RAGGED ROBIN REVIEW

Then  –   emerged from the thinking soup, the story and endeavours of Future Farms Martin limited, where an attempt was made to feed the Parish from an organic, no- nonsense cooperative, and what is left of that, as a beacon of social cohesion, is a village shop run by the people for the people, but with very little of its own garden- grown produce. Nevertheless it is an idea to build on; not lost but an experience to refer to . Then followed Maple Field Milk C.I.C which flourished from 2010 to 2019 and  foundered on the betrayal of the planning system. But the purpose and the flame of change burns on in countless areas of Britain.

Somehow we have to make the knowledge of basic soil redemption and supporting fertility, an absolute ‘must’ for everyone we meet  –   and those we reach by bellowing; it is so urgent,  and the land without it is absolutely frightening ; it all leads through to our food, to our strength, to our minds; and while we look ,as a Nation ,to become more productive  –   this subject is at the heart of it; At the beginning of how we feel toward each other; a trigger for how we treat each other; the people we choose as leaders and the economic strategy we want to live under. This is where our needs are met fairly and squarely   –   Or not. This could be where we find meaningful, worthwhile occupations to give us lifetime interests  –  on the land.

And it is mostly laid out already for us; the land is there as always, we just need to gain access and to add in a lot of hedges. Instead of the intention relying on one single entrepreneur farmer/person , the rallying cry comes from thousands of families who have become convinced that their food supply is not good enough, for them,  or for the immediate slice of planet they inhabit  –   that there is another way enshrined in supreme effort and garden- like attention to detail. Almost  –   that degree of persuasion has to come first,  so that the consumer/activist questions asked by consumers to the Super 7 grocers are unanswerable,   and change must follow; and it absolutely will as food aisles empty, and footfall is reversed by doorstep deliveries, food collection points, (which might be modified supermarkets with acres of rain-swept carparks)  and farm visits by the really eager families.

GINKO BILOBA  –  survival trees

Among my recent discoveries and attributable wonders , is the black walnut stationed in the garden of Middle Woodford Rectory. I have it on my PC screen as an open- up photo, and I’m sort of entranced by it; its girth at head height, measures 240 inches which translates into 240 years of steady growth from its birth in 1785 , perhaps when the house was built, in its strict, clean Georgian splendour.

This is October and I wanted to catch it with a full canopy of leaves before they turned and, with such a covering of nuts, it’s difficult not to sit for an hour in the sling- back chair , and gorp in mouth- open astonishment . The current curator of this magnificent plant , the Reverend Doctor Mark Perry, is going to collect a big bag of walnuts for us to grow into offspring trees on our nursery, just as  William Cobbett would have done, as by the time he passed through the Avon valley, the ‘old majestic’ would have been 50 years old or so and fruiting like a ‘good –un’ ; and to think  this plant outlives every human that finds it  –  The beauty of its mighty arms , with its roots baptised in the river Avon , it remains fixed in all the minds of everyone who sees it  –   and we’ll give away the saplings as a ‘Cobbett –transfer’, to continue these incredibly successful genes up to the next Ice Age; for people to continue to eat these craggy old nuts and to store their extraordinary nutrients in their bones, and to watch their trees with the same pleasure as I watch this one.

And the black walnut is probably a great survival tree, like the Ginkgo Biloba, and the Yew; they will deal with climate change without noticing; they are utterly terrific, like the 1000 year old oak in Marl lane, Fordingbridge  –   and should be numbered among the Saints.

And it’s no coincidence that examples of all these natural wonders, these totemic trees, these long lived, quite balmily big trees, have a place in the Plot System of farming, so they become not rare but normal ; all threading our top soil with filaments far more useful than fibre- optics; They use the intelligence of nature to feed us.

The low- level October sun projects images of the Sycamore onto the flats opposite, with such detail I can make out long tail tits moving in the branches like puppets on a black and white screen; the projectionist is so accurate   –  all this excitement over a dawn cup of tea; the back view of the cat, death- staring a vole in the garden hedge .

 And of course,  I flip back to the black walnut; the biggest in Christendom? Whose garden solitude is commanded but it’s perfectly balanced boughs, reaching at least 10 metres  from the trunk in every direction to counterbalance the colossal weight; and it’s utter grace aims each leaf surface away from the next, to catch every pixel of light falling like snow to the ground; it is utterly and professionally gorgeous and lives next to the celandine and the wild strawberry as a monument for the humans to admire, like some ‘standing stone’ put up as a display of exactly what plants can achieve  –   with no help from us. And as we eat walnuts every day for breakfast provided in a mix of almond, sunflower, cashew, Brazil , hazelnut, pumpkin seed( 7 )to enable us to eat 7 different plants in our cereal, with oats; that makes 8  –   with all thanks to the Green Gram grocer ,of a refill status on our busy High Street.