Shedworking

Today’s working day was a bit different. My laptop and I have been transplanted to a beautiful off–grid smallholding in Dorset which I am lucky enough to be calling my home for the next couple of months. Pat, who calls this place her home year-round, has generously agreed to host me in a little green caravan on her field. We’re basically doing a skill–share: I’m interested in off-grid living and agroecology, things she has been practising every day for the last 20 years. So I get to pick her brains and to experience the reality of an off–grid lifestyle, while she in turn gets me to help her out with all the sowing, growing, compost making and raised bed repairing that needs doing at this time of year. As a special project, I’ve taken on her forest garden, which is in need of a bit of TLC. I’m pretty obsessed with forest gardening at the moment, so this is a great opportunity to put together a design and to help implement it, too. Magic, as Pat would say! In return, she lets me do translation work from what she - rather deprecatingly - calls her “shed”.

Which brings me back to my working day. What was so different about it, you ask? Well... Instead of lazily sauntering about 2 metres from my desk for a loo break, today this involved a 50-metre scamper through the drizzle and high winds to the compost toilet. Rather than opening the fridge to retrieve an egg for my mid-morning snack, I had to shoo a broody hen off her stash of half a dozen eggs in the chicken shed. And rather than taking my electricity for granted, a constant eye had to be kept on the amount of solar and wind energy we were creating, to make sure that there was still enough juice to keep the inverter running (and with it, all gadgets charged and the WiFi turned on).

There’s an appealing element of straightforwardness and authenticity about the routine that comes with this kind of life. Most things are tangible rather than abstract, whereas in my 'city routine', it often feels the other way round. Here, the pace I operate at is very much determined by what is happening right in front of my nose: Do the plants need watering? Yes. But the forecast is for rain, so let’s leave it overnight and see if that’ll do it. Did the chickens lay enough eggs to meet today’s order? Yes. Good. Were the bees happy about being moved to a different hive? No. Bad! Abandon all plans and lock yourself inside for a bit.

At the end of every day, I retire to my caravan and carry out a few more rituals. Lighting the fire in my log burner and placing a kettle on it to heat some water for my nightly hot water bottle. Checking the weather for the next day and putting a pile of clothes REALLY close to my bed so I can get dressed while still under the covers, if I have to. Finding my head torch and checking if the chickens need shutting in. Doing a quick sweep for spiders. That sort of thing. 

And you know what? I could totally get used to it. (Well alright, the spiders part still needs a bit of working up to...)

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a chicken errand to run.