rewilding Get on this land
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JO CLARK together with his team offer land-based learning of regenerative agriculture principles at Oxen Park Farm, near Exeter. During lockdown they switched to providing local vegetable boxes of their produce. Teign Greens sees them embarking on a new community supported social enterprise to provide the seasonal vegetable boxes alongside vegetable based learning.
was brought up on a small mixed farm in the Exe Valley. The visceral connection that I gained through my interaction with all that lived and grew on that land has informed so much of what I now stand for. As an adventurous young child I was often told by neighbouring farmers to “get off my land!’’, making me leave behind the apples, blackberries or hazelnuts that I had scrumped. I recall the feeling of indignation and sense of injustice as a child. I could not understand the concept of land ownership for me all the land around me felt like my home, today, 55 years on it still feels like home and I know now that it is our stewardship of this land that matters not our ownership. Oxen Park Farm has offered us the opportunity to address the lack of access available to people so that they can interact in a meaningful way with this precious productive Devon land. When I look at the ancient patchwork of fields and woodland riding on the rolling curves of the hills that tumble into the Sunflower heaven shaded valley, I wonder at the farm. what the future might be for this magical, abundant landscape. Small scale farmers scrape a living and their offspring move away, reluctant to take on the struggle. Conventional farming still relies on heavy fertiliser and chemical input to produce meat, dairy and grain products, whilst land is amalgamated into bigger farms or sold for pony paddocks. It is now stated that our methods of food production and distribution produce around 25% of greenhouse gasses and scientists, academics, activists and many farmers know that we must change. Over the last 200 years or so there has been a gradual rural depopulation with less and less people
Foxes bold as love I met a friend in the street the other day, and we chatted, whilst maintaining our obligatory 2 metres distance. It is amazing how quickly this has become normal. For decades the idea of Totnes without hugs would have been utterly unimaginable, and yet there we were. He is someone who gets up earlier in the morning than I usually do, and he told me of encounters with deer in the street, foxes bold as brass strolling down morning streets, blue tits landing on his shoulder whilst sitting in the garden. It resonated with to stories from elsewhere, of herds of wild goats roaming town centres and dolphins popping up in the canals of Venice for the first time in living memory. Another friend who lives on the High Street told me of finding an owl on her windowsill for the first time ever. As I write this, a pair of bullfinches are sitting outside my window. I feel as though I am being visited by royalty. I have lived through a Spring that, as Charles Dickens would have put it, “was the best of times [and] … the worst of times”. It has, in many ways, been the most glorious Spring of my life. Dazzling sunshine, grass
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involved in the production of the food that we eat whilst farming has largely become a monoculture ‘agri business’ rather than a craft. My parents could hand shear a sheep, grow any crop, heal Jo Clark direc a sick animal, cut and lay a hedge, repair any farm tool or of On The H machine, build or repair a fence, gate, shed and much more and C.I.C. whilst there are many farmers who still have these skills much of modern farming is often conducted from the seat of a tractor, even driverless tractors, whilst factory-scale pig and poultry farming is largely automated There is however a global movement known as regenerative agriculture which among other things fully recognises the imperative for humans to accommodate the needs of the wildlife, acknowledging the fact that our human health, well-bein and survival is dependent upon the health of all living things. This movement also recognises the need to bring people back to the land and to bring education bac to the experiential, sensory and tangible. The movement supports small humanscale farming, moving away from a reliance on fossil fuels, using organic method focussing on local food needs and maintaining the health of the soil as a living organism rather than a sterile growing medium. Here at Oxen Park we are embarking on the creation of the second social enterp The first is On the Hill (www.onthehill.camp), a land based learning initiative bringing children, young people and adults to the farm to explore a regenerative, rewilding of education whist supporting schools to develop outdoor experiential land-based facilities. During lockdown we have been expanding our organic and biodynamic vegetable production and in September we will launch Teign Greens, a Community Supported Agriculture social enterprise run by the dynamic Holly Budgen and Tim Dickens who have been here since March planning and preparing. Teign Greens will provide fresh seasonal veg boxes to members who will be invited to ‘’get on this land!’’, giving them the opportunity to be directly involved in the veg that they eat during regular community gardening days. The educational, therapeutic and social elements will work in symbiosis with the food production and all conducted in a way that benefits everything that lives and grows. Bringing about positive change can be catalysed by the creation of inspirational examples of what the future could look like and inviting people to experience them. This is our hope and our intention. To get involved: l Volunteering; email veg@onthehill.camp l Veg boxes; email veg@onthehill.camp l On the hill; email info@onthehill.camp
ROB HOPKINS founder of the Transition Network and Transition Town Totnes b have the perfect opportunity to bounce forward after what has been ‘the Sprin lives’. This article was first printed in our online only edition.
and leaves greener than I can ever remember, birdsong louder than I’ve ever experienced, sunrises and sunsets that took the breath away, a sky free from contrails, streets free of cars, air fresher and more delicious than I ever recall. Vegetable gardens popping up everywhere. Seed companies overwhelmed with orders. Local food producers tripling, quadrupling production in order to keep up with demand. In many ways, this has been the Spring of our lives. And yet at what cost? We have arrived here through the absolutely worst route. No-one would have chosen this as the way to arrive here, and it is almost certain that by the time you read this, business-as-usual will have clawed back most of the gains set out above. But what these weeks of lockdown have done is to give us a taste of what a more localised, more resilient future would actually be like. Hold on to that. Emblazon it in your memory. Remember what it felt like, smelt like, sounded like. Two weeks into the lockdown I took part in a ‘Teach-In’ with novelist and activist Arundhati Roy. She talked about how COVID-19 has been like an MRI scan for each nation it has visited, highlighting the inequalities and injustices in each. In the UK we have seen that BAME people have been 4 times more likely to be killed by this virus, and that air pollution, suffered predominantly by those in the poorest urban areas, has been a key factor in exacerbating vulnerability to it. The government was happy to send poorer workers back to work in unsafe conditions whilst the middle classes continued working from home, and while state schools re-opened, private schools remained firmly shut. This has, of course, been ruinous to the economy, and Totnes is not exempt from that. Many small businesses will not survive and many families have suffered huge financial hardship. I fear for the damage this will do
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to Totnes High Street, with its 80% of busine independent, family-owned enterprises. Som of course have done well out of this crisis bu A French friend once told me a saying used describe how some people do well out of ev worst of crises: “we have a saying, that the the Titanic turned out very well for the lobste kitchen”. Jeff Bezos may well also be thinkin the best Spring of his life, but for very differe
What matters now is that we do everything to ensure that we do not go back to how thi before, that we ‘bounce forward’ rather than back’. It is entirely possible that we move fro economy to a wellbeing economy, one who purpose is the cultivation of those very thing cherished over these months, the clean air, t shared purpose, the biodiverse towns and st birdsong. In Totnes we already have many p puzzle. What matters going forward, and w is that we more skillfully work together, forge and connections, raise our level of ambition to build on this going forward, use it as the that enables us to leap to new heights, rathe slumping back into a business-as-usual that, actually worked well for very few people. Bu better.
l Rob has just launched a podcast series, ‘From If to What Next’. Subscribe a www.patreon.com fromwhatiftowhatnext . His latest book, ‘From W What If: unleashing the power of imagination to future we want’, is now out now. Follow his blo robhopkins.net
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