In spring of this year, while planning my escape to the countryside, a friend put me in contact with some young farmers in Norfolk who suggested they might be interested in having me stay for a week. We emailed back and forth, shooting suggestions and pushing pens, I think both parties not totally sure what we were agreeing to. Among many ideas the one that gelled was about learning practical skills from each other that could impact the way we respectively work, and cooking a large meal to celebrate the solstice.
This upcoming series of newsletters is my report from the project, featuring journal entries, scans of my scrapbook (made by Rosie Lee Wilson), photos and drawings, as well as an interview with Tommy, Helen and Meg from Salle Moor Market Garden.
Reciprocity Residency has been a self-initiated and unfunded project like so much of my work. If you are enjoying my writing and would like to support me, please consider making a regular donation as a paid subscriber
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Part 1 introduces the premise for the collaboration, a journal and some scans.
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Sean Roy Parker at Salle Moor Market Garden
15-21 June 2021
prospective text written 14 May
“Celebrating the Summer Solstice is showing gratitude for the longest day of sunlight and acknowledging the slow slope towards Winter. This time of abundance and generosity is more of a Neo-Pagan tradition, upheld and proliferated by those with inextricable ties to their bodies within the wider ecology: Peasants, farmers and landworkers, sages, magicians, artists, chefs, cooks, and luddites. Halfway round the wheel and on the crest of the wave. To observe the solstice is to concur that time is non-linear, circular, undulating. To shake hands with the sun, the creator and sustainer of all human and more-than-human existence, is to meet as an equal force and stare your own existence in the eye. Reciprocity is beyond exchange; it relies on gifting and implies trust. Sharing without expectation – allowing objects, labour and feelings to move freely – exposes us to chance and rewards vulnerability.
For a week, Sean Roy will be camping under the stars amongst the critters, exploring the beautiful flatlands of Reepham, supporting daily farming tasks, and learning hands-on organic and biodynamic techniques from Tommy, Helen and Megan. In return, he will share practical, no-waste fermentation techniques in a makeshift outdoor kitchen, teach an in-person workshop to CSA customers and farm friends, and explore preserving surpluses, by-products and wild foods that build a picture of the project. The team at Salle Moor have planned crops specifically for mass transformation – pickles, kimchi, sauerkraut, salsa, chutney, jam, leather, tuile. This illustrates a deep understanding of the lifecycles of their chosen materials and the willingness to forge a dynamic working relationship with microbes: living in the soil, collecting on the crop skins, and undertaking the creative digestion.
Sean Roy Parker is an artist, environmentalist and fermenter based in an artist community in rural Derbyshire. His work examines the lifecycle of materials, complexities of civic responsibility, and problem-solving through collaboration. He practises traditional approaches to craft and art-making, using leftover or abundant items of nature and artifice to explore feelings of eco-anxiety in late-stage capitalism, and redistribute resources through flexible care structures.
Salle Moor Market Garden is a not-for-profit market garden based on a farm in Salle, near Reepham in Norfolk. We grow seasonal vegetables using environmentally-friendly methods and run a community supported agriculture (CSA) weekly veg box scheme, currently providing 60 local families per week with fresh, nutritional food.
In 2021 we are looking for funding to allow us to develop our 0.4 acre growing site in order to increase community access to outdoor space by providing an accessible learning space and range of community programmes, including inclusive, practical educational and therapeutic workshops for all age groups based on food growing, horticulture, farm-to-fork cooking, environmental arts and craft activities, and outdoor skills.
We aim to transform a dilapidated polytunnel on the site into a wheelchair accessible classroom and growing space where we will run our workshop programmes. The aim of these workshops is: to empower people in the local community to grow their own food and reduce waste; engage local school and toddler groups with nature and healthy eating education; connect with the local community; and nurture a respect for the local and wider environment. Our beautiful site and the new learning area will provide an inclusive space for people to enjoy the physical, emotional and social benefits that come from having a connection with nature, and provide a space for therapeutic activities to promote wellbeing and combat loneliness.”
Tues 15 June, 13:54
Just arrived at Salle Moor Market Garden to the embrace of Tommy, Helen and Meg. We had coffee and walnuts while discussing what we had planned for the week, laying out our abridged journeys to the flourishing pocket of Reepham. Tommy scythed a path thru nettle, cleaver and sedge, finishing with a clearing for me to camp in. His chop revealed a heaving undergrowth: ground ivy, elder, hairy bittercress, all abundant and delicious. Pitched up, now listening to Mike Skinner and laying on my belly following the outline of clouds. Excited for the week ahead; reciprocal learning, practical & ideological worlding, new flavours, hidden pathways, solstice appreciation. The potential for intertwining narratives and time-bending in the context of landwork against the backdrop of peri-capitalist praxis, the entanglement of multi-species lifeworlds. The suspension of linearity. Research in jars, observation as doing, exchange through eating, debrief by sleep.