Community Haystacks invites everyone with an interest in the history and current use of the marshes to take part, with the aim to reintroduce annual communal harvest events to the former Lammas Land.

The Walthamstow Marshes are one of the last expanses of semi-natural marshland left in London, and were formerly used widely for grazing and haymaking. Since 1985 the land has been designated a Site of Special Specific Interest (SSSI) and is now managed by the Lee Valley Regional Park. Traditionally the Marshes were considered “common land” and Lee Valley Regional Park now conserves the Marshes using an ancient system of management, where hay is cut on Lammas Day (1 August).

The event takes place on the Lammas Meadows behind the Lee Valley Ice Rink on Lea Bridge Road. For event bookings and further information visit: visitleevalley.org.uk/haystacks

Scything Lessons
Friday and Saturday, 1-2 August, 1.30pm & 4.30pm
Scything expert Clive Leeke will run two-hour workshops (priced at £5, includes tools and refreshments), which will include practical experience of different scything methods as well as information about the numerous advantages of traditional scything.
Book your tickets now.

Alternatively, if you’re a dab-hand at sycthing, why not just come along!

Talks
Friday and Saturday, 1-2 August, 7pm
Free talks on the Marshes and the chance to discuss broader issues related to the history, management and current use of the site. Invited speakers include artist and architect Céline Condorelli, food grower and conservationist Fiona Fiona McAllister (Growing Communities), artist Alana Jelinek and a representative from the New Lammas Land Defence Committee.

Haystack Making
Sunday, 3 August, 12-4pm
Day three will be dedicated to gathering hay and building haystacks. This is a family friendly event and guests are invited to bring their own picnic and join in the making of the largest haystack the Marshes have seen for while! The park rangers will also offer guided walks around the meadows with first-hand information about the wildlife, plants and land management.

The event co-organised by the Lee Valley Regional Park Rangers together with artists Kathrin Böhm and Louis Buckley.

This year’s ‘Haystack’ follows on from a first public haystack making on the marshes in 2013. Click here.

From the early 19th century each summer over 200,000 east Londoners – mostly women and children – would ‘go down to Kent’, for temporary seasonal work harvesting apples, berries, hops and other crops. This annual event came to an end in the 1950s.

The tradition of hop picking in Kent reminds us of London’s closeness to the countryside and relationships between urban communities and rural production, workforces and harvest seasons, economic needs on both sides and the excitement of going somewhere else – even if it’s a working holiday.

Mark Watson will talk about this tradition of “going down to Kent” and the changes in beer cultures and beer production over the last centuries.

The talk takes place on
Saturday 24th May at 2pm
at Valence House
Becontree Avenue
Dagenham RM8 3HT

Nearest train station is Chadwell Heath (15 min from Stratford).

The talk is part of Myvillages’ new project ‘Company. Movements, Deals and Drinks’ which takes place in Dagenham and links the history of ‘hopping’ with the ambition to set up a new community drinks enterprise.

The next Haystack takes the form of a tour to various orchards and apple related sites around London’s Heathrow area.

Kate Corder is interested in the Thames Valley Corridor as a former apple tree orchard cultivation area, which included Heathrow prior to the building of the airport. It is still undecided if or when a Third Runway will be built at Heathrow. Kate will direct a walk searching for apple tree blossom along one of the potential runway sites in the public domain. The walk will meet at Transition Heathrow, a squat in an old market garden at the village of Sipson, then walk to Harmondsworth to visit the grave of Richard Cox, who grew the first Cox’s Orange Pippen apple. The walk will continue to the Sheraton Hotel at Heathrow, where the managers planted an orchard, and the Haystack ends with drinks at the Discovery Bar.

Kate Corder is bringing a bag full of apple stories and histories to have along our tour – hopefully just in time for apple blossom.

Read Kathrin’s reflections on the walk on the Guardian’s Comment is Free website here.

Our first meeting point is at West Drayton train station (TFL zone 6) at 1.30pm (trains from Paddington take 20 minutes), there we will get the 222 bus (towards Hounslow) to Sipson. If you are coming on the Underground meet us at Grow Heathrow in Sipson Village at 2pm. (Take the Piccadilly Line to Hounslow West and then take Bus 222 toward Uxbridge and get off at Sipson Close). Grow Heathrow is a minute walk away from the bus stop, turn right onto Sipson Lane and left onto Vineries Close, where you will find the entrance.

Grow Heathrow is the market garden set up by Transition Heathrow. Here Kate is going to introduce the site and apple history followed by an I Phone screening of artist Tom Ingate’s “Apple Tree Ochestra” performance.

From there we’ll be walking to Harmondsworth (1.1miles), passing the former Greenpeace Airplot. Artist Jo Thomas will be remembering the apples trees planted and twinned in support of Greenpeace Airplot.

In Harmondsworth we will go to St Mary’s church and visit Richard Cox’s grave in the churchyard. Here, Kate will read a short essay on Richard Cox and apples.

We will then walk to the Sheraton Hotel Heathrow for a drink at the Discovery Bar, and visit the orchard planted by managers two years ago in the hotel garden.

From there we take a bus back (U3 and 350) back to West Drayton or Heathrow tube.

Addresses along the way:

Transition Heathrow, Grow Heathrow, Vineries Close, Sipson, West Drayton, UB7 0JH

Richard Cox’s grave, St Marys, High Street, Harmondsworth, UB7 OAQ

Sheraton Hotel Heathrow, Colnbrook By-Pass, Harmondsworth, West Drayton UB7 0HJ

Kate Corder is an artist, researcher, curator of Cultivation Field and her recent PhD explores allotments, plant material and land cultivation.

In her presentation ‘Care and crisis: ethical economies in subsistence practices’ Kim Trogal is going to explore questions around the emotional and ethical aspects of our economies. Whilst it might sound strange to speak of the relation of money and feelings, the economic aspects of our lives structure our relations (and spaces) in ways that are often not perceptible. Via an abridged history of the English commons, mutual aid in a rural German village and some of the subsistence practices of Romanian women, the paper suggests that to be resilient again today, we need to (re)embed our economies in our everyday lives.

Bio:
Kim Trogal is a teacher at the Sheffield School of Architecture. Her PhD research, ‘Caring For Space’ focused particularly on new, ethical spatial practices using feminist methods and concepts. She is currently working with Irena Bauman and Doina Petrescu, developing a new research platform in the School of Architecture, on local resilience.

Haystack 09 “Care and Crisis”
Thursday 20 March, 7-9pm
Tin Tin Room
Open School East

Old Rose Lipman Library
43 De Beauvoir Rd
London N1 5SQ

‘The Ornamental Hermit’
Haystack_09 with Barnaby Hosking

From May to October 2014 Barnaby Hosking decided to set up camp in a Mongolian yurt in the English countryside. Within the Houghton Estate in Norfolk, by a lake and a huge oak tree, he made artwork and lived a simple life under the guise of an “Ornamental Hermit”. Word would slowly go around that there was an artist living on the field. People would come around, look at the paintings, have conversations. Life would be slow and quiet.

On his return to London, this self-imposed hermit like residency inspired new works for the upcoming “Habitat” exhibition at Gallery SE8 on Deptford High Street. The yurt is still in its original location, visited every fortnight for inspiration, quiet time and to light the stove. Another of the artist yurts will be re-erected in the yard of Gallery SE8 in which Barnaby will be talking about his artwork, experiences and the problematics of mobility, from rural to city, from residency to studio to gallery.

Spaces for this one-off talk are limited, so please let us know if you are planning to come.
E-mail kathrin (at) myvillages.org

The talk will take place on
Thursday 6 March 2014, from 7-9pm
at SE8 Gallery, Deptford, London.

Hot soup and drinks are being served.

The Haystack coincides with Barnaby’s exhibition “Habitat” at SE 8 Gallery.
From the E-flyer:

SE8 Gallery is pleased to present the exhibition ‘Habitat’ by the British artist Barnaby Hosking. The new works include a full-sized Kazakh Yurt built outside, and an installation in the gallery that features a sound score of field recordings. Both internal and external spaces function as immersive, hermetic environments and underscore Hosking’s concern with space as lived experience, when ‘no apparent form ever becomes complete but is in a constant process of movement’.
The installations at SE8 Gallery are a direct result of the artist’s embedded experience in the landscape, and comment on the problematic of mobility: from studio – to site – to gallery.

In the late Spring of 2013 the artist constructed a Yurt in the grounds of the Houghton Hall Estate in Norfolk, where he would live until the Winter. Here, the artist presented himself as a modern-day hermit, ensconced in his mobile dwelling. During this period of solitude, he was not especially concerned with representing his surroundings, preferring to show the evidence of the individual’s actions within it through experimental paintings, photographs and field recordings. Instead, the true subject of the adventure was the artist ‘s presence, his embodiment of spatio-temporal perception.

Exhibition opening: Friday 28th February 6-9pm
Show Runs: 1st March – 5th April 2014
Opening Hours: Fridays and Saturdays 2-6pm

For further information please email us at [email protected]

For the last fourteen years artist Grace Ndiritu has been researching alternative communities and lifestyles including Buddhist, new age, permaculture and neo-tribal festivals such Burning Man in Nevada. In 2012 she took the radical decision to quit living in London and begin a dual mobile lifestyle, living in nature and or rural communities and only going to the city when necessary. In these 18 months she has resided in both Thai and Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, a Hare Krishna Ashram and the ‘Findhorn’ new age community in Scotland. She will be giving a small talk about her research into living off grid.

To listen to the un-edited recording of the session click here.

Tuesday 28 January 2014 at 7pm
Unit 73B
Regents Studios
8 Andrews Road
London E8 4QN

Haystack 07 “Cows, Conservation, Controversy”

This special Haystack on a Saturday afternoon gives first hand insight into the reality of running an upland hill farm, husbandry and conservation policies.

John Atkinson, a Cumbrian farmer and Lead Ranger for the National Trust will talk about the concept of “Farming with Nature” and how he applies his interest into conservation, sustainability and access to landscape as someone who comes from a family that has farmed in the Lake District for the last 600 years.

Artist and filmmaker Maria Benjamin will be screening a range of “Farm Animal” films from recent years, ranging from birth to slaughter.

The afternoon will end with a collective sausage making effort, later to be served with fresh Sauerkraut made during Haystack 06 at Hewood Farm in Dorset.

Haystack 07 takes place during “Good News from Nowhere” a three week long exhibition and events programme at the Architecture Foundation London by myvillages.org

Saturday 14 December 2013
2-5 pm
The Architecture Foundation
136–148 Tooley St
London SE1 2TU

If you happen to be in the Rotterdam area, join us for a Dutch Haystack with a visit to Uit Je Eigen Stad City Farm at 16.00 and presentations and drinks at the Goethe Institute in Rotterdam from 18.00. With reports and stories from Zwizzchi (Russia), an introduction to next round of Eco Nomadic School, festive drinks and food Made in Schiebroek.

Haystacks in Zvizzchi

To continue the age-old tradition of making German Sauerkraut in rural England (since 2011!) Haystack 06 takes place during the Halloween celebrations at Lower Hewood Farm in Dorset.

We picked up the annual Sauerkraut making habit during our stay in Höfen, using Heidi Böhm’s special recipe.

In 2011 red and white Sauerkraut was made during the Harvest Festival at Wysing Arts Centre in Cambridgeshire, organised by Grizedale Arts.
In 2012 members of the Coniston Youth Club braved the chopped kraut with their bare feet during the village’s Harvest Festival, organised by Grizedale Arts.

If you happen to be in the area please join and respect the fancy dress code for the occasion: come as an edible animal!

Organised by Maria Benjamin.

Friday 1st November
4.00 pm – late
Lower Hewood Farm, Hewood. TA20 4NR

Haystack 05
Thursday 26 September
6pm – 8pm in the Queen Elizabeth Hall Roof Garden
Southbank Centre
London

Haystack 05 start at 18.00 with a tour around the gardens with Julian Cox and continues at 18.30 with presentations by architect Katrin Bohn and artits Kathrin Böhm.

“Hunting Wild Boar by Phone”
A conversation about food in the city

The architect Katrin Bohn has been researching and testing designs for urban agriculture during the last two decades. Together with Andre Viljoen, she developed the concept of CPUL City (Continuous Productive Urban Landscape) and the practical and conceptual conditions for implementing these within architecture and urban planning. London has been a case study and early example for their hypothesis. Katrin is a guest professor at the Technical University in Berlin and teaches architecture at the University of Brighton.

Kathrin Böhm is a London based artist who in 2011 together with myvillages.org produced the “Vorratskammer (Pantry)” project which sourced food from and around Berlin, to feed a festival on culture and sustainability. The artist team refused to use organic and local as determinant criteria in their search for food, and their pantry reflects the plentitude of contradictions and complexities in our food chains and habits. Kathrin is a founding member of the art and architecture collective public works and the artits group myvillages.org.

Katrin Bohn and Kathrin Böhm have known each other for years and their work overlaps in may areas. They receive e-mails and post for each other, and this joint talk is also to stress the fine nuances in the spelling of their names.

Katrin Bohn on the left and Kathrin Böhm next to her on the right.