Back in 2017, I started using permaculture to think about work, and I did a lot of pondering about the concept of a 'right livelihood', and whether I had one. All this thinking culminated in one of my diploma designs - 'Effective work (and a payrise)', which I started over Christmas 2017.

Three years later, and in somewhat different circumstances, it's time for an evaluation and update. This is going to be a long one (but I'll try to add some gratuitous chicken pictures along the way).  

A quick summary
The design summary for the original design at the end of 2017 was 

I'd been in my new job as a lecturer for two years, and while I loved the work, I didn't like working full time, and wanted to be in a position to go back down to four days a week. However, we were also in the process of moving house, and so decided our best long term strategy was for me to increase my wages through promotion, then drop a day a week. This design was therefore focused around making me more effective and efficient at work, and ensuring I was working towards the criteria for promotion. 

I've now been in that job for five years, and am still working full time. I applied for promotion in late 2019, and wasn't successful. I have another opportunity to apply in early 2021, but I'm still not convinced I meet enough of the criteria. So this is a good opportunity to evaluate where I am, and where I'm going. This is going to cover both the design, and work in general at the minute.

What's been going well? 

The workbooks
One of the outputs of the design was a workbook - an A4 document that I use to facilitate weekly and monthly reviews, and longer term planning. Each version covers four months (to coincide with our semesters at work) and I've tweaked little things as I've gone along. Here is a list of things the Autumn workbook contains - some of these are very specific to my role, but others are more generic - I've shared these as google documents so feel free to adapt them for your own use. 

• Decision-making tool
• Teaching timetable
• List of key functions and associated goals (you can see this in the original design)
• Areas of responsibility with approximate weekly hours (a version of this is in the original design)
• Progress towards goals each month
• List of publications and their status (in progress, with co-authors, submitted, revising, accepted, published)
• Weekly teaching prep checklist
• Space for new research ideas
• Weekly review and planning for following week (in the process of updating - see below)
• Monthly review and planning for following month
• Semester review and planning for following semester (questions are the same as the monthly review)

These have been brilliant. I love the routine of weekly planning on a Friday afternoon, and including a timetable (with 30 minute increments) makes me put in all fixed commitments, and forces me to be realistic about what else there is time to do. I look forward to the reviews at the end of the month and semester too, and will often do this in a cafe (when they're open, of course). I keep the weekly plan page open on my desk which helps to keep me on track. 

Working from home
This year has brought many challenges, and I have been ever so grateful to have a job at all, and particularly one I can do easily from home - I've had just one day in the office since February. As my commute is a 54 mile round trip drive, this has made a huge difference, in terms of environmental impact, cost, and time. 

I haven't had to deal with many of the struggles a lot of people have been dealing with when working from home - I have no children, and I am fortunate enough to have a separate room to work in. Working from home allowed me to be a bit more flexible with my time over the summer - but has also meant that there's no real definition between home and work, which has been a bit challenging (see below). 

New roles and responsibilities
As part of my original design, I documented all my roles and responsibilities, and I've done this again now. I won't list them all here as again they're quite specific to my job, but I will highlight some changes. 

• I have dropped teaching on a couple of first year modules that I found either difficult (because I didn't know the subject matter well) or dull. 
• I've dropped some of my pastoral care responsibilities (I still have some - but only for around 40 students, and none in the first year).
• I am no longer a year tutor (again, a reduction in pastoral care).
• Some of my research projects have come to an end - when I did the original design I was bought out of teaching one day a week for one project, but now I'm not.
• I now supervise two PhD students.
• I've taken on co-ordination of a departmental research group. 
• I've taken on co-ordination of a regional group of researchers. 
• I've taken on a charity trustee role for the first time. 
• I'm now on a committee which makes decisions on funding grants. 

My actual amount of teaching has increased, but for the most part this has become more specialised. I'm not funded on a research project at the minute, but we have a new system at work which means I have applied for (and received) the equivalent of half a day a week to work on research anyway. I've taken on several different external roles which have come with their own challenges, but which have mostly been interesting and enjoyable. Looking back, I can see a definite principle of succession at work here - as I get more experienced, I'm able to specialise more, and have more control over my working life. 

Setting boundaries
This has been SO important. I identified a few  'energy leaks' in the original design - inefficient use of small amounts of time, inefficient scheduling of student meetings, teaching preparation at times when I could have been doing something for longer term work. I've worked hard to address these using the principle of designing from patterns to details.

I use Calendly to set up a schedule for student meetings, and when a student contacts me, I send them the link and ask them to book a slot. This saves SO much time sending back and forth emails - it helps me because I can make the decision once about when I want to schedule meetings (which I usually do on a monthly basis), and it helps the students because they can see all the slots I have and pick one to suit them. I usually allocate two two-hour slots each week, one morning, one afternoon, and give 20 minute slots within those. It has worked really well. 

I use Trello, and have set up monthly, weekly and daily templates. Again, this has been really helpful to give a structure to my weeks. For example, on my weekly template, alongside my teaching timetable, I have regular slots for teaching prep, student meetings, replying to student emails, departmental admin, and work on each of my external roles. Allocating slots means I'm not constantly flitting between contexts (one minute answering a student email, another trying to figure out finances for a funding bid). There is still some of that, of course, but I can at least tame it a little bit. 

Focusing on applying for funding
I've made a real effort to apply for research funding this year. Funding which pays for my time allows me to reduce my teaching hours, and is also a major contribution to the promotions criteria. I've applied for two grants on my own, and another three with colleagues from other universities and outside organisations. We were shortlisted for two (and interviewed for one of those), but didn't get either. A third funder waited until after the deadline (when everyone had submitted), and then withdrew the whole scheme because of Covid. Two don't announce their decisions until the spring - unhelpfully after the promotion deadline.

I'm delighted to have been part of each of these bids, and I have learned so much about both the subjects of the research, and about the process. However, each of these bids takes weeks of work - coordinating a group of people, working out finances, project planning, putting together pages and pages of application. This (along with other tasks) is meant to fit within the half day a week that is allocated to research.  

Making use of small bits of time
This is something I identified as an energy leak in the original design, and I've got much better at it. Because all of my meetings and classes are literally sat at my desk, there's no getting sidetracked wandering outside for a breath of fresh air on the way back from a class, or chatting to someone in a corridor after a meeting. As I've got used to the technology, I've even been able to use ten minutes here and there while students are working in groups to start planning the next week's class. 

What's been challenging? 
Hmm. This year it's temping to say 'everything'... but I'll try to be more specific.

Working from home
Yes, this is on both lists. Being able to work from home has been great, and I do recognise how fortunate I am, but it does mean I've spent a lot of this year in one room, and it's meant I've sat down a lot, and not walked anywhere. We created a tabletop standing desk which has allowed me to stand up, which has been great - but I've not used it as much as I probably should have done. We did modify it a few weeks ago to make it less of a hassle to lift on and off, so I plan to make more use of it in the new year. 

Working from home has also made it harder to finish work each day. When I was in the office, I'd often work 7am until 3pm, and if I hadn't left by 4pm I'd be itching to get away to avoid the traffic. If I started and finished later, I'd find the office slowly emptying around me, and I'd want to leave before I got too tired to drive home. 

At home though, I don't tend to start until 9am, and there's nothing specific to make me stop. Especially now it's dark by 4pm, the hours after that just drift by, and I've often found myself working until 7 or even 8pm in the last few months. It does me no good, and makes me too tired for anything else in the evening. 

The global pandemic
Ah yes. I'm not going to pretend it's even close to the experience of those on the health and social care coal face, or anyone working in a customer facing role, or those who've had a stressful time with the uncertainty of furlough, but goodness me this year has been a tough one, especially since September. The autumn term is usually my busiest anyway, but combine that with online teaching, changing regulations, the government and university desperate to have everyone back in face-to-face classrooms, so many students with Covid, or having to isolate, that anything we did do in classrooms had to be repeated online, and it's no wonder many of us are near the end of our tethers. 

The students are stressed, especially the first years, isolated in small rooms away from family, in flats with people they don't know, trying to get to grips with online learning, and with none of the social experiences you'd usually expect. Many of them also work almost full time hours in supermarkets or care homes, or have been furloughed or let go, so are worrying about money as well. Of course we as staff have had a steep learning curve with technology as well, and managing a group of people who don't know each other well online is difficult, especially with so many reluctant to put cameras on (understandable, since most of them have no space other than a bedroom). 

So all that has meant extra work, and extra stress, and learning, adapting, and spending ever so much time in front of a screen. It's been exhausting, and I've come closer than I've ever come to not being able to cope. 

Some other interesting observations
I used the CEAP framework for the first design (Collect information, Evaluate that information, Apply permaculture principles, Plan for implementation and maintenance). ​As part of this evaluation, I've actually run through all the stages I ran through the first time, starting with collecting information about 

• Roles and responsibilities
• Inputs (energy) and outputs (yield)
• How I use my time
• Seasonal energy changes
• Spirals of erosion and energy leaks

Then evaluating this information by applying various tools.

• Identifying functions, systems and elements
• Creating goals
• Looking through the lens of the permaculture ethics
• Considering time limitations
• SWOC analysis of potential elements (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, constraints)
• Random assembly
• Placement

I think it's helpful at this point to run through each of the permaculture principles, as they have generated some useful insights and helped me plan where to go from here. 

Observe and interact
Having weekly, monthly and semester reviews has really helped me to observe what's working and what isn't. Each time I've printed the workbook I've tweaked it a little, adding new questions, removing ones that don't seem relevant any more. I've recently started experimenting with time blocking, and this has been another helpful tool, showing me how much I deviate from my plan each day (and what I'm distracted by).  

Catch and store energy
I haven't done a good job of this, and it shows. I planned to prepare and record all lectures before the start of term (one advantage to teaching online), but got caught up trying to work out the new technology, some of which I didn't even end up using. This has meant playing catch up all semester - recording lectures a day before they were needed, preparing for classes an hour before. Constant stress, constant rushing, constant overwhelm.

Obtain a yield
This is an interesting one. I've put a lot of energy this year into applying for external funding, and getting myself appointed to external roles, and all this counts towards the promotion criteria - but, crucially, isn't enough. None of those funding bids have so far resulted in any funding, and in spending all my time doing those, I've neglected writing. I've had one journal article published this year - it's cheerful, and I'm proud of it and enjoyed writing it, but it's teaching-related and won't count for much towards the promotion criteria. The two articles that would have languished at the back of my hard drive, neglected. I've been ridiculously busy, and have obtained many yields, but not enough of the right sorts of yields to fulfil the main aim of the design. 

I'm not completely blaming myself. It's been a difficult year all round, and research funding is always elusive (and some of those funding bids may well bear fruit in the spring). But I do need to be mindful of making things count - making sure that the activities I do lead to the yields I want. 

Self-regulate and accept feedback
This is what I'm doing now. Working nine, ten, eleven hours a day is not good for me in any way. My posture is appalling, I ache, I'm not eating properly, not sleeping well, not doing enough of the things I enjoy outside of work, and not spending enough quality time with my partner. This has mostly been since September, and will naturally tail off as I get less busy over the next few months, but I need to learn what I can so I don't repeat this cycle next year. 

Use and value renewable resources
Having been in this job for five years, I'm in the pleasant position of being able to recycle some of my teaching materials from one year to the next. I still spent too much time at the start of term unnecessarily tweaking lecture slides, but after a few weeks I just re-used what I could. I think I need a rule of just revamping a couple of lectures for each module each semester, rather than trying to update everything at once. 

Produce no waste
One of the energy leaks I identified in the original design was photocopying for the students, because I'd not prepared lecture slides sufficiently far in advance. Obviously I've not been able to do that this year, and despite the rushing, I have managed to get everything prepared before it was needed, so that's one energy leak plugged. There are still areas I'm producing 'waste' though - seminar activities that we don't have time to use, over-fancy lecture slides when plain ones would do, months spent on committees without achieving anything 'distinctive'. 

Design from pattern to detail
This principle might be one of my favourites, and I've made use of it in lots of ways. Daily, weekly, and monthly Trello templates have been invaluable, allowing me to see the overall pattern of each time period before allocating specific tasks. I start with the monthly one (as part of my monthly review), and note which tasks need doing in which weeks - marking, revising an article for resubmission, funding deadlines etc. Then the tasks for that week get allocated to days within the weekly template, which is then transferred to the daily template each evening. This principle has also been good for group activities - using broadly the same structure and transferring between modules, just changing the content rather than reinventing everything from scratch. 

Integrate rather than segregate
I've made some use of this, but not as much as I could have. I created a new lecture from material I was reading from a journal article. I'm getting some students involved in a project for an organisation I'm on a committee for. These opportunities don't always arise, but I will keep an eye out for more of them. 

Use small and slow solutions
I've definitely learned my lesson on this one. I tried to get to grips with too many new types of technology before the start of term, and some I didn't end up using at all. I'll take a more measured approach next time.  

Use and value diversity
I've done quite a bit of experimenting this semester, and while I've settled on some patterns, I have tried to retain some diversity in teaching activities. Students, like any other group of people, have a range of preferences. Some prefer recorded lectures, some prefer live teaching. Some like to talk in small groups, others feel pressured if they feel they have to join in. I have my own opinions about some of this - it might be easier to watch a video than join in a group discussion, and we all have days when we can't be bothered to speak to anyone - but does just watching videos lead to deep learning? Still, I've tried to find a balance between giving a range of activities for the students to do (watch a recorded lecture, read a journal article, post on a discussion board etc), while acknowledging that in reality most of them will ignore at least some of the activities, and I must be mindful of my time too. 

Use edges and value the marginal
I think one thing we've missed in this period of online learning is the edges - talking to students while waiting outside classrooms, them being able to just have a quick word after class, chatting to a colleague in the kitchen. Yes, students can stay behind for a minute if they need to, but it's not as easy as it was, and there's no chance for a quick word with a colleague without making an appointment. It's been really noticeable, and the main thing I've missed from being in physical classrooms. 

Creatively use and respond to change
Ah, the principle of the year. I've done my best to create interesting learning environments, to use tools I wouldn't otherwise have done, and there are some things from this year that I'll definitely continue to use when things get to normal. This year has proved that many jobs can be done from home, even when previously employers said they couldn't. Given that this has gone on for months now though, and shows signs of going on for some time to come, I need to adapt from 'crisis' mode into longer term thinking, to make sure that some of my own longer term goals can be tackled.  

So what happens next? 

So where does all this waffle and navel gazing lead us? The next promotion deadline is early spring, and it looks like I still won't be ready. I'm disappointed, especially as I was apparently 'so close' 18 months ago, but I'm a lot closer than I was, and there has been a global pandemic to deal with. 

An important question I've been asking myself is do I want this at all? The answer is, I think, yes - but, importantly, not at the cost of my mental health and life outside work. This means that I have to accept that I can't do everything, at least not at the same time, and that instead I must focus on doing fewer things, but obtaining a good yield from them. I also means that I might have to accept that I won't even be ready by 2022. 

It's useful at this point to have a reminder of the overall summary of the original design. 

So far I've focused a lot on becoming more effective, and on meeting the criteria for promotion so I can earn more. But in the meantime I seem to have forgotten the other elements that those things were meant to be facilitating - making work more enjoyable, going part time, working less. Those were the ultimate goals, and they have been lost along the way. 

So what can I do to bring them back? How do I make work fun again rather than stressful? How can I work less? Can I change other things about life that would allow me to go part time without the promotion? 

Here are the elements that I'm going to be working on for the next semester at least - I'll review them again around Easter. 

No new activities
This year I've taken on a lot of new roles and activities. I need to stop doing that now, and focus on making the most of the things I am already doing. So no new activities, and each one that I already do needs to contribute to several functions.  

Focus on what makes me unique
I don't like this, but it's a reality - the promotion criteria is based around what I do that makes me unique. I have to be able to detail my exact personal contribution to group activities, my own research niche. I've not focused on this enough so far, but I need to turn my attention this way now. I've been advised to think of it in this way - what exists in the world because of me? It's not a bad way of thinking of things. 

Finish work on time
My role is salaried, so I don't clock off after a set number of hours - I just need to get the work done, however long it takes. I do, however, have some influence over what work there is. I can't change much about my teaching schedule, but I often find myself putting in more hours of teaching preparation than I'm officially given time for. I need to stop this, accept that 'good enough is good enough', and that perfection is rarely either achieved or appreciated. No working past 6pm except in very exceptional circumstances. 

Physical health
Sitting down all day is not good for me. I'm going to work at least an hour every day at the standing desk, go for a walk before work or at lunchtime at least three days a week, and do at least five minutes of stretching during the working day. I'm also going to make sure that I drink plenty of water (not just endless cups of tea).

Phew! That was a lot of thinking, but I feel like I've gotten somewhere, and finally have a plan to follow. This doesn't cover everything, but most importantly I know I need to combine this with a separate (integrated) personal wellbeing design - that's the next thing on the list. I'll review at Easter, and see whether I've managed to put these things into practice. Watch this space. 

Well now, this is indeed exciting. Yesterday I signed a contract with the national park for a small woodland creation grant, which means that very soon we will have our own woodland. 

I'm excited about this for several reasons, not least because it means I'm progressing through the Land Management design that formed part of my diploma portfolio. It was really interesting reading back on this design over a year after it was finished (and two after it was started) so I thought it would be useful to go through my pattern level design to see where I'm up to. 

Plans for 2018
We moved here in February 2018, and very much planned for 2018 to be an observation year, with some small, non-permanent projects. This is pretty much how it turned out. 

We got our first chickens! We acquired four rescue hens in September 2018 and have had a succession of chickens ever since. This is easily one of my favourite things we've done. I adore them. 

We also planted an edible windbreak, one of my other diploma designs. This is growing nicely, and this year we had a good damson harvest. 

Plans for 2019
My plans for 2019 were a little more ambitious, and we achieved some, but not all of them. 

First of all, some major building work - we had the joists replaced in the kitchen ceiling. This was an epic job, involving a lot of stress, but at least it was the only big thing to do to the house that we couldn't do ourselves. 

We also planned other DIY projects, and did one of them - decorating the hall. The others remain undone - we've not yet finished the kitchen or the bedrooms.

Also planned for 2019 was a hay harvest, which we achieved - this was part of another diploma design about restoring a traditional hay meadow. I was unable to get someone to come and scythe the meadow, so ended up doing some of it by hand, and letting the neighbour's cows in to eat the rest. 

Our other plans for 2019 - removing the small garage, and weatherproofing the chicken run, did finally get done in 2020. 

Plans for 2020
Ah, 2020. I think everyone's plans have got a little awry this year. Still, we got some things done. We had the small garage removed, and it's made such a big difference to views and light from both the front garden and the house. 

We planned to extend the chicken run, which hasn't really happened, although we did build a kind of temporary extension to keep the new chickens in while the old ones were free ranging. This has worked really well as a daytime extension, to keep the chickens away from visitors' picnics, without shutting them completely in their run. We also did some major weather proofing (planned for 2019), so the chicken run now has a roof, and also has a lot of extra perches, meaning more space when we do need to leave them shut in for a day, and there's enough room for both of us to sit in there with a cuppa as well.

In terms of DIY, we planned to have the kitchen, bedrooms and bathroom all finished this year - and so far we've done none of it. We're still using the temporary kitchen we set up in the music room, with a two ring hob, a microwave, and the world's smallest oven. The kitchen itself remains a building site, although I have finally started the process of sanding and painting the joists, and fitting insulation and plasterboard between them. I don't think we'll be having Christmas dinner in here though. 

In terms of the hay meadow, my plan for 2020 was to do a plant survey, and bring in a 'proper harvest'. I've identified as many species as I can, although I'm not sure it count as a 'proper survey', and I've scythed far more of the field than we did last year. We've got a decent stash of hay in the barn, and plenty of too-damp-to-be-hay being used as mulch. 

I'm annoyed with myself that I didn't manage to scythe field, and that I missed the weather window, so couldn't make as much hay as I would have liked. I didn't start until August, which was too late, and a busy work schedule combined with an injured elbow (too much scything...) meant I couldn't go as fast as I would have liked. What I did cut didn't get turned and dried as quickly as I'd have liked. But it's all a learning curve. I harvested some yellow rattle seeds and trampled them into other areas of the field, and am planning to start cutting a little earlier next year (late July). I might even see if I can rope in some other people to help rake and turn. 

Two other things were on the list for 2020 - reclaim what we're calling the 'sanctuary field' from the cows (and scythe it), and re-roof the stable block. We've not yet reclaimed the sanctuary field - yes, it just means closing the gate, but if I don't scythe it, it will quickly become scrubland, and that's not we want either, so that's shifting forwards to next year. As for re-roofing the stable block, we've had someone round to quote, and hopefully that work will be done over the winter. 

Plans for 2021
So what's on the cards for 2021? More DIY - on the list was the living room and music room, but priority needs to remain with the kitchen, then the bedrooms, then the bathroom. I doubt we'll get all that done in 2021.

We want to create a small seating structure of some kind in the sanctuary field, to sit and look at this view. 

Also on the list for 2021 was to investigate grants for planting some kind of coppice area in a couple of fields, and for once I am ahead of myself. This year I rang first The Woodland Trust, and then the national park, and am delighted to have been given a small woodland creation grant to plant 1000 trees in these two fields. 

I've been quite daunted by this, even though it was planned (well, I rather vaguely planned 'coppice' of some kind). I'm still getting used to the idea of land 'ownership' (or at least 'management'), and it feels like a big decision to change the landscape so drastically. I keep feeling like I'm going to be told off. 

I got quite anxious about the whole thing last week, and I'm trying to drag myself out of that by (a) being rational (who exactly do I think is going to tell me off, and do they have any real reason to?) and (b) getting other people excited. I've spoken to everyone I know who is knowledgeable about trees (a surprising number of people), and while several of them have expressed (different) opinions about whether the planting plan is appropriate, they've all been enthusiastic about the overall project.

We've got aspen, beech, blackthorn, crab apple, elder, field maple, hazel, willow, rowan, sessile oak, and silver birch. One friend thinks it's not warm enough here for maple, and not dry enough for beech, and he would have expected alder and Scots pine. Another says there are too many blackthorns, and I'll be fighting my way through a Sleeping Beauty style thicket within a year or two. I suppose there's never one right way to do anything like this. It might not be what others would have chosen, but I'm going with the tree list provided by the national park (who are, after all, providing the trees and paying for the planting). 

Anyway. In the process of getting other people excited, I've become more excited about the whole thing myself. I think there's a lesson in there somewhere. 

So that's where we are in terms of my land management design at the end of 2020. We've done plenty of other things, of course (including creating a fenced area for growing veg), but that was part of a separate plan. 

I might spend some time this winter updating the overall land management design. It gets very vague after 2021, and I feel like we're in a better position to make some other decisions now we've got this far. Watch this space. 

Yes, I know it's November. But I found this garden tour video that I'd made back in August and it seemed a shame not to post it. 

I enjoyed doing my little garden tour last month so much, I've done another one. Again, I've not tidied up - as much as I love seeing other people's lovely tidy (ish) gardens, mine just isn't like that right now. Small areas are relatively tidy, and those are the ones I often take pictures of, but in these little videos you're getting more of a sense of how the whole fits together - and that includes the half-finished projects and overgrown areas. 

I do sometimes want to hide those things... but actually I hope it helps you to see what 'in progress' rather than 'well established' looks like. 

Anyway. In the last month we've almost finished preparing the veg garden, and the seedlings are almost (but not quite) ready to go outside. Exciting stuff! 

I've been really enjoying watching video tours round other people's gardens, so thought I'd do one of my own. In it I show you our new veg patch (still in progress), the seedlings in the greenhouse, our edible windbreak, and our current water harvesting system. 

I don't have a perfect garden, and I confess I've made no effort to tidy up for this video. This is the lived-in garden of someone who is enthusiastic but who works full time in front of a laptop (and is on occasion quite idle). 

I enjoyed doing this little tour, and I might try to do another one in June (perhaps on a slightly less windy day!) I think you can get a much better idea of the layout of a site from a video than from photographs sometimes, and if nothing else it will be interesting for me to see how things change. 

I've written about our veg garden plans here, and the edible windbreak was one of my permaculture diploma projects which you can read about here. 

Other gardens I've enjoyed virtually visiting: 

Those Plant People - April lockdown tour
​Grown to Cook - tour of permaculture kitchen garden

We moved here in February 2018, and decided to spend at least a year observing the land, and the weather, and ourselves, before doing anything drastic. In this post I'm going to talk about the decisions and changes I've made to our veg growing since then. 

Year 1 (2018)

As part of our observation year, I did a bit of experimenting with growing annual veg. Annual veg is good - if it doesn't work, you can move the beds and try something new the next year. Obviously it's ideal to stay in one place and build up the soil fertility, but on a new patch of land it can be a good way to obtain an edible yield while expanding your knowledge of the conditions. 

Our land mostly slopes down in a north easterly direction, and we're near the top of an exposed and windy hillside at 1300 feet above sea level. For the first growing experiments I chose the flattest field, reasoning that it was also the highest, with the most sunlight, and I could see it from the house. I made a compost bin and greenhouse in the same field, and installed a bench from which to watch the sun rise over the hills and the house. 

I scythed the grass, laid beds, planted raspberries and squash, and when the local dairy farmer brought his cows to graze our land, he installed an electric fence to protect my little top corner.  

What worked?
I loved sitting on that bench, and I was right, it did get a lot of sunlight. The walk up through the meadow was lovely, and I did manage to grown a few courgettes.

What didn't work so well?
The meandering path through the growing meadow was lovely to walk through, and less lovely to push a wheelbarrow up, or to navigate carrying watering cans. When the cows arrived, their presence, plus the electric fence, made things just that tiny bit more difficult, and I barely visited at all except for harvesting.

The land constantly wanted to return to grass, and once I stopped visiting regularly it felt unkept and unloved.  

As soon as I realised that field wasn't going to be ideal for growing veg (we're now restoring it as a traditional hay meadow), I cleared another area closer to the house, and this worked much better. This area is in what is better described as 'garden' rather than 'field', and I'd neglected it originally because in March my enthusiasm for veg growing seemed endless, and I had visions of the whole field being neat rows of pumpkins and beans, and this space seemed too small.

But small and slow solutions were just what was needed, and I cleared space for one bed at a time and left the rest just grass. 

As I filled each bed, I cleared another, until I had a whole row of beds down this side of the garden by the end of July (by this point I'd abandoned my distant courgettes to their fate at the top of the field). 

What worked? 
This space was a manageable size, much closer to the house, and closer to the greenhouse (which has a water butt attached - although this wasn't quite enough to get us through the unusually dry summer that year). We did grow a decent amount of veg here. 

​What didn't work? 
Some of our leafy veg was nibbled by hares and escapee sheep, and even on one occasion, a cow. There is no protection from the prevailing south westerly wind, and everything got rather windswept. 

I decided to use this area to create an edible windbreak (which became one of my diploma designs, and will also have the advantage of screening the garden slightly from the nearby footpath). 

Year 2 (2019)
​
Over the winter I planted the edible windbreak, cleared the area of long grass on the left of the photo above, and created several new beds. These had wood around the edge and were mulched and no dig, and I left the paths wide enough to be scythed. We mulched with reams of slightly damp old printer paper that were left in the loft when we moved in, covered with our own compost and some manure from the dairy farm. 

What worked? 
By this point we'd added an outdoor chicken run, which is close to this area, meaning I visit it at least twice each day. It's close to the greenhouse, and will eventually be protected by the edible windbreak. The ground is flat, and the soil seems in reasonable condition. The view is good, and it feels like a nice space to spend time. 

Initially I'd been worried about shade from the sycamores - one of the reasons I'd originally planted in the top of the field - but by keeping the beds to the right hand side of this space, this hasn't been a problem, and they do provide some protection from east winds. 

What didn't work?
I planted veg here, but my rudimentary attempts at fending off the chickens were ineffective, and each time I planted something out, it was dug up by them or nibbled by the hare. We also had quite an invasion of sheep from a neighbouring farm (the farm boundary is now more secure so I'm hoping that won't happen again).

The summer of 2019 was a busy one with work, and with various other projects, and I also felt quite overwhelmed as this still had the feeling of 'small beds in a large field', with grass encroaching from all around. 

Year 3 (2020)

Through a process of observation over the last two years, and incremental tweaks to the design, I feel like we've arrived at the right space to grow vegetables here. This year I'm working to tackle two of the limitations from last year - other things nibbling our crops, and my sense of being overwhelmed. 

​We're building a fence. 

I've laid out an area of 9m x 9m, and we've surrounded it with a chicken wire fence. It has a gate at two corners - one accessible from the garden seating area nearer the house, and the other from the greenhouse and water butt. There's enough space to walk round the outside with a wheelbarrow, to access all the fruit trees for pruning and harvesting, and there's space inside for four long thin beds and four square (ish) beds. 

I bought in materials for the fence, at a total cost of around £170, including posts, chicken wire, straining wire, staples, and a set of fencing pliers. We have around 14 metres of chicken wire left, and a role and a half of straining wire. I've used straining wire to add tension to stop the chicken wire sagging at the top, and have enough to add another round of straining wire to raise the height of the fence if the chickens attempt to get over it. 

So not a cheap solution on this occasion, but having spent two years observing and moving and planning, I was willing to spend a little to keep various creatures out of this space, and I hope this fence will last quite a while. It wouldn't keep out a determined goat (I've never seen one of those roaming free round here anyway) but will be enough of a barrier for the chickens, hares and to discourage a passing sheep. 

This fence also has the advantage of making the space feel more manageable. I don't have to get the whole garden under control, just my little fenced off area, which I'm thinking of as a kind of mini-allotment. 

Of course ideally I would have done this last autumn, and have laid mulch over the beds back then, and now be just planting through into beautiful friable soil. I didn't, and so I'm now pulling out the grass from one bed at a time. I could just mulch, but given that we're not far from planting out, at this stage removing grass seems wise, then I'll add mulch to plant through. I'm not properly digging though. 

I'm also putting a row of stones round the outside of the fence, partly to cover up gaps under the chicken wire (the ground is quite uneven so there are plenty), partly to create a bit of a weed barrier round the fence, and partly because this is dry stone wall territory, and we have a profusion of stones everywhere. It also looks nice, and helps this to feel like a manageable, defined space. 

At this stage, my seedlings are still small and we still have a few weeks before they'll be out, so I've plenty of time to sort out this space. Our growing season is quite late anyway, and I started later than I should have (spring always catches me by surprise) so it remains to be seen what has long enough to grow. 

But I'm hopeful that with a manageable sized space, and the exclusion of chickens, hares and sheep, I might be able to get a better crop than last year. I'll report back each month to see where we're up to. 

Finally, I've finished! 

I accredited at the National Diploma Gathering in March, just under six year since I started. That's me with my certificate, in the middle of Dano on the left, whose diploma portfolio is here, and Barry, on the right, who has been my 'response partner' throughout, with monthly video chat check-ins, and a bit of friendly rivalry as we raced to the finish. 

Six years is a long time, and I've meandered my way to the finish via a change in jobs, a house move, the addition of some chickens (hooray!) and all sorts of other things besides. I'm grateful to have had my diploma, and permaculture more generally, as a framework to guide my decisions and actions. 

I'm also very grateful for the lovely people who've supported me throughout, and who volunteered to be on my peer group at the end. Jo for being my first tutor, Katie for supporting me in the middle, Hannah for holding my hand to the finish line, and Carla who stepped in to lead to facilitate my accreditation when Hannah couldn't be there in person. And on my peer group Dave, Hildur, Anne and Steve, and Barry of course. I couldn't have done it without you. 

So what now? Well, I want to use this space to keep writing about permaculture, to show how our projects are developing. Barry and I continue our monthly check-ins, and this morning I set out plans for planting more seeds, building a fence round our veg growing area to keep the chickens out, and doing some design work around water harvesting. Watch this space. 

Let's have an celebratory bit of tea and cake shall we? Because I have finally finished my diploma portfolio! 

Well, nearly. There are several stages to the assessment of a diploma portfolio. First is the Interim Portfolio Assessment, where your tutor checks and signs off your first five designs - I went through this in the summer.

Second is the first Final Portfolio Assessment, where your tutor checks and signs off your second five designs. For me, this happened in September, where I spent an afternoon at The Inkpot with Hannah reading through my designs while I corrected typos and added missing photographs and re-drew unclear diagrams. 

There were a few small tweaks to a couple of my designs, and one wasn't finished at all. However, those tweaks have been made, and Design 7: Land management has (finally) been finished, and everything has been sent off to Hannah.

What happens next? 
Hannah needs to read and sign off my tweaks, and I'm sure she'll tell me if there are any tweaks needed to Design 7. After that, my entire portfolio goes through the 2nd Final Portfolio Assessment, where a second senior tutor reads a couple of my designs to moderate Hannah's marking. There may be a couple of tweaks needed after this stage, but I wouldn't expect too many. 

And then the final part, which is more of a celebration than an assessment - I will present my portfolio at the National Diploma Gathering in March, which will be held at Roots and Shoots in London.

And what happens after that? 
Well, this is what Design 10: Keeping permaculture in my life was all about. I identified three potential future avenues

1. Writing about permaculture
2. Registering as a tutor
3. Working towards becoming a LAND demonstration site

I've already started working my first post-diploma permaculture design, around making good use of the excess water we find ourselves wading through in the winter. There is tutor training before the gathering in March, so I need to make a decision about whether to register for that. And I want to set up some visits to other LAND centres to see what's involved. 

I've enjoyed having permaculture and the diploma in my life these last few years, and I don't want to let that go, especially not now we have space and the opportunity to experiment more. I'm excited to see where this will take us. 

Goodness me. Such a lot of things have changed since I last wrote on this blog sixteen months ago. We've been in our new house over a year, and have a small flock of rehomed chickens marauding around the place causing havoc. The veg garden is up and running (although there's not much actual veg in it at the minute). 

And I've planted a small orchard protected by an edible windbreak/small forest garden. 

As for my diploma... it's probably easiest to run through the four questions. 

What's going well? 

Lots of things!

I had my Interim Portfolio Assessment in July last year, so my first five designs are signed off. You can see them by clicking on the diploma portfolio tab above, or these individual links.

1. Our small city garden
2. Reducing my soap footprint
3. Turning our house into a palace
4. Researching the diploma
5. Effective work (and a pay rise)

There's a nice mix of designs in the first half of my portfolio. The first is land-based, on a very small scale. The second you might describe as 'manufacturing'. The third, well, I'm not sure how to describe that and I'm not sure it worked too well as a design, but I certainly learned a lot through doing it. The fourth is a collaborative design, and a contribution to the development of the diploma process. The fifth is my favourite - very much a design for personal effectiveness, but intensely practical and certainly the most useful from the first half of my diploma. 

The second half of my diploma feels more coherent, and is more land-based, which is unsurprising given the amount of land we now have.

6. Chickens
7. Land management
8. Edible windbreak
9. Hay meadow
10. What next?  

The sixth design is about us rehoming a small flock of hens, which has been a delight (and also a bit of a nuisance). The seventh is my biggest design, still in progress, about what on earth we do with this space we have here. Eight and nine are nested designs, smaller parts of the larger land management design, around an edible windbreak to protect the veg garden, and about how to manage our traditional hay meadow. The final design will be about planning how to keep permaculture in my life after the diploma. 

I've committed to accrediting at the National Diploma Gathering next March with my diploma buddy Barry. We started at roughly the same time, and we have regular check ins with each other every six weeks or so, which is a lovely way to make progress. 

I've booked my Final Portfolio Assessment for 10th September. Lots to do in the next few weeks! 

What's challenging? 

I feel slightly overwhelmed by the space we have here. I've never been responsible for anything other than a 100 square foot garden before, and so eleven acres is rather a step up. I struggle with the idea of 'land ownership' - in some senses I feel like we don't own it (because we have a large mortgage), and I also feel like we shouldn't own it (because should anybody own land?) 

These thoughts have held me back from thinking about what we might do. I have a constant sense of 'am I allowed to do this?' and 'what will people think if I do that?' For a long time I felt like I didn't know anything, but that feeling is slowly passing as I read as much as I can, talk to as many people as I can, join organisations like the Dry Stone Walling Association, and wander about the fields identifying plants and fixing walls. 

Last year was definitely an observation year. We didn't make any major changes, just grew some annual veg, and set up a chicken run and a greenhouse. The neighbouring dairy farm used our fields for their pregnant cows (as they have done for the last few years before we arrived), and as a result we saw them regularly and learned so much about the community and the landscape. 

This year I'm starting to use my diploma to start thinking about the future more. Taking it step by step is starting to make it feel more manageable (although I do still have slight palpitations when I think about how many dry stone walls we have).

Of course, I also have too many projects on the go. Aside from the diploma, and general land management, we also have ongoing large DIY projects in the house, and I work full time, and have various other ongoing activities. Periodically I assess my life and see what I need to drop, and I think it's about time to do that again. 

Long term vision

My vision for the diploma is to accredit next March, and I now have just over six weeks until my Final Portfolio Assessment, when all ten of my designs (and the supporting information) need to be ready. That's not very long. Five have been signed off, another one is ready, three are in progress, and one hasn't even been started yet. Lots to do. 

As for my long term vision for this place... well, that's part of design seven (land management). We want to manage the space for wildlife. We don't need to earn a living from the land, which is good - but also means that I work full time, which means any management needs to be done at the weekend, or evenings or holidays. Longer term I'd like to drop at least one day at work (part of design five - effective work and a pay rise). 

Next achievable steps

I have six weeks to prepare for my Final Portfolio Assessment. These are my next steps for each design. 

Land management

• Buy tracing paper and finish map overlays
• Write up analysis

Edible windbreak

• Draw final maps
• Write up

Hay meadow

• Finish reading the meadows-related library I seem to have acquired
• Find someone to cut and remove the grass

Permaculture post-diploma

• Decide which design process to use
• Get thinking!

All doable, but I do need to focus. I have Fridays off for the next few weeks, and also two full weeks off in August. Best get on. 

Finally! After at least two years of decorating and planning, and another seven or eight months of bureaucracy and waiting and tearing our hair out, we finally made it to our new home a couple of weeks ago. I've laughed to myself reading back on my last blog post here (in December), where I said 

As it happened, we moved on February 26th, and by February 27th, we had so much snow we couldn't leave for several days, and I had to cancel all my work for the rest of the week. 

Still, it did provide us with a good introduction to the wind patterns that swirl around our new front garden, which blew the snow away from the grass and created huge icy waves. 

Our last garden was 100 square feet, and we now have 11 acres. We weren't originally looking for land, and I hadn't let myself think ahead too much, as we nearly lost the house a couple of times, and I didn't want to get too overexcited. Of course, that now means we have very little in the way of a plan. 

My first task has been to observe. Well, the very first task was to figure out how to use the central heating, and get the builder round to figure out why exactly two of the upstairs rooms don't have joists - but inside is my partner's domain, while I am in charge of outside. 

This weekend was the first time outside hasn't been covered in snow, so I've printed a map and walked the boundaries, making notes and taking over 150 photographs in the process. These are a few of my initial observations.

We have more outbuildings than we need

We have several outbuildings, some in a better state than others.

There are also two (probably asbestos) garages - one in a reasonable state of repair which we will likely keep for storage or temporary workshop space, and the other which is falling down, looks dreadful, and is right in the way of a nice view, so will have to go. 

The views here are spectacular

We knew this, of course, but I have still spent house just sitting in the living room staring out of the window. One of our major 'wants' for this place is to open up some of the best views that are blocked by less useful outbuildings. We'd like to create several seating areas - to start with by the front door (for breakfast), and secondly by the back door, which has the best views.

There's a footpath running along the boundary of that field to the right, so that will involve some screening for privacy (although it doesn't seem to be much used). 

We'd also like to put simple seating areas in several of the other fields, particularly down at the bottom of our slope which is secluded even from our house. 

Our fields are rather soggy

There has been a LOT of snow around here, so the general sogginess is partly due to that, but I remember some areas being quite damp when we visited in August. There are several springs, in some cases more of a stream, and three of the fields in particular I would describe as wetland. 

The local farmer said some drainage pipes (I hope not ones involving the septic tank...) had been damaged by contractors, and that the previous owner had been planning to have them reinstated. I'm going to investigate that a bit further, and before I do anything drastic, see if we can find a use for the fields in their current marshy state (least possible effort for maximum gain, after all...). 

I think I've identified the food-growing field

This is the field closest to the house, about two thirds of an acre in size, and only gently sloping, with no shade. It's also one of the least muddy, and has the best access from the drive (for deliveries, and for ambling in to check the veg on the way home). 

I'd initially ruled it out as it's one of the closest to the neighbours, and I didn't want proper farming folk to be witnessing my shoddy attempts at food growing, but as the drive is rather longer than I'd remembered, there is no road past our house, and our only neighbour within half a mile is 87 years old, I don't think it'll be an issue. 

Our land is part of a refugia

This morning I spent some time investigating the Countryside Stewardship Scheme. As we had no particular plans for the land, investigating the local priorities for wildlife and environment seemed like a good place to start. 

We are in a national park, so there are all kinds of priorities relating to that, and we have possibly a couple of miles of dry stone walls, which have their own payments attached in some circumstances. We are very near a small bit of woodland, so there is the possibility of extending that slightly into our land (in fact it seems to be extending itself already). 

Apparently, we are also part of a potential refugia, something I'd not heard of until this morning. Natural England says:

I like the idea of providing almost a safe haven for the local wildlife. There's an awful lot more to investigate in relation to this. I almost wish I didn't have a full time job... 

There's plenty of wildlife here

On our second day, we saw a hare just outside our front gate, and we've seen it several times since, leaping across the fields. I even managed to get a photograph of it this morning. 

I put the bird table up today, and within about ten minutes there were chaffinches, blue tits, great tits, sparrows, dunnocks, and a robin. We've also seen footprints in the snow, of what we think is a fox, and also what we suspect is probably a rat. 

There are several other things we've noticed. There is an extremely good local facebook weather page, which helped us out no end in the snow. We now have all weather tyres on one of the cars, which should help if there's another bit of wintry weather. We've met several neighbours, who all seem nice and friendly, and the local shop and post office are well stocked. We've sampled all three of our nearest cafes (and decided on our favourite already). My commute is an hour, and if I want a parking space near work I really need to set off earlier than 7.30. However, the commute itself doesn't feel arduous at all, and is proving a nice space either for us to chat, or for me on my own to have a good sing on the way in. 

So, as I'm having a response partner meeting with my diploma chum Barry tomorrow, here are some next achievable steps: 

• Continue the process of observation and documentation
• Decide which outbuildings to remove and get assistance if necessary
• Think about the best place for chickens - there is a rehoming day on 7th April but if we are not ready by then, we'll wait
• Decide where is the best place for a greenhouse and order one

​I'm off for a fortnight over Easter so I hope to get the greenhouse installed and my annual veg beds started before I go back to work. 

I'm glad I've got the structure of the diploma and the permaculture design process more generally to help me with this else I'm not sure I'd know where to start...