“You made it mate! And I bet you want to turn around and go right back to London.”
Dick Strawbridge’s greeting was a reference to the weather, not a threat.
I had arrived at New House Farm, the Strawbridges’ Cornish HQ, on day two of another three-day photoshoot for our Self-Sufficiency manual, and the rain looked like it might have set in. On the road by 6am the weather seemed to promise fair along the M4 corridor but clouds gathered as I swung round the Mendips, and descending off Bodmin Moor steady drizzle turned to perpetual downpour.
“Come in out of the rain.”
Crossing the yard I felt instantly that my faux tweed jacket offered less protection from the country elements than I had supposed. And the honking of geese and darkness of puddles brought to mind a favourite pair of Tiger trainers that were my only footwear.
Over double espressos from their solar-powered or water-powered – some sort of renewable-powered – coffee machine (20,000 cups of coffee and not a cloud harmed), against a backdrop of delicately tumbling piles of broad beans, courgettes and chard arranged for a harvesting shot, we had an impromptu council of war on the kitchen table. Options looked limited. Almost everything down on the shootlist for today needed to happen outside. Precision satellite weather maps were consulted and they were turning from blue to thundery lime. We could try some technical demonstrations under cover but the aim is to capture as much of the photography outside as possible. We want the reader to feel like they’re taking down a deep breath of clean country air every time they open the book. Wet looks should be restricted to the solar shower and the waterwheel; and the ducks, lots of ducks. So we agreed to bag a couple more shots then abandon the shoot for the day and reschedule for next week, with Dick and James keeping an eye on the weather and in contact with Peter, the photographer, who handily lives only an hour away in Devon.
Luckily the boys had enjoyed a dry and highly productive shoot the day before, smoking cheese, making beery slug traps, mixing pest sprays from cigarette butts, fixing comfrey cocktails, drying onions and hanging melons. I think I missed out on a party. In the end we settled on capturing two things that day: floating rotten eggs and chasing ducklings in the rain. More party games.
Telling a fresh egg from a less fresh egg when you’re gathering them straight from the chicken’s bottom (for all I know, but have a professional duty to find out), and aiming to waste not a single egg, is an important self-sufficient life skill. How is it done? You’ll have to wait till publication. What I will say is that it involves a bowl, water and some eggs. I hasten to add that James had deliberately kept back some eggs till they had turned rotten – quite coincidentally, but it helped out with the shoot – and a huge jar of pickled eggs shows they’re very much on top of any egg gluts. Pickling will also be covered in full.
Next up the recently-hatched ducklings. James offered a multitude of weatherproofs to supplement my “tweed” and, perhaps inevitably in the land that inspired Daphne du Maurier, I reached for the red macintosh and was all set for some splashing around. These were Muscovy ducklings and they turn the nursery rhyme ugly rule on its head: cute and fluffy babies that will quickly mutate into revoltingly boil-faced ducks. My job was to throw pieces of bread to lure the ducklings from their parents or cause the parents to abandon their ducklings, whatever worked to keep their mugs out of shot. The job was not made any easier by a troupe of Indian runner ducks constantly trying to rush the scene. And when runner ducks rush it can end violently; a common cause of duck drowning, so James informed us. I pulled my mac tighter and tried to keep out of their way. Despite the commotion, Peter managed to get some super shots of the ducklings bobbing beside wild watercress in the stream that passes through their enclosure. The stream is made to work hard before it’s allowed to leave New House Farm, not only providing ducks with their element but powering the waterwheel and watering the greenhouses too.
For me and Peter, however, our work on the farm was done for the day and we were packed off with a goody bag full of courgettes, broad beans, kohl rabi and a hunk of smoked cheese. I thought smoky gratin and maybe a frittata. The sign of a productive plot is the generosity of its holders and Dick and James are always more than happy to share. By contrast, when I cultivated an allotment, which, alas, I had to give up when I moved to the other end of London, I exhibited staggering meanness with my harvests. I struggled so hard to grow anything on my patch of soil – 90% clay, 10% horsetail – there was no way I was going to just give stuff away. Those were my slug-tunnelled potatoes and they weren’t for sharing. But then at the time I didn’t have the benefit of the Strawbridges’ wisdom collected in a book. And already I’m learning: don’t leave your potatoes in the ground too long, or simply grow them in a bag where the slugs can’t get at them.
The rest of the day I spent in nearby Fowey (pronounced “Foy” in perversity), installed behind a double cream tea. Du Maurier lived in Fowey for a period and, as I knifed my second scone and looked out at lonely tourists haunting the gloomy, rain-soaked streets of this river port town, I felt her presence somehow. Lest it be thought the life of an editor an idle one, however, I’ll have you know I took the opportunity to plan in detail further shoot lists and ‘catch up with paperwork’.
The next day I woke to rain but the forecast showed it clearing east and I was optimistic for our day of willow-weaving ahead. Hosting the shoot were Carol and David, the friendliest smallholders you could wish for, in charge of a herd of Dexter cows and a willow crafts business called Cornish Willow. When I arrived Carol was soaking a bundle of willow stems in hot water to make them pliable ¬– the smell was wonderfully sweet – and Peter was setting up an impromptu studio in a bright part of the barn, positioning tungsten flash bulbs to enhance the natural light and arranging a neutral backdrop and simple work surface. Carol showed us round and explained the process, and we chatted about what would be most useful to photograph. She had the great idea for a particular kind of small basket that would work as an achievable, beginner’s-level project we’d be able to show from start to finish.
Susie the dog, a petite mongrel, watched over our efforts with unflagging interest. The proximity of the wood-burning stove may also have had some appeal. Either way, she bore my own attentions – constant patting, ear-scrumpling – with great patience. Carol proved herself to be the ideal step-by-step instructor, always explaining what she was about to do so that we could work out which steps to shoot and Peter could settle on the best angle and composition, and never complaining when obliged to hold an uncomfortable pose. She produced an impressive yet simple basket that even I felt confident I’d be able to reproduce. I’ve seen willow crafts at garden centres before and failed to consider their origins in living trees, the stages they have passed through and the hands that have worked on them. Having now seen and photographed all stages of the process, from the coppiced willow beds with their red, yellow and purple stems and silvery leaves growing, to the basket built around an initial pair of intertwined stems, I can appreciate the story behind the artefact. I hope readers will get the same feeling of connection from the book.
By the time we’d finished the step-by-step photography the sun had finally appeared and presented an amazing view as far as Dartmoor. Perfect timing to photograph the cows. Carol must have sensed my anxiety about the still sodden ground and leant me her spare pair of wellies. That wasn’t my only source of unease. I’ve long been fearful of cows. They look big and dangerous to me, and scheming. There was also a terrible incident in my past that I don’t wish to relive here (it involved an entire herd chasing me down a steep, narrow footpath and I swear I escaped with my life only by diving through a barbed wire fence). But these Dexters were just the dinkiest cows you’ve ever seen – the perfect smallholder’s cow for that very reason – and so sweet-natured. I was confident I could floor them if it came to a fight. The short-legged bull calf, especially, was cute as a button. David and Carol clearly had a lot of love for their animals and knew them all as personalities but what struck me was how easily this affection shared mental space with an unsentimental pride in the quality of their meat. I’ve seen it often in the course of making this book: a favourite piglet mentally earmarked for the spit roast; baby chicks visualised on a roasting tray. Whereas I look on all farm animals the same way I look on Susie the dog, just blanking out in my mind that they will eventually be eaten, smallholders who are completely in touch with their food can look unflinchingly at their livestock as both individual life and food commodity, and see no contradiction. When you know the full story of how an animal has lived and died, and you know it was a happy, healthy life, that feeling of unease and guilt before a packet of supermarket mince begins to dissipate, and busy shoppers need no longer barge through your agony of soul-searching indecision. Perhaps that explains this growing desire to bring aspects of self-sufficiency into our lives: to reconnect with the whole story; to eat things and use things and buy things and not simply consume in a state of complacent mystery. A head of broccoli holds such greater appeal now I know I’m eating a bundle of unopened flowerheads.
The only dark cloud on the horizon was talk of the bees disappearing and the possibility of a collapse in food production as a result. David was more optimistic: there are other pollinators and though the fruit levels in their orchard have taken a hit following the colony collapse of their neighbour’s hives, they’ve held up surprisingly well. More worrying, he thought, was the dependence of industrial-scale farming on oil-based fertilisers and sprays. When the oil runs out and producers are forced to return to more traditional methods, will the land still be able to feed us? And if the bees disappear at the same time, and a post-apocalyptic fight for survival ensues, will I be obliged to look on even the likes of Susie the dog as a food commodity? Such thoughts left me as I exchanged warm goodbyes with Carol, Dave and plump little, glossy-coated Susie. I thanked them for being such accommodating hosts and left them in the capable hands of Peter with a parting request to photograph aspects of their woodland management activities.
Dark thoughts returned, however, as, in metallic twilight, I approached the outer reaches of our great metropolis and considered to what extent London might be built on a foundation of over-industrialised farming practices, idly prophesying the collapse of urban consumerist culture with a certain degree of relish. Indulgent nonsense, of course, but it’s so much more fun to imagine fighting your way out of an anarchic London with a bootful of homemade biodiesel, than to think of returning to your desk on Monday. An angry blast of horn from the car behind me as I made a last-minute lane switch from M25 Heathrow to M25 Gatwick didn’t help to encourage sympathy for my fellow city-dwellers. Yeah, yeah! You may be master of the lanes but I know where I’m going when the oil runs out. To Cornwall I shall go. Whether Cornwall wants me is another matter. There may not be honey but at least there’ll still be clotted cream for tea. Hold on, though. Will there still be tea? Then I remembered James has already started a mini-plantation at New House Farm and tea-growing will be featured in the book. Relax.
