Post 6 - still Belgium

My apologies for the silence of the last months. I have several reasons for waiting this long to write again, though perhaps a couple of them are better described as excuses. One good reason, one that is relevant to the content of this blog, is that I’ve been unusually busy volunteering on a farm for the last five weeks. Another reason (which is perhaps an excuse) is that I found my previous location of Olen – described in the last blog post – as sleepy and stable. There are, of course, always things that could be said about a place and one’s experiences, but I didn’t feel inclined to publish any of them. Suffice to say that Olen failed to produce any exciting anecdotes, or any fantastic revelations. My time there proved to be largely a period of rest and recuperation, which is exactly what I wanted. To think too much about one’s daily life can also be to rock the boat of contentment, so I have been reluctant to consider what I might say in summary about how my trip is progressing. However, the time has now come for new communication. In this post I will say something about my current location, and then mention the things I have planned for the next few months.

The farm I’ve been working on is called De Doedorij. In Dutch this roughly translates to ‘Dude’s Farm.’ Dude is in fact a man named Wouter. He is indeed a dude, though I think the nickname originates from a prior time when Wouter led an alternative lifestyle of a different kind, primarily involving smoking lots of weed and being a bit mystical. The image you may justifiably have conjured from this description is probably incorrect – Wouter is only twenty-five and has all of his faculties intact. He runs this small farm with competence, total seriousness and endless enthusiasm. The farm is a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. This means that Wouter grows vegetables for approximately 120 customers who pay in advance for eight months of produce. It’s like an organic box-scheme idea, but without the weekly delivery of produce; the customers collect their vegetables from the farm. A farm of this size, growing a range of vegetables this wide, would be very hard pressed to survive without guaranteed custom. I like the idea of CSA because it represents a very simple avoidance of the market. It’s poignant that one of the largest vegetable auction-houses in the world is a few miles down the road from here. At the auction the prices paid to farmers are driven so low by huge retailers that only the largest players can participate. The consequence for the consumer is bland produce in the shops. On the farm we mostly eat our own produce, which beats its supermarket counterpart for taste and quality literally every time. It will be a hard fall to agribusiness earth for me when I leave here and am forced to eat produce from the shops again.

I had actually planned on leaving the farm by now in order to volunteer at the Belgian permaculture festival. I went to the festival site last week, but found the prevailing language of French to be very awkward. As an English speaker I was next-to-useless to the disorganised band of organic Belgian ruffians who were preparing the site for the festival itself. They were all decent people, and I was welcomed after a fashion, but it was clear that I was wasting my time. What’s more, I was in danger of wasting theirs too by hoping to be included. I quickly decided to leave much earlier than planned, and came straight back to the comfort of the farm – the closest thing I now have to a home outside of England. I’m disappointed that the festival was nothing I had hoped it to be, but the experience taught me to be more realistic in the choices I make about what to do whilst I’m away. I knew the festival would be conducted in French, but was arrogant enough to think that it would be fine to muck in anyway. In the event it was not fine, and I now recognise that any situation in which I’m bound to be marginalised is unlikely to be fine either.

Whilst in Belgium I’ve been contemplating ideas of sustainability. I have a developing interest in the sustainable use of resources, and alternative technologies, but I’m more interested in what the idea could mean for my personal conduct. I figure that it’s possible to make sustainable choices about how I use personal resources, which is to say my body and mind. Eating shitty food, for instance, is not sustainable because it depletes my body’s resources without renewing them to an equal extent. Reading an interesting book, on the other hand (and of a different kind of example), can be considered sustainable. Reading adds to my store of knowledge without unequally depleting physical or mental resources. Obviously, there is much more to consider, with the idea of opportunity cost (i.e. what could I be doing instead of reading the book?) posing particular difficulties for such choices. However, I’m enjoying thinking through these ideas at a shallow level, and I think that there will be some lasting effect(s) from these thoughts.
On September 4th I’m heading down to the south of France. It has always been my plan to chase the sun south and west through Europe. New impetus has arisen in two respects that are also coincidental. First, I have met a new friend here on the farm who has put me in touch with a friend of hers in the south of France. The friend of a friend is currently renovating an old property and needs some practical help. This woman sounds worldly and her land sounds inviting. Second, some friends of Wouter’s, who are becoming my mates too, happen to be driving down that way in September. They are also going to an arts festival in Spain, and I might go with them that far. In any case, I won’t return with them to Belgium but instead will head to my new autumn residence. I expect the autumn and winter climate to be tolerable, certainly by the English standards I’m used to. I’ll be a happy man if I can work outside comfortably during the autumn months. I have been learning basic practical skills during the last two months or so, and I want this to continue. Ideally, I will reach a point at which I am thoroughly capable of building and fixing all kinds of material things. Only then, my friends, will I be a man.

My final note in this post must be the recognition that I am deeply missing you, dear readers – my friends – and my social life in England. This comes as no surprise to me, as the sheer goodness of what I was forgoing when taking flight from England was blatant back in April. I hope that it comes as an unsurprising admission to you too, otherwise something is amiss with my end of the friendship bargain. In particular I want to say to my friends in Norwich that being away from you and the city has brought the realisation that Norwich is a damn good place to live. We have all known this for a long time, but there’s nothing like a dose of separation to hammer home the point again. I suppose that the question thus arises of whether I intend to return, but I must refuse to answer because I have no clear thoughts on the issue. However, I am quite confident that I will return to the UK quite soon in order to continue my life there in earnest. Being abroad again has reminded me that my identity is irrevocably tied to England and to pretend otherwise is foolish. I also love English, which is lucky because I have no other language to flirt with.

I would truly love to hear from you. Email or message me at will.


Cheers.