I also need to get this place to pay for itself. So here’ s my idea. I will post up some dates for some day visits. They will have a theme – like a goat day or a soap day or a permaculture day – and I will pack them with related activities that anyone can have a go at, and hopefully arrange for you to have some small item to take home with you for your trouble.

These will be small gatherings, at least at first – so early birds will get to be in on the cosiest sessions. You will get to meet all the animals, and Neil, myself and the girls will share with you some skills and insights into that particular day’s ‘thing’. It won’t be a course. It might just qualify as a workshop. You’ll be welcome to bring and share anything you have that might be helpful.

I’m starting the ball rolling with a goat day in June – mid to late, date to be confirmed – hopefully post kidding so that you can get some hands-on.

Morning with the girls and (hopefully?) some babies – milking, care and management, that kind of thing.

Afternoon doing a little cheese and yoghurt making and if time some goats milk soap.

There will be maybe five or six spaces. I’m working on the cost.

Anyone interested? I’d really appreciate you sharing this around. You can post it on facebook, or email your friends.

In exciting other developments, I’m also looking to run an Introduction to Permaculture Course later in the year, spaces limited so apply early.

Sign up for my barn door notices now, if you would like to know when I am back!

… and old ladies who are just a little sad because their oldest daughter moved to Devon – you know how it is, you want them to get on, but you still miss them – can be brought up to the house to chunter and mumble in the long grass under the trees, and enjoy some human company…

… and in the last rays of the evening sun, the half of the quads who started life in a cardboard box by the Rayburn, get a much bigger space, and despite finding out that the orange net really does bite, can run and run until they fall asleep under the apple trees.

and it is very late, and a very long day has been had by all, but what joy there is in sunshine and working together as a family.

The other half of the squad fenced a new area for Linnie and Lacey, so there will no doubt soon be news from Goat Valley.

or is this exciting?

Just as well, because I would be shredded by now. Neil and Sasha are in charge of lambing, and despite a change of school and some big challenges, Sasha is faithfully out to her sheep as early as 5.30 each morning .
It is a hopelessly busy time, as I work, try desperately to plant the garden now that the weather is half way to behaving, deal with the dogs, the orphan lambs (well they’re not orphans, but the losers of the lottery when Bertha had four) and so on and so forth.

So you might guess that this little lady, who turned up as you can see on a lashingly wet day in April, is not yet getting the attention she needs.

I’ll be breaking her to harness and using her around the place.

I say that with the confidence of one who didn’t even get to consider writing a few lines about life until nearly midnight.

But I will, I must, because some things? They are imperative.

wonder if there’ll be babies?

When I mention that I work on the phone from home,  I do see troubled brows and exit strategies coming into play. So I just want to explain what it is I do, and, perhaps more importantly, what it is I don’t  do!

‘Earning money from home’ has a bit of a shabby reputation, and in the past, perhaps that was justified , but hey, this is the 21^st century and we have the technology.

So, it’s not network marketing,  it’s not double glazing, I don’t tell people their fortune or fulfil any other fantasies (!) and I don’t call people to convince them they must have been mis-sold something or at some time fallen over within the vicinity of someone against whom they can fabricate a claim.

It’s also not glamorous, won’t make me (or you) a cool million, and can be hard work, and challenging at times. If I suggest you might be interested, trust me, I don’t get a kick back or collect a cut on your earnings.

I work for Arise via a fantastic IBO called CallCatcherz – Arise has various clients, with various applications available to work on – in my case, I take incoming calls for an insurance company.

There are costs involved in setting up – as there would be with any business – you have to have the right equipment, and you pay for training courses.  You train for anything up to four weeks, and you are paying them for the privilege.  Yes. I know.

It’s basically Call Centre work, so it is not warm and fluffy; it’s about getting the job done.

On the other hand…. I don’t have a commute, I book my hours to suit, I can work more in the winter and less in the summer, if we should ever get one, I have a huge amount of flexibility, and I earn proper money.  Not LOTS of money, but a proper hourly rate, favourably comparable to what I might earn in an office, which would involve travel, smart clothes, and being away from the animals and the home for entire days.

Would I prefer to be out with my goats or in the garden? You bet I would, but getting real is an important part of this for me, and we do have to eat. I enjoy my job, and when it’s hammering down outside as it was today, I am grateful to be in the warm, with no return commute to ‘look forward to’!

You don’t have to be full time to do this agrarian thing. I take my hat off to the committed and the communards, to Tinker’s Bubble,  Tony Wrench, and Andrea at Casalinho.  It’s also lovely when people are able to do this full time, because they inherited the farm, or the money to buy it, or downsized from a stock broker mansion to a mere hundred acres of Somerset.  It’s lovely if you ‘re young and carefree, and can live in a yurt and worry about all this later, but you know what? You don’t have to be.

When you want to do something extraordinary, sometimes the most important thing to remember, is to stay ordinary.

A year into my studies for the Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design, at the end of March, I spent four days at High Heathercombe on Dartmoor. No photos were taken, since although the snow which threatened to make it more like fourteen days eventually stayed away we did have all encompassing fog for the entire time.

A great metaphor for my diploma journey.

Permaculture is a design led process, and education in permaculture is no less designed. You begin with an Introduction Course, which might take a weekend. Next comes the iconic PDC – the ‘full design course’ which traditionally takes two weeks and is residential. The amazing Patrick Whitefield, my own permaculture guru, has recently launched a ‘proper’ online course, but still for most of us, the PDC is a life changing and life affirming time spent on a kind of permie retreat, actually *becoming* a permaculturist. I did mine at Ragmans Lane in Gloucestershire with Patrick Whitefield and Sarah Pugh

After that, the decision is whether to go for the diploma, which takes a minimum of two years, involves ten designs, and tutor and peer review, culminating in a presentation and accreditation. At one year in, I probably should be closer to that milestone, but it’s more important to get it right than in on time.

The weekend was about spending intensive time with fellow diploma apprentices, examining what we have done so far, and critiquing each other’s designs. I was in superb company – seven visiting apprentices, and High Heathercombe’s earth-mother, welcomer and wonderful, wonderful cook, Mel who is also doing the diploma. We were joined daily for circle time by Mel’s daughter Ellie, who is learning the ropes.

On Sunday, not long before it was time to go, the fog lifted briefly, and a tempting glimpse of the glorious valley appeared beyond the deck. In a poetic parallel, we gathered for a final session including a final exercise where each of us listed our next achievable steps.

These precious promises to ourselves were committed to paper and then folded and put into a hat – from which we then drew one another’s papers as kind of accountability buddies. One month from the farewells, we will call or email each other to check on progress.

One of my major steps, having redesigned my Learning Pathway at High Heathercombe, is to begin work on the most time limited design, which is to introduce abundant herbs to the garden for Jo at The Art of Wildness.

My explorations in design include designing for life and designing for change – both areas Jo and I have been working on of late.

I’m working on the family economy, as a Biblical mandate and as a practical necessity for the future – multiple income streams –and of course sustaining and feeding our small family from our gardens and livestock. Woven together, incorporating Holmgren’s principles – our small rented plots can become wisdom and resource for ourselves and others.

There was a quote :

People say to me now that I must have been very smart to get where I am, but the truth is that life isn’t like that. You look at your universe of opportunities, you have an idea, you put your head down and run off at top speed in one direction, then in six months’ time you look up and see what’s changed. Your universe of opportunities will be different, so you assess the best route and change direction if necessary. The path we all take is a zigzag. Then someone looks at where you are now, draws a straight line back to where you started and thinks you must be a genius! But all any of us do is assess the opportunities around us and respond to them. That’s what I tell people who want to be in business: you can’t know everything at the start.

 

Ray Taylor, co founder of Enterprise Unite

This is a little feedback loop known in Permaculture circles as ‘evaluate and tweak’ (the biological parents of my inkblob demon, the Evil Tweak) – and in other places comes as the advice ‘Don’t just aim and aim and aim … Fire and adjust. Fire and adjust.’

And so, this being me, part time job which allows me to work from home, smallholding which holds great potential but craves time and money, emergent herb growing business waiting in the wings, wonderful children growing and changing, hard working husband back in the corporate rat race for the time being, long standing commitment to bringing the family home, and Biblical Agrarianism, Diploma well underway – the key to my future? – as well as undertaking to an unknown diploma buddy that I’ll make a start on my achievable steps – I’m in with Jo for six months with my head down #6mhd.

Will you join us?

I am restless for spring, want to be outdoors – many though by no means all of my permanent beds are brown and crumbly and inviting, but it’s too soon – it’s bitterly cold out there and patience is called for.

I could be in the polytunnel, which once again was woefully underused over winter, but am spending most of the mornings working – I have to earn money somehow you know ! – and then what with toting children around, preparing meals, and keeping everything fed watered and ticking over, there is not a lot of daylight left.

I enjoy my job – I work from home as a claims handler – and it’s certainly convenient to have flexible working hours and no commute. I do have to book hours in advance and get penalised for dropping them less than 48 hours ahead of time – which is an aid to self discipline and avoids the distinct tendency I would have to  drop all my hours when the sun shone on a particularly golden morning and the lure of the veg plot was too great to be ignored!

I’ve been doing this now since October, and it hardly seems possible that nearly four months have gone and I haven’t really as yet established the routine I would like – I *have* to learn to use downtime – evenings and weekends – better in the service of the farm and my own micro businesses – as I would if I was working full time out of the home.

It’s hard, because in my heart, I want to live a far simpler life. If I could live the low key life I want to, I wouldn’t need to work the hours to pay the money to keep together the stuff I don’t want in the first place. As I typed these words, someone dropped a glass jar on the glass hob of the electric stove in our rented house and cracked it. It will have to be replaced. I don’t feel like I need a glass hob.  I confess I love it, and have kept it spotless and shining – but I don’t feel it’s an achievement.  However, it’s not mine. So it will need to be replaced.

Oh look, anyway, here’s Findhorn, and the awesome Tony Wrench. If only.

Findhorn