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 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 …
Continue readingPosted on February 25, 2019 | 74 Comments
In this post, as promised, I’m going to address the following accusation that Vera made of me in a comment late last year: “One issue you’ve ducked time and again is this: does your locked front door offend your libertarian spirit? Do local laws that prevent squatters taking over your farm offend it as well? And if it happens not to be offended then, then why is it offended by equally firm boundaries of larger units humans organize?” Elsewhere, Vera wrote “Millions of impoverished international migrants can be a force that can sink a region or a culture, or a …
Continue readingPosted on February 4, 2019 | 15 Comments
My nose is well and truly to the grindstone with book writing at the moment, so unfortunately I’m not finding much time for blogging. But here as promised is the interview I did with David Bandurski, author of Dragons in Diamond Village: Tales of Resistance from Urbanizing China (Melville House, 2016) on which my previous post was based. I reproduce the interview below without further comment – it raises some interesting issues and further questions, I think, which hopefully I can develop in the future. Meanwhile, I’d thoroughly recommend David’s book. My thanks to David for finding the time to respond …
Continue readingPosted on January 19, 2019 | 14 Comments
Comments are back on after my return from a brief and computer-less sojourn in the Scottish Highlands. Computer-less, but TV-enabled (the opposite to my usual life on the farm), enabling me to watch endless programs about homesteading in Alaska and, when the mood took me, to keep up with the UK’s fast-developing, eminently predictable and wholly avoidable constitutional crisis over Brexit. For those with better things to do than following the machinations in Westminster, here’s a quick summary of how Conservative MPs have recently voted. No confidence in Theresa May’s leadership of the party: 117 out of 317 No confidence …
Continue readingPosted on January 5, 2019 | 19 Comments
Happy new year to you from Small Farm Future – and thanks for the seasonal wishes from various folks on here just prior to the holidays. My new year’s resolutions for 2019 are … writing, writing, writing. But, regrettably, not so much on this site, I fear. I have an autumn deadline for my book manuscript which already feels looming in view of the work yet undone for it, so I think for the time being new blog posts here at SFF are going to be few and far between. Happily, various commenters have been keeping the site ticking over …
Continue readingPosted on December 22, 2018 | 17 Comments
And so we come to Small Farm Future’s final blog post of 2018. Time for some seasonal goodwill and an offer of peace to all? Nah, time to settle old scores – in this case my debate with Jane O’Sullivan about population and poverty that’s been rumbling along on this site over the latter part of the year. I was advised by one commenter to let the debate lie, which is probably wise, but this commentary from Dr O’Sullivan has been sitting unanswered for a while and I think a response is in order – if for no other reason …
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