Smallholding

When the purchasers of my house first visited, they asked about the land around the house. On hearing that it had always been rented to the house owners by the council, they got very excited about being able to grow vegetables and fruit. The dream of having a small holding is one that Czechs hold dear. A few may want flower gardens, but many want to have sheep or goats in the orchard, chickens and rabbits in lean-to shelters, and potatoes, squash, cabbage and beans in ground. Go into a country dweller's home in winter and you will find jars of tomatoes, soft fruit, sauerkraut, and potatoes in sacks, stored apples, onions and garlic. As a builder once told me "All a Czech needs for the winter is potatoes and cabbage." He should have added beer, but that goes without saying.

I tried to join in this dream of self sufficiency by planting fruit bushes, but was not in the country enough to fight off the deer and birds that raided my garden. I was soon disillusioned of my rosy ideas of the rural idyll - growing food was a battle, but rearing animals for food was more demanding.

This was made very clear to me one day. I was standing at the bathroom window cleaning my teeth, when I saw my neighbour take one of the rabbits from the hutch. I watched as he killed it, hung it from the apple tree to strip it of its fur and gutted it. He had spent all summer carefully picking dandelion leaves specially to feed it and yet he was brusk even brutal when it came to killing the animal. I was shocked, this was so unlike my gentle giant of a neighbour. It made me think about my attitude to meat. I had never seen an animal killed for food before, although I eat meat. Mine is the first generation in my family that have had the luxury of ignorance. My mother remembered the killing of of the family pig and no doubt other animals. My grandmother talked in great detail of the flurry of activity that followed the pig's death, including the making of those famous Lincolnshire sausages. Wasn't the Czech approach more honest than mine?