THE SMALLHOLDING EXPERIENCE

THE SMALLHOLDING EXPERIENCE

with Chrissie and Bobby Valluri and Ian Watt

Whether you want to be more self-sufficient, live off-grid, live a low-impact life style, escape the rat race, prepare for the collapse of the industrial way of life, explore how to draw down carbon at the local level, or just grow your own food and medicinal herbs and re-connect with the natural world, here's an opportunity to see and feel what it's like, based as much practical experience as possible. We'll answer some of the important questions...

• How much time does it take a day?
• Can you grow all your own food?
• Can you live completely off-grid?
• How much money does it take to set up?

YOUR OWN QUESTIONS

... and do please send in your own questions before the course so we can do any research we need to into specific questions on a topic, eg on water purification. Above all, we like life to be as light-hearted and as much fun as possible!

PROGRAMME - WE'LL PACK IN AS MUCH AS WE CAN!

We'll start by having a good look round Chrissie and Bobby's project, which they have been developing over the last fifteen years. They now have an amazing range of stuff going on in their space, which totals about 4 acres: areas for growing annual and perennial veg, lots of fruit bushes and trees, an area of coppiced willow, a polytunnel, and a tiny house for extra accommodation complete with a composting toilet. They also have hens, sheep and an alpaca and are developing an area for conservation grazing as a wildflower meadow. (Scything is a useful skill to have for this - something we'll demonstrate and hope to let you try).

THE BASICS: FOOD, WATER, ENERGY

We'll do some practical exercises to do with these basics, raising plants from seeds and cuttings, minimising weeding with reduced digging, mulching and using cover crops like clover. We'll look at managing polytunnels and greenhouses, irrigation and composting, also harvesting rainwater and different ways to reduce the energy we need and collect it from our own renewable sources.

We'll look at some of the practical ideas for managing land sustainable that have proved successful in the recent past and even going back before agriculture: the Permaculture Principles, developed from the late sixties onwards and the ideas of Forest Gardening, which is probably older than humanity. We'll do some practical exercises based around these.

In our experience, it's generally not through lack of money or time that projects run into difficulties, it's more often just a clash of personalities. We have a simple fun exercise to help people understand their own patterns better and think about how, with that understanding, they can cooperate better and better.

Then we'll think about your own real or dream projects and how to plan them so as to work with natural processes, and so that each element of your own project supports every other one... as much as possible...

SLIDES AND TALK ABOUT OTHER PROJECTS

Since about 2006, Ian has been exploring what a sustainable way of looks like in real life, working on many different projects here in the UK and in Portugal. He has photos from Lammas Eco Village, Tombreck Farm, Treflach Farm, Inverquiech Farm and Perth Community Farm and will give a talk about these and the inspirational people he's met on Sunday evening for those that would like to stay on into the evening a bit. We're sure it will spark off lots more questions and give you more ideas for your own place.

CLOTHING

Please bring plenty of layers of clothing, also gardening gloves and outdoor footwear - heaven only knows what the weather will do...

FOOD

We'll provide simple meals and teas and coffees(including some home grown food of course!). We'll prepare a GF/VEGAN dish, please bring some food of your own if you have other special dietary requirements.

ACCOMMODATION

We hope you will be able to stay over in and around Cottage Three possibly on Sunday night so people can chat on into the evening... Camping space is included in the price, various local options are available for a small extra charge, please ask for details.

Please reply to this email with any questions you have at the moment,

Very best wishes for now, Chrissie, Bobby and Ian

Host or Publisher Ian Watt