Fivepenny Farm

There is a place at the end of a thicket-fenced lane, where a pheasant roams between sheep on a buttercup-jeweled hillside. And the sea, in all its glorious, glassy blue, sags down on the horizon as rainwater collects on loose tarpaulin. And hedges and fences sew scars across fields, quilting together patchworked pastures with grasslands and gardens. There is a place where days stretch out like unfurling palms, where time is an expanse punctuated only by the ring of the barn bell and the sun switching stools with the moon. Where a group of us, strangers, come together to imagine different ways of being, in community with each other. Where we saw and hammer and drill to the strum of a guitar and the hum of a tin whistle. Where we carve out new ways of living in timber, and fill in the gaps with straw. There is a place, at night, where coloured tents light up like jellyfish along the slope of an orchard, glowing, just for a moment, and then fading into the dark.

By Arlo Kean