe that I tend to work close to the ground when planting, weeding etc, as I find it less painful than standing, so end up with wet and soiled clothes that I dry above the stove.
I cannot rely on being able to run a van in the future, so will wish to be able to visit the land for the day by using the bus. This would be an uncomfortable prospect without a shelter upon the land.
The activities of scything and gardening I find help to relax the physical strain of my other work patterns elsewhere, which often require me to stand at a workbench.
  I have consider the status of the raised trestle and whether I should remove it. I feel that it is multifunctional and so the most effective use of such a small space. I can store valuable and damp-sensitive items discretely in boxes underneath, and use the platform itself for seating, as a desk and worktop on which to lay out and sort papers and to sow seedtrays, and to lie on to rest.
No other arrangement would serve all these purposes.
Household items will be kept to the essentials, such as toilet paper, spare dry clothes, first aid, soap and towel, and a basic larder. I will maintain the basic requirements that HSE advise for co-workers, such as a toilet & washing facilities (I have a spring water tap outside, and can heat water on the stove) and a warm and dry rest room.

I have tried to imagine an alternative structure that would serve my needs for tool storage, warmth, rest, offer basic comfort, and shelter for myself and co-workers, and be more acceptable, and have not been able to devise one. I am willing to construct an alternative structure if a design is offered.
It is as small (8.6 square metres) and as compact as it can be  for its many purposes.

It is "temporary", both in the sense that it needs no permanent foundations & is made from timber, and in that it is a sectional building, composed of 31 main pieces (6 floor sections, 12 walls, 12 roof pieces, plus top hub) which are bolted together. This has allowed me to site it with care and sensitivity. It can equally be unbolted, dismantled, and removed with the minimum of environmental disturbance.

The description of it as a 'roundhouse' is neither accurate technically (it's duodecagonal) or reflect its fundamental design ethos. This is a moveable, modular building.
I have considered replacing the shelter with a small caravan, but would not be able either to get it out of view or in a useful place, and I feel it would be ugly and cramped. Also I have discussed this solution with my immediate neighbours, whose opinion I respect and heed, and they dislike this idea.
 My original application was, and remains, for a temporary work shelter, "ancillary" to my agricultural activities and my conservation project.
This I intended and intend to mean that once conservation activities cease, the shelter will have no need to remain.  I feel that my shelter's removable nature encapsulates and honours this.

Without such a shelter and tool store, I regret that this ambitious,  and heart-felt restoration project is pracically unworkable.