Breakdowns and a learning curve

I'm sat at home (ten minutes from the Oak Tree) here waiting for a bottle of specialist tractor oil to be delivered which I then have to get into an impossibly small looking hole on the rotovator fitting, and then put the whole thing back onto the tractor, which I am not sure if I am physically capable of doing.

The tractor has been out of action for nearly two weeks due to a part that is designed to break under strain breaking under strain, I'm glad it did, but then again I wish there hadn't been a bit of string wrapped round it to do this in the first place. I know nothing about all things mechanical, but I am having to learn as I have had almost two weeks where I haven't been able to plant much which is not good!

I'm slowly building up a selection of spare parts and useful things to prevent breakdowns from holding up work. A few weeks ago the wheel broke on my cart, and it took a tube of JB weld to do a temporary fix so I could finish spreading muck. It is really frustrating having to wait, but in the meantime I've been making sure everything else is carefully hoed and generally looked after.

One piece of completely obvious wisdom that I have gained is this: don't try to lay out large sheets of horticultural fleece in windy conditions. Even if you really want to get it done. Wait for a calm day, it is better for the nerves and the plants!

I've just had a politician on my doorstep. It reminded me of my emails I wrote a few weeks back to the (shadow) Secretaries of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs concerning obstacles I've encountered at The Oak Tree Low Carbon Farm. I've copied the text below. Since I wrote, the problem with the online land registry system seems to have been resolved, however the wider land ownership issues still apply IMHO.

Who wrote back?

• The Liberal Democrats had been in touch with me before I even wrote. They had seen my Guardian Gardening blog posts and wrote asking about what I was doing, recommending contacts, and asking how they could encourage projects like mine. Out of fairness I sent them the same email, and they continued our previous, constructive, conversation.
• Labour's reply rather missed the point by referring to allotments and similar initiatives. Now I am all for allotments etc, indeed I was an allotment gardener for many years, but I don't believe they are the whole answer. What about people who cannot, physically, garden? And those who simply don't have the time, or interest. And there is the problem of appropriate tools and expertise.
• The Conservatives simply didn't reply. I have just mentioned this to a doorstep canvasser.

My email to the (shadow) Secretaries of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of the three main parties:

Dear ***,

I’m currently setting up the Oak Tree Low Carbon Farm www.the-oak-tree.co.uk and I would be very interested to hear your opinion on:

• Whether projects like mine would be encouraged by a ***** government
• If so, how?

To give you a little background, I have encountered a number of obstacles in setting up my project, including during my purchase of the land.

The Planning System

Currently the planning rules are not at all helpful to small land based projects on the edge of towns, like mine. For example:

1. Uncertainties over future housing developments make landowners reluctant to sell small areas of agricultural land on the edge of towns. This land could be developed into smallholdings which would offer sustainable, low carbon, low food mile produce to local residents.

2. Planning requirements are far more stringent on agricultural holdings of under 5 hectares than on larger farms (regardless of proximity to a town). For example, planning permission is required even for a temporary agricultural building, which I believe would not be the case on a larger farm. My local planning authority has been very helpful within these regulations, they are not at fault here, it is more the overall philosophy behind the system that I am thinking of.

Agricultural Subsidies and grants

Beyond oversubscribed lottery grants for non-profit making activities, small scale local food projects like mine are not receiving much, if any, financial support. Compare this with the vast sums of money being made available to large land owners to install unsustainable irrigation systems etc.

Given the shortages of water, fertilizer and fuel that we face in the future, we need a radical rethink of agricultural incentive schemes. I have received no state aid whatsoever for my project. For example, the East of England Development Agency cannot help as they are currently investing in larger scale projects.

The Land Registry

The Land Registry in the UK does not give a complete picture of who owns what, and with the recent disabling of the on-line map-based search tool for title information, it is increasingly difficult for people searching for land suitable for a smallholding to find out who owns what.

I would be very interested to hear your thoughts on all this.

Kind regards,
Joanne Brannan

Home made cold frames

Many people have admired our lovely coldframes. I'll come clean and admit that I didn't make them, Richard did! He's written how he built them, in case anyone is interested.

The Oak Tree on The Guardian Website

For readers who haven't come to this blog via the Guardian website, you may be interested to take a look at my posts on their Gardening blog.

Simple Living in Suffolk

My partner, Richard, has started a blog Simple Living in Suffolk about the changes he is bringing about in his life. He is the quiet force behind The Oak Tree, helping me to build all sorts of infrastructure on the farm while working full time, as well as developing his own projects.

Peak Oil and so on

I've been reading Dmitry Orlov's book "Reinventing Collapse" and watching him online. He is an interesting guy, and manages to get scary ideas across with a fantastic sense of humour. His theory, which sounds pretty credible to me, is that much of the economic crisis in the States today is part of a social collapse similar to what happened to the former Soviet Union. So we'd have a (as Orlov puts it) an fUSA (former USA ;)

So, what does that have to do with The Oak Tree Low Carbon Farm? Well, quite a lot, from my perspective. Here in the UK we may escape some of the worst excesses that make the USA so fine tuned as to be almost entirely lacking in resilience. For example, I live in a town that you can walk across in a few hours that is surrounded by fertile farmland. But Ipswich's population is far higher than it was in the days before the mechanisation of farming. And we have all but lost the skills to feed and shelter ourselves without oil based technologies. Not only that, most of that soil is in pretty poor shape if we want to grow things without oil based fertilisers.

At The Oak Tree I still use a lot of technology that has been produced with some oil based technologies, even if I don't use much oil on an ongoing basis. For example, many of my fabulously clever smallholding tools, such as my Earthway Seeders, are made of plastic, and imported from the USA. See what I mean? If we do find ourselves with oil based infrastructure severely compromised, how easy is it going to be for other people to procure tools like mine, to set up similar farms?

Years ago I attended a course at the Centre for Alternative Techology in Wales on home blacksmithing. At the time I wanted to make pole lathe tools that weren't available commercially (they are now). Now I'm thinking this could be a very useful tool given charcoal (I have wood) and metal (there should be scrap metal to scavenge). It would take me some time to learn how to reproduce my tools, or make new ones, but I would have a chance. So I've just ordered The Complete Modern Blacksmith by Alexander Weygers. It may sit on my shelf for now, but it might just turn out to be useful in the future.