Connecting with nature spirits

It’s been a while since my last post and in between then and now I went to the Bhakti chanting festival that I really enjoyed and have discovered chanting as another form of sound meditation. Then went back to Gaunts house to volunteer at the summer gathering to re-connect with my new friends and also met lots of other interesting folk. In between working in the information tent dealing with stressed workshop leaders and parents who’d lost their children I was able to attend a few workshops. Highlights for me where connecting with nature spirits, which I will be experiencing more of up at Findhorn in a couple of weeks time, healing relationships using inner child work and understanding dreams for spiritual intelligence. It was great to spend time and share experiences with like-minded souls who are on their own journeys.

Strawberry vinegar and other delights

But before all this happened I had another wwoofing placement at Harpsbridge House, a permaculture smallholding a few miles from Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast where I learnt lots of top permaculture tips.  My hosts Nick and Sara Vowles have been living a sustainable lifestyle there for about 10 years guided by pemaculture ethics and principles. The hard work they’ve put into their home and way of life was reflected in their fantastically productive smallholding and their community work. It was great to spend time with people who have been doing it a lot longer than me and to hear about the ups and downs of their learning journey.  They were also very understanding when I had my tiredness meltdown (see previous post) and had to leave a bit earlier than I planned but despite that I had a great time there and really appreciated the warm welcome I received especially after my Old Hall experience.

It was a shame I was so tired because it’s only now on reflection that I see how much I learnt and how much effort Nick and Sara put into making their helpers stay such a positive experience. There was bread (chilli and coriander seed was the best), cheese and fruit vinegar making, jamming both eating the fruit kind and making music, interesting conversations about sustainability, helping out on a school community garden, bush craft skills, plant identification walks at the nearby nature reserve and I even got an opportunity to teach the permaculture design process for a PDC course Nicks been running this year for some local secondary school teachers who want to teach permaculture to their pupils, an important priority for the next generation.

Teaching the permaculture design process to secondary school teachers 

Experimenting is good 

The most inspiring aspect of my time in the garden was seeing Nick’s experimental approach to growing, a fan of polycultures rather than companion planting his philosophy is to work with nature as much as possible so if nature in her wisdom decides to grow a plant in the middle of a designed bed it will be left there unless it’s getting in the way of his intention. I really liked his experimental approach of just trying things out rather than worrying too much if it will work as even if it doesn’t you will learn a lot during the process. Triage weeding was another example of low maintenance gardening and is possible with a well mulched plot as you can be selective about removing plants that are in competition with the ones you desire to grow. Just choosing to pull out weeds that are about to go to seed ensures you don’t get loads more growing in a place you’d rather they weren’t in residence rather than the Gaunts House approach of five hours hoeing beds to remove all weeds, what a waste of people energy! There were many examples of the design principles and features in action including a shelterbelt around the plot to block the prevailing wind, an apple orchard with geese, a herb bed watered using ‘grey water’, polycultures, stacking, a wormery, water capture and pumping, chickens, geese, bees, mushroom growing, scything, rocket stove cooking and seed saving to name a few. Other things that spring to mind where leaving the cabbage roots in the ground so you can have cut and come again cabbage leaves, using grass as a mulch, the huge variety of delicious jams, pickles, chutneys and vinegars (including the aforementioned strawberry flavoured one) you can make with your produce, using wilted comfrey to feed slugs so they don’t attack your plants, planting phacelia under your blackcurrants to provide bee food and stop birds eating your currants. Most evenings we walked to the nature reserve,  a wild unspoilt coastline very similar to the north Norfolk coast I’ve visited many times but here it was even less inhabited apart from the grey seals that like to bob about close to the shore for us to wave at.

'Cut and come again' cabbage

Grass mulching the polytunnel

Singing to the seals

On my last visit to the beach for some reason I started singing to the seals, they didn’t sing back but one of them did hang around for quite a while and I felt like we shared a moment together before I walked back up the beach and he swam off into the depths of the vast ocean probably to tell his family about the strange warbling two legged creature it had seen on the beach that day… thanks to the Vowles family for a great time.

A beautiful 'sand tree forest' on the beach, the intelligence of nature is awe inspiring