As you might know I'll be hosting Jedburgh's participation in the Fallow Land Project for the next five months. As part of  that  I’d like to invite writers to contribute to the art works around the project by writing one or more haiku. A haiku is a short Japanese poem consisting of three phrases composed of seventeen syllables, in a five-seven-five pattern. Quite often there’s a seasonal reference.

The primary theme is fallow which can be understood literally, usually agriculturally, or metaphorically, for example relating to spiritual growth. Other related themes are land use and ownership, soil, the food environment and sustainability.

The Fallow Land Artwalks are under way on the last Sunday of each month. The themes from February to April are word, light and sound respectively so I'll be encouraging the walkers in February to contribute their own haiku.

You can submit as many as you like on as many relevant topics as you wish. If contributors wish I’ll then figure out a way of presenting everyone’s haiku(s) in small publications using folded card and paper as well as putting them on my website where I'll be updating progress regularly. It would be wonderful if you were able to participate and of course if you want to write something more substantial please do!

Please email me your poems (as word docs preferably):-jimmy1@wyness.myzen.co.uk

Provisional deadline: Friday 21 February 

There’s a very good Wikipedia entry if you want to dig deeper:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haiku

And here’s a link to the Fallow Land project:-https://www.artwalkporty.co.uk/project/fallow-land/ 

As part of the Fallow Land project I've made a good start to the the year with my plans to host a series of four artworks in and around Jedburgh between January and April. I had the idea from the excellent work done by Artwork Porty over the years. The idea is to invite people to walk and reflect upon the environments encountered during the walk. Walks can be medium specific, for example a soundwalk, or more general, for example to make connections between creative people.

The first walk is fully signed up and we'll be doing a four mile circuit along the back roads and woodlands above Jedburgh to the south-east. In preparation for this I'm learning from local farmers, informing myself about what goes on in the fields. This is an important part of the project, investigating the patterns of activity in the managed landscape, from land ownership to land use to food growing, from which some kind of art work will emerge.

My hope is that we'll get talking and learning about not only about the land and landscape but also about how we might make art in and around the topics and themes that arise. This occupies me regularly on my walks and I'm always relish the opportunity to listen to ideas from other artists. 

For the next three walks, at the end of the month from February to April, I want the groups to consider particular art forms, especially sound, lens-based media and  writing though I imagine these will all fuse together over time.

Over the last week or so we've been thinking about sites for planters to fill with seeds and eventually edibles. Bob Dawson and I had a walkabout and identified between twelve and fifteen sites around the town that would be excellent places to put planters and maybe some more benches nearby so that people could enjoy the views over the town, the river, the abbey and so on.

We also looked at the Greyfriar's garden with its herb allotments begging to be tidied up and replanted with something approaching the original herbs. So far so good except for a nagging trend for institutions to throw health and safety and other bits of red tape at you when you try to do something simple and beneficial. They always want you to be constituted which immediately bogs you down in time wasting trivia. It probably comes from a hierarchy of people covering their arses but nevertheless. The way I look at things anyone putting obstacles in your way should set out to find solutions and fix it. They are after all being paid. Fortunately we have a new Community Council with good people on board - do-ers rather than paper shufflers - so I'm confident that with this umbrella body we can provide good things for the town without too much bureaucracy.

I also learned about food sovereignty. In simple terms this is defined as a food system where the people who produce, distribute, and consume food have control over the policies and mechanisms of food production and distribution but in practice it's a complex field. ​Obviously we're not near this yet. What interests me is the notion that there's some kind of human right going on whereby people should expect the state and its offshoots, like councils, to provide, facilitate and promote access to healthy nutritional and inexpensive food. I'll pick away at this in the weeks and months ahead because I'm not seeing much from 'above' and what I do see comes mainly from the excellent work of schools and the NHS, as you'd expect from dedicated professionals whose vocation is to care for people and thereby develop a civilised society. The easiest and best thing councils could do is stop junk food retailers from setting up in Borders towns. I suppose you could argue that it's what people want. I know a few middle aged men who want strip clubs and massage parlours up the High Street but I can't see that happening. 

​Here's a rough plan of the sites we identified for veggie planters in 2025. We had the idea of making a sort of accessible trail that people could follow and take rest at various points. The sites are un-named and in blue - hopefully you can distinguish them from the other markers.

​I've been busy figuring out the ins and outs of agriculture and food growing in the Borders, especially around Jedburgh. Here's what I've found out. First, farmers are very friendly and interesting people but they're hard to pin down. Must be part of the job. I did establish a few contacts to talk to later and discovered that some farmers here are looking into regenerative farming, which I assume has to do with soil sustainability and the wider ecology around land use. I wonder if that's why younger people seem to be becoming more interested?

A small group in the town is interested in local food growing, so we'll begin by identifying sites around the town to place planters, tell people what we're doing and then plant food that people can pick when it's ready. What I like about sitting down with others is the different ideas that people come out with. One idea that came up was to eventually establish a trail around the town where you could visit the planters and maybe have benches at some points along the route. There's also been a suggestion to look at growing herbs again in Greyfriars Garden, where in the 15th century Franciscan monks would have grown medicinal herbs and plants for dyes and so on. Maybe even some kind of Physic Garden. There are a few hoops to jump through but so far the signs are positive. 

​I did some historical digging to find out if there were ever any peasant's revolts in the Borders but couldn't find any records. Maybe we could stage and film a (non-violent) modern-day peasant's revolt that makes unreasonable demands of the powers such as sustainable and diverse food growing, care for the soil, wildlife corridors, carbon capture, getting rid of land use for shooting. Then maybe proceed to a suitable field and burn some effigies. Fun and games. 

I’m enjoying the initial stages of the Fallow Project, working with Artwalk Porty, the research and planning within the town and in the hinterland.
 
My first move has been to try to put together a small group in the town to look at how we might start small scale but visible food production. Some call this guerrilla gardening (but we’ll come up with our own name so as not to upset people). The idea is an extension to the amazing flower displays in the town whereby we introduce small planters of food and maybe herbs, attractively presented and dotted around the town so that people can help themselves when the food is ready to eat. There’s a substantial support network in the Borders so the precedents are there. Apart from the polytunnel at the school I don’t know of any small scale food growing in Jedburgh which puts us at odds with most of the other Border towns.
 
I’m also getting in touch with farmers and figuring out what I want to ask them. I’ve been reading a lot about global agriculture and the food ecosystem, in particular George Monbiot’s excellent positioning work Regenesis which offers a fairly bleak assessment of out current position with respect to land use and food production. I suppose what I’d like to find out from farmers is how they see their work within the constraints and conditions imposed by climate, government policies, the global food markets, financial considerations and so on, and what they see as the future of sustainable food growing.  I'd also like to find out what they would see as the future of agriculture if some of the constraints were removed or changed.
 
At the other end of the food chain, the cooking and eating department, I’m pleased to see that there’s a cooking initiative coming to town from a Glasgow based group Outside the Box.
 
As for en eventual art work let’s wait and see but I’m fascinated by Monbiot’s discourse on the supreme importance soil and how we, in his own words, treat it like dirt. He has a podcast on his book on Spotify which is well worth a listen. The things that go on beneath our feet.