An interesting thing happens when you start to grow food,
you want to grow more, you want to try new things.
I’m not sure if it happens to everyone, but this natural progression
seems to be common among many growers.
There are of course natural limits to this growth in growing.
Space, time, available resources can all be limits,
but you can generally find more of all of these things if the need and desire is there.
Limits of physical capacity and skill, can sometimes be more difficult to surpass.
But perhaps the most interesting limit is the number of people you can feed,
and your relationship to them.
With this general trajectory of people growing food, is there a scale that we naturally expand to,
a threshold beyond which things change substantially?
Another version of this question is what would be the optimum or most useful scale of production
for me within the context that I find myself?
I have come to realise that a 100m2 garden just isn’t big enough for me,
even if I have 6 of them!
Another interesting, but much broader question that I have been exploring is
what is the most resilient scale of food production?
This is a very different question than what is the most profitable,
or the most efficient or even the most sustainable scale of production.
What makes this question intriguingly complex is we need to determine what we are trying to be resilient to?
My garden is never going to be resilient to a massive asteroid strike,
and a zombie apocalypse could be tough thing to bounce back from.
But depending on the scale, it could be made more or less resilient
to a sudden scarcity of imported resources, to severe economic downturn,
to drought and other extreme weather events, to personal injury, or to conflict among those involved.
When thinking about this question, I keep coming back to a scale of vegetable production
that is large enough to feed 15 to 20 people.
This scale is obviously too small to generate a reasonable livelihood as a grower,
but depending on context it could produce a partial supplementary income.
It is large enough to be able to take advantage of some forms of mechanisation,
but still small enough to be managed by hand if needed or desired.
This intermediate size can also exist within the gaps in our urban and peri-urban landscapes
and on the fringes of society, on pieces of land unsuitable for larger agricultural production,
which are more easily embedded within our communities,
to take advantage of available resources and the closer connection with those eating the food.
These broader issues of scale, have mixed with a few local issues including
who is going to feed my community?
Many of the people in this community who are interested in local, seasonal food are already
part of the Cloughjordan Community Farm, a members based Community Supported Agriculture project.
Unfortunately this innovative model does not suit everybody, for a variety of reasons,
and it has become apparent that we need to diversify the supply of local seasonal vegetables
within our community.
There is also a prominent parcel of land within the ecovillage that has become unused,
despite being in close proximity to the houses, to the entrance road and other facilities.
This land use to be the site of the polytunnel production for the Cloughjordan Community Farm,
until they were unfortunately destroyed in a storm a few years ago.
This land was a unused yet potentially valuable resource, but it will be a challenge to transform
this windy, overgrown site into a productive growing space - but I like a good challenge.
So, there is a site available for a growing project, a small market for local seasonal vegetables,
and I need a lot more space to try out all the things that I am interested in.
Combine this with a desire to try explore growing at a larger scale, and to explore
more deeply issues of resilience, and all this has led me to develop the Black Plot.
I took over this bit of land and started to cultivate the soil a few months ago,
and there is a lot of work to do.
25 fixed beds are being prepared for this season, each about 20m long,
with a possible expansion to 40 beds for next year.
This will provide a total of almost 1000m2 or 1/4 acre of growing space,
including space for one polytunnel this year, and hopefully more in the future.
Windbreaks will need to be established around the gardens,
particularly to slow the strong prevailing winds from the south-west.
The aim is to create a form of protected walled garden using hedgerows and windscreen fabric,
which will also be useful in keeping out stray animals.
Around the main growing beds there is lots of space for trials, seed saving, composting,
seating areas, storage, as well as a few fruit and nut trees,
and for other explorations that I am interested in doing.
I am planning to use reasonably Intensive growing methods,
trying to get the most out of the space available,
but this needs to be balanced with increasing the resilience of the plot as a whole.
I will be exploring some methods used in market gardening and have taken a lot of inspiration
from Jean-Martin Fortier through his book The Market Gardener, and others in planning this plot.
But It will be an interesting challenge to find a balance between the intensive efficiency
of a market garden on the one hand, and the diversity and redundancy and other factors
that are needed to develop resilience on the other.
I am fascinated by what happens when you overgrow, when you produce too much?
Abundance, at a scale like this,
especially within a innovative community, opens up a lot of possibilities.
I plan to be selling food through the local village market, and at an honesty stand.
There’s also the possibilities of supplying small amounts to restaurants and local catering companies.
But I’m also very interested in finding out what happens when you give food away,
especially to children.
Because, in the end it is all about feeding people, knowing that my community is well fed.
If, in the process, I can explore a lot, learn a lot, skill up and hopefully develop a livelihood,
then all the better.
This Black Plot is currently an unfunded project,
independent from any academic institution or funded program.
I also don't accept any commercial sponsorship, and I'd really like to keep it that way,
because it gives me the independence to try what is most interesting and useful.
But if I don’t raise some funds for some key infrastructure, including a polytunnel,
it's going to take me a long time to develop this project than I’d really like it to.
So, to help with this I’m going to be launching a Crowd funding campaign in the near future,
so please keep your eye out for that.
Funding the long term management and development of this project is another thing.
And I really do hope that this YouTube channel is successful enough
to help me to earn a livelihood from this work.
So, in that regard, thanks for watching!
Ok, I should probably explain why I’ve called this project the Black Plot.
I was originally going to call it the Resilience Garden, but that seemed too prescriptive.
I’m entering a bit of unknown territory here from a growing perspective,
and it’s a dark and serious name for the dark and serious times that we live in.
Besides, the Black Plot and the RED Gardens seem to go together well,
in a semiotic and coloristic kind of way.
But in the end the name probably has a lot more to do with the fact that I always wear black!