Comments on: I Live In An Allotment House - Part Two

By: Daniel Kandy

Daniel Kandy — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 21:55:56 +0000

Hello,

I am traveling to Denmark this summer to do ethnographic and ethnobotanical research on allotment gardens and gardeners. You’re perspective would be valuable to my research. Would you be available for an interview? I am an anthropology student, and the strict ethical guidelines would protect you from any unwanted disclosure. Please email me at Dkandy@gmail.com

By: Rob Burns

Rob Burns — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 00:13:58 +0000

You are living my ultimate dream. That is just unbelievably cool.

By: Beener.

Beener. — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 11:41:33 +0000

Oh my gosh what a lovely way of life!
Unfortunately we are not allowed to live on our allotments in England. I couldn’t think of a nice way or place to live.
lucky you!

By: antony

antony — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:30:40 +0000

What a fantastic experience you must have had, sadly in england we don’t have those sort of allotments as much but I have visited some in germany which were beautiful.

My wife children and I may be moving from our centrally heated house to a cottage in the country which has a wood powered CH and for cooking. We are doing it more out of choice than money but I’m looking forward to the experience good and bad.

By: Sandy D.

Sandy D. — Sun, 21 Jan 2007 19:45:52 +0000

Too bad I didn’t read this about Jerusalem artichokes several years ago. We couldn’t get rid of ours except by moving.

By: Henrik

Henrik — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 22:27:35 +0000

Good question about ‘gendered’ house work.
We only have few arguments over who should do what (more often the argument is ‘when’ I’m going to do this and that as I promised… err…). I will try to avoid an essentialist approach here, but it seems natural that the physically stronger person who likes electric gadgets and fire should handle related activities.
There might be a political point in doing it the other way around, but it’s not very practical.
As you can see, cutting firewood is ‘my job’. In fact most outdoors and/or dangerous activities (such as handling power tools, digging holes in the ground, fixing electrical devices and generally just breaking and burning stuff) fall on my part and The Lady takes care of most of the indoors and/or easy stuff. I cut the grass; she looks after the vegetable garden. I set up the mouse traps (and tend to them); she handles the dirty laundry.

In the kitchen I do the cooking and The Lady is in charge of doing the dishes. This ‘less gendered’ division was born naturally out of the fact that I prefer cooking to doing dishes, whereas it’s more or less opposite with her.

By: Martin Rundkvist

Martin Rundkvist — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 20:28:32 +0000

Great stuff! This is the time in your life you’ll look back to with crushing nostalgia!

I wonder if you guys have come up with a gendered division of labour? You seem to do the wood chopping, for instance. Modern conveniences take most of the muscle-work out of housekeeping.