Author of Finding Lights in a Dark Age, Saying NO to a Farm-Free Future and A Small Farm Future
Menu
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 May 19, 2014 | 27 Comments
Well, an air of normality has returned to us here at Small Farm Future. A combination of sunny weather and endless meals of Clem’s slug stew have put those pesky molluscs on the back foot and enabled us to get some plants established at last. The money I paid for the potato planter has returned to me (though not, alas, the planter: now I know what people on ebay mean by the term ‘time waster’). And the hordes of permaculturists who were commenting on this blog a week or two ago seem to have departed to graze on other pastures. …
Continue readingPosted on May 8, 2014 | 13 Comments
I was about to turn my computer on last Tuesday evening when Mrs Spudman suggested instead we sit out in the field with a glass of wine in the sunset. We watched a fox quartering the slope beneath us, listened to the birdsong die in the rising gloom, saw the first bats of the evening emerge and heard a man walking up the lane beyond the hedge stop, unaware of our presence, and offer a prayer for the beauties of the season. Time well spent, I think. But when I turned my computer on the following evening after 48hrs of …
Continue readingPosted on April 28, 2014 | 20 Comments
Following on from a recent post of mine and from Clem’s comment therein about thinking of food and land in terms of private property with protections through the rule of law, I’ve been musing a bit on this issue and thought I’d mention a few things here that touch on it. One of them is an interesting article by Guardian journalist John Harris called ‘The Tories own the future – the left is trapped in the past’. Leftwingers of the Twitterversity were quick to brand him a traitor to the left but I thought much of the article was bang on, even …
Continue readingPosted on April 24, 2014 | 2 Comments
Time perhaps for a brief report on the demonstration staged by the Land Workers’ Alliance outside the DEFRA offices in Westminster’s corridors of power last week. My colleagues in the LWA did a fine job assembling a generous farmer’s market stall of small farm produce adjacent to DEFRA’s imposing front door, much to the bemusement of its besuited denizens as they scurried out for their lunch breaks. It’s a bad time of year for us veg growers to be trying to demonstrate our productivity (rhubarb and salads featured prominently…) but all in all it was an impressive display. And some of …
Continue readingPosted on April 15, 2014 | 8 Comments
Well it’s been a rum old week here at Small Farm Future. First up, as you may have noticed, the blog site went belly up. This was caused by me attempting to sort out a minor problem that I didn’t fully understand very late at night when I wasn’t concentrating properly. Result: minor problem became a major problem, and I had to call in the experts to solve it. Which they did, almost – but not quite. Not quite, because a few of the comments (notably some of Patrick’s, Clem’s and Brian’s) from my last post got etherised. I’ve restored …
Continue readingPosted on April 7, 2014 | 22 Comments
Maybe time for a quick post from down on the farm, so here’s a picture of part of our new farmhouse being shunted into position. Well, I know it’s not much of a farmhouse, but I can only refer you to Mendip District Council’s Local Plan, Policy DP13, which insists we have to erect a temporary building with no foundations that must be removable after 3 years. “In this way”, to quote from Mendip’s document, “We will make it as difficult as possible for hippy upstarts with ornery ideas to get their foot in the door of England’s green and …
Continue readingPosted on March 30, 2014 | 3 Comments
A little follow up to my previous post – and a request for your help. I suggested in said post that the city and the country are not two separate orders of life but two sides of the same coin that jointly create the whole. Still, there seems no end to the debate over the relative merits of urban and rural life, as if the twain should never meet. Generally, the city has got the best notices in this debate over the past century or so, for who but a hopeless romantic can these days seriously extol the virtues of country …
Continue readingPosted on March 19, 2014 | 2 Comments
Well, the rains have ceased for now, the waters are receding, and the tractor is primed for its 34th season (God willing). But perhaps I’ve just got time to share some thoughts on two classic books of a similar vintage to my trusty Ford. They’ve languished for too long in my in-tray, but the idleness enforced by the sodden early spring has enabled me to catch up with them at last. Both of them as it happens are on the subject of the country and the city. One of them, appropriately enough, is The Country And The City (1973) by …
Continue reading
If you like my writing, please help me keep the blog going by donating!
Subscribe via RSS