Why an allotment?

So, how did my allotment learning discovery begin..

Hmm….might have to go back a bit and dredge through my thoughts.

Often I have a dream of escaping the world. Or at least, many of the modern trappings, some of our western ways of living. It occupies a lot of my ‘musing’ time.

Trying to find a balancing solution to life…

There are of course many things I appreciate – light and warmth and protection from the elements are particularly useful!

But houses? Not so much. They take an enormous amount of striving for.

Be it rent or mortgage, there will always be a lot of effort involved to keep a house going.

Electricity and gas and oil. Logs and coal and chimney sweeps. Insurance and telephones and internet. T.V and washing machines, fridges, freezers and cookers. Floors and lighting, wall coverings and furniture, curtains, vacuum cleaners,….ornaments!

Then of course – dusting and washing up and hoovering  – cleaning and mending and decorating. Repairing, building and re-making.

IF you are lucky enough to have a garden, add on lawn mowing and weeding, sheds and garages, dustbins and storage. Compost heaps!

…(and if you can include lofts or cellars – or both! on your list then you have even more of my sympathy…)

If the house looks too clean, you can always add in pets – cats and dogs, cages and rabbits,…or chickens seem to be all the rage?…walks and more cleaning…

There. Now we are all isolated in our tidy little boxes and if we are lucky we might have time to sleep in them. If we work very hard we might be able to go on holiday to get way from them!

You get the picture. Well, most of you are probably living the picture, like me. It is easy to get sucked into it.

As a supposedly intelligent species, how did we end up here?

So… a long winded way of saying that I can’t help realising- fairly often – DO I REALLY NEED ALL THIS STUFF!

I think long and hard about possible alternatives.

I have tried living in a tee-pee…..

I think I would love to try living in a camper van… ( erm.. except perhaps in January)

I dream and long for a little cabin / shed  / hut somewhere remote and peaceful, where no one can find me.

I considered squatting in a beach hut…

….( other people watch ‘Grand Designs’ on TV. I drool over George Clarke’s ‘Shed of the Year’ series.)

 

(..made for me?!!)

In amongst this muddle of thinking and dreaming, planning and hoping, one factor kept resurfacing. How would I manage without a little bit of soil to call my own? Nowhere to plant stuff?

It was suggested, by an eminently sensible person, that I could find out about allotments.

So I investigated the subject. And I discovered that there was, in our area at least, an eight year waiting list for these much coveted plots.  That they are relatively cheap to rent. That they can be challenging ( especially if you ‘inherit’ a very neglected patch  –  which is likely! )In discussion with my son and his growing family ( who are lucky enough to have a garden but it is fairly small…) we added out names to the list. After all, so much could change in eight years……

After a while,  our local council mounted an offensive to reduce the waiting time. Allotments were  becoming all the rage…

Some plots were divided into two. Some people, who didn’t seem very interested anymore, were asked if they would like to pass on their allotments.

The upshot was – that after only eighteen months…..

……….we were offered a half plot.

 

Time for some serious thinking.

 

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