Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
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I’ve been blogging about farming, ecology and politics since 2012. I welcome well-tempered discussion. Please note that if you’re a new commenter, or if you include a lot of links, your comment will go into the moderation queue before publication. I sometimes miss comments in the queue so feel free to nudge me via the Contact Form if your comment fails to appear.
Posted on October 14, 2019 | 47 Comments
So many possibilities to choose from as a subject for my first new blog post since May, now that I’m free of book-writing duties… Maybe a report from my time last week at the Extinction Rebellion protests in London (and at the City of London Magistrate’s Court watching my dear wife being committed for trial)? Or the ongoing, pointless debacle of Brexit and its oh-so-predictable descent into constitutional crisis and incipient authoritarianism. But that’s all quite raw and I need something gentler to ease my way back into the blogosphere, so I think I’ll talk instead about trees – and …
Continue readingPosted on October 2, 2019 | 32 Comments
Well, it’s been a while since this blog has been graced with any new content. I’d hoped to keep it ticking over while I wrote my book manuscript but the reality was that I just didn’t have the capacity. I’d expected the book writing to be hard work, but I naïvely underestimated quite how draining it would be – not only mentally, but also physically and emotionally in surprising ways. Anyway, as of Monday the completed manuscript is with the publisher so I thought I’d send out a chirrup into my familiar little corner of cyberspace. The question is, is …
Continue readingPosted on July 19, 2019 | 7 Comments
Apologies that this blog has become essentially dormant of late. I’d hoped to keep it ticking over while I wrote my book manuscript and perhaps try out some of my ideas for the book on it – as with my previous post – but the reality is I’m not finding the time to write both a book and a blog while simultaneously trying to lead an actual biological existence not confined to a 15 x 9 inch screen. Hopefully I’m in endgame with the book manuscript and this blog will spring into life again in the autumn. Meanwhile, I’m happy to …
Continue readingPosted on May 27, 2019 | 41 Comments
Apologies that I’ve been so silent of late on this blog. I’m afraid my book-writing chores are consuming almost all my desk-time at the moment and posts will probably continue to be sporadic at best until my submission deadline in the autumn. But let me at least bring you a sneak preview of some graphs I’m planning to present in the book (…and a couple that I’m not … thanks are due to my editor Brianne at Chelsea Green for allowing me to let the cat out of the bag). I’d be interested to hear any comments on my interpretations …
Continue readingPosted on April 23, 2019 | 86 Comments
I briefly mentioned the Extinction Rebellion climate change protest in my last post. In this one I want to describe what some of my misgivings about it were and how I’ve now laid them aside and embraced the movement, thanks to a few dark nights of the soul and a little helping hand over the line from former British Home Secretary, David Blunkett. The issues bear directly on many wider themes of this blog, so it seems appropriate to lay them out here. A key demand of Extinction Rebellion (XR) is for the British government to act now and reduce …
Continue readingPosted on April 17, 2019 | 50 Comments
A happy International Day of Peasant’s Struggle to you. Talking of which, I’m still struggling away trying to write my book about peasants while the rest of the farm crew are up in London protesting about government inaction on climate change, which means I’m having to do a bit of proper work as well for a change – all reasons why this blog is wallowing in the doldrums at the moment. So here are just a few nuggets to keep it ticking over for the time being. I’m hoping normal service will resume in the autumn. In the book draft, …
Continue readingPosted on March 29, 2019 | 25 Comments
29 March 2019 – a famous day in British history. Why? Well, er…dammit, I can’t quite remember – just seems like an ordinary day, to be honest. Possibly, though I don’t like to brag, it’s because today’s the day when I finished the complete first draft of my book manuscript – surely a date to rank with the finest in our nation’s history? But I’ve got a funny feeling that’s not it. Aha, got it, by Jove! Today’s the day when Britain throws off the shackles of its vassalage to the European Union and strikes out alone – a sovereign …
Continue readingPosted on March 6, 2019 | 79 Comments
Today I’m happy to bring you a rare guest post in the form of a review of historian Adam Tooze’s magnum opus, Crashed penned by Michelle Galimba, rancher and valued commenter here at Small Farm Future. Tooze’s book has been sitting in my in-tray for some time, but thanks to Michelle I can now let it linger there a while longer. Meanwhile, there may be another service interruption on this blog while I toil over my own opus, but I’m hoping to present some further ruminations on property and commons emerging out of my last post and my current book draft, perhaps in …
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