Community › Community › No dig gardening › Preparing the ground › GQT VS. NO DIG part 3! › Reply To: GQT VS. NO DIG part 3!
Steph – not quite sure why that comment was directed at me.
As a newbie on the forum (although a long time fan of Charles’ pioneering work) just thought I should clear up my choice of username. For the record it doesn’t refer to a pro-dig agenda. Far from it.
It refers to the undoubted great, great grandfather of allotments Gerrard Winstanley – in 1649 he led a group of rebellious comrades to take over some land in Surrey (St George’s Hill) in protest at the Inclosure of common land. They became known as Diggers because they sought to cultivate land and encourage anyone to join them – all you had to do was offer your labour and you’d be rewarded with a share in the produce. The landowner had different ideas (the local vicar, how charitable!), and a gang of local thugs were sent to drive them off. Winstanley produced a prolific amount of literature at the time setting out his views. One particular line has always resonated:
Was the earth made to preserve a few covetous, proud men to live at ease, and for them to bag and barn up the treasures of the Earth from others, that these may beg or starve in a fruitful land; or was it made to preserve all her children?
So my choice of moniker is in recognition of Gerrard Winstanley, and the stand he tried to take against vested interests who were pilfering the common law inheritance of the ordinary man and woman.