Our wintertime in Singapore

Although we are now back in Tropical Singapore, I still count this as my 'winter time'. What I mean, is that I am treating it like it's a time for reflection and going 'inside'.

I truly discovered the meaning of this when we were working on the farm in Wales, outdoors non-stop from March till September this year. Long long days spent outdoor working on the land. Physically, I don't think I've ever been in this great shape.

But I certainly felt very 'lost' during those long summer months. Lost because this was the first time in my life where I was outside SO MUCH. Both physically, mentally and spiritually. It was as if I was out of touch with 'me'. It wasn't an instant realisation. But instead, just a gradual strange feeling of just constantly being in the present. Being in experience mode, instead of reflective mode.

As Fran, our farm host describes it - No time to ponder and think about life... just constant do do do! work work work. The summer months on any northern European farm means a short window of time to get everything done! Grow all the veg, plump up all the animals. Hurry while the sunlight is still high in the sky. "Make hay while the sun shines" as they would say.

Honestly, I was exhausted all the time. I crashed into bed by 9pm every night, and woke up 10 mins before breakfast at 8, my whole body sometimes still aching from the work the day before. Where was all my energy? How was it that Fran and Kevin were going going going like machines? Where did all their energy come from?

I then learnt from Fran, how she lives with the seasons. Like how our energy levels are different during different parts of the day - Morning = high, Noon = Peak, Afternoon = Slow down, Evening = Chill. For her, and most farmers, the wave of energy dips and peaks throughout the whole year. She tells me, summer is a time when you just don't have a moment to think too far ahead, or too far behind! You're busy from one day to the next, making sure the onions are in the ground so they will be harvested in time! The tomatoes get their feed so we can eat them ripe before the first frost. Getting the sheep sheared before it gets too hot and they start getting fly-strike. Everything is literally back to back.

So our mind, spirit, body is directed towards these immediate necessities that need to be done. So that when the leaves fall, and the vegetables stops to grow, one will have stored enough food to last you another tough winter.

Then winter comes. And everything slows down. The sunlight, once given in abundance, suddenly so sparse, and the nights are so loooong. It's cold and you want to stay by the warm fire as much as possible. Snuggle up with your loved ones and conserve all energy for next year. Winter down time. Time to go inwards, consolidate the whole year, reflect and plan.

It's funny now, looking back, I can see why it was so difficult for me to update my blog while in the farm. I couldn't bare being in that cold, dark room for long when I know it's just so beautiful outside. So I usually just quickly check my emails, send necessary updates to family and then get out! And somehow, I just wasn't able to have any proper reflective thoughts. It was like my mind was always blank. (very good for yogic/buddhist practices)

So after quite a big summer, we knew, we'd better try and get our proper winter's rest no matter where we are and what we are doing. And so far, for the last three weeks in Singapore, I've pretty much been quite good at it. Am catching up on my sleep. I am slowing down my physical exertions, eating more (hehhehheh), and definitely given myself a lot more time and space to reflect. I was at first feeling guilty about being so piggish and unproductive. But instead of guilt, why not just surrender into the present, and just flow with whatever comes my way? In fact, my sudden spurt of reflectiveness is the productive engine at work now. Lap it up!

So while the rest of the country turn up the volume with the partying, shopping and festivities, For the sake of balancing out the whole year, I am going to pretend that I am still at Old Chapel Farm and have my own quiet winter. :)

Working with our hands

I'm reading an awesome little book right now, borrowed from the library called "A Different Kind of Luxury. Japanese Lessons in Simple Living and Inner Abundance" by Andy Couturier. When I saw the title, I was immediately drawn to it. This is exactly what I think about all the time, exactly what we try to tell people why we do what we do, and exactly what we are striving for. Simple Living and Inner Abundance. I always admired ancient Japanese culture of respect and wisdom that we in Singapore, is completely lacking. We seem to be horrendously unwise. With all due respect to our parents and grandparents who love us and brought us up the best way they know how... a lot of it is really misguided. Don't want to get into a list of things right now. But definitely one of the things... is how we did not at all encourage our children to work with their hands, and instead, focused on just academia. Anyway... I will just quote this from the book which sums up what I want to express. The context here is the writer of the book, asking Osamu Nakamura, self-sufficient man who lives alone in the woods who does wood block carving and booking binding for enjoyment - if it nerves him that a small mistake he makes can mean he will have to start everything over again.

"A crafts-person's job if half meditation, half creation. It takes creativity to design whatever you are working on, but it takes meditation to do it right. Making things with one's own hands cultivates a certain generosity and openness of the heart. It nourishes that state of mind in the crafts-person themselves, which is intimately connected with an entire way of life." Hearing this I am reminded, with sadness, of the epidemic levels of depression in my own country, and wonder whether it might have something to do with the aversion we have to working with our hands. For people in industrialised socierties, perhaps the problem is not that manual labour is intrinsically unpleasant, but that we get frustrated because our attitude is one of resentment toward something demeaning. Viewed differently, however, such work presents us with an opportunity to know ourselves and the physical and natural world better by exploring this essential aspect of being human: our relationship with our hands. How funny it is that one of the fundamental definitions of being "modern" is the ability to avoid physical labour, when it might be that very thing that could provide us with such depth of connection to ourselves and to the world.""

Very well said.

And very sad indeed as well.

I just feel so incredibly blessed that I now know better. And I leave you some of the wonderful things we got to do by hand at Old Chapel Farm....

Picking dandelion in a field of... well, dandelions to make wine

Turning the bed over to plant fresh crops

Where do you think milk comes from?

Resting after planting this bed of young tomatoes

Green bean chutney I made

My gate almost finished

Posing for a photo after our 2 day basket weaving course

I just want to be able to sit on grass

Singapore?
Bali?
Australia?
New Zealand?
and now... Canada?

The options are many. Decisions are hard.

But at the end of the day, I told Bjorn today..... I just want to be somewhere, where I can sit on the grass.

And that's something ... one just can't really do in hot, sticky, buggy, wet, pokey-grassed, Singapore. 

Confused about the Good Life

Feeling jetlagged and confused. Once again, back in our old room at our parents' place at Upper East Coast Road in Singapore. It's 3.30am and we cant sleep because its only dinner time, the day before, back in the UK.

Have been feeling a dull mix of emotions and thoughts in the last 24hours or so.

When we decided, four months ago to come back home to singapore/bali to start making a living for ourselves. A simple life that suits us. Not earn too much money, not too much stress, not too complicated. Just enough for us to live by and have a Good Life. We decided that we could not 'faff' around the UK any longer and was just anxious to get started on our own project. But defining the project has been the main trouble. A million and one ideas have been thrown around between Bjorn and I in the last few months. So many. But none conclusive because we weren't in the location where we were going to be in to start this. To know the demands and needs of a market, one needs to be there. Many people leave their home countries, go abroad and get inspired by some business idea in that foreign country then take it back home. Coffee shops in Melbourne. Donut shops in America. But farms and country living? If only we were Taiwanese or Japanese. Then we could just start looking for a small holding in the countryside right after we return, and then just start already! We are deciding to try to do that in Bali now. Many people have started businesses there and make their lives there. I suppose, Im just feeling the fear of the unknown. An uncomfortable, yet necessary emotion that will hopefully propel us into something useful.

Time to get some shut eye now.

Turning water into wine

The biggest cost we can incur in our now very frugal life always comes down to providing ourselves with some form of entertainment, and entertainment in the countryside boils down to having copious amounts of booze. Making your own booze is actually not as hard as what many people make it out to be, fermentation is a natural process a gift given by god and a process undertaken by ancient civilizations for thousand of years . All it takes to make some alcohol is to leave some sugary fruits alone and volia alchoal is born! Making alchoal is easy, but making good booze is almost an art that requires a whole deal of work: getting the right equipment is the first step, demijohns, food grade fermentation bucket, campedan tablets, mashing bins, pressure barrels. Then focus has to be put into sterlising the equipment making sure that the solution coats everything!! Getting the proportion right, heating the mash, stirring it, straining it, pouring insane amounts of sugar, decanting it, racking it and bottling it. It is a long and arduous process and enjoying the fruit of your labour is still at least a year away, making your own booze is a true test of one’s patience. But I had none and sneaking a drink from the demijohn has left me with a groggy headache too often for my liking. Cheers to all!!

Picking dandelion for wine

Yummy flowers

1 more year, 1 more year

Beerfest

Yeasty mess

Green green vegetables

My mission the next 6 months was to focus on the vegetable production on the farm. Old chapel farm has 12 acres of land but only 2 acres were for vegetable growing, the rest of the land were dedicated to woodlands and grazing. The hills of mid Wales was one of crazy and unpredictable weather, which at times can be so harsh that only grazing of animals and potatoes stood a chance. Frost when the ground freezes over can happen as late as the 10^th of June. Vegetable growing thus is not an easy one to crack, the growing season was thus a short one and having to be always aware and in tuned with the weather. There was only so much planning that we could do, but in the end our fate was determined by mother nature.

The glass-house was my garden, a place of great importance but also one with much responsibility. Spring was a time where frantic sowing of seeds took place. I spent most parts of my days sowing the mighty brassica family, members of the solanace family bird eye chilies (hundreds of them) tomatoes, Aubergine, sweet peppers in pots,  peas in toilets rolls, lettuce in succession, calendulas in modules and dwarf French, broad, runner beans. It was a mad house, but mine to enjoy, BBC radio 2 in company I’m sure Ken Bruce added to the vitality of my little seedlings with his ever so monotonous selection of music and his boring banter with the weather and traffic girl Penelope fudge. Damn turn that radio off!!!!!   

And so the journey continues….Yurt living

We return to Old chapel farm after a short wwoofing stint 2 years ago. Apart from my college placement requiring me to work on a farm for a whole growing season, we were keen to explore what it takes to live off the grid and as self sustainably as possible. The living arrangement one of the most important factor was the first challenge, we shunned the idea of sleeping in a nice country farmhouse bedroom with all the luxuries of expecting light to appear at a flick of the switch, demanding water to flow with a turn of the tap. It has always been our dream to live in a yurt, a round space, our own space somewhere to call home. It was by far the most realistic type of structure we could afford to build on our own little farm in the future and now it was time to test this living space used by Mongolians’ nomadic tribes for thousands of years. These structures called Mongolian gers for those in the know are round structures held up by wooden poles and a canvas to keep the rain out (that was what we thought!!). These time tested structures are built with such simplicity but with surprisingly accurate precision has given it the ability to withstand the strongest of wind so common in central Asia.

We had 2 dry days forecasted and we set out to erect our 21 ft yurt
within this short window of opportunity. The yurt decking has already been built on a gentle slope overlooking the green lush valley of old chapel farm. The winds at this very exposed spot was a little daunting, doubts started to creep in on the possibility of erecting a temporary structure came to mind but it was quickly quelled by Fran (our host), they’ve been doing this for the past 3 years with only some problems in the last few years. The construction or more in reality the assembling of the yurt wasn’t as hard as we first anticipated, but we (city folks) still struggled nonetheless. We fumbled with poles dropping on our heads (note: to remember hard hats the next time), the trellis not fitting together, grossly entangled ropes which took forever to unknot, there were moments of frustrations with a tinge of motivation, small challenges crop up all the time anyways. The entire experience and sense of accomplishment is not the same to buying a home; the immense joy and satisfaction of putting up your own home is one that human beings has related to for thousands of years and today we felt that.

Wrong pole for the wrong hole!!

Is it over yet?

Fumbling with poles

What is happening?

Poles again

Here comes the canvas

Our home lovely isn't it!!

The inside

Sweet

So here begins our journey of living almost off grid, with no on-demand electricity, on demand water and centralized heating!!! 

But who needs all that when I see this view every morning when I open the door.

Recapping our wwoofing journey

Hi there, Its me, Crystal. It's been a while since I've personally updated the blog. Bjorn, the real farmer now has been writing in it since mid last year and lots of stuff has been happening in our lives and our journey, that may confuse readers! So I am now here gonna try to describe all that has evolved from our wwoof journey - coz that's initially what this blog was about. Wwoofing.

We came back to Singapore in December 2009 after wwoofing in the UK and Spain for about 6 months. We felt lost. What to do now. We did the wwoofing. Should we continue? What was our goal? Must we need a goal? Was life just about living in the moment and going with the flow?

Then 2010 began. And what a year.

In Dec '09, we met Lai Hock and GUI (ground-up initiative) and we were introduced to the organic movement in Singapore. Lai Hock told us how he is on this path, because he feels that connecting with the earth is one way to find that 'spirit', that meaning of life, that bigger consciousness. We kindda knew what he was on about. But never had anyone really put it that way before.

In Jan '10 , my grandma died which was tough on the family. Then we went to Bali for a month - intending to find organic farms/wwoof places. But had no luck, instead, we went for this meditation retreat called Bali Usada for one week in the mountains. And there, we faced our minds, ourselves. And we found the stillness that we never knew we needed but realised we did. For me, this was a huge pivotal point in my life. The clarity just slowly started to sink in. The retreat was a gift from nowhere. And I don't know how ever to thank the universe for it.

Feb to July '10 - A few more close people in our lives past away quite suddenly. I found yoga after the meditation retreat and fell in love with it more and more. I started relief teaching at my old secondary school - St anthony's convent and found so much love there. Bjorn started on this project - GUI Pathlight school vegetable farm which a couple of posts in 2010 on this blog is about. Then after Bjorns grandpa passed away in July, he decided to sign up for the Biodynamic agriculture course in East sussex England. And I decided to go to India to get my yogas teachers training certification.

Sep '10 - Bjorn left for England

Oct '10 - I left for India

Dec '10 - We met again in Singapore, spent Christmas and New years with friends and family

Jan '11 - I came back to England with Bjorn. We now live on college campus. We will be in Wales doing his farming attachment from Mar to Sep this year. And back here at Emerson college in Sep for his second year.

So what happened to wwoofing? What's the point of all this updates?

Looking back now, I realised that going wwoofing after quitting our corporate jobs was the best decision we've ever made. The wwoofing in 2009 was like a process of cracking us open to discover who we really are inside. It was just like chiselling slowly. Creating more obvious lines aned cracks everyday we were out there working out in the farm. We didnt know what we'd find. But we just kept going at it. It was therapeutic.

But once we were 'broken' into, we did not know what to do with all this new stuff we were experiencing. Going back home to Singapore, was a process of coming to terms with our new selves, our new lives. Not really new actually, more like, we removed the obstacles and barriers that was built up throughout our Singaporean, modern lifestyles. We knew the old us, wasnt us anymore. But who were these new people? And what purpose did they have? And 2010 was the 2nd part of the process. It the peeling away of those little egg shells that were cracked open. And finding all these things that were possible. Finding new ways of looking at things. Becoming less mad at the world, and realising that everything and everyone has their place in this complicated web of life. But in this web, we are all connected. And that, will give us an answer for every question we sought. 2010 was like a realisation. It felt like a lot of loose ends were tied up.

So this Thursday, is the start of the New Year in the Chinese Lunar Calendar. 2011 will be all about building up. I sense that. I have a gut feel that 2009 was deconstruction, 2010 was laying it all out and 2011 will be about growing.

And that's where the wwoofing has taken us. We will go back to Old Chapel Farm this summer to 'wwoof' there longer term. Bjorn will hopefully play a bigger role in terms of helping with the planning of the growing. And I will be a wwoofer / yoga teacher. It will be quite an awesome year.

Community Supported Agriculture- Are we ready for that?

I sat in on the 15^th year anniversary of the first successful Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program in the UK which is incidentally based within the 2 farms around my college Tablehurst farm and Plaw hatch farm. The co-op was unofficially started in 1968 and formerly registered in the early 90’s and is one of the longest standing co-op in the UK today, incidentally wwoofing was also founded and started in these 2 farms which today led to a global movement.

There are currently 2 broad CSA models:

1) Being a Shareholder of a co-op and not expecting any materialistic returns

This is the basis of how many early CSA started and how the tablehurst and plaw hatch began, the farms were failing and wider community was concerned about the future of their food supply, the community came together and found a new model on saving and future management of the farm, they then started a co-op which allowed the community to buy a share into the farm with only a promise that the land will be farmed in an honest, organically and sustainable manner. Today the co-op has 600 members many who had donated much more than money but their time and sweat to the 2 farms.

2) Being a Shareholder of a co-op and getting something in return

This started the era of the vegetable box schemes. Support your local farmer by paying up-front for the vegetables you can expect to receive. With that upfront payment, the farmer will be able to farm the land and supply vegetables to you, sharing the risk with the farmer i.e. bad harvest= smaller share of vegetable for the week etc.

What would work for Singapore? Are we ready for model 1 where people are concerned enough that they will support a cause like that without being materialistic about it? Or perhaps a new model for our unique little culture? This is my take:

A community supported agriculture program simply means something created and maintained by the community. With over 300 community gardens in Singapore we have the opportunity to build up an intricate food growing system where these gardens are used for the production of vegetables for the community of a radius of a few HDB flat, they essentially form their own co-op to serve their own local neighbourhoods thus helping Singapore take that small step forward of becoming a little more self sustainable whilst creating jobs for our citizens and retirees keen on gardening and growing vegetables. This intricate web of community food gardens littered all over Singapore could provide a space or platform for educating our people about the importance of food and food miles, a place where they can come and learn, feel the soil and understand where their vegetable comes from. A place to foster relationships between neighbours something we can probably already see the benefit of in Singapore, a space for interaction, sharing and social cohesion. Seen in many successful models all over the world: Allotments and community garden projects in the UK have been used to rehabilitate refugees and integrate them into the community, why not use the space to help with our current social issues in Singapore?

A support function for the community gardens must exist or be in place so that this food growing organism can survive; agricultural know how, bringing fertility back into the land and education must be the cornerstone of this foundation. The survival of the Kranji countryside and existing farms in Singapore is also critical for the production and supply of fertility to these community gardens. The wealth of knowledge on crop growing in our tropical climate so eagerly guarded by the old time farmers could be released back to those that are keen to continue the work of food production.

We need to ask ourselves this: will this movement require the community to come together and drive it’s growth organically, each CSA program have to grow in it’s own way, at it’s own pace.

Or

Would a government led, corporate sponsored model prevail?

What would work for our small nation state of 6 million?

I’m excited to see what will happen in the next 2 years with all the buzz happening around community supported agriculture in Singapore!!