Little bits of self-sufficiency

This year we have eaten all our own rhubarb, but due to dry weather it has gone to seed (first time in 7 years). Don't buy shallots or onions, grow my own from sets, the shallots keep for up to 2 years, just gathered them in before the welcome rain of the last two days. Must get onions up and in soon. Ground still very hard, big cracks in clayey soil on allotment. Wonderful red and black currants this year. The bushes are not expensive to buy as small plants, don't need a lot of work, weeding, feeding, mulching, pruning maybe twice a year, netting to save the fruit from pigeons. Just put away many pots of redcurrant jelly and blackcurrant jam, make good  presents. French friends sometimes a bit bemused by my concotions such as rhubarb and ginger jam, green tomato chutney, chinese plum sauce... Trying to grow angelica again.

 Potatoes this year a disaster, very dry weather and some late frost. Beans looking good and enough for some nearly every day, will get boring soon. Years ago used to slice with a little machine and then salt them in big earthenware jars. Remember having a complete cupboard filled with Kilner jars with mainly fruit in. No freezers in the 1950s only a small fridge. luxury (you were lucky... young people nowadays...). Bendix washing machine my dad bought to cope with the nappies after I arrived in 1945 cost over £100, a small fortune, you could survive on £200 a year, lasted 30 years. I digress. We used to have fruit picking parties with all ages involved, a huge picnic lunch. I remember lots of people sitting round the kitchen table preparing fruit for bottling or making into jam. A joint endeavor, laughter, singing, drinking, playing "sardines" in the garden, a lot of cigarette smoking (both parents smoked 50 a day).


What is the point of all this you might well ask? It feels good to produce some of your own food, to be able to give it away, to cook and eat it, to share it. I get great joy from watching my grandchildren pick fruit as I did when small, to look for beans to pick, where they gathered the bean seeds, dried, sorted and planted them. I'm trying to reconnect them to the soil, the earth on which we all depend for our survival. To feel a part of nature not apart from it. To develop a sense of place, belonging, heimat, at-homeness. To come to know the seasons, the weather, the need for rain and frost, as well as sun and warmth. ho hum

Chief Seattle's Testimony

I  came across Neil Spencer's "looped cursive" handwriting book from my class of 9 year olds in 1976. His handwriting had improved wonderfully during the year in my class and he was proud for me to keep it as an example of what can be achieved. What has this to do with sustainability you might well ask. Well, after using Spike Milligan poems and children's regional skipping games (Iona & Peter Opie + children's own knowledge) for the texts for our daily 4 lines or so of handwriting, I came across Chief Seattle's Testimony. So we used that and spent time discussing what had happened in 1854, what his message to the white man was and what it might mean for us in Colne, Lancashire today. The children were genuinely inspired by his words (even if he didn't say exactly that, even if they were changed at a later date, even if they were invention. See "A native american eco-gospel or Southern Baptist creation?") It made them think about their environment and how it was being spoiled. It helped them to realise the importance of noticing nature across the seasons, during our monthly walk around the same patch of cemetry, riverbank, woodland and abandoned land behind the old Lancashire cotton mills, long silent. That summer term we organised cleaning the river/stream with the help of the local district council who provided, gloves and plastic sacks and a skip. It was a success but deemed too risky to repeat. "Why were they not in school? Wasn't it too dangerous? What were they learning from the experience? "Shouldn't the council clean up the river/stream?... How proud they were of what they had achieved. I told them earlier in the year that if they started and finished each lesson on time saving at least 5 mins. for each lesson, more than 20 mins. a day, and nearly 2 hours a week, they would earn 3 whole days during the summer term to do some worthwhile project that they could choose. Another year and another class, we conducted a local tree survey over a period of  a few weeks.
The good news, some of the trees especially the ones with TPOs (tree preservation order) are still there, the little saplings in danger of being vandalised, now majestically line the road. The children knew they had made a small difference. The bad news, 3 years after the river clean up a local company up stream suffered a fractured pipe on a suphuric acid storage tank. The children now at the local secondary school came to me one day after school in tears to tell me about the dead fish. It mattered to them, it was their river now. The company was fined, and eventually life returned to the little river. I have happy memories watching them play by the side of a sand bank, swimming and splashing after the clean up knowing all the broken glass, old bikes and steel drums ... had been removed. I wonder what their children's experiences have been?. Neil will be 43.
How can we develop a sense of place in today's children?