Sweetcorn and Libraries August 30, 2018

It’s important to plant lots of different kinds of vegetables in the garden because each year brings weather conditions and other factors that suit some more than kinds better than others. This year has had quite singular weather, from a cold, wet, late Spring to a long, hot, dry early Summer, and then a typically changeable August. Apparently these are the precise weather conditions that sweetcorn loves.

Julia loves fresh sweetcorn, and it’s one of our least reliable crops. Most years Julia has to replant it at least once in the ongoing battle against slugs and other things. But this year everything fell into place and each stalk has got two fat, juicy cobs on it. And it is delicious!

Workawayers have continued to come and play their part at Nethergrove. Marco and Charles have become acquainted with the Great British Bramble and battled the Rhododendron, amongst other jobs, hopefully improving their English in the process.

There have been some more medium-term visitors to Nethergrove, in the shape of Sue and Heidi, who are staying with us until they can move into their house in September. Heidi has filled the farmhouse with the delicious smell of baking, which is a great improvement on the smell of the hens that were inhabiting the farmhouse before them.

More long-term, Derek has moved into the Bungalow, and another couple are lined up to move into the farmhouse (watch this space!). So reading back over the last blog I posted, it’s encouraging to see that we’re never low on numbers for long, and we should probably not worry about it. Nethergrove’s like a supermarket carpark – no matter how big it is, it always gets filled up.

The library of this post’s title refers to my latest project, the Nethergrove Christian Library. I’ll be blogging about this more in the future, and it’s all still in its infancy, but the idea is to create a space at Nethergrove where people can come to study and read. There will be a small collection of Christian books, aimed primarily at individuals exploring their faith, but also for church leaders planning services or small group study materials. As well as the books, there will be a comfortable desk to work at, comfortable chairs to read on, and a good view to look up at. The library will be by appointment, and should be open in time for the Northumbria Community South West meetup at the beginning of November. Maybe me writing this here will help me get my act together and make it happen!

Snow March 18, 2018

Baby Merryn has now seen snow twice in her short life. That is as much as her four year old cousin!

The labyrinth this morning…

And then again a few minutes later…

And then again a few minutes later…

I feel there’s meaning in there somehow, but whenever I try to spell it out it seems twee or telegraphed, so I’ll just leave it like that.

It’s also coinciding with a bit of a time of change here at Nethergrove, with Sab, Ben and Jacob moving on at Easter (which seems a good time for starting something new), it’s going to seen very different. It’s been really good having them here, and the 18 months has flown by. But now the remaining 4 (and a half) of us are considering what might be next. Usually someone turns up. But should we be being more proactive? Should we be more strategic? We’re not sure at the moment. I hope that when we look back it will be clear that everything was coming together even when we didn’t know about it… But we’re not there yet.

Some new things – catching up on 2017 November 12, 2017

Enjoy these pictures of builders doing stuff at Nethergrove, as they should now be a rare occurrence. The new building is finished. We’re in. It’s warm. We’ve got a front door!

Exit pampas grass

Remodelling the drive

Finishing touches

Laying the surface of the drive

And it was definitely worth the wait. We have a new kitchen, bedrooms, downstairs bathroom, boot room, porch and chapel. The chapel deserves a blog post all of its own, and maybe one day I’ll get round to writing one. In the meantime, here’s some photos of the launch party:

Nethergrove grown-ups

Nethergrove flowers and tapestry

Tug of war at NG opening

Kids playing at NG opening

Cakes and Bakers

It’s now been about six months since the new building at Nethergrove was officially opened. That’s too long a time for me to do much more than a quick overview of what’s been going on. Most importantly then, as you might notice in the photos, there are new people living here! Sabrina, Ben and their son Jacob came to join us about a year ago and have made a tremendously positive impact on the place. It’s obvious to say but worth remembering that the people here are what it’s all about, not the building or the gardens. Speaking of people, we have had a fair cohort of Workawayers coming through this year. People who do Workaway tend to be quite interesting, and we’ve definitely got just as much benefit from their visits from their conversation and their shared insights than we have from the work they do. I’m going to do a whole blog post on Workaway soon…

 

As well as building changing and people coming and going, Nethergrove’s core activities have been continuing and developing. We still follow the rhythm of prayer set out by the Northumbria Community (who continue to be very good friends) and the chapel is now physically at the heart of Nethergrove, as a reminder and encouragement to us to make prayer the centre of what we do. We are involved in the local churches (and are setting up a regular meditative stilling meeting – see flyer), the village youth group, the local community shop, the village Christmas choir, the community woodlands, the village Rainbow unit, and Julia is still increasingly busy as the Parish Nurse. Living together and praying together allows us to do more together than we would be able to do individually.

Finally, this happened:

The effect of which isn’t something I can write about succinctly or pithily, but will no doubt influence everything I do for the rest of our lives.

Of labyrinths February 19, 2017

The labyrinth at Nethergrove has been in the planning stage for, let’s say, about three years. Don’t get over-excited – it’s still not finished, but we have (ahem) turned a corner in its progress. In the past three years we have very slowly prepared the groundwork (quite literally) by levelling and reseeding the dovecote lawn (which shall now be called the labyrinth garden), researching labyrinth designs and deciding which is the most appropriate, making a scale plan, deciding what materials to use, etc. I don’t think I will have blogged about any of this, as it’s all individually so very mundane.

However, the bricks finally arrived, and David and I spent a happy morning laying them out. Here’s the progress photos:

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The next job is to dig them all in a bit so we can mow over them without spitting out brick shrapnel. There are a few more than 500 bricks there, so that’s not a small job. We decided to have brick lines and grass paths both to keep the cost down and the maintenance easy. As the grass will stand the relatively light use this labyrinth is expecting to have, it should be a good compromise.

It’s funny how much the process of building the labyrinth has reminded me of the process of walking one. As I used trial and error to decide on the best way to mark out the lines, there was a lot of going back on myself. Sometimes the end was just in sight, before being snatched away by the twisting path. It also takes a lot longer than it looks (110m of path!). However, whereas the labyrinth is a well laid path stretching ahead of you that tells you exactly which direction to walk, even if it seems unlikely, making something from scratch sometimes seems like crashing clumsily through a pathless forest. And yet, I wasn’t actually making it from scratch. There were years of groundwork behind me, and I hardly came up with the design myself.

Some might even suggest that this reflects the whole Nethergrove project.

Without wanting to belabour the point, I’m reminded that a labyrinth is a miniature pilgrimage. On a pilgrimage, everything becomes allegorical. It forces you to reflect on the journey, not just the destination. That’s not to mindlessly repeat the pithy tropes you get on inspirational posters about ‘the journey’ being more important than the destination – it isn’t. But the journey can inform the destination, and help you understand it better, or change what the destination means to you.

Update on the house soon. Relatively speaking.

Still not a post about New Nethergrove September 17, 2016

The champagne has been popped (all over Derek, as it happened), the grand moving of the kitchen has occurred, and we’re now using New Nethergrove. Downstairs there’s a big shared kitchen, boot room (with very organised freezers), sun room, and wet room. Upstairs are three bedrooms and a bathroom, and is the realm of me and Sam. However, this still isn’t a post about New Nethergrove, and there are no pictures of it, because it still doesn’t seem like the right time yet. The courtyard is still a bomb site, the chapel and porch have no roof, and the farmhouse has been denuded. Actually I will show you a picture of that, because it’s quite interesting…

But that’s all you’re getting for now. Instead, this is a post about Autumn.

The swallows are all gone. In their place we have jackdaws, which this morning were establishing their winter pecking order through an aerial combat tournament. When the whole clattering (which is the collective noun for jackdaws – good to know) hurtled after the one whose turn it was to be the leader, I thought for a moment that they’d rootled out a small black buzzard that had camouflaged itself to hide from farmers with licences to kill. But no, it was all part of the show. What professionals!

Sam has to leave for work at about 7am, so when I have a day off and she’s at work I find myself up at 6 with the best part of the day in front of me, the part of it that’s usually hidden behind duvets and showers and the wheel of my car. Now as I’m typing this the weather is kind of grey and almost murky, but when the sun came up at 6:45 there was hardly a cloud in the sky, a deep layer of dew sparkling on the grass, and the air smelled of autumn.

I’m kind of cheating about the air smelling of autumn, because for me the smell of autumn is cold apples, dew, and distant fried bacon. And I fried the bacon myself, because I’m the best husband ever. But the apples and dew were all natural. Which leads me onto what this post is actually about, if I ever get round to it.

Apples! The Nethergrove Apples are just getting ripe, and it’s a perfect time to admire their beauty and variety. Here they are:

The Role Call of Apples. Starting at the left we have Nethergrove Seedling (I think, I’m always a bit hazy about which one we mean by Nethergrove Seedling…), which grows on the slopey lawn in front of the new kitchen. Then there’s a small eater from the orchard, followed by a big cooker from the orchard. Then there’s my favourite, which grows to the left of the polytunnel, and is another contender for the moniker ‘Nethergrove Seedling’. Next is the really red one, then the one we’ve got loads of, both of which grow to the right of the polytunnel. Beside that is a russet, then a Cox’s Orange Pippin which was given to me as a wedding present and grows near the chickens. The last one’s a pear. You’ll notice I’m not very good with apple varieties, and also not very original when it comes to naming things. Here they are in all their glory.

This isn’t all there is. There are quite a few different cooking apples, but they all look pretty similar really and there wasn’t much space left in the line. Also there’s a quince, which is beautiful and smells of pear drops, but isn’t ripe yet. And there are three cider varieties too, but I took their fruit off them this spring because they were struggling. And there’s a whole generation of trees that Steve grafted, most of which are repeats. When we make apple juice we just throw them all in together and it seems to balance out nicely, but cider’s still a no-no until the cider trees are up and running.

So you’d think it’s been a generally good year for apples and pears. But look at this:
That’s canker, which is caused by a fungal infection, and it’s all over the place this year. Almost all the trees are somewhat susceptible, and some are very vulnerable to it. Nethergrove Seedling has got dead wands sticking up all over it. I’ll have to remove all the affected branches and burn them, which will be quite a challenge, especially at the top of the trees. But looking at these trees with their dead sticks all over them and their living sticks weighed down with apples made me wonder if the canker is doing a kind of natural pruning, and maybe the good apple yield is connected to the stress of the disease. Perhaps. But if it’s this bad next year we’ll have dead trees, so I’m not going to rely on fungal pruning. Although, the trees are most vulnerable where they’ve been pruned, so it’s swings and roundabouts really.

Final update: who benefits most from all these apples? Rhubarb and Custard, that’s who!

No, this isn’t a post about the new building May 1, 2016

Instead, it’s a post about how we chopped a tree down. There will be an update about the new bit soon! Oh, and if anyone’s interested (BT certainly aren’t) in the ongoing saga of Getting The Internet To Work, you’ll be pleased to hear that things may be looking up everso slightly. But I’m probably speaking too soon.

Anyway, onto the important business of chopping down trees. This tree had it coming. It was a sweet chestnut, but it’s nuts were absolutely pitiful and too small to be of any use to anyone, even squirrels. It was also overshadowing the orchard, causing a perfectly good Black Dabinett to lean away from it. Furthermore, Heidi (of www.facebook.com/sky.blue.pink.withyellowdots) wanted some rounds of wood. Also, David really likes chopping down trees – it’s a great opportunity to play with some of the tools and gadgets that don’t often get an outing.

Such as this massive saw.

Which is surprisingly efficient. If you’re thinking ‘that cut doesn’t look very straight’, then think again, buster, as it’s not meant to be straight:

Stage one, complete. Now, the next bit doesn’t photograph very well, but it involves making a horizontal cut from the other side an inch or so higher than the wedge.

So, you can see the wedge, you can see the horizontal cut, and you can imagine the little bit of tree left inside forming a kind of hinge that will ensure the tree falls in the right direction. But what’s that unusual-looking bit of iron-mongery leaning against this precariously ‘hanging-on-in-there’ tree? Why did we think a steering wheel lock would be helpful in this procedure? That’s thing is a felling lever (obviously), which we will now insert into our horizontal cut and carefully, in a controlled manner, push the tree over:

(Just so you know, Sally’s shut into the [currently vacant] pig paddock. No need to ring the RSPCA! Sally’s the dog, by the way, not the lovely lady with the camera)

Hazaa! Isn’t it nice when a plan comes together! Now we’ve just got to spend hours processing the wood. We’ll use a chainsaw for that bit…

Destruction, degradation, and some tantalising hints of construction April 1, 2016

It’s been a while since I last updated, not because there’s been nothing to update, but because our internet connection has taken a turn for the maddeningly frustrating. After many calls to BT and weeks of trying to get a local telephone engineer to pay any sort of interest, this is the result:

A twenty-first century primary socket. Apparently our old one was a 1970s museum piece which had been hit by lightning once too often. All hail the clear dial tone and the onset of 10mbps downloads! However, after initial excitement, it turns out this wasn’t actually the root problem, just another problem, meaning our internet connection is still annoyingly unreliable. Isn’t that just the most annoying thing? So I’m blustering on regardless.

So, did I mention it’s been busy? So many Workaway hours have been ploughed into Nethergrove recently, you’d hardly recognise the place. For instance, remember this?

Well, I hope you weren’t too attached to it, because it now looks like this:

It’s a bad year to be a hydrangea, as I might have mentioned elsewhere. These poor suckers know it:

Oh yes. The encroaching bank is no more!

Will you look at that? Please actually do look at it soon though, because blink and you’ll miss it. They’ll be 6ft by summer, though might not flower properly until next year.

Aside from the obvious labour, we’ve also had some really good experiences and conversations with workawayers, and we really feel like we get a lot more than just work out of them. They all leave their mark on Nethergrove one way or another, and what else can we hope for? We’ve even had some return visitors, so they must be enjoying their time here a bit too.

And yes, I’ve not done an update on the building works yet, because I’m saving that for a post ask of its own. But it is very exciting. There’s paint! I put some of it there! And we found a well! How did anyone ever lose a well anyway?

Winter February 13, 2016

The Lake District, where my grandparents live, is far wetter than we are here in Devon. But dogs going on walks there don’t end up ear-deep in mud within six feet of their door, and cars where you can’t read the back numberplate are still the exception, not the rule. The Lake District is a slate clean wet. Devon is a deep, rich, mud. I think I might have moaned about this before.

After this morning, however, let me never more doubt the glorious beneficence of Winter in the South West. Here is our wood pile:

Mother Hubbard would sympathise! And I’m sure than any of you who helped us fill it to overflowing just a few months ago would be aghast. Are we to freeze come the next frost? And then, in the darkest hour of night (both literally and metaphorically), when ask hope seemed lost…

Praise bounteous providence!
We shall rename the pigsty wood store The Imogen Woodstore in honour of our patroness.

Not only has this four tons of hardwood arrived at a very opportune time in regards to our stocks, but also in terms of our human resource management. Two new workawayers are expected to arrive this afternoon (so lookout for updates on their activities), and this looks like just the project to get them started. Chopped and stacked by teatime please!

Hydrangeas in December December 6, 2015

To coincide with the talks going on in Paris, although I wouldn’t want to conflate weather with climate, here’s Sam with an armful of hydrangeas picked this afternoon. We haven’t had a decent frost here in about three years, and whilst that’s good for hydrangeas and insects, it’s bad news if you’re a vegetable prone to pests. Very first world climate change issues.

Hydrangeas in December

The Winds of Change! November 21, 2015

Today is the sort of very sunny, very windy Autumn day that makes you want to watch the weather scooting up the valley, preferably from a big arm chair by the stove. So that is what I’m doing. No trees down yet, but it feels like it’s just a matter of time. Which isn’t bad really, as the wood stocks need replenishing.

The last time I updated the blog, Sticks and Bricks were just beginning to find their paddock a bit on the muddy side. Well, now it’s got a bit beyond that, and we’ve brought forward the date of their demise because there’s now a real danger they’ll get trench trotter! The poor beasts have to paddle from island to island through a sea of mud. And one of those islands has to be constantly dredged by me or David to keep it from inundation. However, it’s not all bad news for the porcine residents, as they’ve probably eaten something in the region of a metric ton of apples, not to mention the beech mast and hazelnuts that also fall into their realm. (They also have the benefit of living with a librarian)

However the delay in getting another blog post done hasn’t really been caused by demudding the pig swamp, but by the arrival of the newest Nethergrove resident. She’s pretty time consuming, but very cute. Introducing… Sally!

We got a puppy! That was Sally when we first met her (here’s her advert). She’s grown a bit since then.

When Sally first arrived

Ice lolly

New Bed!

Getting to big to sit on my knee now

Sam now spends half her life training her, taking her to the community woods for a run and introducing her to other dogs. She’s adorable. But very naughty. She’s a Springer Spaniel X Labrador, though you’d be forgiven for not noticing the lab unless you saw her trying to eat stones. What a good habit to have inherited from your father.

So, what else has been going on here? Oh yes!

That was quite a site to come home to one afternoon. With the help of the latest Workawayers, Thierry, Eduardo and Sebastien, the Sun Room was totally emptied (including of windows, skirting boards, etc) and then demolished, along with the Mysterious Wall with No Purpose. I don’t think Sally enjoyed that much (actually, she spent the day with Sam’s family). Since then Nick Copp and his team have been digging holes, measuring things, laying foundations, and all-round building. We’ve now got a floor, and the wooden frame is going up next week.

This is the long-planned, oft-doubted, repeatedly redesigned rebuild of the part of the house that burnt down sometime in the 1950s (an event that some of our more elderly neighbours remember, but keep tight-lipped about!). If you look back through the blog you’ll find some pictures of what this ‘Gap’ was like. Rebuilding here will really bring the house together structurally, but more importantly it will give us much more scope to welcome guests and others with greater comfort. We’ll be able to have more flexibility over how much independent/shared space the different people living here have, and the kitchen will have a better view. It’s all extremely exciting!

So, watch this space.