Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

1. Woodland Immersion

2. Farming Beyond My Boundaries

3. Engagement with the Trees

4. Finding the Craftsman Within

5. The Need for Shelter

6. Trees of Prickly Nut Wood

7. Changes in the Woodscape

8. Prickly Nut Wood 2037

Postscript

Glossary

Index

Copyright

About the Publisher

For my children

Rowan, Zed and Tess

‘I know this place. I belong.’

I am standing within this place I know as Prickly Nut Wood, and deep from within my belly I send a deer bark, throaty with a characteristic rasp. I emit it with focus and penetration in response to a roe stag who challenges my territory.

Such behaviour might sound strange or perhaps alarming, yet I belong here not just as a human being amongst other human beings but as a mammal amongst the inhabitants of this forest.

I have been living within Prickly Nut Wood for twenty years now and I can make the bold statement ‘I know this place’ through my learning and observation of this environment. It has taken twenty years and I will know it better in another twenty. ‘I belong’ comes not purely from the passage of time but also from my integration into the world of this forest. As a forest dweller and dominant mammal, I have immersed myself in the heartbeat of this woodland, its diversity and seasonal changes, and have acquired an altered sense of time and a deep knowledge of the detail of the landscape.

* * *

My early years here were quiet and luxurious, allowing me time for observation and reflection. My first dwelling, a simple structure built from bent hazel sticks and canvas, nestled discreetly within the forest flora. I was new to this world – I arrived, listened and observed, absorbing my new surroundings. I had neither radio nor telephone, nor any form of communication with the world beyond Prickly Nut Wood, save my own legs to carry me away from it for provisions and occasional human contact.

There was no road or track into Prickly Nut Wood. I would walk in along a footpath that twisted through steep banks of beech and yew and passed visible remnants of small earth banks that once enclosed the field system of people now long departed. Each bank, rich in mosses and ferns, and the occasional remains of a sandstone wall, can be made out along the pathway. The footpath climbs up into heavier soils, where the beech gives way to oak and sweet chestnut, and after winter rains the path too becomes heavy underfoot. My first journey is challenging – I look for obvious landmarks, a big oak here, a fallen chestnut there. These are the signposts that will help me find my way in and out of my chosen world.

As time passes the path becomes familiar. I notice smaller trees, subtleties on a stone half hidden in the wood bank; a wren building its mossy nest in a crevice in a chestnut stump becomes familiar, and as I walk back and forth I observe its busy life being acted out for me, its sole audience. I listen out for the chicks and watch the continual supplies of food being flown into the moss-lined hole, as if the bird were a pilot dropping food parcels in time of famine to desperate, waiting human beings. One day as I pass by, all is quiet. The wrens have fledged and departed. Was I the only person who knew of their whereabouts?

By now the large trees that were once my signposts are in the background. I am aware of passing them but no longer need their reassurance for my sense of direction.

Where the footpath borders Prickly Nut Wood, the escarpment is steep and falls away into the labyrinth of forest tracks amongst the dense coppiced sweet chestnut of the wood. I attached a rope at the top in the early days to help me scramble up and down the hill, as at that time it was my only way in. Over the years, I have carved out steps and my days of sliding through a muddy river cascading down the hillside are past, but the sense of adventure and the feeling of being totally alive in the woodland world as I make my way back instinctively to my home have not disappeared.

The Great Storm of 1987 swept through Prickly Nut Wood but the hill to the south-west helped baffle many of the areas of coppice from the power of the wind and only some of the taller trees were uprooted. The coppice stems, more flexible on their sturdy stumps, could blow and spring back again. One large sweet chestnut that was uprooted by the storm continues to grow in the way that chestnut will, sending up vertical stems from what was once the main stem, which now lies horizontal across the woodland floor. The new shoots have grown up and lean forwards towards the light, creating a canopy. It was under this canopy that I lit my first fire in the wood.

This fire marked my arrival and I stayed with it until the last of the day had gone. Curled up on a March evening around the embers, I listened for the first time to Prickly Nut Wood at night. The woodland awoke as the darkness drew in, and I heard the hooting of a tawny owl, followed by the familiar ‘kee-wick’ note resonating crisply in the chill of the evening. Soon there was a cacophony of owls conversing with one another, filling the wood with their invisible presence. After some time it stilled to a momentary silence. I could hear my gentle pulse of breath. Then, a scurrying and rustle of the leaves. I now recognise the sound of a mouse on chestnut leaves in March, but twenty years ago it was unknown to me, and it was near. It was followed by a crackle and a noise that made me freeze – a roe stag let out its territorial bark, deep and primal, and then the scraping and stamping of its hoof. I felt vulnerable, a horizontal figure wrapped around the glowing embers of the fire. I was within the territory of another and felt as a trespasser must feel when confronted by an angry landowner, shotgun in hand. The next bark resounded further away, and I relaxed my breathing and allowed my eyes to close once again.

I awoke cold but filled with an overwhelming sense of arrival. The first shafts of light highlighted the crisp lace that lay across the surrounding chestnut leaves, and the sound of awakening birds grew until the volume and variety became so intermingled that it became hard to discern individuals amongst the masses. I pulled my blanket away from my face and engaged with the fresh feeling of pure cold that the icy air communicated in engaging with my skin. I surveyed the unfamiliar outlines of the chestnut trees and a large holly, whose evergreen presence was clear beyond the leafless chestnut stems. A warmth emanated from within me. I had arrived in the forest and I had much to learn.

* * *

Prickly Nut Wood is an area of less than eight acres of predominantly sweet chestnut coppice on the north-east face of a hill. The soil is greensand over Wealden clay, and springs break naturally between the soil layers, ensuring that the land is damp underfoot for much of the year. It was within this setting that I began my forest-dwelling life. Eight miles away, a busy railway station shipped the gathering flow of commuters into central London. But life at Prickly Nut Wood could not be further removed from such an environment.

A few more nights curled around the fireside embers and it was time to build my first home. I had made ‘benders’ from hazel poles at festivals when I was a teenager. Low-impact and quick to build, with the wooden resource growing all around me, it seemed the obvious structure to begin with. In fact, it remained my home for two years. I cut about thirty hazel stems about one inch in diameter and forced the butt ends into the ground. I pulled the tall tops down with a rope and then secured them to the pulled-down tops of the opposing poles, creating a series of hoops like a wooden polytunnel frame. I square-lashed them with sisal and hemp cord, and soon had the framework of my home. I already had some army surplus green canvas tarpaulins and these I lashed over the frame. I now had a shelter and over the coming months developed it into my home. I collected pallets to make a raised floor, an old woodburner to keep the bender dry and warm, and a window and frame from a skip to give me a view out into the woodland, so on the wettest of days I could look out and continue my observations from my warm, yet simple home.

For me, the period of observation was to help minimise mistakes I might otherwise have made in being too hasty and forcing my ideas on to an environment that I did not fully understand. It’s all too easy to arrive with pre-conceived ideas about land we wish to work, and then start implementing them, unaware of the damage we may be doing to the established order. Prickly Nut Wood has been woodland for at least 400 years, although the ground flora and earthworks would suggest longer. Who was I in my short life to feel I knew better than 400+ years of established plant, insect and animal relationships? Part of my observation was to study these relationships and learn through the changing seasons the patterns and activities of resident and migratory species. To help with this I kept notes and diary entries, and made links between food plants, caterpillars and their butterflies and moths, and woodland management techniques that encouraged the right environment to allow these species the opportunity to continue to survive and thrive within Prickly Nut Wood.

27 May

I have been watching the dead top of a large chestnut tree. It has bothered me since I first arrived here as it looks unhealthy and stands out above the coppice with its dead crown. It stands out all the more now the leaf has broken and everywhere has greened up. But the more I watch it, the more I have noticed what a popular spot it is for birds. It seems to be a viewing post for all visiting birds to the wood. Last night its purpose as a marking post was clearly pointed out to me when the woodland came alive with the ‘churring’ sound of the nightjar. Having flown from his winter retreat in Africa he had returned and picked this dead top of the chestnut from which to make his presence known. After a few minutes he stopped ‘churring’, swooped down, clapped his wings together and made for the large oak before beginning ‘churring’ once again. He then chose a birch before returning to the dead top of the chestnut tree to make his final call, his territory now clearly marked.

Without my time of observation, I might have followed my first impulse and felled the chestnut tree with the dead top, and never known of its importance to the nightjar or other birds. We have little understanding of the roles of particular trees in the lives of birds but even basic observation shows us that they spend a lot more time in direct relationship to trees than we do. With the exception of a few groups of forest-dwelling people around the world, it is unusual for us to live in trees, while for many species of birds it is clearly their usual location.

Many of our woodlands in the UK are managed based on plans that have taken little time for detailed observation, and many habitats are lost because of this. It is common for felling licences to be applied for to fell trees within a woodland, with only one visit having been carried out. If I had not been staying at Prickly Nut Wood at night, how would I have known that nightjars were migratory visitors to the land? The chances of seeing them in daytime are low, as they are highly camouflaged and stay on the ground. They do not create a proper nest, but scrape the ground and lay their eggs directly on to it.

My spring mornings would begin just before the awakening dawn chorus. On many mornings I would awake as the first glimmer of light brought form to the evolving silhouettes and wander over to the firepit and light a fire and put the kettle on.

Lighting a fire to boil water is a simple and satisfying experience, provided you are prepared and well stocked with firewood and kindling. My morning fire would begin with fine strips of birch bark, with small, dry twigs of sweet chestnut laid on top. I would light the fire and slowly blow into an old copper pipe with a flattened end, so as to direct my breath with good velocity wherever I pointed the pipe. As the fire took, I would build up the fire further with slightly larger pieces of chestnut. With stacks of dry material sorted into piles by their size, lighting a fire becomes as easy as turning on a cooker.

With the kettle on the fire, I would wait listening for the first sound to break the morning silence. I am still astonished how fast the chorus builds up. From the first delicate tones of the opening bird, within a couple of minutes there are so many birds singing that it becomes almost impossible to try to discern one bird from another. The dawn chorus in a broadleaf woodland in spring is truly one of the wonders of the world and a magical part of the environment I inhabit. Every year I am refreshingly amazed by its intensity of volume; friends who have stayed with me have resorted to ear defenders, so as not to be woken at 4.30 am. As for me, I am always happy to catch the first notes and will sometimes return to sleep after a brief ten-minute burst of choral bird song. To have such an array of birds within the woodland clearly shows that there is sufficient food and that it is an ideal habitat for them.

Observing the landscape of a woodland takes time. There is not the clear expanse of a grass field with hedgerows neatly marking the boundaries. A woodland offers little in the way of vistas to give you perspective of size or space. With an ancient woodland such as Prickly Nut Wood, which has not been cultivated by the plough and undulates across the landscape, much of the topography is hidden by the trees themselves. Added to this, Prickly Nut Wood had a thick wall of Rhododendron ponticum, which made the landscape impenetrable in places and further disguises the topography.

I remember clearly one of my first adventures, cutting a path through the rhododendron, bill hook in hand, and arriving suddenly at the base of a large oak tree. This tree, the largest in the wood, would stand out in any other landscape but here it was hidden amongst tall chestnut stems, birch re-growth and the blanket wall of established rhododendron. I estimate the tree to be around 300 to 350 years old, which is young to middle-aged for an oak tree. It has a circumference of more than 7 metres and a height of more than 25 metres. Its crown is similar to a parkland or field tree, in that it has spread and formed a large canopy. The regular cutting of the coppice woodland below it will have helped give it the light to expand and the coppice re-growth will have helped push the tree up taller. It stands proudly on a ridge and now I have cut the coppice to the north, the true branching pattern of the cerebral crown can be seen in its full glory. I have attached a swing seat to the oak and it makes a wonderful spot from which to survey the woodland and across to Blackdown beyond.

Having found the tree for the first time, I sat down on a mossy seat formed between the root buttresses and contemplated the changes that might have occurred during the life of a tree of this age. Perhaps germinating as a seed during the English Civil War, it will have been growing through countless changes, numerous wars and a good few king and queens. One of the buttresses has a large scar across it, angled as a woodsman would angle a cut to remove the buttress prior to setting the tree up for felling. The scar has calloused over and I like to think it was caused by a woodsman who, after beginning the cut, thought better of felling such a magnificent tree and decided to leave it to grow on. I am very thankful that he did.

It has also been struck by lightning on two occasions and carries the scars right down its trunk. The tree seems in good health and shows no signs of distress from this experience, bar the scars.

I often lie on the ground and look up through the vast array of branches, marvelling at the tree’s ability to hold up such a huge weight of timber high into the sky, and then consider the volume of water the tree is absorbing and then pumping through the sap layer to reach the millions of little leaves high above.

I can only guess at the role and value this tree has played in the lives of others who have gone before me, but even in my twenty years at Prickly Nut Wood it has become a focal point for celebration and contemplation.

My eldest son Rowan has the ashes of his maternal grandfather scattered beneath the oak, its presence seeming fit to be the chosen resting place by his grandmother after the loss of her husband. Friends of mine have asked to come and sit beneath it when they are going through a troubled period in their lives or are just seeking a quiet space. I too have turned to the tree and used its calm, ancient and peaceful presence when I have had troubles of my own.

It has featured as a focal point in a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and is referred to in the book The Bard and Co, in which the tree is named ‘Shakespeare’s Oak’. Its acorns were recently taken to the Globe Theatre in London and then distributed, along with a picture of the tree, to those who attended to take away and plant.

Yesterday, Ben Law introduced it to us, the oldest tree in the wood. At this time of year, the scattered acorns were sprouting and beginning to send roots into the ground. We collected several cupfuls with the aim of giving everyone an acorn from Shakespeare’s Oak (now newly named).

The Bard and Co.

A local herbalist became a regular visitor to the oak tree. She was moved by the presence of ‘tree spirits’ that she clearly sensed when around the tree. Although I cannot claim to have had such an otherworldly experience, I am also drawn to the tree. Whether out of superstition or respect, in spring I always find myself looking across to the oak tree and subconsciously asking the tree’s blessing to continue burning charcoal in the woods.

The tree has always been a magical place for my children. Zed and Tess know the tree as ‘the story-telling tree’, for when you sit on the bench suspended from its limbs and swing and ask the tree politely for a story about whatever you wish for, the tree always responds (with a little help) by telling a story.

There is no doubt in my mind that this tree has become a sacred place to me and my family and friends over the last 20 years, and whether by circumstance or unknown force we have all in our way been drawn by the presence of this magical, ancient tree.

Beyond the oak, the woodland drops away through more sweet chestnut coppice and comes to a stream that flows near the northern boundary. This stream picks up both surface run-off from the woodland and the escarpment above, and is also fed by the springs that break between the clay and greensand soil layers. It opens out into a pond, now a wildlife haven for dragon- and damsel-flies, newts and often a grass snake.

7 May

Glorious day. I awoke to shafts of sunlight across my face and after a good stretch and a couple of cups of tea, I headed down to the pond for a swim. I slid in off the platform and as always was shocked by the icy-cool, spring-fed water. I had been treading water for a couple of minutes when a shape caught my attention. Turning towards it, I had the strange sensation of observing a grass snake swimming past me, just a couple of feet away and right in my line of sight. Its agility in the water was impressive and it made quickly for the far bank, disappearing amongst some flag iris.

Swimming in the pond became a morning ritual in my early years at Prickly Nut Wood. I built a small, wooden ladder and a few planks for a platform, and this allowed me to enter and exit the pond without my feet disturbing the muddy banks and clouding the clear water. The temperature of the water means a dip is usually just that, and most of my time is spent sitting on the platform observing the comings and goings in the pond.

The pond sits on the woodland edge, benefiting from the environment of the woodland on one side and the organic hay field on the other. Between the pond and the field, there is a narrow wood bank and a ditch. The ditch has been mechanically cleared many times but the bank retains its archaeological features. Wood banks were once common along the perimeter of ancient woodlands; the ditch would usually be on the outside of the wood, with the bank stretching some thirty feet back into the wood. The Prickly Nut wood bank seems narrow and may have been disturbed when the chestnut was planted some 130 to 150 years ago.

In spring the bank is abundant with primroses, bluebells and some early purple-flowering orchid. This diversity is also enhanced by the wood bank being situated both at the edge of the wood and the edge of the field. The edge between two different landscapes attracts species from both forms of landscape, and species unique to the edge environment itself also colonise the bank, often making these edge habitats the most diverse habitats in our landscape.

I have now coppiced this area from the oak tree to the pond three times, and the biodiversity and abundance have increased with each cut. But it was all very different when I first stumbled across this area. My first experience involved battling through the twisted stems of rhododendron and I did not emerge by a beautiful dragonfly-dappled pond; to the contrary, I came out at a farm rubbish dump, full of rusty metal, cans of oil and old milk crates, through which grew a few self-seeded goat willows in a large indentation in the landscape that was once a pond. I loaded a trailer with this collection of dumped items and took them to be recycled. I then hired a digger and began the process of clearing out silt and willow roots until I met the seam of clay I knew would lie waiting to be used again. Clay will hold water naturally if it is ‘puddled’. Puddling involves working the clay layer with one’s feet until it becomes smooth and creamy, creating a seal across the surface of the clay. Pigs are often used, as they naturally puddle clay with their rooting and mud-creating habits. I didn’t have a pig to do the puddling, but the excellent Wealden clay puddled up with the help of a little rain and a good amount of working between my feet. Puddling is quite labour-intensive but can be a fun social event if you pick a warm day, choose the right music and arrange a puddling party. Twenty or thirty people dancing Irish jigs in the mud at the bottom of a pond is a lot more fun than spreading out a butyl pond liner. Slowly, over the coming months, the pond began to refill until one day I noticed water lapping over the large stone I had placed in the overflow outlet. The water then flows into a network of streams until it finds the River Lod, flows on into the River Rother, then on into the River Arun and eventually out to sea at Littlehampton. With the pond naturally filled, it did not take long for the biodiversity to increase and the pond to become the haven for wildlife that it is today.

Storing water has to be one of the most practical ways we can improve and help our local environment. I am astonished how much rainwater it is possible to catch, even off a modest-sized roof. When I lived for a couple of years in a 30- by 10-foot caravan, I collected the rainwater off the roof in four 50-gallon rainwater butts that were all linked together. The butts were raised up and I drew the water off the end butt through the caravan wall and out through a tap into the sink. These butts supplied all the water I needed for washing up and to run a shower throughout the whole year. Even when they began to run low in summer, it took just one big thunderstorm and they were all filled up again.

If you measure the area of the roof of your house and multiply it by the average local rainfall for your area (available from your local meteorological office) you will be able to estimate the average volume of rainwater you could be collecting from your roof. I have two buried 10,000-litre tanks that irrigate all the vegetable gardens and that are often overflowing. You will most likely be surprised to find how much water you could be harvesting from your roof.

It is easy to become complacent in England about water, as often we have lots of it. But droughts are not uncommon, and as our climate seems unpredictable and unsettled it would make sense for every home to be maximising their water-storage options. It should be compulsory for every new home to have water storage as part of the design.

* * *

My first year at Prickly Nut Wood was one of observation. Of course, I cut wood, built myself a basic shelter and drew water from an old catchment well within the woods, but beyond that I came to observe.

It was the late 1980s and I had been travelling in South America, predominantly searching for solutions to the leaflets that kept appearing through the letterbox telling me an area of the Amazon rainforest the size of Belgium was being destroyed every day. Such a scale of destruction of rainforest was hard to contemplate. I felt inadequate in Sussex discussing the fate of our planet amongst friends and wanted to do something to help. The irony, of course, being that my travels made it clear to me that I needed to focus my work locally. And so I ended up at Prickly Nut Wood, just a couple of miles from the letterbox where the leaflets had arrived, the ones that sent me, young and headstrong, to the other side of the world. The story of The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho describes a similar realisation.

What my travels abroad showed me was a pattern. The pattern of the forest dweller. In the Amazon rainforest, and later in Papua New Guinea, I spent time with people who were children of generations of families who had dwelled within the forest. I met people to whom the forest was an extended map of provisions. They knew where to find medicinal plants to treat their ailments, they knew where migratory species would arrive and when, they lined their pathways with fruit-producing trees to eat from and harvest whilst on their journeys to visit friends or neighbours, and they built their houses from timber growing around them. These forests were rich in biodiversity, and the knowledge and lore of the forest had been passed on by its human inhabitants. Children grew up learning the different uses of plants, and where to find and harvest fruit-growing trees without realising they had learnt it. Education came through being brought up in one place, knowing that landscape, and being fully integrated into a way of life that was simple, although, of course, this life was not without its hardships. This tradition of the forest dweller being a natural form of woodland management seemed to be missing from the way forests were managed in England.

At Prickly Nut Wood, I wanted to live as a forest dweller, but I had not grown up as one and had no one to show me the lore of the land. I had to learn it through experience and observation, and I also had to transfer the pattern observed in diverse tropical rainforests to the woodlands of the south of England.

During my year of observation, I expanded my knowledge of the locality by regularly walking the generous collection of footpaths that weave through the parish. In doing so, I began to build up a map of surrounding foraging sites to which I could seasonally return over the coming years.

If I strike east from Prickly Nut Wood, I pass through an ancient wooded common, which has not been grazed for many years. Large, outstretched, pollarded oaks cast dappled shade over what were once pastures, now patches of wood sedge and bracken. Dark pools surrounded by thickets of blackthorn make this enchanted woodland a fine source of sloes. Whether for wine or gin, these ‘dry your mouth’ plums are worth collecting as the flavour when fermented or steeped in a spirit brings laughter to most who partake in their pleasure. The blackthorn itself can be the most impenetrable of trees, with sharp thorns that tend to poison the skin when pricked. Many a time have I noticed what seemed a scratch from blackthorn inflame in to a septic wound. This tree deserves respect. I remember reading how a 14-foot-wide hedge of blackthorn was once planted around Farnham Castle for protection. In the days when a septic wound could be life-threatening, the use of blackthorn would have led any potential invaders to have second thoughts.

The common is bisected by the road and it is here my life nearly ended some years ago in a car crash. I mention this as I ended up in a hedge and a spike of blackthorn pierced my eye. In protecting itself my eye formed a cataract and I had to have the lens replaced, so I am fortunate still to have good vision. I returned to the site a few months after the accident and cut myself a blackthorn stick from the broken bush near where I’d had my collision. It has made a good walking stick and is a good reminder to me of the fragility of all life. Blackthorn makes excellent walking sticks but it is a challenge to cut – a good pair of gauntlets is recommended. As part of my winter work involves laying hedges, I have some very heavy-duty leather hedging gloves that enable me to grasp the stem of blackthorn others might shy away from.

Hedge laying has begun to see a renaissance over the past 20 years. Stewardship grants have led farmers and landowners to consider the wisdom of starting their tractors and spending the day ‘flail cutting’ the top and sides of the hedge, and using much diesel to destroy the biomass that has grown within the hedgerow. Laying a hedge involves ‘pleaching’ (partially cutting through) the upright stem, in order to bend the stem over and lay it at an angle so that it forms a woven barrier and all knits together. The top (in the style of the hedge laying I carry out) is woven with hazel binders around upright posts of sweet chestnut about 1 foot apart. The resulting hedge not only looks attractive and uniform but forms a strong, long-lasting and stock-proof barrier, removing the need to use steel fencing altogether. It can then be left to grow on for about fifteen years and the next time it is laid, there will be a firewood crop yielded from the hedge row as well as some interesting elbow shaped pieces of timber formed from the re-growth from the pleached stems. These pieces can make fine walking sticks or, as I have found, can be used to make traditional knees in boat building. My first rowing boat contains ash and chestnut knees formed from material sourced whilst hedge laying. Laying a hedge also creates the perfect nest-building habitat. The angled stems, woven together and then supported by stakes and upright re-growth, make the ideal support for nest building. So a well-laid hedge will increase biodiversity, work as a stock fence, provide material for walking sticks and other projects, provide firewood, remove the need to use steel fencing, and can also provide a good site for foraging if the species used are well chosen. Surely this productive and diverse hedgerow, which can be managed with hand tools, must be a more sustainable alternative to repeated cutting with a tractor and flail cutter.

In 1992, I planted about a mile of hedging on a nearby property.

28 December

I was greeted this morning by the perfect winter day. A good, crisp frost meant I needed a couple of layers under my Swandri, but after an hour of work the sun was warming me and I shed a layer. I started on the hedgerow down the northern side of Meera’s wood. This hedge will wind for about a mile and I look forward to the day when I can stand back and see the hedge in its full glory, matured and bursting with wildlife and wild food. It’s hard to find words to encompass the sense of satisfaction and fulfilment I get from planting trees and hedgerows. Such work should be part of everyone’s life. A year of ‘national service’ to improve our environment would be a good statement for an evolving society.

I chose hawthorn and blackthorn as the main species, as they lay well and form an impenetrable boundary. They also produce sloes and haws from which to make wines or jellies. In addition, I planted hazel to provide nuts and materials for craft use; spindle to add diversity and create sticks for artists’ charcoal; field maple to have its sap tapped for wine; holly for berries for the Christmas market; Guelder rose for its medicinal cramp bark; dog rose and rugosa rose for the hips for rose hip syrup; cherries for fruit (for the birds); a few oak standards to grow and mature from within the hedge to form ancient trees for future generations, increasing the hedge’s biodiversity; and crab apple for pollination and the making of verjuice.

Verjuice

Collect ripe crab apples and leave them in a plastic bag to sweat. After a few days press out the juice and then bottle it, leaving cotton wool in the top as it will ferment because of the natural yeasts. It will be ready in about a month and makes a traditional substitute for lemon juice. It is particularly good in salad dressings and stir fries.

After eight good years of growth, I laid the hedge and now sheep graze in the fields without any fencing, the hedge successfully keeping them within the field. Planting hedgerows and laying hedges that I can return to as I walk the parish, harvesting wild food and produce that I know is there, form part of my farming of the surrounding countryside.

The common also has a good amount of self-seeded ash and this, entwined with honeysuckle, makes some of the most attractive ‘barley twist’ sticks I have ever made. In my early years at Prickly Nut Wood I sold walking sticks in the village pub. They sold well and it made a good talking point, helping me meet many people and further integrate into village life.

Bordering the common is one of the orchards I have planted over the past 20 years. Now the trees are producing well and the orchard provides cider apples for the village pressing. I planted ‘Harry Masters Jersey’, ‘Crimson King’, ‘Yarlington Mill’ and ‘Kingston Black’, and they all make a fine cider, whether mixed or fermented out to single-variety ciders. The trees are pruned as standards, which allows sheep to graze beneath, a traditional silvi-pastoral system that I expect we will see more of in the coming years. Lodsworth has always been a cider-making area and throughout the village well-established old trees can be seen, now enclosed in gardens from parts of the old orchards of days gone by. I remember old Ted Holmes telling me before he died of the mobile press that used to turn up outside the Hollist Arms pub, and the excitement he experienced as a young lad on apple-pressing day.

Within the village we have revived the tradition, and each year we set up the press and ‘masarators’ outside the Hollist Arms. People bring apples and take away apple juice, and the remainder goes into barrels. This is fermented over the winter months in households throughout the village. The resulting cider is brought out for village celebrations, such as the village fête, or an anniversary or public holiday. Apple-pressing day is increasingly popular, with all ages mucking in and getting involved. At the end of the day the pulp from the apples is taken off to be fed to pigs, which in turn will taste fine with a glass of Lodsworth cider.

I remember the tasting on the first night we revived the tradition. It was election night when we brought the cider to the bar of the Hollist Arms. Nick Kennard was the landlord then, and with his wife Sally they ran the house well (although the beer was sometimes interesting!). The cider was strong that year and I noticed after a couple of hours that tongues were loosening, quite literally in the case of a respectable couple who worked for the European Union. The evening evolved into a party and the next morning Lodsworth was one place in England where many of the residents had no idea that Tony Blair had been elected for his first term as prime minister. Since that time our cider making has improved and the quality of the drink is more refined. Many a good winter’s evening has been spent racking and blending to ensure the best quality is available for village functions.

* * *

Ted Holmes was a forester/coppice worker who worked mainly on the adjacent Cowdray estate. Ted would nod at me but rarely spoke – I was a different type of coppice worker, I lived up in the woods. One evening in the Hollist Arms, I bought Ted a beer or two, and he told me the story of his life as a boy in the village and the work he would do. His descriptions of village life painted a vivid picture for me – I could see his early-morning work in the bakery, then, moving on to the wheelwrights, how he would throw water over the metal tyre to cool it before it burned the wood of the wheel. Traditionally the metal tyre would be heated so that it expanded, and when it was glowing red it would be fitted over the wooden wheel rim and hammered into place. Once in place it was doused with water to stop burning the wood and the cooling process would shrink the metal tyre tight on to the wooden wheel, compressing it all together. A wheelwright was an important profession and with three blacksmiths all working in the village it was a thriving small community.

Ted talked to me about the cider, and in particular the plum and gage orchards that grew to the north of the village and the abundance of cob nuts along the eastern edge. Fruit picking formed part of his day as a boy as it does mine now. I’ve planted plums and gages in similar areas of the parish to where Ted mentioned they grew, and so far the trees have grown well and crops have been good. There is a lot of knowledge of our localities locked up in the memories of the older generations that will be useful in the future, when we are likely to need to become more locally based and self-supporting, and need to be able to turn our hands to a variety of different skills.

The cob nut orchard that ran along the eastern edge of the village has been lost amongst the many houses and gardens that have been built. Some gardens have one or two established nut trees remaining, but in a couple of places the orchard has remained intact and I’ve been fortunate to spend time restoring these areas.

When I first cut the derelict orchard, or ‘platt’, as a cob nut orchard is often called, it was a matter of cutting back thick, overgrown stems and reshaping the cob nut trees to form a goblet shape. The re-growth is then ‘brutted’ (snapped so that the branch is stressed and left to hang, still well attached to the mother tree by the fibres that are so strong in hazel wood). These goblet-shaped trees then produce an abundance of nuts. Commercially, most cob nut orchards are grown well away from woodland, in areas where squirrels are less likely to risk crossing open pasture to reach the delicious nuts dangling from the ‘brutted’ trees. I have now pruned the cob nut orchard on a couple of occasions and the trees are producing well once again.

Restoration of old fruit trees has kept me busy over many years and, by working in many individual gardens on the old trees, I’ve been able to see the patterns of the orchards that were once so much a part of our village landscape. Identifying old varieties is not easy; some are clearly distinctive but as many varieties have a similar ‘parent’ apple, identification can become difficult. One or two of the local Sussex varieties are easier to identify. ‘Sussex Forge’, an old cottagers’ apple, dates from 1923. It is a small, yellow apple, streaked red with a red flush and is a good dual-purpose apple, as it cooks well and is of good flavour eaten fresh. The more I have worked with apples, the more respect and fascination I have for these wonderful fruits and the regional history that so many varieties bring with them. Our wild crab apple, Malus sylvestris, can often be found amongst ancient woodlands and was no doubt an important food and fermentation source for generations past, as were so-called ‘wilding apples’ (grown from discarded apples or cores) and cultivated varieties, the earliest of which recorded is the ‘Pearmain’. This was the first named variety recorded and is noted on a deed of 1204. Since that time we have bred and crossbred apples to have a vast variety of cookers, eaters, dual-purpose, sliders, girlies and keepers – in fact the National Apple Collection in Brogdale, Kent, lists over one thousand varieties.

Planting new orchards is a favourite activity of mine. One must select a succession of varieties that will produce over a period of time, yet be part of the right overlapping pollination groups to ensure bees and other insects carry out their gift of duty. Some apples are tetraploids as opposed to diploids, so they need two other varieties to pollinate them. ‘Blenheim Orange’ and ‘Bramley’ seedlings are two well-known tetraploids. Most apples are then grafted onto a root stock, which dictates the height and expected lifespan of each tree. Most apple root stocks now used are root stocks that were developed at East Malling Research Station and hence have the name M from Malling, followed by a number. M25, for example, forms a large tree, whereas M27 forms a tiny tree. Which all makes it quite difficult when I’m asked that common question: ‘I’ve got an old apple tree. Can you tell me what variety it is?’

Most small apple trees in gardens are on M26 rootstocks. These provide a relatively short-lived tree that will grow to about 10 feet (3m) in height and produce fruit at a young age. At Prickly Nut Wood I have a few apples on M26 rootstocks near the house and around the vegetable garden. Further afield I grow apples on the medium-sized MM106, and my largest apple trees are grafted on to M25. There are similar rootstocks for pears and plums. Most of my pears are on Quince A rootstock, which produces a large tree, with a few on Quince C, which produces a smaller, productive tree. Most of my plums are on the semi-vigorous rootstock St Julien, with a few near the house on the dwarfing rootstock Pixy, and a few larger plums on the vigorous Myrobalan B rootstock. Choosing the appropriate rootstock for the right situation – and visualising the heights and varieties – make planning and planting an orchard one of my favourite seasonal countryside activities. I am often asked for advice on what to do with one field or another by a local landowner. In most cases I advise planting orchards. By planting standard trees (or planting maiden trees and pruning them to become standards) on large, vigorous root stocks well spaced out across the field, the orchard will establish well, allowing for grazing by sheep or geese below. These orchards are a beautiful landscape feature in their own right, brightening the fields every spring with blossom, the promise of fruit to come. The planting and establishment of orchards throughout the countryside will leave an important food legacy for the next generation.

Some of the most interesting work I did with apples was when I was working for Oxfam as a permaculture consultant in Albania. The mountain district I was working in was poor and inaccessible, and the choice of fresh fruits was very limited outside of the main growing season. The apples in particular were very poor. The local varieties were at best similar to low-quality English crab apples, so any improvement in the varieties grown would be beneficial to the local people. Working with Brogdale, suitable scion (grafting) material was obtained and sent out to Albania for grafting on to the local Albanian crab root stocks. ‘Ribston Pippin’ was chosen for its high level of vitamin C, while others were chosen to survive the long, cold winters and the short summer growing season in the mountains. These materials are now cultivated in the permaculture research centre in northern Albania, and hopefully improving the lives and diet of many people living a sustainable lifestyle in the mountains.

Restoring old fruit trees and orchards, as well as planting new ones, have helped me to cultivate many plants in the surrounding landscape, although I can’t exactly claim that I am farming them.

As I turn and head south, with the sensual curves of the South Downs silhouetted in the distance, I join the small, winding waterway – the River Lod. Rising north-east of Lynchmere, and picking up many streams along its journey, it skirts the village of Lodsworth before joining the River Rother at Lod’s Bridge, which in turn joins the Arun and continues on out to sea at Littlehampton. As the Lod winds south through the parish it makes its way through mixed coppice woodland – hazel, ash, field maple and willow – below which can be found abundant bluebells, yellow archangel, early purple-flowering orchid and wood anemone in late spring. Preceding this flush of colour, the wood is carpeted with the dense mass of foliage of wild garlic. A walk this way in spring and you will be aware of the wild garlic before you see it. Its poignant aroma fills the air well in advance of its physical presence. I harvest the wild garlic for stir-fries and salads, a cheese sandwich for lunch is greatly enhanced by a few leaves, and it makes an excellent pesto. I have supplied pubs and restaurants with the leaves over the years, and in my early days at Prickly Nut Wood I would often trade beer for wild garlic at the local hostelries.

The Lod is a healthy, clean river and salmon trout spawn as far up as the mill pond at Lurgashall. Brown trout are common, as are bream, roach, chub and pike. As a small river it is not often fished, with the nearby River Rother being more popular with anglers. One part of the river that seems never short of water is near the bridge at Lickfold. The road regularly floods here, and after heavy rains it can be hard to make out what is bridge and what is river. There have been a number of civil engineering works over the past couple of years to try to improve the regular flooding, but so far I have seen little evidence that they have made much difference. I am astonished at how often we seem to throw money at trying to find a solution to a problem that is part of nature. Water has clearly always flooded at Lickfold, which is a low point for water collection and is well fed from surrounding fields. It is not a major route, is only impassable for a few days a year and there are alternative routes, so it would seem to make sense to leave the river to flood when it wishes at Lickfold Bridge and focus our civil engineering energies on more useful projects.

Where the Lod reaches halfway bridge, I have found many good giant puffballs in the adjacent fields. Creating a fungi map based on wild mushrooms that I find is a useful part of farming the surrounding landscape, and there are many areas that I visit purely to collect mushrooms for the table. One of my favourite is ‘horn of plenty’, or the ‘black trumpet’. I have a favourite picking spot heading west from Prickly Nut Wood. When found in abundance I have picked baskets full, and as I often find them near to Halloween, they are an ideal mushroom to market to local restaurants for ‘black trumpet soup’. Another favourite I find throughout the chestnut coppice is ‘chicken of the woods’. This is a great find, as one orange bracket of ‘chicken of the woods’ can feed a good number of people. I’ve walked through the woods to the Duke of Cumberland pub at Henley, and found and traded ‘chicken of the woods’ for beer on a few occasions. ‘Chicken of the woods’ gets its name mainly from its consistency; follow a recipe for chicken pie, substitute ‘chicken of the woods’ for real chicken, and few people will notice the difference. When cooked, ‘chicken of the woods’ looks exactly like chicken, and its texture and taste are surprisingly similar.

As a lover of mushrooms, I have taken to cultivating my own. I have been growing mushrooms on logs for about 12 years now and have had good success with Japanese shiitake mushrooms and oyster mushrooms. I buy in the mushroom spawn growing on sawdust and then drill holes out in a log, fill them with the sawdust spawn and seal them with hot wax. In my first year of inoculating (as this process is called), I used beeswax from my hives and the bees visited the logs and took back every bit of the wax. Since then I have used a vegetable-based cheese wax, similar to what you will find surrounding Edam cheese.

The log is left to stand within the woodland for a year to 18 months, depending on the species of tree. A birch log, for instance, will produce mushrooms more quickly than a sweet chestnut log, because the mycelium can colonise birch more easily as it’s less durable than chestnut. Once the mycelium has spread through the log, the log will fruit (produce mushrooms naturally) when the appropriate weather conditions arrive. In autumn, with heavy rains following the warmth of summer, the conditions are perfect to stimulate mushrooms to appear in great numbers throughout the countryside. The same applies with mushrooms cultivated on logs. One great advantage of inoculating logs is that I know each log contains mushrooms and therefore I can simulate the autumn rains by throwing the logs into my pond. I leave them there for 48 hours and then extract them. About five days later the mushrooms will start appearing. The log should be rested for about six weeks before shocking it again. This process can be repeated so each log can produce mushrooms three to four times a year. I think of the process of shocking the log into fruiting as being that the mycelium inside the log feels like it is drowning as it lies in the pond partially submerged. When nature is under stress it reproduces, so naturally the mycelium sends out its reproductive parts, these being the edible mushrooms.

16 April

I took my ‘push me/pull me’ hedge-laying tool, which resembles an exaggerated boat hook, down to the pond. I pulled out another five sweet chestnut logs and stacked them in the shade nearby. The logs I pulled out four days ago already have tiny mushrooms beginning to form. I am going to keep up this pattern of shocking a few more every two days and see what volumes I produce. I enjoy walking amongst my log piles. To a visitor they would look like any other pile of firewood, but I know there are mushrooms stored in the log, waiting for me to free them. Today, with so many piled up at different stages, I felt like I was wandering through an outdoor laboratory, inspecting different stages of an experiment. Took 2 kg to the Hollist Arms – Sam is going to stuff them with walnuts and Stilton, and serve them as a starter.

I often think that, as a species, the human race is under high levels of stress. Our reaction to this stress, similar to the mushrooms, is to reproduce, and in doing so we maintain the seemingly unstoppable upward curve of our increasing population. I once heard on the radio that had China not adopted its one-child policy, over the past 25 years their population would have increased by the size of the population of Europe (and that’s not counting all the children who were born). With our rapidly growing population, and the associated challenges of meeting our energy and food needs, it is possible with hindsight to see the wisdom in what at first glance seems such a Draconian measure. It probably seems a step too far for Western cultures to consider such a measure. But sooner rather than later we are going to have to make some major decisions about population control – unless nature, through natural disasters or contagious diseases, decides to make them for us. I find this one of the most difficult environmental questions of all – and as a father of three children, I understand the animalistic need and drive to procreate. In the United Kingdom as a whole, and especially in the south-east of England, we are very heavily populated. It is hard to see how we can maintain population growth at its present rate, whilst at the same time converting more potentially food-producing land into accommodation and harvesting more resources for energy and infrastructure, without further degrading our landscape and pushing more species towards extinction. However, despite this rather negative outlook, it is important to remember that a new generation always brings fresh hope. Perhaps it is the children of the next generation who will make these tough decisions about population growth, limit our energy usage rather than expand it, develop local food and energy initiatives to revitalise communities, and simplify our lives to bring us more in touch with nature and our natural environment.

* * *

Foraging has become a natural part of any walk I take and I am always alert to a free meal that nature is offering. Crossing some of the many rural roads near Prickly Nut Wood, one becomes aware of one of the few benefits of the motor car to the forager. Motor cars are quite adept at producing a meal and I’ve collected a good number of pheasants and rabbits, one partridge, one mallard duck and a number of roe deer, all of which have provided fine meals. The quality of roadkill varies depending upon the nature of the vehicle’s impact and where it has struck the animal. Whilst I have picked up pheasants so crushed and flattened that it would not have been worth trying to sort the meat from the bone, I have found others where the impact has been slight and the meat is untarnished. The next thing to establish is how long the animal has been dead. First check for warmth and how flexible the body is – has rigor mortis set in? Then look for flies’ eggs, which can arrive within an hour in the heat of summer. Have any hatched in to maggots? Does the meat smell? If I decide it is good to eat, I still have to get the meat back home. This is easy with a rabbit or a pheasant, but not so easy with a roe deer. If it is a deer I find, the first thing I look for is to see whether the stomach has begun to swell. Deer are ruminants and the grass in their stomachs will ferment, making the stomach inflate with gas. If the stomach is not swollen I will ‘paunch’ the deer – cut open its belly, and remove the stomach and intestines. If the deer is still warm, at this stage I will remove the liver and take it back home for my next meal. I will then drag the deer into the shade, marking the spot clearly in my mind so I can return to it later with a vehicle and collect the carcass. Once I have the carcass back home, I hang it in a fly-free environment for a few days before skinning and butchering it. A roadkill deer will provide venison for a number of meals, and such a find often signals a good time to invite over friends for a fine casserole or roast. The actual killing of deer is controlled under the Deer Act, so don’t let the delicious taste of venison tempt you into hunting deer, unless you decide to get properly trained through a deer-stalking course with the associated firearms certificates.

Heading north on the return journey to Prickly Nut Wood, the footpath takes me under an old walnut tree that kindly deposits large volumes of nuts upon the footpath. The actual walnut we are all familiar with is enclosed within an outer case that is thick and green. The green colouring will soon stain your fingers when harvesting these nuts. It has been traditionally used as a dye, as have the leaves. After picking a bagful of nuts and husks and then trying to wash your hands of the greeny/brown colouring, you will certainly appreciate its qualities for dyeing. I have five mature walnut trees I visit for foraging nuts as I walk around the parish, and there are a couple I have planted at Prickly Nut Wood. I planted grafted varieties of ‘Broadview’ and ‘Buccaneer’, which have struggled to compete with the ever-present challenge of the grey squirrel. I visited Martin Crawford’s nut trials at the agro-forestry research trust in South Devon and saw some fine examples of grafted walnuts producing well, which are all very suitable for our climate here. Martin recommended the variety ‘Fernette’ in particular, but there are a number of good cultivars to choose from. Away from the woods, where squirrels have less aerial access to trees, the planting of more walnuts would be a useful addition to our future food supply. In any garden or wasteland space, the planting of fruit- or nut-producing trees will help us towards having more established perennial food production, something that I believe will become a necessity in the future.

As I continue north beyond Prickly Nut Wood, I take a favourite route that takes me up the zigzag to Blackdown. On the way through Blackdown Park, I pass an orchard of plums and apples that I planted ten years earlier. The trees are now well established and cropping well, and sheep graze beneath them – a classic silvi-pastoral landscape. The zigzag is a steep climb up to the Temple of the Winds, where a stone bench marks one of the finest views in the south of England. Looking out from the Temple of the Winds, it is hard to imagine the motor car has been invented or that we are anywhere near the highly populated south of England. The border between Sussex and Surrey passes over Blackdown, and the area was one of the first pieces of land the National Trust acquired. In recent times – with the felling of timber and the grazing of cattle – much of the hillside has been returned to heathland.

I often visit here with my children for bilberry picking, as the reduction in tree cover has encouraged the spread of this prolific berry across the open heath. The wild relative of the blueberry, it is delicious in flavour and ensures the children’s hands and faces are more purple than when we have been blackberrying. Plenty are consumed while picking but others are taken home for one of my seasonal favourites – bilberry pancakes. I remember as a child that strawberries had a particular season. Now, with imported food, it is possible to eat them all year round, and the energy cost of transporting them is reflected in the price, unlike the associated pollution. The excitement and anticipation of waiting for the first strawberries to ripen have been taken away and in doing so this exquisite fruit – at its best when plucked straight from the plant – has become trapped in a plastic package and transported around the globe. It is the eating of fruit in their particular season that makes our connection with growing food so special and foraging such a delight. Blueberries are readily available all year round, but bilberries, they have their season and even then you will not find them in the shops. This perfect little berry creates a day of adventure. A picnic is prepared, water bottles filled and a mission undertaken to venture out across the heathland. A whole day unveils itself around this seasonal fruit. Games of hide and seek are interspersed with more picking. My son Zed becomes a bilberry scout, venturing ahead and alerting us busy pickers behind him to the treasures he discovers. Tess, my daughter, is picking well, her face blotched purple from her stained fingers. ‘Look at this one,’ she shrieks, finding a good-sized bilberry. As the day draws on she is on my shoulders as we start our descent and the journey home.

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