Starting in the 5th Centuary AD
a little history, starting in the 5th Centuary AD…
At 280 meters above sea-level and lying at 57 degrees North, the farm sits below an ancient Pictish monument that we derive our name from, Tap o’ Noth. The majestic hill, crowned by the ruins of an iron-age vitrified hill fort, sits to the farms North, ever present and a reminder of the early farming peoples that chose this challenging and remote part of NE Scotland as their home and place of sustenance, just as we have chosen to do so ourselves.
The earliest maps we can find shows our farm (then Howtown) in 1776 as a small settlement of farm buildings, with one map of 1867 including a blacksmith building of which the ruined building still exists today. We have written accounts of the blacksmith who lived here in the early 20th century planting large amounts of soft fruit - gooseberries, red and blackcurrants - and digging a large well that still seeps from a hillside above our market garden. The Blacksmith’s ruined house, that predates the building of our own farm cottage (1886), is still evident, just visible from behind thickets of gooseberry and clumps of blackcurrant that grow from the house’s tumbled down walls - the legacy of the berry growing blacksmith.
We also have spoken accounts from the older generation of the village who talk of the milk house that today serves as the milking parlour for our goats, a field of potatoes and kale where we too once grew vegetables for our veg box business, though the field now grows fruit trees and has been grazing for our cattle, sheep, goats and geese. And there has also been mention of bee hives, apple trees and beautiful beds of roses.
Our story with this parcel of land began in 2012, originally with the intent of setting up as a family smallholding - a place to take care of our family’s needs- and as demonstration site for Permaculture Design. Over the years we indeed designed and developed the land to provide a large part of our food needs and in 2014 become an official demonstration site for the Permaculture Association UK, hosting courses and running events. Then in 2016 we set up a thriving quarter acre market garden, growing tons of fresh veg that was sold via a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme to over 50 families within a 15 mile radius of the farm. After six seasons we began the work in accelerating succession and have moved on from annual vegetable production to focussing on perennial shrub and tree crops with the intent of supplying our local community once again with fresh produce.
We know we are not the first to inhabit this land and we won’t be the last. The land is always growing and evolving with landscapes and agroecological systems that should flourish well into the future, beyond our memory and that of our children’s.