School camp at the farm

Yesterday afternoon a class 9 (20 pupils) from Csillagberek Waldorf Iskola arrived for a week-long mezőgazdasági gyakorlat (agricultural work experience) - with their upbeat and lively teacher Pitti Linda (who also came with her last group of Class 9 students 5 years ago).

The students split into groups today and all started work on various gardening tasks - clearing the tomato tunnel ready for the autumn crop to replace the tomatoes, weeding and hoeing, etc.  All of this activity very much brought home the change of season.  

Autumn is my favourite season, and perhaps even more so as I have entered into my autumn years.  I have always enjoyed the change that September brings. New sowings and plantings - the last of the season -  together with the feeling that we are not racing here faster and faster to keep up with the season, but anticipating the slowing down of the year, and gradually more of a time to reflect and to turn more inward.  This is the best part of being a gardener - the feeling that we internally follow the seasons of the year, and this is what leads us.

It has been a long and intensive summer, and most people I know who work on the land are breathing a big sigh of relief, that perhaps we can take a new breath - the days (and particularly the nights) are cooling down - all that is missing is that cooling, life-bringing rain which we all miss dearly. [Now arrived! - editor] 

I find myself thinking a lot about how do we go forward after this summer which showed us so clearly that we have entered a critical new phase in climate change.  Not just a noticeable change in weather patterns, but a severe challenge that many things are just not going to be possible the way they were. Many assumptions about the year and the season have to be reviewed in the knowledge that the future climate is going to mean higher temperatures, less rain and unpredictability.

So how does a farmer or market gardener cope with this (without just going nuts or giving up)?  It seems pretty obvious that the most clear route forward is to plant a load of trees - I am talking about lots and lots and lots of trees.  We need to restructure our farms and gardens so they are small field plots for cultivation surrounded by trees and hedges and flowering perennials.  How would this help?  We would change our microclimate by increasing shade, cooling soils down, increasing year-round green cover, increase evapo-transpiration, which would in turn create clouds and more localised rain.  If this were done on a trully regional and global scale it would reduce thermal energy stored in the soil, and start to reverse global warming - seems simple?

But, we don't just have a climate emergency on our hands - but also a biodiversity emergency.  What are we going to do about that?  Luckily, pretty much the same as above.  If we are careful in our selection of trees and vegetations, selecting appropriate plantings - which mainly means sticking to native trees and traditionally grown varieties - we will very quickly increase insect life and diversity.  When we have lots of insects we will see more birds and small and then predatory mammals and birds of prey coming back.  In short we will herald back a web of life to our farmland and countryside.

At the same time we need to do everything we can to establish new bodies of water, to slow down any water that rains down or flow through our country.  If water is slowed down then it will have more chance to perculate into our soils.  But to allow the water to perculate, we also need to have soil management practices which favour a "soil sponge" that is a healthy soil which has plenty of structure and holding capacity for water.  

Really not complicated, but the above does demand a massive act of will and application. It might invoke a huge outcry from the farming lobby and especially agri-business "services" which predates on conventional farmers.  They will shout "food security" and "end of cheap food". Food security however is a myth in the world we have shifted into, unless we regenerate our natural eco-systems as above.

If feels right then that we have 20 fourteen and fifteen year olds in the garden at this time. We have an opportunity to share with them what a future food and farming system might look like. It is after all their future we are talking about.