HF ISSUE 4 P14-15 SMALLHOLDER
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16/5/08
14:47
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GOOD LIFE BLOGGING
A Growing Realisation Lucy Debenham describes how a budding interest in vegetables grew into an online-documented bid at living the Good Life I CALL MY Mum and enthuse about how my chilli seeds have finally germinated. I wax lyrical about our awesome new wooden compost bin – we’ve built a gate on the front that allows us to turn the compost easily. We talk about my ‘girls’ Yoko, Pattie and Maureen. We discuss the virtues of ‘Stuttgarter Giant’ and ‘Hercules.’ But despite what you may be thinking, I’m not old enough to qualify for a free bus pass. And neither Mum nor I are anywhere near entering retirement. At 25 I sometimes feel like I’m living on the fringes of society – particularly when it comes to my own generation.
THE GOOD LIFE It’s not hard to see why, as a vegetablegrowing hen keeper, I don’t fit the mould. My generation is often depicted (and often perfectly obliging to satisfy preconceptions) as a cohort of selfish,
money-grabbing, career ladder-climbing, sex-obsessed, gadget-wielding boozy consumers with little or no interest in more worldly issues. I’m supposed to party hard, work to pay to party, and live for the weekends. By not conforming, I’m made to feel like I’m missing out. I used to feel like a peculiarity and felt that some of my peers regarded me with a mixture of affection and mockery. Am I paranoid? Possibly. Supposedly I’m part of a legion of 20-something non-conforming conformists. We buck the trend by being all about family values. We enjoy growing our own veg. We’re conscious consumers. We opt for civilised dinner parties rather than alcohol-infused hedonistic lost weekends. It all sounds terribly uptight to me. But although I am at pains to pigeonhole my way of life, there is some element of truth in this description. It also seems that being green and ‘self-sufficientish’ is en vogue. Part of me wants to shout “but I was like this all along!” probably in an effort to validate the fact that maybe I was always a bit cool. But I realise that cool only matters in relation to things like germination. Working outside with nature tends to give you a sense of balance and perspective – like free therapy.
THE INCEPTION OF THE SMALLEST SMALLHOLDING We’re lucky enough to live in a fairly old house that still has – for this area at least – a good chunk of land with it. Before they moved out, my parents acquired a plot of land next to the original long, thin garden. Lack of access to the plot from the road meant that any planning permission for further housing development would not be granted. As a consequence it was left to the mercy of Mother Nature for a good two and a half decades. The plot was an overgrown tangled thicket of 6ft brambles and bindweed when my parents finally purchased it. The sprinkling of fruit trees – crab apple, damson and Victoria plum – was hidden from view. Research later revealed that they were the remnants from an old market garden that had existed there until the early part of the 20th century. To tackle the relentless brambles and bindweed, and despite Mum being an avid gardener, the majority of the plot was turfed. The fruit trees and a few shrubs were left in place. Once my family moved out, my partner Rich and I moved back in. We weren’t interested in the land really. Although the space was