Jane Smith: Solo Farmer, Single Mother
Go past the castle and the Kings Inn, turn right into the white ‘gates’ of Pearly wood and continue for two miles until the road levels out. Right 100 yards then left quarter of a mile, now right again. It’s the fifth field on the right with a dozen sheep and gentle signs of life. It has no postcode, landmarks or signposts, nothing to Sat Nav. This is all you have to go on and unless Jane wants you there, you’re probably not going to find it.
Once found Jane’s farm is a treasure, a jewel buried in the bosom of Dorset, small, productive, quirky, charming; much like Jane. It’s sustainable and feeds the neighbours “as all farms should”, says Jane. She hopes her farm will be part of a sane future in which vegetables are not flown, but grown and eaten all within a few miles. It’s a simple fantasy, but the practicalities are not made easy by our infrastructure. It has taken Jane years of hard work to buy and then gain permission to build the agricultural buildings needed to cultivate the land and earn a living from it.
Jane’s environmentally low-impact way of life began in 1997 at ‘Tinkers Bubble’, a fossil free community in the woods of Somerset, the largest community of its kind in the UK. Inhabitants at the ‘Bubble’ earn their living from the land. Taking part in various communal enterprises such as selling timber and making apple juice. Jobs integral to upholding of the community are done communally, two days a week. Houses are built from the surrounding wood, trees are felled, meals are cooked and clothes are made, without a trace of fossil fuel. Without power tools or basic appliances daily jobs are time consuming and labour-intensive.
Jane was already ecologically minded when she reached the Bubble having worked for Greenpeace during the early 90’s, however what really drew her to Tinkers Bubble “was a desire to live within a community”. She was a single mother “socially and geographically isolated” in Sussex with Alex her 4 year-old-son. “I needed more adult company, he needed more adults and children.” The Bubble offered a peaceful, family environment for them to live in where domestic duties were shared and meaningful relationships were formed. With the community’s help she built a Douglas fir framed house from the surrounding wood (below). She gave birth to her second child Lilly in the bubble.
Not one to stand back and watch Jane tells me how she even attempted logging, a communal job, whilst pregnant before deciding it was just “too hairy”. Childcare in the bubble: “children just come along to work and you carry on”.
Bubble life came at a personal cost for Jane. “I had a very conventional straight upbringing and he was not impressed”. Jane’s father “barely” spoke to her for seven years after her move to the Bubble; he had imagined an “uneducated hippy commune” and refused to visit. When he finally did visit he realised that wasn’t the case. “Did you think I would live in a horrible place with horrible people, it’s a beautiful place with lovely people”. He stood in the car park upon leaving and with tears conceded “I should have come a long time ago pet”.
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Community is the heart of Tinkers Bubble but sustainability will always be the driving factor. “There is a lot more time to talk to people when you’re living in a community. But it’s also so busy up there. It’s not all skipping through daisies, I used to be frantic and so stressed because it was just so much to do with no labour saving devices. If you wanted a cup of tea you go and get the sticks and make the fire and boil you know…’
Tinkers Bubble is founded on consensus decision-making where everyone must agree for a decision to go forward. Jane believes this works at the Bubble but that “you need hierarchy. It’s about who you respect, hierarchies are natural things that just happen.”
The house she built there is still named after her but she no longer lives in the Bubble. In September 2010 Jane left, leaving her house for the next person. The concept of ‘home ownership’ does not come with a monetary commitment in the Bubble. Alone in the “big bad world” she found that she had been “sort of institutionalised” by her 12 years in such a tight knit community. “If anything broke, well someone could mend it and if a decision needed to be made, everyone would make the decision, then it was just me”.
Two years later Jane purchased her farm, six acres of beauty with a heartening dark blue pocket of sea peaking through the hills opposite. Jane has lots of little lambs, some of which she sells to Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s local River Cottage. She also owns ‘Marshwood Scrumpers’ selling delicious Apple juice from her orchard. Business is good now that she has her regular customers however she believes the government needs to adapt the Common Agricultural Policy to include farmers with less than five hectors of agricultural land as this makes it incredibly hard for solo farmers to establish themselves.
Jane has much to say on the current sustainability of food production. “People living on breadline don’t have the disposable income to go down to the farm shop and buy local food, so there’s a problem. That it’s cheaper to import food from abroad and it’s cheaper for Tesco to package everything in plastic packets.” So how can we make the sustainable more affordable? “Legislation needs to change.”
Jane likens people’s willingness to live a disposable, consumerist lifestyle to children who want to eat chocolate biscuits for breakfast. “You say no, no you can’t. The government needs to go ‘no you can’t drive 50 miles to and from work everyday. Yes you would like to have it, but you can’t’. We are all so spoiled. Tough you can’t have it.”
“It’s our greed and selfishness. The word decadent originates from the same word as decay and once our society is decadent it’s in decay.”
Jane’s sustainability goal is to “cause no harm and leave the planet in a condition that I would want to find it.” She’s not looking to change anyone else; “It’s just how I want to live but I’m 52, a single parent and I’m single, so if I can make a go at this then I hope it might be an example for those out there going ‘oh no I could never do that’ to think oh hang on, that middle age women over there is on her own, so maybe I can, it might just be encouraging.” It is.
By Milly Vincent
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