The storms have abated. The enraged river has lowered its voice.
Tiny insects, winged flecks of gold dust, sail through evening sunbeams. The shafts of light fan between the budding pear trees while the scent of freshly cut grass swells to meet them. Wild flowers, spring’s courtiers, bustle for attention fussed over by bees, and the call of the returning oriol and the drumming of the woodpecker proclaim abundance.
So strong is the beak of the bird that the rhythm rebounds off the mountain ridge, now snow free and sweetened by new growth on the pines. I sit by the talkative water pouring from our Roman aquifer at 1000 litres an hour, faster than it ever has in our 12 years at Mother’s Garden.
All is beginning and yet, perhaps, something is about to end.
Why would anyone think of leaving this? Yes, we are. Let me tell you why.
Some of you discerned in my last blob from the Garden that, after spending nearly a quarter of our lives here (and much of those of our children), Maggie and I seemed a little unsettled.
Indeed. We have been facing facts and agree it is time to take another deep breath, another positive stride.
Ella will be at university in England from September. Joe is ready for new challenges too.
And we know that our growing fresh olive oil business in England can flow even faster if we give it more oxygen and cease gasping to fit it in between the increasingly demanding challenges of tending a multi-fruiting organic farm and running a holiday cottage.
How great the fulfilment of bending to the challenge of an ecological existence at an age when we still could bend. How much we have gleaned and stored. But the sheer physical endeavours are unsustainable, naturally, and like all we need to balance truths.
The creep of age is punctuated with stark waypoints, like the dismantling of the long-unsafe tree-house, the suddenly impossible flexibility of seeing the soles of my shoes without taking them off.
And there is another reason to recalibrate. I crave time to write daily, to unburden my cerebral filing cabinet of tales. There is the Norfolk film script Moon Daisy now looking for funding (more next month), with another script and two books in the wings. Maggie, my editor, could not be more supportive.
So…..
Plan A: To relinquish this treasure trove of 10 acres and to base ourselves in South Norfolk, buying a smaller olive grove here and returning regularly to tend olives and beehives: to remain members of the cooperative and build on all we have learned and shared.
Plan B: To sell the cottage and half the farm, and keeping the old farmhouse and olive grove as our business base while spending the majority of our time in England, closer to family, renting somewhere, and bandwaggoning the Mother’s Garden olive oil message hither and thither.
We shall see what plan comes to fruition. If anyone would like to discuss one or other we would be happy to chat.
It seems now like we are in the eye of the storm, with the troubled waters of decision behind us and the unchartered upheaval ahead. We wait as news spreads, hoping that the right person will appear, appreciative of the magic and wisdom to be found here; someone who will love it.
And now that we are decided there is great optimism and certainty.
Without sadness but with immense gratitude to my family and with brimful fulfilment I see the momentous years everywhere I turn, and feel them; the shadows of tiny children running bare-footed after puppies; splashes of freedom and glee; shouts of adventure from the woodland; harvests of the garden, grove, vineyard and the wild; Maggie planting, pruning and choosing roses for the table, out there until dusk, then standing with me by the back door to feast upon the stars; the weight of my son on my forearm, his fist full of asparagus: And louder than all, the music of innumerable treasured evenings when our kitchen became a dance theatre and forever more the heart of everything that really matters in the precious feeling of this family, this life.
There – my heart thumps at the thought of leaving our kitchen. The head needs to prevail in the ubiquitous human wrestling of standstill wishes with relentless realities.
The immeasurable worth of nature is the most important thing we have learned above all. Seeded in it is sustenance, realistic values and fulfilments, the core roots of family. I make no apology for raising my voice now and in the future about the abject failure and greedy resistance of society’s single-minded economic dictators to change course.
Common sense and conscience: we all know what feels wrong, what is unfair, unsustainable, illogical, damaging, hollow and abhorrent. Heaven knows what our children and grandchildren will make of this woeful generation of leaders for not deal with the glaringly obvious home truths.
What will the legacy be?
In rambling to photograph the raging river I paused twice, once to ponder on the significance of the long-deceased Seat 500 on our neighbour’s farm, and then again to stare at another mountain we have just climbed.
Ella and Joe have been planning a fund-raising ascent of La Mola, the Snowdonia-sized limestone monolith that watches over us. If that wasn’t a great enough endeavour theypledged to their generous £800 Comic Relief sponsors that they would spend the night up there. Mmm.
We have done it now. A rare and unforgettable experience that I will tell you about soon.
Theirs have been relatively wild childhoods, freer than most if you dare to dwell upon the unbelievable pressure applied to the young these days in ways that families cannot hope to protect them from. Bean-counting pedlars who think it is fine to rob them of their innocence and herd them into anxiety-driven consumerism make me so very angry, but not as much as does the system that encourages them.
Sorry. I do this a lot don’t I?
On a positive note, I do sense an awakening of public conscience to the destructive, materialistic, blind path along which we have all be led.
Can I leave you with others’ wise words? I have just read the allegorical tale The Man Who Planted Trees, by Frenchman Jean Giono (1895-1971). If you don’t know it, let me tell you it is of the greatest beauty, something that simply gifts the notion, the hope, that we can renew the whole earth: That in the living force of nature humanity can rediscover the depth and harmony lost in urban life. The edition I hold, one of more than a dozen issued since Vogue first published it in 1953, has the added delicacy of woodcut illustrations by Michael McCurdy.
And then to Adrian Bell. All his books rise in a Pisa pile beside our bed. So much wisdom.
“We clutter the minds and call it knowledge. Why, if a man knew intimately the story of what lies between the soil in his right hand and the flour in his left, he would be splendidly, superbly, educated. In our so-called education we substitute written notes for memory. Notes are dissected bones, memory is alive, imaginative. We cram the youth with facts and figures and take away from the man the one thing needful for his manhood, the power to be alone with himself in nature.
“Britain has many places of wild beauty, and many gentle places of seclusion. He may stand on a height surveying six counties or in a corner of an orchard watching a bird building its nest. It is all one. If that power of vision were held intact through the difficult years from his childhood, he would need but few of those facts as a foundation on which to build a complete life. Multiplicity of materials does not build beauty but babel.”
Keep well.
