Can You Dig It?

(Well, what would Mr. Obama say? Yes….)

Silver Fox was paid immense expenses to check out the local “grow yer own” people….

Like many people, I’ve never given allotments a great deal of thought; or if I have, it’s been coloured by memories of childhood visits to muddy hell-holes to see my granddad.

I recall dour men, grimly eking a couple of sorry-looking radishes from patches of soil that looked like slag-pits and one rum old cove who – for reasons best known to himself and his CPN – kept the rust-ravaged shell of a Morris Minor on his plot that each year yielded a bumper crop of stinging nettles.

Mostly, I got the impression that the whole point of allotment-keeping was to escape “The Wife” by skulking in a shed. I saw them peering suspiciously from these clapboard wankatoria before sighing with blissful contentment and going back to their treasure troves of homebrew and back issues of Razzle.
In our current cursed era, however, allotments have come to mean a lot more to people; they’ve become a vital and practical epicentre for an emergent culture of self-sufficiency.

Once seen as the Utopian fantasies of 70’s hippies and sitcom characters, self-sufficiency is looking pretty damned valid; not only does it make sound economic sense for people to grow their own food, but with recent figures* showing that it takes four barrels of crude and half a blue whale’s worth of oil to transfer an anaemic and pesticide-riddled cabbage from soil to plate, it’s an essential way to help preserve our dirtball’s dwindling stock of natural resources.
Not that it’s called self-sufficiency any more.  There’s a new buzzword, cats and kittens: it’s now called permaculture.  Broadly speaking, permaculture is an all-embracing approach to life, and its cornerstones are sustainability – the preservation and maintenance of the resources we use – and ethicality – a mode of thought free of the baser, more grasping attitudes to production and interaction than currently holds sway in our fun-filled capitalist society.
It came as quite a surprise to learn that permaculture is alive and kicking (in a purely non-aggressive sense, of course) right here in Hull. Just off of Newland Avenue, in fact.  Hidden away from the bustle and crushed kebab cartons of West Hull’s notorious fleshpot is a massive expanse of pastoral tranquillity, a green and pleasant enclave where people of all types and from many walks of life are – whether they know it or not – diligently and quietly engaged in making the world a better place.

One of those who definitely does know what he’s doing is 44-year old Steve Dales, a former City Planning officer.  On his little (250sqm) patch of Heaven, he’s growing a startling variety of fruit and veg – even gourmet stuff like garlic and squash.  Quite an eye-opener for a culinary philistine like myself who thought that such things actually only sprouted from plastic tubs on the shelves of Asda. Steve, however is unassuming about the whole thing…..
“It just started off as a hobby, really – more therapy than anything else.  It gave me something to do, to focus on, after being pretty much immobilised by ME.  I didn’t know anything about gardening, to be honest, but I found out a lot online – and once I got into it, people would just turn up and give me stuff, saying – go on; plant that.”
Steve’s developing interest – and a shortage of funds – led him further and further into permaculture.  “It just makes sense to recycle.  So much stuff gets burned, or thrown into landfill sites, when it can still be useful.”
To illustrate this, he showed me a sturdy cold frame, cobbled together from old doors found in skips – “that’d cost a fortune from a garden centre, wouldn’t it?”
(And such invention isn’t confined to one cash-strapped scavenger; one of Steve’s fellow allotment-holders uses scrap metal and old engine parts to make rotorvators and similar agricultural equipment.)

Aside from the inventiveness, what really impresses about these people is that, in addition to shallots and broad beans (which I don’t like), a genuine sense of community (which I do like – in moderation) has grown up.  Almost by accident, Steve and his friends have stumbled upon a co-operative; skills, know-how, and salvage are freely exchanged, and tasks are shared on a tacit quid pro quo basis.  It’s frightfully heartening, if I’m honest – seeing the basic tenets of socialism being so unselfconsciously applied in a sort of “Unplanned Economy”.
This spirit of co-operation has opened up possibilities that earlier generations of “allotmenteers” would never have dreamed of as they glared enviously at each others’ big marrows.
Steve’s group are currently working on their own wind turbine to provide themselves (and others) with free electricity, while another loose-knit collective (in association with Friends of the Earth) have developed a Wildlife Sanctuary and hold regular open events during which kids can see birds, pond-life, butterflies, and – if they’re lucky – foxes.

Silverfox in his natural enviroment

It’s certainly a far cry from those miserable damp hours spent squatting on a Gro-bag in my grandfather’s shed being bored shitless while some old bloke bitched about his neighbour’s shed overshadowing his pea-patch.  The ramshackle sheds are being phased out, and many now store their equipment, relax, and cook in caravans (although the Council are obviously keen to crack down on such a dangerously harmless and pleasant practice), and it comes as no surprise that there are more and more people looking to get in on the trowel-wielding action.  According to Steve, there are currently more than a thousand Hull citizens chafing on the Council’s waiting list, just aching to get their hands dirty with something a little more constructive than picking up dog-shit – and who can blame them?  A plot costs around thirty quid a year, which seems like a pretty fair price to me, for food, exercise, and peace of mind (during my tour, I was almost freaked out by how quickly my customary cynicism and pessimism drained away).  If I have one complaint to make – and I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t – it’s that I didn’t run into a “Permaculturess” who looked like a young Felicity Kendal.

No matter; I might nip back there around harvest time and see if I can’t get my Good Life on.

Silver Fox