It being a wedding I had packed my nice dress and colour-block was the suggested theme. I even managed to have a shower the day before which was more than I had managed in the preceeding 5 days! I ran out of time to prioritise shaving my legs or armpits which have been overlooked for I don't even know how long, partly because being fair-haired I can 'get away with it' and partly because it really doesn't sit well with me at all that these things should matter even slightly. Well, it turned out I was in good company because there were loud and proud hairy armpits and furry legs aplenty - including the bride! Gosh, that was soo refreshing (and initilly surprising)! I do feel like a duck out of water sometimes when I say such things but there I was postively normal! I love that my cousin and his friends are entirely unaffected by illogical and unnecessary expectations of society :) There was no pretence - people were just free to be themselves - in every way! Paul (aka Mole) and his wife even swapped outfits for the banquet, incorporating a powerful message regarding gender politics which I may blog about some other time when my brain is working better! And they actively welcomed my kids at the top table of the banquet for the full hour of speaches without batting an eyelid which I so appreciated - they were made to feel fully part of the whole thing and even led the wedding procession into the ceremony field without that having been planned; it really did feel like 'anything goes' :) My cousin and his wife aren't Christians but they are Christ-like. they bith work part time in a library and live very simply with no car. they volunteer in community cafe's and open their street regularly for children to play out, organising stewards to close the road off even though they have no kids of their own. They frequently go on on protest camps for th good of the rest of us and those without a voice and they make an actual difference. Shell pulled out of laying a pipeline, that would have put local residents at significant risk, thanks to them not being afraid of being arrested and also putting their lives at risk in the sea in front of massive Shell ships coming to start drilling.
When we arrived there was a little handwritten notice by the entrance gate saying "Feel free to wee anywhere around the site just not in the toilets" (aka the poo loo's) - so I knew instantly that I could relax (in more ways than one) and that we were among friends!! The kids amused themselves so well the entire time - I could just let them roam free. There was a handmade climbing frame and swing set and a trampoline in the field that we camped in which was their 'village green' which was at the centre of the bender and round house dwellings of the people who live there (separated by a hedge for privacy). Ten adults live there and seven children. One of the children came out not long after we arrived and befriended my two older ones so the three of them became a little possy and basically looked after themselves for the rest of the time. She invited them into her garden where they played on her tree swing and in their chicken house, with the ducks etc. She had My Little Ponies in her house and her 13 year old sister was on a laptop (running off electricity from their wind turbine) so they are 21st century hippies! There's only one drinking water source on the whole site though, which is a pump given to them by Water Aid who needed somewhere to long term quality test the pumps they give to communities in Africa. In order to source the water the bore hole people used dousing which is still the main way water sources are found even though it seems archaic. They're completely off-grid hence needing to dig a well of their own.
It is a premaculture site so they are trying to live as sustainably as possible - but intentionally not entirely self sufficient - they actively seek to build relations with their 'neighbours' and often share tools and other things with them. When they got the site 10 years ago it was basically a big field with some woodland next to it. They had to apply for change of land use from agricultural and it is now registered for educational, horticulutral, environmental and I think residential - all of which are quite wide in definition which helps them have quite a lot of freedom within the terms of use. with their blank canvas they decided to have a village green set-up because it seemed the most community-building-friendly. They found it hard to agree on size for the green though - some wanted lots of space for games, others wanted the houses close together, others didn't want it at all. I know from being in a family school where mainly the parents did the teaching (so it was like a co-op) - that this sort of thing comes up a lot where you have a group of people who have chosen to commit to something together: everyone has different idea's of what will be best but also want very much to work together hence opting in in the first place. It can get quite intense. They found that to problem solve this particular issue the thing that worked best was they all stood in the field, started in the middle and physically put their bodies where they wanted the edge of the green to be, then inched about a bit until all were happy.
Another aspect of permacultue is that you put the things that need the most attention closest to your dwelling (further than 20 feet away and they've found they get neglected) - so they have the goats, chickens and veg patches right next to their dwellings and the horses and slower-growing plants further away, in another field. They've found this works really well. It makes sense. They have a communal bender and yurt attached to each other for house keeping gatherings and hanging out, where there is also wifi, but they spend a lot of their time outdoors and have a campfire area outside this. This is next to the village green. They also have an outdoor pizza oven and fire pit in the next field by the water-collecting structure.
They use a wind turbine and solar panels for elctricity so they make lots of electricity in the summer and not much in the winter which means they've had to get creative with electricity-usage and food storage for winter. The more they use in the summer the better because they get money for generating it, albeit from other electricity suppliers which they aren't 100% happy with from an ethical perspective. They were dehydrating their produce for the winter but dehydrators use a lot of electricity so they now grow things that dry on the plant naturally and can then be stored, such as runner beans, and they just use the dehydrator for things that can be dehydrated in the summer months when it's in their interests to use electricity up!
