Surfacing

I am sitting sheltered from the wind in the entrance of a small two-man tent looking down across a hillside topped with line after line of dark brooding conifers. Beneath them, catching the afternoon light, is a fringe of ash, rubbing shoulders with sycamore and field maple. And below them threads a line of quivering silver birch.

At the bottom of the valley lies Ladybower Reservoir, its sunken village and church hidden beneath sunlit silver-grey water that ripples with the breeze. Above, the sun plays games with the shifting clouds, lighting patches of moorland across the mountains in the distance.

I am in Derbyshire for five days. Time out, with the soft murmur of the trees behind me and the rustle of the tent around me and total peace and quiet reaching out with long fingers in all directions. Around the tent purple-whiskered thistles push up through long, dry, brown stalks of grass and tiny pale blue harebells nod in time to the wind. There is a cup of tea beside me and a book lies face down on the dusty earth waiting to be picked up again. I ignore it and just sit and look. I close my eyes for a second and listen to the mewing of a buzzard lost somewhere in the blue of the sky and the grey of the clouds. As he spirals upwards I catch sight of him lifting above the mountains, riding the thermals into endless blue. Up and up and up.

This pilgrimage to Derbyshire at the beginning of August is becoming a habit. This is the fourth year in a row I have stayed here at the top of Hope Valley, taking time out and gradually surfacing from the two busiest months of the year on the smallholding. June and July are manic as every gardener knows. As you turn the calendar over into August things begin to ease off; the sowing and planting are over and the weeding and hoeing become less imperative, and harvesting what you have grown becomes part of a routine.  

Every year is the same but different. This has been an amazing summer, shrink wrapped in heat, with endless blue skies, and not a drop of rain for two months. Holiday weather; weather to lie back and enjoy on a beach, asleep in a hammock in the garden or on a gentle walk through a woodland. Not weather for farmers, smallholders or growers.

It has been totally full on. Hard work, moments of despair when I have wondered why I do this smallholding thing, wonderful moments, moments of anxiety, sadness, and joy.

I need to share these:

Definitely hard work: Spring was long, late, wet and cold and I found myself a month behind trying to get things into the ground. Then at the beginning of June it stopped raining and as temperatures soared the ground dried out and plants struggled to survive despite long hours spent watering. Everything has need extra coaxing, extra care.

Despair: during the long, wet lead up to summer I watched as slugs and snails munched their way through seedlings, demolished struggling brassica; devouring everything green; except the weeds of course. As I re-sowed they came back for seconds.

Couldn’t we come to some sort of arrangement? Eat the weeds, not the crops and I will be extra specially careful that I don’t step on you as you slither around at night on your silvered trail.

Heat drove the molluscs into hiding. The snails found deep, dark cervices between pots and paving slabs and sealed up their shells to conserve moisture. The slugs, slunk off into the undergrowth. But then came the cabbage white butterflies; white, delicate, beautiful, with amazing striped caterpillars which are capable of annihilating a row of cabbages or sprouts, in hours.

After that it was the rabbits that infiltrated my rabbit proof allotment.

But the final straw came when the fruit cage fell apart. It has always been essential for protecting strawberries, raspberries, red, white and black currants from the birds. As holes appeared in the netting, inviting in a variety of feathered friends, it quickly became apparent that old age and the heat had taken their toll. Blackbirds, thrushes, dunnocks and a single black cap took advantage of the gap in defences and feasted on the fruit.

Wonderful Moments; there have been so many.

Waking to an ear shattering dawn chorus camping in the Wye Valley on a stolen weekend.

Bivouacking beside the Adur, lying on my back looking up at a clear, dark sky hung with millions of tiny worlds long since dead. Falling asleep to wake at first light, and sitting with a cup of tea in hand, watching a barn owl hunt along the misty edge of the river bank.

Sharing our bedroom with an elephant hawk moth.

Watching a rare stag beetle flying at dusk.  

Shutting up the ducks as large bats (too big for pipistrelles) winged their way across my bottom field.

Sitting on our patio, glass of wine in hand, listening to the night, surrounded by darkness and the warmth of a summer’s evening.

Lying in a hammock looking up at the trees stretching into the night sky.

Anxiety: sitting beside a sick pig on a hot, sweltering afternoon willing him not to die after the vet had left having administered anti-biotics for an unknown infection. What had I done wrong? Had I missed earlier signs of illness. Was I fit to keep livestock? How did I get fond of a pig I mean to eat?! Everything going around in my head.

Sadness: The sudden death of an old friend. A lovely human being who will be sorely missed.

Then one evening at dusk, as a chill rose from the grass, I walked over the field to shut up the ducks and chickens and stopped to listen. On the evening air came the sound of ewes calling for their lambs. It drifted down the valley from a neighbouring farm and hung around me; sad, plaintive, persistent and I knew the lambs had just been separated from their mothers. The ewes had called through the sticky heat of the day for their loss and they would call into the dark stillness of the night.

Wrapped in the sound was all the sadness of our planet. All the damage we have done to this earth we live on. We have taken away its wild places, stolen its forests, denuded its resources, caused mass extinctions of its animals, polluted its rivers, seas, and air and now we are changing its climate. And we cannot see what we do.

The spectre of climate change has stalked this summer. Record temperatures have been set and then reset. Farmers, those producing our food, have struggled as grazing has dried up, corn yields have crashed, crops have suffered. The countryside is parched and wildlife has had a hard time of it as well. Reservoirs like Lady Bower are seriously depleted. There have been fires. The effects go on and on and this may be only just the beginning.

I looked around me at the brown dried out field I was standing in and prayed for rain.

Then there were moments of Joy: returning in the evening to the pig to see him on his feet coming to the gate for food. A miracle.

You need to hang onto these moments………. like sitting outside a tent at the top of Hope Valley, listening to a buzzard and watching shadows shifting over distance moorland. Surfacing from everyday life, and gathering strength to go back and carry on with it.