Falkland Estate Harvest Festival

September 24

I will arise and go now and go to Innisfree

and a small cabin build there of clay and wattles made

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee

And live alone in the bee-loud glade

These lines from the Yeats poem ‘The Lake of Innisfree” came back to me today at the Falkland estate Harvest Festival as I stood in the September sunshine watching natural building enthusiast Becky Little mixing earth in buckets.

Becky was up to her elbows in mud, kneading it like a deft baker. She mixed clay soil with sandy soil to create a kind of mortar; with straw to make insulation; with water to make plaster with a Farrow and Ball tint. There are no recipes as it depends on the local materials - feel and experimentation are key. 

“We have been looking into fermentation recently; we found that if we leave the mixture for a while it starts to brew, and then it breaks less and is stronger when it dries.”

Becky Little mixes insulation

A small crowd gathered at this first attempt at a low-key harvest festival. Once the royal deer park where Mary Queen of Scots and her companions the four Marys dressed as men and rode out to hunt stags, Falkland Estate is now in part a place to relearn from our low-carbon-footprint past.

Becky showed us around a timber-frame cabin, displaying a range of colours and finishes. There is a harmonisation going on in the small world of traditional techniques, a loss of diversity, a sort of even-ing out. In England, Becky explained, willow was used for support in ‘wattle and daub’. That is now seen as standard, but heather ropes were often used in Scottish buildings. She produces some loops of braided heather to illustrate the point. 

Nearby, Sam is churning apples into juice with a traditional wooden press. I get to sample the tasty results. What will become of the pulp? The horses will get it. No someone says, so and so wants it for her pigs. OK, they can get half each.  

A couple are standing chatting. As I pass, the woman is saying in a Miss Jean Brodie voice: “French people are very aligned to the privilege they have in being French; they are really aware of their traditions.”

Whittling

Two children nearby are confidently using a range of wicked-looking sharp tools and an axe to whittle wood. Someone else is trying to work out how to spin clumps of sheep’s wool. On display is a mural from the Imagineers - the Children’s Parliament has been this way leaving its spoor of of fresh ideas. Illuminated night walk and bike hire are already being introduced. The treetop marketplace might take a little longer. Local children clearly love this place. As the Lake of Innisfree poem continues: 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

My friends Andrew Whitley and Marie-Louise Cochrane have a stall with items from “Scotland the Bread”. They are passionately committed to improving our daily bread - the “People’s Loaf” will be made from heritage wheat, with much more nutrition and protein than commercially-favoured varieties. 

But the conundrum is that most of the beautifully fertile land in this part of the world is used to grow the very worst kind of wheat. The vast bulk of it is then funneled into cheap spirit - the kind that is wholesaled at a few pounds a litre and, hey presto, turned into expensive boutique gin with the addition of some botanicals and a classy bottle. 

The force of the market is directed at this process; farmers are pushed down that route because brewers will pay top dollar for high-yield, low-nutrient wheat. One issue for farmers is, if you get paid a certain price per weight of wheat with 10% impurities - what do you do with perfect wheat? Get paid 10% less - or add floor sweepings? Farms have to make a profit in days of soaring energy and fertiliser prices. 

The UK government won’t change the regulatory or tax environment, because each truckload of wheat eventually generates six-figure sums in alcohol duty. But, in these days of food insecurity,  can we really afford to use our best farmland in this way?  Well, when you put it like that... As always, getting to the answer starts with posing the question. 

I buy a bar of vegan chocolate handmade near Kirkcaldy and wander back down, through sun-mottled broadleaf woods to the picturesque village of Falkland, where tourists are filing out of the iconic Palace. The people gathered at the Festival are doing impressive work; I have learned a huge amount in a short time. Food for thought - and the chocolate is good too.

“I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.”

Links

Becky’s earth builders: https://www.rebearth.co.uk/

The people’s loaf: https://scotlandthebread.org/

Falkland estate: https://falklandestate.co.uk/

Vegan chocolate: https://www.rawwildandconscious.com/

The Imagineers: https://www.childrensparliament.org.uk/falkland-imagineers/