to Adam Sutherland
Hello.
I have some more questions about that TOGE people visitted Grizedale.
Q1.Where did TOGE people work ? Did they work in the Lawson Park of your
stronghold ?
Q2.How is the spread of your field ? According to your website, Lowson Park
has an area 15 acres. Do you use all area in this park?
I'm glad if you would answer my quesutions.
And thank you for your kind.
from Eimei Ishii
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Dear Ishii-san
Toge people worked at the Lawson Park farm making 3 new Tanbos (rice paddies) and clearing forest areas
They also collected mountain shoots and ran a cooking workshop for local chefs. The best resturants in the area attended including the famous Sharrow Bay Hotel and Michelin 2 star l'Enclume
On the last day of thier work programme they made a resturant for the village of Coniston in the famous Ruskin Institute. Many local people came (90) and the special food of Toge was very much enjoyed by all. Many people tried Warabi (Braken) for the first time and some started to consider it as a possible crop. The donations (250 pounds) from the visitors were given to the funds for the Coniston Water Festival www.conistonwaterfestival.org.uk a village festival on the lake
Lawson Park farm has 2 areas of land one is 15 acres of land that has not been farmed for 50 years. This is the area the village mainly worked on we are bring the whole area back into use. The other area of 5 acres is all gardens and the village built a bridge now called the 'Toge Bridge'. Later in the year we are hoping to bring a builder from Matsudai to make a new resturant in the gardens where we will make seasonal food including the mountain vegetables introduced by the villagers of Toge. We hope we will have further relationship with the people of Toge as all these projects develop.
All the best
Adam
Mountain vegetable workshop
Here are a few pictures of how we're shaping up this year.
The first is a general overview of the main ornamental borders nearest the house. We recently overhauled these as the herbaceous planting was overgrown and also in recent years the boggy back border had dried out as I improved the soil, so plants like gunneras were actually getting a but limp in summer.
So this year its a little more slimline, with a wider path thanks to George, and some new plants like eremurus (an experiment in this windy wet place...) but generally a reduced pallette, as this is what i'm trying to do throughout to give the garden more coherence. The back hedgerow is now lush and dense after just 5 years, and gives us much needed shelter from the regular mountain-bikers on the track.
The second is really just showing off - I'm finding the new raised bed kitchen garden utterly compelling. Its like being a child again, looking after these squares of geometric little vegetable rows. These broadbeans were sown in the tunnel mid-Feb. and doing really well outside now.
The third image is the woodland garden, so-called despite there being no mature trees yet. We started to mow round existing hummocks of native grasses and heather and what's evolving is a really unusual space. Again I'm trying to reduce the plant palette, use repeated groups and keep it generally colour-free.
Topics: 'garden'
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Day 2 was wet but bearable and the work pace furious again – with this troop we could scalp the site in a week. I have now noticed that using equipment is the principle joy. There is an antipathy for the spade, I didn’t see one of the village pick one up for a moment, or a hand saw.
Principle achievements were felling timber and clearing fallen trees. The afternoon we managed to ‘plant’ mushrooms (in logs) and build a new and rather substantial bridge. There was little time wasted on aesthetics, just practical decisions about longevity and usability.
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Toge men folk arrived for battle/work on Monday morning at 8am having twiddled their fingers for 2 hours waiting for us all to get ready, and then they were off, no stopping them chainsaws whirling. I started off with a chainsaw but was quickly overridden and my saw handed to a man more able, 72 but more able for sure I’ve never seen my saw work so well, the vorpal blade. The only difficult thing was getting them to stop, a moment of turned back and another tree crashed to the ground, they certainly do enjoy confirming the sound of a tree falling. The day was foul, driving rain which does tend to slow you down a bit, by lunch time everyone was soaked – Yasura-san explained that now he felt alive again. For lunch they all changed into my clothes, a bizarre sight the checked and tartan land army. As the weather worsened I called the afternoon session of and the village slept.
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Wet work
Tartan land army
I whisk the Toge women off to the Lilliput Lane factory at Penrith after they express a desire to develop our prototype model of a Toge house. It was made by a LL sculptor, but the company remains rather disinterested in the project. The women would like to cast the commissioned mould and paint the models themselves, a kind of bootleg Lilliput Lane production, so the chance of an informative tour of the factory offers some useful insights for them.
The company allow me to film the visit and tour, and don’t flinch at the copious notes Mitsuko-san takes at every stage.
Karen Guthrie
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And then telling them what you were doing... nice!
It’s great to spend time with the village, and artist Junko-san (who we met in Toge) again. Junko doesn’t do small-talk. In the car she leans over to me and says “Are Beatrix Potter and Harry Potter related?”
I say, tentatively, “Conceptually….yes. But actually, no.”
Karen Guthrie
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Shortly after the village arrived they explained that they were sad to miss the bracken season in Japan – we showed them the hills covered in bracken shoots which everyone would be very happy for them to pick. Their sadness lifted as they began to plan how they could carry it home. Michgo-san suggested she might move to the Lake District and set up a business exporting bracken to Japan.
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Just thought a word re the bracken. I returned from the Coniston Japenese-cum-Lake District food party very excited about being able to make something of the bracken shooting up on the hill. Went bracken gathering and prepared it. My hosts not so keen on eating it - and after consultation with sheep veterinary book and Richard Mabey (Guide to Edible Wild Plants) they confirm that it contains carcinogens. Admitedly the blindness in the sheep is caused from eating large amounts over time, and raw, but not sure that the boiling removes the carcinogens. I think that we'll be alright from Saturday, but export business perhaps not such a great idea. Shame!
Bracken should be picked young before the fronds open, placed in boiling water and soaked in wood ash over night to remove bitterness - this cooking process seems to be important and is likley to remove any possible poisons, although the village stated it was to remove bitterness. Bracken is eaten in small quantities further reducing any risk.
There are a number of foods we commonly eat that are poisnous unless correctly processed, potatoes, aubergines, rhubarb etc. The British became wary of wild food with the rise of processed food in the late 19th century - it is only recently that wild mushrooms have become more acceptable.
The Japanese have been eating bracken for hundreds of years and reputedly have the highest life expectancy in the world. They are rather more wary of beef, this only being introduced to Japan in the 19th century - it was called mountain whale in an effort to get people to eat it. Animal fats versus bracken, mmm.
I checked with the local doctor regarding bracken who said the jury was still out with no conclusive proof, it seemed likley that the possible carcinogenic qualities were most prevalant in the spores of mature plants.
Friday night at midnight 6 of the villagers from Toge arrived in Coniston along with Jamie and Aiko Goodenough and Junko an artist that was working in toge. To keep up with events check into the blog at http://adamsutherland.typepad.com/grizedale_arts/
Upcoming events include fish and chips in Keswick, selling at the Coniston car boot sale (homemade slippers, pickles and things), Terracing, mushroom logs, pruning and planting a bonzai forest, Chefs masterclass in edible weeds, Japanese cafe and a whole lot more
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Very glad to see the return of George - garden buster. Of course Karen and I had worked ourselves stupid trying to get the garden in a good state before he came back and actually I am now desperate to get a few more vital things finished before the Japanese visit – to avoid the humiliation of them thinking I am a bit lazy – this farming thing is tough re peer pressure, no escaping the reality of what you have and haven’t done, (unlike art which is much more of a fudge).
Despite spending 12 hour days (weekends) in heavy labour in the garden Karen still feels I need additional stomach flattening exercise in the gym – which I truly hate. I can’t stand all that waste of energy, just seeing people exercising to no useful purpose – to arguably look better. The gym is like a receptacle constantly filled with wasted energy, thousands of hours that could have been put to a useful purpose – maybe rather than calories burnt those machines could show numbers of spades lifted, walls walled, weeds weeded, nails nailed.
The other interesting thing in the gym is the sight of an exercise class, entirely filled with in-shape women that clearly think they look more or less ok, like relatively good looking. Obviously these are the functional people of the area, happy enough to exercise, confident enough to wear a leotard – Karen tells me they are extremely shy in the changing room, changing in the showers and generally dicking around playing towel curtains, clogging the system up and making me wait an age, and as Karen says ‘who the f... is looking’.
Topics: 'gardener' 'George Watson'
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On Friday Grizedale hosted a lunch for some Chinese Artists who were taking part in the Liverpool Tate show that had opened the night before. The artists were the most interested people to ever visit the site, gripped by the plants, food, collections and other - particularly - land related stuff. None spoke English but their interest and excitement was very visible. They were accompanied by Zhang Whey from Vitamin, sadly we had to little time to talk about the forthcoming Grizedale troop residency in Nanling planned for November 2007 (see Alistair’s China blog entry)
I cooked a whole turbot for lunch but left the bones and the head in the kitchen as is the British fashion. I found the artists gathered round it talking excitedly, they were worried the best bits of the dinner were going to end up in the bin –throughout lunch I could tell they were thinking of the lost delights of the cheeks, jaws and eyes (bones are a Chinese culinary obsession).
Tom Trevor from Arnofini also came along and was interested in discussing Lawson Park as a venue for an art project involving growing tea, something to do with import-export colonialism, sounds a bit like international agri conceptualism, but hey people seem to like that stuff. An interesting addition to our patchwork approach to land use and curation, anyone can do whatever.
Topics: 'Arnolfini' 'China' 'Chinese artists' 'tea' 'Vitamin Project Space'
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Dem bones
Pages:
Contributors:
- Adam Sutherland[28]
- Alistair Hudson[1]
- Dorian Moore[1]
- Karen Guthrie[72]
- Lisa Stewart[42]
- Maria Benjamin[1]
Topics:
- animals[2]
- apples[2]
- bad weather[2]
- Bracken[3]
- Brantwood[2]
- building[15]
- carving[2]
- demolitions[2]
- drainage[2]
- drilling[2]
- farming[2]
- Fruit[2]
- garden[12]
- gardener[2]
- gardening[2]
- grand designs[2]
- ground source heat[6]
- hedgerow[2]
- honesty shop[2]
- Japan[2]
- Kitchen Garden[5]
- Lawson Park[26]
- Lawson Park building[4]
- lighting[2]
- National Garden Scheme[3]
- orchard[2]
- progress[2]
- raised beds[2]
- roof[3]
- sewage treatment[2]
- slate[2]
- spring[2]
- vegetables[3]
- view[2]
- wildflower meadow[3]
Months:
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2010
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2009
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2008
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2007
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2006
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