Dearest Hive Friends and Homesteaders!
our beautiful Cornus mas tree - one of them; we found 4 already!
It is taking a while to appreciate it, but we have just crossed the threshhold into a new dimension: we have our feet on the earth, our heads in the heavens, and we have this unique opportunity to completely reinvent both our lives separately – and our life together… And it is hard to fully comprehend!!
Cornus mas
Cornus mas berries drying in the sun
I have made massive life changes before, but never anything like this. Not even throwing my entire possessions/ identity/ dream into the universal co-creative pot, by spontaneously moving to either a great metropolis, or a Mediterranean island village – none of my previous great changes were like this. Not even buying my first home in an Italian medieval quarter, when it was in a phase of mostly-abandoned, could measure up to this complete transformation-of-all-areas-of-lifework.
yet another noce/ walnut tree, which we found hidden under bigger trees!
Perhaps because I/ we’ve been waiting and hoping for this for so very long, perhaps also due to our living in the moment, and not being able to take so much into perspective – I for one am quite over-whelmed, blasted open, terrified even, of what we have embarked upon! It is still hard to really take in the scale of this place. It is huge! It has so many trees we could not map them all! It is wild and rugged, and we are in the peak of the heat of the year: there are few hours of the day in which it is easy (or possible) to work outside (without melting!), and our days unfold in clunky grasping of an hour here, 15 minutes there – of improvised activity.
the rather large ivy which we are taking off of an ancient oak, at our property boundary
A lot of the rest of the time, we siesta, move around super-slowly, we clean and tidy, and try to keep ourselves both comfortable and nourished. Waves of crazy wash over us occasionally; we caffeine and sugar binge, or delve into society for a few hours by driving down a busy motorway and into the maelstrom of coastal pleasure-seekers… Each time, there is a consequential reaction, of exhaustion, of being spread-thin – being reminded that we do not resonate with that vibration, no matter how glorious the waters are.
it's a big job, this ivy!
Then there’s the planning: do we plan? I want to plan, map, vision more than @vincentnijman , for sure, and my permaculture and survival studies/ life experience have me rushing ahead with building, planting, structuring, as well as with clearing and cleaning. There are myriad junks to get rid of, including an inactive ‘smartmeter’, the latter involving a rather labyrinthan investigation into tele-assistance, most of which is impossible to move forward with. The sense of stepping out of the system by having to step back into it, is rather acute.
hoping that our work is sufficient to prevent the ivy destroying this great albero 🙏
Meanwhile, the practicalities of our relationship with the land are still mostly involving observation, and improvised harvesting. Learning more about the larger trees, whilst removing ivy and other vines from them – that is a major passtime. And identifying a particular plant here and there, which looks edible: burdock I mostly knew (but have never harvested in Scotland); corniolo or Cornelian cherry I have read about but again not seen before – we have at least 4 trees of these… Our calendar of crop plants grows every week, and now that we have had a few (albeit small) rain showers take the heat and dryness out of the parched ground, we’re seeing all kinds of friendly flora pop up under our feet: the richly nutritious nettles, dandelions, mallow, plantain, begin to poke their leaves through the soil. The dusty pale-yellow fields under the olive trees start to turn into a more interesting colour and texture: already there are myriad plants that convention might have us look at ‘destroying’, but we instead watch, listen and wait – erring on the side of them being useful.
we'll watch over the next weeks, if the ivy will dry out
This enrichment time is vital in any design process – even a very organic and intuitive one. Just taking in the riches, accepting them fully, knowing that the Universe knows better than us; it will present a very precise and particular group of nutrients and materials, for us to work with. If we reject this, by charging in presumptiously and breaking up the earth, or clearing our mature plants/ trees for us to build on, etc, the land will reciprocate with us. But if we give great gratitude for all that is before us, and use it, then we will get more of it; utilising things well, storing them efficiently, returning the crops’ wastes to the ground again: slowly, slowly, we shall build up new soil, retain moisture in the ground, and protect (thus supporting the growth of) particular larger plants. The land loves us tweaking rather than crashing around! We’ll be better taken care of too, and more fulfilled, so the win-win-win-win-win dynamic shall continue to spiral upwards.
Already I am singling out asparagus plants and mulching around them with rich leaf mold. We’re moving old logs from where they’ve fallen, and into specific borders or piles, so that beneficial insect life will have good habitats which are in-tune with the beauty and harmony of the holistic landscape. Removing dead trees and coaxing hedgerows out of existing scrubby bushes, are the only major earthworks we’ve embarked upon, but we are itching to cut out a large crescent in a spot which we feel is right, to begin an earth shelter.
In previous moves, I would be moving forward with ideas much more quickly, but this being mostly land and very little house (so far!), it feels super-important to allow the land to lead the way, and for us to follow it; seasons, elements, rhythms, growth cycles, harvesting times… It is not for us to grab the reins, nor to whip the beast forward, as it were. Our job is just to land here, and to take good care of ourselves and each other, whilst our previously-programmed mindbodyspirits become accustomed to their very new environment and pace of life.
our glorious hazelnut tree, which needs some other stray trees around it cleared, to help it flourish even more - we've been VERY MUCH enjoying the couple of handfuls of hazelnuts on our breakfast yoghurt with brambles! 😋
Shifting pace of life is a hard thing to do: it makes me think of domesticating a wild or unsettled animal; our egos are bound into very strange rhythms and quite literally insane prejudices, as city-dwellers – even if our previous home was an ancient citadel in a rural town, it still worked very much outside of Natural Law. Now the land re-educates us in Natural Law every day, and is not interested in what we are downloading on the internet, or worried about in terms of our relationships with corporations; it only wants to work in symbiosis with us. It only wants us to be symbiotic and in right relationship with our environment. Our job is to listen to anything that appears to be making our life here uncomfortable and to lean forward into our guardianship with discerning effort and commitment.
we are very excited at how much moss there is across our land; it suggests possible underground water flows 😍
We need to work in our masculine and in our feminine ways, also: we each have differing and yet interdependent roles to perform: this is probably the hardest work that we do here. Our dreams interweave, and we have trouble at times separating which are my neuroses and which are his. It is a gloriously messy business! And we relish it! The physical work, which most people speaking to us about our land focus on first, is really a series of minor, very manageable tasks; the more physical aspects in fact are more for the easing of tensions from the other, more difficult works that we do.
exploring another section of the land that we didn't see yet: very steep slope, with bracken and young beeches
If we do chop and saw, pluck and carry, collect and distribute things on our land, this allows all the amassed detritus of the everyday to disperse ...and to transform into ….better-ness. We go about our days like this; sacred tweaking, as I like to call it. Stepping into Sovereignty really is more of a(n ecstatic!) rebirthing than a hard grafting.
our biggest walnut tree, towering over our tent and house 🤗
Looking forward to seeing what you all are doing on the land these days – and wishing this community the greatest of success in ever-improving thriving on this earth!
With Love!
