Welcome to Roots & Ramblings

A new category for the Orkney Outpost

As the autumn equinox approaches tomorrow, it feels like the perfect time to kick off something new, Roots & Ramblings.

Image created with AI, many prompts later. One version had me sitting on the ground with the roots coming out of my bottom. Not a good look!

The autumn equinox is when the day and night are roughly the same length marking the moment when the Sun is directly above the equator. This happens simultaneously in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, so what is the autumn equinox in the north is the spring equinox in the south! Because of the way the Sun, Moon and Earth align the tides are quite dramatic, I nearly got washed off the beach during a workout on Thursday before jumping in to cool off. The view from my windows is over our little bay and it’s mesmerising to see the change, turn your back for a couple of minutes and it seems to have moved metres.

We’ve also enjoyed a Super Harvest Moon this week and some of you may have even seen the partial eclipse, I was sensibly tucked up in bed! The Harvest Moon is the full moon that is closest to the harvest, traditionally farmers would work late into the night harvesting their crops under the light of the full moon. Whether they have been harvesting or not, I could still hear a tractor humming at 10pm on Wednesday night.

The autumn equinox, the Harvest Moon, the start of a new school year and the almost end of my first growing season feels like the perfect time to get my teeth stuck into something new. Back in 2020 I asked my Dad and Step-Mum for a subscription to Permaculture magazine. I received 8 magazines packed with information, one for each season over a 2 year period. I’d like to say I have read and re-read them but in truth, they are part of a pile of mags along with a few copies of Smallholder that have been moved from York to Aysgarth to Orkney. As you can tell, it’s been on the agenda for a while!

The magazine stack that I will read at some point…

What is Permaculture?

Permaculture is a philosophy of working with, rather than against nature; of protracted and thoughtful observation rather than protracted and thoughtless labor; and of looking at plants and animals in all their functions, rather than treating any area as a single product system.

— Bill Mollison

Permaculture was developed in the 1970s by Bill Mollison, senior lecturer in Environmental Psychology (who knew there was such a thing?) and graduate student David Holmgren both from the Tasmanian College of Advanced Education. It’s a fairly new concept but rooted deeply into a time we have forgotten and one we’re seeing more and more, certainly in people’s back gardens and allotments. Permaculture is a way of growing food that works with nature instead of fighting against it. It's about setting up self-sustaining systems where everything supports everything else.

At its core, permaculture has three ethical principles:

1. Earth Care – Protect and regenerate natural systems.

2. People Care – Support and nurture people’s needs.

3. Fair Share – Redistribute surplus and reduce waste, ensuring resources are shared sustainably.

It’s the opposite of monoculture and monoculture is those large swathes of cereals, soy or rapeseed you see across the landscape. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t me on an anti-monoculture rant, the situation is much more complex than that, we need to grow food and farmers need to make money, we live in such a different world to the one we did even 100 years ago. But this little pocket of Orkney is mine and this is what I would like to do.

In my vision for the garden, I still see the need for annuals and short cropping plants (e.g. radish & lettuce), but I also want to introduce lots of perennials like robust fruit trees and bushes along with self-seeders like nasturtium and borage. My plan is to nudge nature in the right direction and then get out of the way (most of the time). But it is me and I am uncoordinated and ramshackle at best and wilful and distracted at worst, so I anticipate it to be a very imperfect journey.

Journalling and keeping track of how things progress has three glaring benefits:

1. I get started

2. I log what I’m doing & what the garden is doing (absolutely key to the project anyway)

3. Anyone who’s interested can learn more about it & how they can create little pockets of permaculture in their own space.

Along the way I’ll also be sharing a more general eco/green vibe, discussing why I find compostable poo bags so frustrating and whether it’s ok to buy clothes from the Tesco sale rack at ridiculously cheap prices, both of which have been on my mind this week.

Roots & Ramblings will sit within the Orkney Outpost as a category rather than a separate publication and my plan is to send a weekly update, but please don’t hold me to that.

I hope you enjoy it.

Han 🌱