![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
As some of you know, my Small Sis (who will be 18 next year and therefore is no longer quite so small as all that!) works on a small community farm as a volunteer. It's a placement that we found for her just this last year, privately arranged after the council decided that she isn't quite autistic enough for them to want to continue paying support for her and various other organisations failed to find a suitable placement for her. Clive, who runs the farm, is brilliant with her. He's an older chap, a family man, who invested £25K in this little patch of land on the outskirts of the city because he wanted to set up a smallholding that he could use for the community. The facilities there are very basic but he takes on disaffected/disadvantaged youngsters like Small and long-term unemployed from the job centre and gives them occupation and an outlet. For Small it is absolutely vital de-compression time - she is autistic and finds daily life incredibly stressful, but working on the farm allows her to relax. She has a real gift for working with animals and gets on like a house on fire with Clive. It isn't a long-term solution for her, but it's exactly what she needs right now.
Except that there's a problem. The local authority has decided to re-designate that patch of land as a conservation area, which will force all the smallholders there to relocate their animals and tear down any structures they have built - basically putting them all out of business. There aren't many of them, but they all bought their land in good faith, have invested their hearts and souls into it, utilising traditional farming methods to transform derelict land into working, productive land. And the council is trying to take it away from them.
They've put up an online petition - here. It isn't terribly well worded, but it is born out of desperation and love of the land they face having taken from them. So please take a look and if you can find it in your hearts to sign the petition, we'd all be incredibly grateful.
In Other News, on Saturday I went along to Westonbirt Arboretum near Bath, to see their festive Enchanted Wood display, which they run through the weekends running up to Christmas - a spectacular one mile illuminated trail, highlighting the striking structures of the arboretum’s trees illuminated against the winter night sky. It is absolutely gorgeous - the pictures below don't come close to capturing how magical the display is.
( Image-heavy picspam continues behind the cut )
Except that there's a problem. The local authority has decided to re-designate that patch of land as a conservation area, which will force all the smallholders there to relocate their animals and tear down any structures they have built - basically putting them all out of business. There aren't many of them, but they all bought their land in good faith, have invested their hearts and souls into it, utilising traditional farming methods to transform derelict land into working, productive land. And the council is trying to take it away from them.
They've put up an online petition - here. It isn't terribly well worded, but it is born out of desperation and love of the land they face having taken from them. So please take a look and if you can find it in your hearts to sign the petition, we'd all be incredibly grateful.
In Other News, on Saturday I went along to Westonbirt Arboretum near Bath, to see their festive Enchanted Wood display, which they run through the weekends running up to Christmas - a spectacular one mile illuminated trail, highlighting the striking structures of the arboretum’s trees illuminated against the winter night sky. It is absolutely gorgeous - the pictures below don't come close to capturing how magical the display is.
( Image-heavy picspam continues behind the cut )
