In Episode 100 of the Sense-Making in a Changing World, I am delighted to be speaking with STEPHANIE HAFFERTY who is based on a half-acre no-dig permaculture farm in Lampeter, Wales.
From the Half Acre Homestead, Stephanie explains how to grow year round using climate friendly regenerative organic gardening methods for abundant harvests and fewer weeds, working harmoniously with wildlife, and what to do with your harvests, from seasonal meals to preserving, homemade body, home and garden care, remedies and natural dyes.
In this episode, Stephanie shares a wonderful story about how she discovered permaculture and gardening, the joy she derives from it, and how growing food has helped her to put healthy food on her children’s plates on a modest income. This affordability and accessibility piece is a big part of what Steph is about, and what she shares with people – nothing highbrow or expensive. Just straightforward simple advice to get a diversity of healthy food from the pot to the plate.
ABOUT STEPHANIE
Stephanie is an award winning garden and food author – she wrote the Creative Kitchen, and co-authored No Dig Organic Home and Garden – and she’s a cover girl for a recent Permaculture Magazine! Stephanie is actively involved in Permaculture Wales and UK, and is a Vice Chair of the Garden Media Guild.
She’s also been featured on the long-running UK gardening show, BBC Gardeners World and other shows, and has 30 years of practical experience to share. She runs courses in her edible garden (and soon online) is a simple living and no-dig gardening advocate, a sought-after speaker at gardening events and she consults with edible gardening projects far and wide.
Stephanie has created and worked home, community and market gardens, gardens for large estates, restaurants and galleries. In 2021 she led the RHS No Dig Allotment Demonstration Garden at Hampton Court Garden Festival.
Follow her gardening and homesteading life on YouTube, her blog or social media.
Find on any of your preferred podcast streaming service or on Youtube.
Read the full transcript:
Morag:
Hello and welcome to the Sense Making in a Changing World Podcast, I’m Morag Gamble. In this episode, I’m delighted to be speaking with Stephanie Hafferty based on her half-acre farm in lovely Wales. Stephanie is an award winning gardener and food author. She wrote the Creative Kitchen and co authored No Dig Organic Home and Garden, she’s the cover girl of a recent permaculture magazine too. She’s also been featured in the long running UK gardening show BBC Gardeners World and has 30 years of practical experience to share. She runs courses in edible gardens and soon online workshops. She’s a simple living and no dig gardening advocate, a sought after speaker at gardening events and she consults with edible gardening projects far and wide.
In this episode, Stephanie has a wonderful story about how she discovered permaculture and gardening. The joy she derives from it and how growing food has helped her to put healthy food on our children’s plates on a small income. This affordability and accessibility piece is a big part of what Stephanie is about and what she shares with people – nothing hybrid or expensive, just straightforward, simple advice to get a diversity of healthy food from the pot to the plate, and how to grow food all year round in places like Wales.
Well thank you so much for joining me, Steph. It’s lovely to see you again. It’s been a couple of years. I think it was pre-pandemic when I caught up with you in Somerset. And now you’re in lovely Wales. How’s life in Lampada?
Stephanie:
It’s gorgeous here. It is lovely. Yeah, where I live is very, very rural. So all the views are fields and more fields and fields again, and it’s absolutely fabulous! I love it and Wales. I visited Wales. Last time I was there and actually to Lampeter and one of the lasting memories I have of our journey. There was this gorgeous little people’s market and local food, local cheese’s, all these wonderful things going on. And there seems to be quite a bit of a permaculture community that’s scattered around that area.
Morag:
Is that still going on since a few years ago?
Stephanie:
Yes, absolutely. When I moved here, of course I moved during lockdown. And Wales had a very strict lockdown. So none of these things were happening, but it’s all reopened again. And the local markets are still going and it’s local produce, local cheeses. There’s fish because we’re not too far from the coast. There’s local meats, local everything. Really, it’s lovely. And a lot of permaculture stuff going on. We’ve got the Welsh permaculture gathering happening here in September on Patrick Holden’s farm, which is about 20 minutes away. So yes, the hub has wonderful public culture, possibly here.
Morag:
It felt beautiful when I was there last time. I hope I can get to visit again. When I come again later in the year I think I’m going to miss you at the permaculture festival. You’ll be at the Welsh one and I’m at the British one.
Stephanie:
Yeah, the British one that’s about a six hour drive away from here. So I’m going for the one that’s 20 minutes away.
Morag:
Yeah. So I’d love to hear a bit of your origin story. Where did you find that you love it? You’re so immersed in gardening, you’re an award winning author and you’ve been on BBC. Your gardening seems to surround you. Where did that begin for you? Like, where did your love of gardening come in?
Stephanie:
Well, apparently, according to my mom, I’ve always liked grubbing in the mud. And I remember as a child being really happy being in nature and in the garden. I’d make little fairy gardens, underneath shrubs and things. So I’ve always enjoyed that, actually gardening to produce edibles. I had cacti and succulents on my windowsill as a child and I enjoyed having those.
But I got into growing plants outside when I got a book from a charity shop when I was about 17. It was an old fashioned book on making wine from plants. And of course, I’m 17 – I discovered you could make alcohol from things you grow. So I started, bought the book for 50 pence and I’ve still got it, it’s falling apart now but still going strong. I had a corner of my parents garden where I grew a few plants and got some plants going and started to learn how to make wine.
Morag:
So, was it tasty? Or was it something you could strip paint with?
Stephanie:
Yeah, so it was variable. Some of them were lovely. I’m sure it boosted my immune system, some of the brews that were concocted. Gradually I then went off to uni and while I was there, I really got into making as much food as I could, because obviously it’s cheaper. And then got interested in plants for cooking, not just making alcohol.
Morag:
I know a lot of uni students, and I’ve been involved in helping to get a number of university gardens started. Not everyone does that though, even though it is cheaper. And it makes a whole lot of sense. What was there that inspired you to do that? And where did you grow? Were you living at home?
Stephanie:
Oh, this was on a very small scale. These were window cells. So it’s like pots of herbs and things. But I was lucky that when I became a student in Bristol, there were organic shops at a time when this wasn’t very normal. So I was getting aware of all of this, the Soil Association was big there, although I wasn’t doing anything with them. I was aware of their presence. I lived quite near a community garden which is still there and there were a lot of us actually to be perfectly honest, we were walking to the pub, but you’d walk past all these allotments to get to the city farm where there was a really good pub.
So I was a student. I socialised. I went to bed at six in the morning, you know, but it was there. And just by walking around and seeing all these things, you’re gradually getting it ‘Oh, this is interesting.’ I could do this. Once I left for my first job, I had a postgraduate degree to be a teacher and I went and got a job in Cambridgeshire. I actually had access to outdoor space properly then. And I started the usual things, tomatoes and more herbs and just started getting into growing a few bits and pieces and it kind of went.
Morag:
Yeah, I think it’s interesting how you’re saying that. Just the fact that things are around you – that it’s there. It goes in somehow. And I think this is really important. I was doing a talk the other day about the way that we design our cities and suburbs and how the ones that have the food embedded in like village homes in Davis, California or some of the Danish ecovillages where there’s food everywhere. Some of those traditional towns and villages, we have the allotments that it just becomes part of our norm.
But in a lot of traditions and the newer suburbs that we have in Australia there’s just nothing edible. It’s just cheek to jowl houses and that’s it. And so as a child growing up or even as a teenager, in that sense that you have these possibilities. So I love that it’s just kind of there in some way or other.
But what led you to actually get to the point of becoming what you call a homesteader and growing your own food for your family? Does it actually save you a lot of money? That’s a question I guess that people want to know. Because at the moment with all the crises that are happening, is growing and all that food actually helping?
Stephanie:
That’s a very good question. I was giving a talk at the London Permaculture Festival a week ago and that question was raised as well. So I was a very bookish child, I read and read and read and read. I would go to a party and sit in the corner and read so I was a great excitement to be around. I loved to read things like Little House on the Prairie, those kinds of which I know have issues now. Obviously, I didn’t when I was a small child. I would play farming and homesteading with my Lego. So I got a piece of cardboard and made my garden using paint & crayons.
So as a little child, I was playing, going off and gathering – it sounds completely mad now. But this was how I liked to play and made all this stuff out of Lego. Then as I got older, it was this interest, which again, I think was why I was attracted to making wine. It’s the idea of being able to make something and then discovering that you can actually make jam, it doesn’t have to come from the shelves. And watching The Good Life. I mean that brainwashed a lot of people.
Morag:
Good Life? Oh my gosh. Yes. That was influential for me too. Like I didn’t get to watch much telly as a kid. My parents were pretty strict on that. But they did let me sit and watch the Good Life with them.
Stephanie:
Yeah, I inflicted this on my children as well. So they’ve had bad experiences. There was all these various factors. Some of it’s reading, some of it was from television. And then once I was getting into growing food, I started to read. My mom gave me Jeff Hamilton’s organic gardening book. When I became a parent at 27, when I had my daughter, one of the things we did living in Wiltshire and then Somerset was go to a lot of green festivals and fairs. And that’s how I got to find out about permaculture.
I’ve got the bias that I’ve completely gone blank on that. The small holding book everybody had, John Seymour, I got a copy of that from the library. We were very big on libraries, we had one in the bottom of our road, and it was brilliant the amount of books you could get out. sort of devoured all these permaculture and gardening books and that kind of thing. It really intrigues me being able to make stuff. I love it. I think it goes back to when you’re very small and you’re making things from glue and cardboard and sticky paper. It’s the same kind of pleasure of creativity, but you can eat it or you can drink it. So I got into growing more and more and more food.
When I had my daughter, I was renting a place in Northamptonshire. I was sort of digging out because I didn’t know about no-dig then and I was digging out bits of the garden and growing what I could, because I was there on my own with a small child. It all helps and I was interested in doing it. Then I had more children and for a time I was married. We bought a small house in Wiltshire which was an ex-council house and because it was affordable back in those days, you could get an ex-council house on a mortgage with one salary.
Now that’s just not possible and rural British old council houses were made with big gardens, relatively big gardens. The idea was you had enough space to have fruit trees, keep chickens, grow vegetables and keep a pig by the standards of those days. So we’re talking houses put up in the 20s and 30s. So I had chickens and ducks and I started my veggie garden there. After a couple of years we had three kids, so we moved to a slightly bigger house in Somerset and the same thing happened. Gradually, I was getting more and more food growing as possible around having young children.
We were pretty scared, particularly when my husband and I broke up. I was on my own with three kids and a very low income. Absolutely for sure, growing as much food as I could, preserving and storing it as I could, it made a big difference. I also stocked the discount parts of the supermarkets and all that too. I think it can if you’ve got the space to get as much food as you can. It is about accessibility to land. I was lucky to be able to get something going way back, as I say, my daughter’s nearly 29. When it was affordable to be able to get these places that are relatively affordable on a mortgage.
Morag:
So in the UK now, where are the most accessible places to access land? Are people still able to get allotments big enough sizes to grow food? How’s that? What’s the situation there? I hear there’s long lines for allotments or is it?
Stephanie:
Again, it depends where you are. So in some places, there’s long, long waiting lists. The allotment I had in Somerset where I grew my garden was up the road. It cost me 20 pounds a year and you could get five tons of well rotted cow manure from the local farm for 30 quid and that went for two years. So you could easily grow that amount of food and that was definitely accessible and affordable. Even on a low income as I was then, I still am actually, but then in other places because it became very fashionable, for want of a better word. It became very popular to have allotments to grow your own food, particularly during the lockdowns – prices have increased. Some places are very expensive.
Some organisations are buying up land and converting them to allotments. And I mean, they’re charging a fortune. It’s all about making money, which you’re only making accessible to people on high incomes who have enough land, but absolutely everyone should be able to grow. It’s not accessible to people who really need to have that. In Bristol, my friend Sara runs Edible Bristol. So there are community projects in a lot of cities using land there to create community spaces. So it really does depend. And there’s also areas which are essentially food deserts. There’s nothing and pretty much entirely all of those places are where there is the most need. Yeah, so some bits are good. Some bits are terrible.
Morag:
So the kind of methods that you use for teaching. You run courses and you’re a writer, blogger and you have YouTube. You also offer people tours into your place. What are the kinds of methods that you’re teaching people to help them to get started in their homes? What are your go to methods that you help people with?
Stephanie:
I mostly teach the no dig gardening method. But I teach it in different ways that are affordable because a lot of people think of no dig gardening as like when I used to work on market gardens. A lot of those beds were made with six inches/15 centimetres of compost on the ground, which is fair play if you can get access to it, but most people can’t afford that. So I teach different ways of doing it, which includes using less compost and it’s much cheaper. Another thing is how to grow food year round with the planning. I’m lucky I’ve got a polytunnel. That’s great. But I also say if you don’t have a polytunnel, this is what you can do. This is what you can make using essentially free resources and waste. And also teaching what you can do with it.
I think a lot of people don’t know because there’s been a separation between food production and cooking. A lot of people, they’re growing, they get their allotment and they grow all this stuff. And then it’s like, okay, I’ve got three recipes for courgettes in my repertoire. What should I do with these 40 courgettes now?
Also we are in a bit of a changing climate at the moment. So it’s looking at ways of growing without soil disturbance and how things can be adapted. Because as you’ll know from having been to the UK, we are the land of the slug. I think we have the world’s largest slug population, or it certainly feels like it. So a lot of the methods we use here are very much about reducing habitat for slugs. We are also starting to get long dry periods, which for a country which is used to basically being like today where I got wet. It’s a challenge, and it’s a change.
Morag:
Yeah, I think I started to hear about that last time. Because, many, many years ago when I was there, we were saying, ‘Oh, we don’t have to worry about all the things you do in Australia, because it’s just going to rain and rain barrels and we’re just going to get filled up tomorrow.’ Whereas, here we have 25,000 litres stored on our property because there’s such a dearth of water at certain times a year. But this changing climate, as you’re talking about, is making us really think about how we can build resilience into our gardens. Much more. Something I like is a framework of those really robust and resilient plants that then we can intersperse with other seasonal things.
I wonder in your climate, what are some of those foundational plants that you always include as a survival plant that keep you going throughout the year? What are they in your part of the world?
Stephanie:
I think we don’t have the same range as you might do in Australia because of our climate and our relatively shorter growing season. But certainly perennial brassicas would be a key thing because they pretty much crop year round. And you can always make a meal out of some perennial kale leaves with other ingredients. It depends very much where you are, I think as well in the UK.
I did note, if you have too much planting, then you’re creating a slug habitat. So I have perennial areas where I wouldn’t grow lettuce, for example, because they just get slugged because the slugs are living under some of my perennial plantings. This may change you know, the slugs may bog off, they might decide it’s too dry there. But mostly plants that are there permanently are things like fruit trees, soft fruit, that kind of thing, which I do grow around.
I grow in my orchard where the apple trees were here when I moved. I grow heaps of food underneath. And I did this in my previous garden because I’m trying to grow as much as I can and it’s surprising how much you can grow under the shade of trees.
One big difference I noticed, when I put my polytunnel up here, I put it in the only space that it would fit. So there wasn’t any design to it at all. It was literally this is the only bit of my garden where a polytunnel that size can go. I was a bit concerned about its proximity to all these fruit trees. Actually, I thought it was to be shady, I’m not going to get any tomatoes. It turned out to be a bonus when we got these hot, dry spells in Britain. So it’s all relative for other parts of the world.
It’s like a balmy summer’s day, but for us, it’s like crikey. So as the sun was moving, when it got to the hottest part of the day, these trees were shading the polytunnel. Problems that some other people had, like my friends in Somerset, with things just literally stopping growing, because they’re almost cooking. I’m not getting that because of these planting. So looking at how you can use larger plants, trees and things within gardens as things I mean, we don’t know how things are changing. We literally haven’t a clue.
It’s certainly looking beyond that idea of having an allotment and vegetable gardens, just being a rectangle of fairly low planting that we’re always taught. ‘Don’t put it near trees because they’ll suck all the moisture out.’
Morag:
So that’s a shift, isn’t it? There’s approaches that really make us think differently about what we imagine is the right way to garden. I’m seeing the shifts and changes here, too. So when you got your garden started, I know you only moved to this new place a couple of years ago now is it?
Stephanie:
Yeah, it was March 21.
Morag:
So that’s, gosh, that’s almost two years.
Stephanie:
Over two years? Yeah.
Morag:
So what did you do when you arrived there? You left, but you’ve been working in this for 20 years and you’ve landed a new place. Did you decide to do things differently? What was good? What was your first starting point? How did you design it and get it going to amplify the growth there as a starting point?
Stephanie:
Obviously, I would have been planning it since I knew that we were going to move, which wasn’t too long. Gosh, I’m trying to think how long it took. Maybe three or four months from the offer being accepted to actually physically getting it. So one of the things I did was as part of my moving house budget… and moving houses is so expensive. When someone says moving house budget, what they really mean is, what else is going on the mortgage to pay for this. So it’s not like pots of gold sitting around the house that you’ve got available. I did include getting compost because I knew I needed to get my garden set up really quickly.
Everything was locked down, I didn’t have any of the accessibility to networks that you would normally have, such as finding out where you can get municipal waste compost or farm manure or whatever. I had an arrangement with a certified organic compost company that I already knew and we sorted that out. I got the keys on the Wednesday, moved in on the Friday and the compost came on the Monday. So it was organised.
I was moving home with three kids. So there was a removal van with all our stuff in it and then another half removal van that they attached to the back that I put in my garden. I’d been growing a lot of things in pots in my previous phone because I had areas of concrete and I was making green forest gardens on concrete to increase food production. All of that went in, all of my stuff, all of my hoops and netting. I’d been splitting plants so I was bringing those things with me as well. Soft fruit and that kind of stuff.
The people I bought from weren’t gardeners, they hadn’t lived there very long, but the lady before them was keen. The established fruit trees were here, some of the fruit bushes, some edibles here already. But mostly it was grass and flower borders, which are lovely. I haven’t had to do anything with the flower borders. But I knew that I was going to be away for nearly a month because I was project managing a show garden at Hampton Court just a few weeks later.
I decided to do the cardboard composite no-dig method that I’d been using for some years in what we call the back garden – it’s an area of grass just outside the back door. On March the 31st, we put cardboard down on the weedy grass. And I put five centimetres/two inches of compost on top and then cardboard for paths. I made a bed and planted it up because I’d literally just moved, I had to get some plants and sow some seed in the orchard. A bit at a time, making beds there, some of it was compost.
I was using resources that were there, part of that was I had to get some trees chopped down because they were hazardous or dangerous. I had a lot of wood chips and sawdust, although it wasn’t a free resource because I had to pay to get the trees cut. But it was a resource, I was using different kinds of mulches and experimenting. All of the orchard beds were made with pretty much the stuff that’s around here. The odd one used compost if it needed it. Then I set up a compost heap. So it’s been a mixture of the ways I knew, it really did work. With experiments.
Morag:
Sounds like fun. I know you’re talking about bringing groups into your garden. So when you were designing this, I often explore this with students of ours who are doing the permaculture design course and the permaculture teachers course, talking about, ‘well, how do you design a garden that is going to be an educational garden?’ As you were thinking about designing it, were you thinking about how it could be part of that as well as being for you? Were you thinking of the educational elements or different kinds of spaces or areas that people could meet outside? How did you think that through? Was that part of it, are the elements just going to weave their way through?
Stephanie:
Well, I’ve only got about half an acre here. That includes the footprint of the house and where to park the car and that kind of thing. So it’s not a huge space. Certain things like in the polytunnel, which is 45 feet long, the first 10 feet of wood has a little border. So that was partly so I’ve got a space to make things when it’s raining. And partly that I had an area undercover that I could have people in the groups that visit here. The courses are very small, 8 to 10 people at the most, which is practical when you’re running something on your own.
I wasn’t thinking of very large groups for this space. Previous courses I ran, we’re looking at 18 to 20 people and that was on a much bigger plot. But yeah, it was quite interesting making the garden accessible for my family and a family space. Because my previous garden was completely full of vegetables by the time my children were teens, we had nowhere to sit outside, we just had to perch on things.
Inside the top of the orchard, it was like this is going to be kept for the family for barbecues, and put tents so my kids can have friends who camp. So that has naturally created a space where I can also host courses and talk to people, then we can move around. But the courses are very much walking around the garden and interacting with what’s there. The planting was first and foremost practical stuff for growing food. My ambition is to get 75-80% self-sufficient in plant food. So no coffee, and I don’t want the closed loop, I want to be able to go to the market.
Morag:
it’s really important isn’t it? Often with homesteading, it’s thinking that we have to be self-sufficient. It’s about growing as much as you can and then having a relationship with your community – trading and exchanging. That’s really important, because otherwise it can feel like a big slog, and you could feel quite alone as well.
Stephanie:
Yeah, one thing with this whole COVID pandemic and people being stuck at home has shown us the value of community and how much most of us really do enjoy interacting with other people. Obviously, if I made all my bread then I wouldn’t be getting the pleasure of going and buying the locally made bread in Lampeter so you don’t get those interactions. If we all make our own bread, they’re going to go out of business. It’s working out the balance between ‘I want to make all my jams and chutneys but I’ve got a callus’ or that kind of thing. But I also want to be able to go and buy my organic lemons from the organic farm shop. Because trying to grow lemons in Wales, it’s hilarious. The winter killed my plants, so I’m not going to do that anymore.
Morag:
It’s being realistic, isn’t it? Well, I love what you’re saying about the preserving and thinking through what you can do. What can I be supporting my community doing? You have a book out that talks a lot about processing food and cooking food. I want to ask you about books because part of the series that I run on this podcast is a permaculture writers series and you’ve got your book called The Creative Kitchen and you co-wrote a book called The No-dig Organic Home and Garden. I’d love to hear about it. You have three kids. You’re running this program. You’re working to earn a living. How do you get to write a book at the same time? I’m so in awe of anyone who writes a book, honestly, it’s an enormous task. How do you do it?
Stephanie:
Yeah, the hilarious thing about writing the Creative Kitchen was having to do a recipe test when it was winter. So I had to get the aubergines and the courgettes from an online supermarket in order to make the recipe. We were all eating nothing but soups and salads for a whole week when I was taking those photos. One of my main jobs is as a writer, I’m a feature writer for magazines. I do schedule it in, it is part of my day’s work. It is finding the time and just working long days. I tend to do a seven day week often and that isn’t viable. So I moved here starting again, but I unexpectedly lost my main job within a couple of weeks of moving here, which was a hell of a shock. I just worked and worked and worked, as you do.
I definitely need a little bit more of a work/life balance. But it’s setting all these things up, you just keep at it. I did go and visit my dad for a month in January and relaxed. I read books not written by me. But it’s scheduling, it’s finding the time. It isn’t easy when you’re doing lots of other jobs too.
Morag:
You are a writer, you have a discipline – doing it in a particular way of structuring. Do you actually map out the whole book to begin with? What’s the actual structure of how you go and do it? Do you see the book and then you write it out? Is that how it works?
Stephanie:
You get an idea of what the chapters are going to be and what the topics are. I mean, one was co-written. So we just split who was writing what, more or less. Some things were both, some things were one of the other. I have notepads, I’ve got one on my desk here. I actually weirdly handwrite quite a lot of it. But I find handwriting uses a different part of the brain to my typing brain. So even when I’m writing an article, I map it out on paper first with a pen. It’s actually this pen here. I was given this when I went to university at 19 by my friend and I’ve still got it. This has been very helpful! Just buy refills every now and then. Then I type it up.
So it’s a lot of planning first and having a clear idea of what you’re going to be talking about in each chapter and each subsection of chapters. Very different from a recipe book to a gardening book, obviously, for practical reasons.
Morag:
Creative Home, you’ve got recipes, but you’ve also got recipes for your body as well. What other sorts of things can people find in that book of yours?
Stephanie:
There’s some interesting preserve shortcuts, making booleans that you can store in simple storage – you can store it in a clean jam jar on the shelf. Then in the winter time, you get those flavours and fragrances of the summer and add it to your food – there’s alcohol too surprisingly, given how it all started! There’s also some crafts. One of the things with making things for your skin or things you can use to clean your house is partly allergies. If I go down the detergent aisle of a supermarket, I’ll get a headache, I’ll start sneezing.
Morag:
I’m with you there, yeah.
Stephanie:
So it was a lot to do with finding ways of cleaning the loo which isn’t going to give me a blinding headache. Also I like to think that I started off growing on a windowsill and then in a very small garden. So each plant really needs to work on as many levels as possible. So it’s thinking: if you grow parsley on your windowsill to flavour your meals, these are the other things you can do with parsley…
Morag:
Yeah, great!
Stephanie:
It’s going beyond just seeing it as something that’s chopped up and added to your soup.
Morag:
Yeah, it’s not just a garnish! The bit that gets left on the side of the plate when you go out and you see plates where it’s just on top. Like that’s the best bit! Why would you waste that?
I think it’s wonderful. You talked about the joy of gardening as a child and that was something that was there with you. I’ve been wondering about this lately, there’s something I feel that I need a word that describes this and I’m looking for one, maybe you know. There’s something about when you walk outside your door, and you’re surrounded by food, and you can just go and harvest your lunch or you grab some fruit, there’s this deep sense of feeling contented, feeling secure, of smelling it and feeling it. That joy of scent, hearing the sound of the birds or watching something going on. There’s is contentment, but it’s not biophilia. There’s a word about being surrounded by an edible landscape, and I haven’t come across it yet.
Stephanie:
I don’t know? Make one up!
Morag:
I’m going to make one up.
Stephanie:
I would definitely. There’s something there. I know there’s people who get incredible contentment from being surrounded by beautiful ornamental gardens.
We’re all different, I have some good friends and that’s what they do – they create these amazing spaces that just make people relax. Whereas I like to be surrounded by things you can eat or make things from. That really relaxes me and makes me happy. And I am even happy here. So where I live – you’ve been to Wales, you know how tiny the lanes are, we can barely get a car through them. My front garden is quite tiny and then there’s the lane and the hedge of the field opposite. And from sitting here, basically, it’s just food. This hedge, it’s either food for me or food for the wild things. It’s wonderful, it’s just non-stop everywhere you look there’s food. I appreciate it, I’m very lucky that I live in a rural area.
Morag:
It’s funny, I was telling you before we jumped online, my daughter has just gone to live on campus at a university in Canberra. She’s grown up here in this ecovillage surrounded by permaculture gardens. One of the first things she said to me when she got there was ‘I just feel really disconnected from my food system.’ Anyway, we would wander through the campus and we’d go, ‘oh, look, here’s some lavender, or here’s some really cool native berries.’ We had a great time just reconnecting with the fact that there was a food system on campus, if you just happen to look in the right places. There were some gingko, really interesting and unusual things.
Then she said she went walking through the landscape with her friends that she’d met at uni and started saying, ‘oh, there’s this.’ And they were like ‘how do you know this stuff? Who are you, plant lady?’ She can read the edible landscape. I think this is a skill and it’s a lost art. In many ways, this ability to notice the edibleness of plants, that there’s some really beautiful quality to be able to share that.
The fact that you’re taking people on walks through your gardens and inviting them into that space to get to know all the multiple ways you can use parsley and all the ways you can store, share and bring a bit of summer into your winter. That’s important, it touches us in some way. There’s a kind of almost unspeakable quality of joy that it brings into our life. It makes us feel secure and happy and nourished.
Stephanie:
Yeah, it’s wonderful. For people who haven’t got access to growing spaces, when I was writing Creative Kitchen, I made sure that if there was a recipe that involved chopped tomatoes, the recipe worked around the same quantity that you would get from a tin of tomatoes to make it accessible to people whose only access to food is the local supermarket. You can get incredible pleasure from getting lots of peaches from the bargain bin at the supermarket and making your own preserve. But I’m saying peaches because they’re quite difficult to grow here. I’ve got three peach trees and they’re three feet high, I’ve only just put them in. So I think there’s ways of connecting with creating food, even if you can’t yet have access to edible spaces where you live. I’m a huge fan of bargain bins at the supermarket, you might have noticed.
Morag:
Like you say, it’s a way to find how you can reconnect with your food rather than it being just an assembly task. Getting into the art of cooking, the art of growing! There’s a very visceral joy that comes from that level of connectivity. There’s also stories to share, we do it together, we will come back to the community meals. I don’t know if Lampeter has community meals where people bring potluck dinners, bringing different things to share. I always love those because you get to go ‘Oh, wow, you did that with that! Wow, that’s incredible.’
Stephanie:
The first night of the permaculture festival is a potluck. So when you come you bring your dish of whatever. Yeah, there are potluck types of things around. And there’s a food festival here at the end of the month at the university. So I’m there giving a talk of plot to plate, I’m going to talk about some of the things you can grow and what to do with them. There is definitely more and more going on with connecting with food.
I’m a member of The Guild of Food Writers which is brilliant for the amount of international cuisine, the stories and the heritage that people talk about. God, it’s fascinating. You just want to literally travel the world and eat. You do nothing but eat in all these different cuisines. There can be a disconnection between seasonal food and affordability. I don’t know how it is in Australia, but certainly here we’ve got problems with a lot of the slow food movement. It’s only accessible if you’re at a certain income level. It’s making it as it always was with my background being working class in the north of England. My great granddad supplemented the family income with an allotment in Bradford, a massive industrial town. It was something that regular folk did, not just middle class and beyond.
I think rekindling that is really important, which is why these urban community gardens are brilliant. The amount of times I see seasonal and local food recipes where it costs a blinking fortune to get all the other ingredients. Which is fine if you want to make that, but it’s not really what most of us can do.
Morag:
Now, I look at my garden and go what’s growing? Alright, that’s what I’m eating today!
Stephanie:
Yeah, exactly. That’s pretty much what I do. I have frozen peas in the freezer for those emergencies. In the winter, when you realise, ‘oh, it’s time to make dinner and it’s now dark and hailing. The emergency pack of frozen peas from the supermarket will come out now.’ But yeah, generally it’s okay, what are we harvesting now? What’s there? The one thing we’re not harvesting is onions because they all got eaten by mice when they were transplanted. So they come from the shops, but everything else.
Morag:
My little friends in the garden at the moment are bandicoots. Every time I plant something in it… they’re like mice, but they’re about this big and they’ve got very big noses. When you put a little extra compost on things, they like to go down and eat things in the soil. They flick out all your transplants as they’re going along, so you come out in the morning and all your seedlings have been flicked out. That’s really frustrating. I also have some scrub turkeys that are going in and trying to scratch out lots of tubers at the moment. I’m just thinking, ‘okay, well, they’re just kind of cleaning up that section for me. I’ll come follow them after they’ve moved on and I’m not going to fight them.’ I’ve decided that my approach to gardening is a peaceful way. Otherwise, it could do your head in!
Stephanie:
Oh totally. I’m happy I have a trail camera in the garden. I know there’s at least five farm cats that come here every evening. I’m surrounded by farms, so these are cats that just live in barns. They come along and they think my garden is theirs. We’ve got rats, moles, voles and mice, all little rodenty things about. So they’re helping keep the balance because it’s all about balance. I know there’s rats living in one of my compost heaps. I’m just thinking, ‘well, while you’re eating what I’m putting in there, you’re not eating the stuff over there. You stay there, you’re turning the compost for me!’ And you’re food for the owls here. There’s lots of birds of prey.
I’ve got this beautiful shirt that I can’t use at the moment because there’s a wasp’s nest in it. Which makes me sound all lovely and benign because obviously I’m not going to kill a wasps nest because we need wasps. But I’m also aware of their role as predators. So they’re eating my cabbage white caterpillars, they’re eating my aphids. So it sounds really nice and friendly and ‘let’s be at peace with everything.’ But I am also thinking of the whole hierarchy of predators and the balance between predators and prey.
Morag:
Yeah, that’s right. Me too.
Stephanie:
Which is nature. So I don’t know what eats bandicoots but I imagined something does?
Morag:
Maybe owls? I just heard them a few hours ago outside but I think they’re going something smaller. The bandicoots have gotten too big and fat on all my food. I’ll have to send my kids out to dance around all night. I don’t know.
Stephanie:
You’ve got like these really sleek bandicoots that are just living their best lives.
Morag:
Oh my gosh, it’s been lovely chatting with you. Where can people find out more about all the things that you’ve got going on?
Stephanie:
Conveniently, almost everything on my social media and website is my name, Stephanie Hafferty. So that’s easy to find. I have my YouTube channel as well. It’s Stephanie Hafferty Homesteading. I think it’s that. But it’s definitely Stephanie Hafferty. My website is also No-dig Home, but both go to the same place. Books are available all over the place. I do courses here, but I’m in the process of writing things which will be available online. So it’ll be more accessible to international people. Although I do have people coming from America to one of my courses here. Then they’re going on holiday in Wales which is exciting. I mean, Wales, the landscape is to die for. It is stunning. The history here is amazing. So I can see why someone would come all the way from the States just to immerse themselves in all things Welsh.
Morag:
Yeah, well, it’s a beautiful place where you’ve landed. I really appreciate you taking the time to talk about your love of gardening and no-dig in your approach to homesteading and all the resources. I encourage anyone who’s listening to this to check out the links that Stephanie’s shared and you can find in the show notes below! And yeah, stay in touch with Stephanie and thanks for listening and being part of our show today. Thanks Steph!
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