Field Notes: Natural assets

Forester and organic grower Emma Planterose Magenta reports on how nature-based businesses are bringing economic and many other benefits to local people and the wider community in Assynt.

Travelling south of Ullapool, along the edge of Loch Broom, you would never imagine the alternate reality thriving on the old drove road a hundred metres up the hill. Turn off into Leckmelm Wood and you’ll discover a growing wonderland of productive gardens and hand-built timber buildings sheltered within the forest.

Bought from the (then) Forestry Commission, 30 years ago, as an uneconomic Sitka spruce plantation with dense rhododendron ponticum understory and no plan. Nowadays, Leckmelm Wood is home to North Woods Design & Build, Ecotone Cabins, Kinder Croft CIC, the West Edge and three generations of family nourished by produce from the polytunnels and orchards. It has become a sort of unintentional community.

Living lightly

As you wander along to the West Edge (we encourage folk to arrive on foot, or bike) a sense of peace deepens, while curiosity increases. This part of the forest is all about repair and regeneration, about reusing, repurposing and recycling, about living lightly, about building soil and ecological diversity.

If it hasn’t grown naturally, almost everything at the West Edge is made from other people’s waste - from found, discarded, rescued, donated, old stuff given new life. We build by hand and live off-grid, with our electricity generated by photovoltaic (PV) solar panels and a micro-hydro turbine made from a wind-generator powered by clear water piped from a burn. 

Our successes and mistakes have formed an unusual venue to help others experience this way of life and learn new skills. It defies any one description - outdoor classroom, forest school, permaculture garden, food forest.  Forest crofting, design and education almost fits as my own job description. Whatever it is, many of the hundreds of visitors and volunteers from all over the world have described it as “magical” and “life-changing”, where even the simple experience of kindling a fire, gathering wood and herbs then cooking tasty food outside over mesmerising flames stays with us (and not just as smoke on our clothes!).

The main yard holds the outside kitchen with a roofed earth oven on wheels, built with Ullapool High School pupils in 2020. Many pizza sessions have been enjoyed since, all year round, often using tomatoes, onions and bunches of basil grown here. We haven’t managed olives yet, but last year did produce some apricots.

The yard is surrounded by a rich mosaic of food forest planted within the shelter of mature Scots pine and a diversity of native trees. Chickens and ducks free-range, guarded by a dog, Cali, who also keeps red, roe and sika deer away, and likes to ride the logging horse, Timber.

Fertile ground

All the animals contribute to the soil-building which is a key process here (as it needs to be everywhere!). The years of extractive industrial forestry and invasive rhododendron - resulting in sour, depleted soil - have now been reversed to yield deep, humus rich fertile ground and abundance of flowers, fungi and beasties. Red Squirrels now eat the nuts from the planted hazel trees (they’d better not touch the walnuts!) and wood pigeon move acorns around. A small tree nursery provides new stock for the forest and beyond, also growing interesting and unusual herbs and perennial edibles for sale.

Individuals and groups are welcome to come muck in and learn through immersion into this forest life, staying in a quirky assortment of yurts, bothies and wee caravans. We are delighted to host the John Muir Trust Junior Rangers and regularly run a mental health and well-being programme - “Finding Your Place in the Forest” - with UHS pupils, in which service and care are key components.

Care is one of the most important things at West Edge and I consider myself to be caretaker - taking care, caring for, tending and caring about this patch and this planet.

Photographs show the Quinag Junior Rangers making pizza at West Edge.

• Find out more about our work at Quinag, with the Junior Rangers, and the Trust’s position on deer management.