Nice weather at last...

We're appreciating the fine weather so much after all the rain last year and the long cold winter. It's such a pleasure to be living out here at the moment with the peace and quiet - save for bird song and bursts of tractor activity - with so much wild woodland about it feels like being right in the middle a forest. It's brilliant to be making progress with all the things I wanted to be involved with, living a simpler life closer to the Earth and having so much going on in the therapy/healing world too.

I heard the strangest honking bird song the other morning and thought it must be a swan but no, it was the Great Honk Bird

Wonderful blossom this year

We have the beginnings of a garden here and have been doing more on the outside of the caravan. We're determined to have a much more cosy winter than last one.

Ruth has lots of brilliant salads growing at the moment...

...and loads more stuff ready to plant out.

And lovely to have Faze with us on the farm helping out with anything and everything in between gong sessions

Energy Medicine and Healing Work - going up a level - my new energy work blog

The energy medicine/healing work I've been exploring has gone up a level recently, lots of people have been joining in with the regular session I host, the Thursday Group. It doesn't seem to matter how far away they are or how many people join in, many of them receive significant help for a wide range of concerns. Our group is just one of many springing up around the world and Energy Medicine must be one of the biggest rays of sunshine amid all the dire news of the climate and conflict.
HOW CAN ENERGY MEDICINE AND HEALING WORK HELP US?

• Through a significant boost to world health - so many people receive little or no healthcare of any kind - the network of healing energy is a good start and can be surprisingly helpful for many people, and it's free. 
• As part of living sustainably - Energy Medicine needs little or no equipment or electricity and, in the case of distant sessions, you don't even have to travel for treatment. Surely the more we can help people in this simple, low-impact way the better.
• By raising our awareness of and respect for each other: The world's problems are mostly people problems - the more we understand ourselves, what motivates us and helps us to work together the better.

More on my new site here:
IAN'S ENERGY WORK BLOG

Busy times...

So much happening here at the moment... This is Azzi who is building the new straw bale toilet and shower block with us. It's been designed with a timber frame as, wonderful as straw is as an insulator, it's not load bearing so you still need a frame of some kind to hold the roof, doors, windows and everything else together. It's been great fun working with Azzi who is a kindred spirit and fellow rebel against all the stupidity of the consumerist, corpocratic nonsense we find ourselves in. He's built himself a beautiful house at Sychpwll using straw bales with a frame of poles in the round and mostly reclaimed materials, all for less than £3,000. We were going to be holding a straw bale building course this weekend but it's been postponed because of the weather. I do hope that we don't have another wet year like 2012...

Azzi on the frame for the straw bale toilet block

Lovely to see the blossom coming out in the orchard

Up until the last week or so the weather has been wonderful here, warm and sunny, so good after the long cold, wet, muddy, challenging winter. One big plus of living and working out in the sticks is that we're getting more and more in tune with the landscape around us, and noticing the day to day changes in the trees and flowers.  There's continuous bird song too from about 4.30 am. I couldn't begin to tell you what all the birds are, yet more ancient lore to re-learn.

Ruth planting tatties in a corner of the pig field - a big first step

Ruth and I have taken over part of one of the fields for more veg growing for food for all of us on the farm, for ingredients for the farm's pie business and to help feed the pigs. It's a bigger step than it might seem, taking land that a few years ago would generally have been ploughed and cropped in modern agribiz style and starting to treat it in a permaculture, sustainable way.

Starting some no dig operations in the same field

The rest of the field has been ploughed up and sown with barley to feed the pigs - our transitional corner is to the left of the photo in the same field

Finally the yurt - it's about five years since I started making it back down in Brighton and it's mostly been stored away either at Lammas or in the barn here, so it's brilliant to see it up at last nestling amongst the trees. Having the extra space means we can at last start sorting out our stuff and begin work on getting the caravan ready for next winter, Ruth and I are determined to be better prepared this time.

DEVELOPING THE PIG FIELD - INTEGRATED FOREST FARMING...

Prototype pig feeder bed - sleepers and angle-iron

DEVELOPING THE PIG FIELD
Lots going on here at the moment, including our plans to develop the pig field for food for the pigs and for the Treflach Farm pie business. The pig field is about three acres and we are thinking in terms of four strips for veg: beans, tatties, turnips and leeks. The plan is to keep the pigs off the veg to begin with using electric fence then let them onto what’s left of the veg strips at the end of the season so they can routle up the ground ready for next season. As well as that, we are planning some pig feeder beds which will effectively be mini-forest gardens with fruit or nut trees and perennial planting so that the pigs can either eat whatever falls on the ground or grows out through the gaps. Everything has to be pretty robust to survive pig assault so we will use up a stock of old sleepers for the beds.

They need to stand up to the scratchings of enormous boars and sows too

 INTEGRATED FOREST FARMING
Watching life here on the farm over the last year, I’ve realised how the animals are an important part of the whole system. For example, the woodland that's grazed some of the time is more diverse and also pleasant than the woodland that isn't grazed nearby. The more their behaviour can be controlled, integrated and utilised within the farm the less energy and expense required. The key idea being that the forest is a sustainable system and that a few carefully controlled animals fit into that very well. The more the whole farm develops in the pattern of the forest, the more the farm becomes sustainable ie: no waste, reduced inputs, increased diversity, increased types and quantities of yields, drought/flood/pest resistance, with space for paths, clearings and human settlement.

The pig field, about three acres of some of the best land on the farm

Whats life like in the eco world?

Muddy! What a wet year its been...
We're moving slowly towards a low-impact, sustainable way of life here. Sometimes progress seems to be really slow but I reckon we've at least taken the first big step, getting access to land.
EARTH WEALTH It's interesting that in Europe there's so many protests against government cuts while in India people have been marching for land. To me there's no hope that governments or any other of our rotten institutions will make things radically better. It's up to individuals to think for themselves, read, talk and do what they can locally to develop true wealth, ie Earth Wealth, for which you need access to land. Access to land means you can start growing food, fuel, materials, medicinal herbs and means that you can start dealing with your waste... it's not really waste after all.  You don't even need to own that land, there's plenty of arrangements where you can swap your work for land access, and great stuff is being done on wasteland and with guerilla gardening. So to me the India land marches are more enlightened, more positive, and show people taking responsibility for world problems themselves.
WASTE This is where we've made most progress, it's easy to make a composting loo, you get a valuable resource after a year or so and save loads of water. Food leftovers, peelings etc go to the chicks, pigs or more compost. Although we get some of our milk, veg, eggs and meat from the farm we still get the bulk of our food from the supermarket, it takes years to get a garden going properly - which is why I'd urge anyone to get involved in food growing any way they can so that as and when there is a major collapse of the Oil Age way of life we're not caught totally unprepared - Powys only produces between 5 and 10% of the food it consumes, how about London? Looking at the waste we produce has made me realise how the packaging problem has just got worse and worse, everything you buy is packaged at least once, and it starts right on the farm with those big black plastic wrapped bales.
KEEPING WARM We have a colossal wood-burning stove and burn logs mostly from trees that have come down on the farm but there's fuel used for the chainsaws and tractor powered log splitter. We still use a couple of electric heaters and a de-humidifier to keep the caravan warm. There's a plan to plant up some trees on the farm for coppicing but again that will take time to produce anything. Slow burning logs produce a lot of toxins so I'm hoping we can adapt the stove to burn much hotter, small section coppiced wood being ideal for that. I've slowly been insulating the outside, photos below, and that's another point - if you're going to live out in a field, be prepared. "Any fool can be uncomfortable", an old army expression of my dad's. The difference between living in a van or whatever with no preparation and one that's properly insulated is huge. Cold and damp are not good for your health.
Ah well, lots to do, but the greatest journey begins with a single step...

Random Wintry Stuff

Ethereal light on a frosty tree back in the last cold snap - about minus 6 here

Home sweet home, warmed by Herman the colossal stove with a couple of electric heaters too along with a de-humidifier

You only fit double glazing once so fit the best, fit bubblewrap

Mud mud mud...

The little stream...

...that flooded the fields below us

A typical farm job for me, new pig shed panels

Dawn on the solstice

Insulation

I've been insulating the caravan on the outside,  2"x 2" framing clad with salvaged larch boards from Ruth's old garden fence

Filling the space with bubblewrap and plastic waste we've been saving in old milk cartons...

.. or just loose, that's a bundle of inner wrappers from those big round bales you see everywhere - a kind of plastic string vest

I have to say I think it's looking rather good, sort of Log-Cab-Avan or something

The Thursday Group - distant energy treatments

In between doing joinery work and generally helping out here on the farm I've been spending time developing this group. I started it a couple of years ago to explore the potential of distant energy treatments to help people. I had been giving one-to-one treatments for years in my therapy work with fascinating results, the group builds on that and explores two special areas: the possibilities of treating several people at once and of focusing on quite precise areas. It's free and open to all, do join in if you can, Thursday evenings 9.00 to 9.45pm.
FEEDBACK PLEASE
Your feedback is very helpful to me in developing this work, please message me or post something on the FACEBOOK PAGE even if it's just a couple of words.
There's more about how to join in with the group, getting ready etc on a separate page HERE.
I like the balance of doing down-to-earth practical stuff as well as therapy/healing work. I think it was Upledger who recommended having "your head in the clouds but your feet on the ground" - sound advice I reckon.

Polytunnel, bio-dynamics, companion planting

POLYTUNNEL

We're really pleased with what we've achieved in the veg garden so far. There's been plenty of failures and difficulties but plenty of successes too, a good first year. Things that didn't do well were tatties, peas, mange tout, swiss chard and spinach amongst other things. Other UK growers we chat too have mostly found it a difficult year with the endless damp and we've had problems with eel worm or wire worm and also with rats and mice. The successes have been peppers, chile peppers, tomatoes, herbs, strawberries, onions, celery, leeks, courgettes, beans and sweetcorn. It's nice to remember that many of the plants started off life on Ruth's windowsill back down in College Road. Well done us! 

Ruth's window-ledge nursery back in College Road

Ruth's tomato-polyculture: companion planting of toms with basil and flowers mulched with straw - great idea, easy to maintain and very productive

Chile peppers galore

GOLDEN RULE No. 99 - GET YOUR INFRA-STRUCTURE RIGHT

Volunteers Ian and Alan working on the final, middle row of beds in the tunnel with Wes and I "helping"

If you plan and set up a good system of paths, gates, fences, raised beds, composting bins, polytunnels etc etc right from the start you will make life so much easier and more enjoyable for yourself. That goes for a hundred acre farm just as much as a back garden plot.

And if you're at all inclined to try growing some stuff yourself but haven't started yet just do it! I look back on all the mistakes I made back on my allotment and realise now that it was all a great way to learn, your garden soon teaches you if you're prepared to look and listen and it's really easy to research stuff via the internet now - above all, the greatest journey begins with a single step...

BIO-DYNAMICS

Some of it might seem pretty wacky at first sight but the more you look into it the more it makes sense. The cow horn procedure boosts all-important bacterial soil activity

This is one of the most interesting avenues we've been exploring in the garden here. It's about timing your gardening according to the phases of the Moon and the position of the planets, and much more. I know some people (who could well be a bit more open-minded for their own good) who dismiss the whole thing as superstitious nonsense but just think of the effect of the Moon on the oceans. Every drop of water on the Earth is being pulled and released in the tides so surely it follows that this will be true for water in plants and the ground just as much as the seas. I wonder if it's partly how water is drawn up into trees as I think I've read that this can't be fully explained by capillary attraction. My friends Steve and Caryn at Quinta Cabeca de Mata in Portugal have been working with Bio-Dynamics for years with such interesting results that they now do more and more in this way, even harvesting wood for buildings. We're going to need all the help and deeper and understanding we can get as we power-down from the Oil Age so lets check out everything that comes our way with open hearts and minds - maybe that's the biggest possible first step.