Micro Holding

My job allows me to meet some fascinating people and today was no exception.

I met two people who live in a modest town house but they are as committed to smallholding as I am. Their limitation is location, a town house with large garden, its what they have done that's extra ordinary.

Their front lawn is a vegetable patch and the back garden has twenty plus hens and three pigs. Our conversation strayed immediately from work related matters to pigs, the work involved, the joy of eating your own eggs and garden produce, their plans to keep goats (I did question their sanity at this point) and where the pigs will go before they end up on the plate.

If only everyone did what they did, or perhaps if a few families teamed up and shared the gardens and worked together what a difference that would make, what a sense of community and purpose that could be created.

They have registered their smallholding, or in their terminology a microholding and with no experience, much like us, have set out to make a difference to their lives and of the lives of the animals that they eat. Quite how they accidentally ended up with three pigs in a cat basket in the boot of the car sounds like a tale straight off these pages but they did it and their lives are enriched by the experiences they now share. The whole family is involved in the venture.

I left them to it and on the drive back to Rock HQ listening to the radio full of Mumbai, Haringey and credit crunch I realised that despite what the rest of the world is up to having met this family there is hope.