Andrew Oldham writes about Pig Row, which is three gardens over a quarter of an acre in Scouthead. Visit at www.lifeonpigrow.co.uk
2014 MARKS the tenth anniversary of the death of John Seymour – a writer, grower and environmentalist who stood against the onslaught of consumerism.
In the seventies he became the inspiration for people to leave suburbia for the countryside. He created a generation of people who dropped out to pick up the spade.
Today, in a society where many of us no longer trust banks or corporations, his message still rings true: “It is inefficient, any agricultural economist will tell you, for me to hand-milk a cow. But what if I like hand-milking a cow? What is the economist going to say about that? Has any economist ever tried to measure the ‘efficiency’ of playing golf?
“And what if a couple of gallons of milk a day derive from my activity of hand-milking a cow? Does that make it in any way less ‘efficient’ than if I spent the time playing golf? When economists try to measure things like that they quickly get themselves in to very deep water.” (John and Sally Seymour, Self Sufficiency: The Science and Art of Producing and Preserving your own Food).
Therein lays any argument for growing your own. This is what gardening programmes miss today, and with Grow, Make, Eat: The Great Allotment Challenge, a spin off from the Great British Bake Off, being broadcast in early 2014 we need to remember that gardening knowledge can be found in the real world rather than on TV.
If you want to learn to garden ask someone who grows. Even moving down the road in Saddleworth can challenge you. Our Delph rain, Diggle soil, Dobcross hills, Uppermill flooding, Denshaw temperatures and Scouthead altitude makes a difference.
Growing is another life in a world of consumerism and it baffles people until they sow that first seed.
