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| A long trench to electrify Pilsdon's fancy new greenhouse |
This winter is the first winter since 2011 that I have not lived at the Pilsdon Community. Normally come mid-November I've packed up everything here in Wales and shifted my life south 200 miles. I have had two homes, two lives. A summer Swan and a winter Swan. Not till February would I pack up again and drive back up over the Severn bridge to resume my Welsh life.
I began doing this not only to avoid spending winters alone in a miniscule caravan, but also to keep my connection with Pilsdon. It is an antidote to everything depressing about modern life. A place where people live and work together, eating the produce they have grown, caring for the livestock, bearing with one another's quirks, helping each other through crises. People who have previously known only urban sprawl are immersed in the peace and birdsong of rural Dorset.
It's been doing this for nearly 60 years. I've recently met someone there who was just back after a 30-year gap and asserted it was still very much the same as it was way back then.
Now my centre of gravity has swung towards Wales. My better half has a permanent job here so we can't go both head down to Pilsdon for months at a time. The winter of 2016 I left her here and spent ten weeks at Pilsdon, this time round I've stayed put (and proposed). I am a full time resident of Wales.
We both wanted to return to Pilsdon though, at least for a week, and so last week we did just that. It was bendigedig (Welsh for 'wonderful'). We were put to work of course. I chainsawed through the remains of some logs. Anna joined a work gang creating a trench maybe 30 metres long from the Annexe to the new greenhouse at the end of the veg garden, laying an electric cable down it as they went. I drove the minibus on the Wednesday afternoon shopping trip. We both made meals (our home-made pizza went down very well).
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| Kale, sprouts and purple-sprouting broccoli are still producing in Pilsdon's garden |
Now my centre of gravity has swung towards Wales. My better half has a permanent job here so we can't go both head down to Pilsdon for months at a time. The winter of 2016 I left her here and spent ten weeks at Pilsdon, this time round I've stayed put (and proposed). I am a full time resident of Wales.
We both wanted to return to Pilsdon though, at least for a week, and so last week we did just that. It was bendigedig (Welsh for 'wonderful'). We were put to work of course. I chainsawed through the remains of some logs. Anna joined a work gang creating a trench maybe 30 metres long from the Annexe to the new greenhouse at the end of the veg garden, laying an electric cable down it as they went. I drove the minibus on the Wednesday afternoon shopping trip. We both made meals (our home-made pizza went down very well).
And we found time to make some wedding arrangements at the church there, the date for which is now not very far away. April 7th here we come!
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| Winter veg in my own polytunnel, a month or so ago before it all got eaten by something overnight. |
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