Month in the life of an urban gardener: June 2024.
The tasks, problem solving, wildlife spots, learnings and reflections from an organic food grower in a North London kitchen garden.
Welcome to this separate reflection — as part of the Food-Fibre-Fashion publication — on what it’s like to be an urban organic food grower. This started as short snappy videos to condense moments across a month, before realising that actually the narrative and context behind them could be useful, whether successes or mistakes.
As this is part of the wider Food-Fibre-Fashion publication that shares essays, articles and resource newsletters, there will be stories and musings to raise your awareness of how interconnected these systems are, even when we’re looking in small scale, such as an urban garden.
Watch reels of previous months here →
May 2024. / April 2024. / March 2024. / February 2024. / January 2024. / December 2023. / November 2023. / October 2023. / September 2023. / August 2023. / July 2023. / June 2023. / May 2023. / April 2023. / March 2023.
This is the eighth in this series of articles — A Month in the Life of an Urban Gardener. To read about the context of where I work, head to the first article.
Watch June 2024 in the form of a reel here.
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Month in the life of an urban gardener: June 2024.
Images: 1. A tired Monday alone in the garden after running an ultra trail marathon, just me and the currants; 2. Currant prunings getting lodged in my Croc holes; 3. Love a lamb’s ear (Stachys) and this bushed up quick once planted out; 4. Face of a distressed and stressed beekeeper in a bee suit.
Harvesting.
Most of June’s harvesting seemed to circulate around the berries — currants, gooseberries, worcesterberries, raspberries, hybrid berries, strawberries. I don’t think we harvested much else, because there wasn’t anything else to give. At the end of May we’d done our crop rotations and so new crops weren’t available. We’d stalled on salad as we didn’t have a customer, and that meant the more unusual leaves also had no home. It was also just wet, so any crops we might’ve had at the end of the month were scuppered and slowed by the mouths of slugs and snails.
Images: Spring onions, broad beans, courgette leaves, wine cap mushrooms.
What most excited me was seeing these berry crops come in from bushes that I had nurtured for a few years, particularly the jostaberry that gave it’s first fruits on what appeared to be dormant wood.
In terms of herbs, we did do some wormwood, camomile, rose petals and I think the last of the elderflower too, drying them for use in tea blends. And we got some chillis from the magnificent rocoto.
July at least will bring peas, courgette, cucumber, salad if we get it in, the first of the tomatoes, chard, beetroot, the last of some berry varieties, rhubarb if we want it, fresh herbs such as oregano. We’ll keep trying with the squash, basil, ornamental and dye flowers. Aubergine and a sweet pepper are in the ground, but these are an experiment. Nasturtium is great, and we have rocket, but again without a customer, we leave them for ground cover and flowers.
Images: Currants: a half-and-half pink currant, a jostaberry, and ripe blackcurrants.
Wildlife.
Some good news was that the newt family and babies were still in the gravel shower tray, but by the end of the month weren’t so obviously spotted. An animal had been running through and knocking over the plants that were sat in there too, so either scaring the newts off or killing them. It also got drought-y and the water levels in the shower tray kept running low, so perhaps they moved on.
A squirrel had been watched trying to find it’s way onto the so-named Squirrel Buster bird seed feeder. It gave up, collecting seeds off the floor instead (that some bird species deliberately chuck out), and returned a week later succeeding in grabbing on and spinning around.
Toads and frogs were spotted under logs when they were moved to tidy up the space. We hadn’t quite finished the spring job of moving dead and decaying logs from one place to another place to a final home, and kids were clambering all over the pile we’d made. It is ultimately their responsibility not to climb and jump and throw, because it’s a working garden and a climbing centre with many risks and we do our risk management. However, they have no risk management and guardian adults aren’t always around (as they should be). So I had to disrupt some homes in order to make things better off overall. Only, kids came within an hour and started using bits as play cricket, and then on our away days had come and created a dam where an entrance to the willow dome should be. I want to teach, but you can’t always engage them.
Otherwise we had excitement of swifts overhead, and the Norwegian, black, and grey tabby cats hanging about.
Images: Top L-R — 1. Cabbage white caterpillars on the kale; 2. Local cat River taking shade under a box of flax straw in the polytunnel; 3. Centre regular Martha the dog having a snooze in the garden; Bottom L-R — 4. A stag beetle in the glasshouse that I’d just relieved of spider web; 5. A baby newt in the gravel cuttings tray; 6. Toads, frogs and slugs under a deadwood log.
Pruning.
We have a lot that needs pruning. And if the weather is wet or damp, then we can’t prune. And pruning tends to take longer than you anticipate. It’s also not just about the act of cutting parts of the plant away, but the decision-making involved in doing so, physically navigating what is likely a bushy plant or tree, the cleaning and sharpening of tools, the tidying up the prunings, and the breaks away from straining your body in terrible positions. Sometimes it also involves teaching.
Unfortunately I do micro-manage my favourite prunings. Or rather, I’ve done a good job so far, and even though I attempt to teach, some information is lost and then it’s not quite done to “perfection” and I have to go back over. Or I feel I have to go back over, for the good of the plant and future yields; I do struggle with letting go. But it really does seem to be a better year for the currant and gooseberry yield since it’s 3 years now of regular summer and winter pruning. We even received the first jostaberries from shrubs that weren’t previously shrubby.
The issue also is that growers tend to have the thing that they either like doing, or do often and so they’re the ones with the most knowledge of that plant. For me it’s the currants and gooseberries, and otherwise the kiwi. I sometimes do the grape and raspberries but forget each year what the instruction is (basically same as everything else, remove the majority of foliage and yet it jars me), and never the stone fruits or apples and pears. My time may be coming to do the cherries again, though considering we had no fruit this year, I don’t know if it was me or simply the hard haircut they received.
You can’t practice and learn when you don’t do something yourself often enough. Consequently someone else takes over and it becomes their thing. The currants et al are my thing, which I’m resoundingly ok with, even when flower bugs come out of the soil you’ve disturbed biting you into anger or you get thorny splinters that don’t come out your skin for days. Jenny the kiwi does require a clambering both up the Victorian brick building inside the bush, and onto a roof to tower above it. Those logistics do push my comfort with ladders, but I’m actually also ok with that activity because I progress. She — Jenny — also makes me incredibly itchy even with goggles due to my latex allergy.
Images: 1-2. Pruning the kiwi by getting a ladder up the wall, and also onto the roof; 3. Tackling the spiky gooseberry pruning; 4. Harvesting more redcurrants into a punnet while pruning the big bushes.
June also required some pruning of the fig trees and cherry plums in the apiary so that more sunlight — and therefore warmth — could reach the hives. The figs weren’t massively pruned in March as discussed because some branches were awkwardly over a big hive. That hive is now even bigger, though helpfully we’d moved it over slightly, and well, needs must to make things better for them. So fully suited up in my camo bee suit with hooded veil on a hot day, I take away branches of the fig and also of the cherry plums. It felt more open, and foragers were bustling in and out for days following, but it’ll be something to monitor further as the light dwindles to ensure we’re not taking too much of a windbreak and shelter away.
Alongside this job was pruning the chocolate vine and goji berry climber from inside and outside the apiary along a trellis, and also above the shed so bringing down the foliage height that would allow honeybees to get out to forage more easily. These two climbers had become entangled over the years without management, and with so many old old branches of goji, it was unclear what was what; it was putting on new growth from very old growth, so it looked messy and wasn’t even giving us fruit. By hacking away at the old growth (so sacrificing new growth), it should throw out new shoots. It revealed the chocolate vine and this was woven through the trellis. More space now along the steps upto the apiary and upper part of the garden, and more space inside the steps of the apiary.
Images: 1. View from the top of the apiary, with goji berry still needing to be hacked down, but more sunlight available to reach the hives; 2. Fig prunings in the apiary; 3. Goji berry and chocolate vine prunings to clear the apiary stairs; 4. The clearer apiary stairs.
Maintenance.
Besides the pruning tasks and weeding, we inevitably had lots of other activities that is essentially tidying up (and sometimes, tidying up after others). It’s summer, so things grow, and while pruning is more about the thoughtful decision-making, maintenance stuff is more about quickly sorting out an area. This is usually all-hands-on-deck, but can take many days to finish due to the magnitude of the steps involved.
One key area to maintain during summer is the path parallel to the external wall, what we call the Green Lanes hedge. The length is maybe 50 metres? Could even be 100. On one side is the living hedge that needs work itself, but also gets weedy. On the other side are trees and shrubs that ends up with nettle and bramble ground cover, and this leads into our Big Green Dump where spiky woody prunings get shoved to die and dry. We have a patch of basketry willow and dogwood, but the builders dumped rubble here. At one end part of the living hedge needed to be removed and rebuilt because sycamores were coppiced, while at the other end is a shady section of the miniplots where public people jump over the fence. It’s a never-endingly messy scrubby area, and somehow in June I managed to avoid doing any work down here.
At Groundswell agriculture festival there was a exhibition stand from the National Hedgelaying Society, with the sweetest living examples of hedge types. I took some pamphlets to help us understand how to manage our hedge; our hedgelayer had been unable to return and because of all the other work needing to be done in this area, we hadn’t gotten to fixing the hedge. However, I’d quite like to go do a hedgelaying course to truly understand how it all works and be equipped to fix our bit.
Otherwise, compost turning and sieving continued. Worm feeding for castings. Comfrey barrel aeration so we had juice for the heavy feeding crops. All the watering, indoors and out. Some potting on and planting out. Some backfill sowing. Path clearing, grass cutting, scrub burning, and putting the Big Massive Net over Raspberry Row so birds won’t get to the fruit.
Images: 1. Deadwood logs moved into seating areas and habitat areas; 2. Team effort putting the big massive raspberry net on over the vine posts; 3. Potting on dye plants, including indigo; 4. Cutting back a hedge that was encroaching on safe fall space by the outdoor climbing boulders.
Solstice.
We have such a good space, but we rarely stick around to utilise it together when we’re not working. I’d like us to at least honour the seasonal waypoints, and that’s particularly handy when they land on Thursdays! This is when we’ve got most staff. So for summer solstice we had a fire burning through the afternoon that helped up get through some scrub, and then ashes hot enough to cook potatoes on. Or, so was intended.
The first batch were essentially charcoal. People generously picked up more potatoes plus additional nacho snacks, and round two was more successful. Eventually we sat with mead and various mixers, with our potatoes and various toppings, and then melted chocolate banana dessert and various conversations. I did my ritual of pouring a drop of mead in front of each beehive and drawing a cross on them. It worked in winter for the first half of the year, so was hoping it would work in summer for the second half of the year.
Images: Summer Solstice community campfire potato evening — 1. The first patch of cremated potatoes; 2. Nachos on the fire while awaiting the second batch of potatoes to be cooked; 3. Using a tiny pitchfork to get cooked potatoes out the fire; 4. A beautiful potato with toppings; 5. Melted banana and chocolate dessert; 6. Ritual of pouring a drop of mead by each honeybee and solitary bee hive.
Community haystack.
Lee Valley oversees the management of the marshland close to us. This is a delightful area of North East London full of wildlife, biodiversity and open space. I run here a fair amount because of the expansiveness and easy trails. They returned their community haystack event where people can come scythe a small section of Walthamstow Marsh (set up in Lammas Meadow) and then build a haystack. It’s such a small fragment of the greater area, but it operated as an educational experience and to entice passers by on the Sunday afternoon into curiosity.
Though we have two scythes at the garden, I hadn’t been properly shown. Our ground is full of tussocks, or there is furniture in the way, so scything isn’t that efficient and we instead strim or shear. One of the event leaders was Ida Fabrizio, the woman that established our garden in late 2008. Ida roams about the land teaching and sharing all of her skills, generously and patiently. On this day we were able to glean instruction from her, and get to scything.
Scything uses an edge tool to sharply cut grass, and is useful over strimmers because they’re quiet, don’t use diesel or batteries, and give you time to consider where you are to avoid disrupting wildlife too much. But, there is skill involved in how you move your body and where to safely place the blade. Our instruction was to “stay low, stay zen” and so this mantra was in my head as I attempted to cut the grass. I say attempt, because though I was creating a small haystack in my wake, it didn’t feel like I was actually getting anywhere. The additional mantra of “cutting a one inch rainbow” and having patience did pay off as you realised you were making a mark and moving onwards. It was also integral to recognise the direction of the grass so that you could change your positioning to cut efficiently.
It’s going to take practice, and I’ve already been offered up someone’s field.
Images: 1. Ida the master scyther in the field; 2-3. Me posing and scything; 4. Someone carrying freshly mown grass to add to the haystack.
Groundswell.
This is an annual regenerative agriculture festival, now in its eighth year, hosting talks, discussions, demos and exhibitors for all things around regenerative farming. I was grateful to receive a bursary place for a second year, and went along to learn mostly about the updates to fibre and textiles in relation to farming, but picked up so many ideas, such as with the hedgelaying mentioned above.
I’d also had a chat about implementing a bioreactor, otherwise known as a Johnson-Su, because we have too much garden waste and not enough capacity. However, a bioreactor acts as a fermentation store to create a highly nutritious concentrated matter in a small space, and could even take the degraded human waste from our compost loo that currently doesn’t have a consistent use.
I’d listened in on a talk about soil amendments and garnered some additional ideas for improving soil health and water-holding capacity for our no-dig beds from an organic biodynamic market garden. I’d gone along to a well-balanced debate on gene-editing, following the deregulation of precision breeding in the UK. And I’d had a chat with the honeybee log hive guys about their designs, essentially shocking them when saying I have an operating log hive myself, because it’s not particularly common.
Along with the scything, it felt like a super wholesome week and I felt utterly appreciative that this is the space I work in and am constantly developing from.
Images: 1. A rocket-shaped log hive at dusk with fairy lights on top and images hung up of the inside of other log hives; 2. I made a sheep out of wild South Wales clay with Martha Wiles; 3. A talk from Linley Farm on soil amendments in the Soil Medic Tent; 4. Learning how to spin wool roving on a drop spindle with Shire Mill; 5. Chatting with Paul aka Mr Thatcher while we plaited some straw; 6. A mini maquette of a Sussex hedge.
Beekeeping.
Though I was thrown into real life beekeeping from June 3rd, and so frankly the first thing I encountered in the month, I’ve left this segment until last. Despite having this apiary to collectively manage for nearly a year now, June made me feel utterly responsible. It’s not just a space in the garden, but a living collection of organisms that I am on hand to support. Ok, so the rest of the garden is the same in that it operates as this mini ecosystem within a wider ecosystem, and of course there is wild life all around from the animals to the plants and the humans that visit. Yet the apiary is literally buzzing with these separate functioning organisms that then operate as a larger organism amidst an even larger organism. Each family is separate, living in their own hives, but the majority are splits from an original (via the swarms). They interconnect, even when kept apart. It is a representation of the world outside, with humans and animals interacting. We go about our own thing, but frequently we’ll meet and navigate one another.
So when you’re observing elements of that organism and recognise that something strange is occurring with behaviour, to then discover a mass death of hundreds of bees, you’re completely thrown. Even writing this is choking me up in grief and remorse. A month following that discovery I’ve become somewhat steely and accepting that honeybee families will die, and that there are so many variables that can cause their demise, and so when another died off, I was prepared, and consequently acknowledged it as what it was — the circle of life. Even when I had to clean out the first dead hive to prepare it as a bait hive for a new family to be moved into once a swarm occurred, and witnessing a piece of comb full of bees that had died whilst hatching, I’d already normalised the actions.
I needed that first family death to throw me into beekeeping and what it actually entails.
Images: 1. A pile of dead honeybees on a wooden hive floor; 2. Dead honeybees on a white sheet so they could be inspected for mites and lice; 3. Inside the dying honeybee family’s hive with only a handful of live bees, plus some cool comb shapes; 4. Inspecting a small honeybee family by looking at the comb to spot freshly-laid eggs as a sign of a healthy mother.
Though I am acting as beekeeper in this space with some other people in what we call the Bee Team, due to being in the garden most, living close by, having the most flexible schedule, and I’d even argue in some respects more comfort in dealing with the hives, I have been taking the brunt of the logistics. Checking in, attending the swarms, buying equipment, doing some inspections. And this is where feelings of responsibility in terms of my actions and decision-making is heightened.
June 3rd was when I noticed the family had perished on a mass scale, and we had to backtrack to try understand what had happened. So ensued research and further observation, helped by a group inspection on June 6th to assess this hive and another smaller ailing hive. We rejoiced in seeing queens in both, with eggs in one, giving information that this queen was healthy and laying so the family could pick up, but the other queen was not laying. We’d also spotted a varroa mite on a bee, and my research had led me to believe they also had lice due to their behaviour. Generally just very weak and unable to cope. On this day we also worked together to add boxes to our national-style hive (but nadeering, i.e. putting underneath rather than the conventional supering, putting on top, so they would continue to have honey on top, brood in the middle, and empty frames on the bottom). And we also added a box to our main warre hive giving them more space, taking the opportunity to have a little look inside.
The additional space caused the national to swarm, not just once but three more times in June.
The first time, on June 17th, they’d landed at the very top of a cherry plum tree that was impossible to climb and cut; they consequently flew off after five hours and I attempted to locate them through various bee contacts.
On June 23rd, the same family went again, this time landing in the elaeagnus that a swarm (from another hive) had landed in in April. I was at the Haystack Day and fortunately a group assembled to do the tricky work of shaking them out of the middle of the tree. They got them housed into an already-set-up hive, and come the end of the month were looking busy.
On June 27th, late in the day around 4pm (usually it’s morning), they swarmed again returning to the inaccessible cherry plum. I was at Groundswell, so on returning to London immediately visited the garden at 8.30pm to check they weren’t in an awkward place (so affecting customers). They were up in the tree, and the next morning had gone. When they first landed here and flew off, we wondered if they’d come back because of how they swarmed again just a few days later, and this time we think they went back into the hive after not finding a suitable new home. We had a bait hive set up, but they’re not choosing them.
On June 29th I was checking in on them late afternoon and spotted a queen on the outside of the hive. The volume and intensity of flying had increased from foragers so it was assumed they were readying to swarm, but then the queen went back inside and the hum dropped.
Images: 1. A swarm from the log hive above the apiary with Castle building; 2. A swarm from the national hive in the air finding its way to the cherry plum tree; 3. Bearding on the outside of the national hive during a swarm; 4. Another swarm in the elaeagnus tree.
We’d also spotted the log hive attempt to swarm on June 10th and (without photos I can’t really remember, but think again on June 13th), setting off into the air and bearding out the front, but then about 10 minutes later going back in. It’s likely that the queen is too old or weak to fly and so they can’t collectively land anywhere. Though because they are bearding out front most days without swarming, it seems certain that the space is too small for them and they’re attempting to cool the hive.
This behaviour, and the national hive swarming multiple times, is especially confusing when you find a queen on the floor. This discovery is really what pushed me into accepting that yes I am a beekeeper now.
For context, the cherry plum swarm had just absconded the garden, we wrapped up the garden for the day, and as I always do now especially if there’s been significant activity, I checked in on the apiary.
At the back of the terrace was both the really dying hive untouched but close to empty, and the less dying hive acting very slow; in the middle of the terrace the national had calmed down somewhat but still foraging; the log hive on the wall was bearding out the front; then on the bottom of the terrace to the right was an empty bait hive for the swarm we didn’t catch, and the original warre family on the left.
I was observing that there was plenty of dead workers on the ground on the middle and bottom terrace; potentially these had come from swarms, were just at the end of their life cycle anyway, or had been carried out by the dead and dying families. Additionally there were drones (the male bees) wandering about aimlessly, probably kicked out of the hive because they hadn’t yet mated.
There was also a handful of clusters of workers, usual behaviour after a swarm where they hadn’t yet received the signal of where their new home was. There was enough clusters for me to start being confused though, looking around further because where had they come from? That’s when I spotted a queen on the ground. She was in front of the original warre — Warre #1, an active consistent family that hadn’t shown signs of swarming that day — but because she was wandering, could’ve also come from the log hive.
All signs pointed to one hive having swarmed and disbanded, or that it was two separate incidents; one with a swarm we didn’t spot and the clusters were leftover, and one with a queen being kicked out. I swiftly messaged my Bee Team to say, “I found a queen on the ground, what do I do with her!?” A suggestion quickly came back that I should put her in a small box until I figured out where she came from and what to do. A few workers found her, but not enough to suggest that she was, as it were, a chosen one. They weren’t acting as if she was their mother, which pointed to her having actually been kicked out.
I stood in that apiary for nearly two hours, upon discovery at 5.30pm and wrangling supplies, until I’d decided what to do. We had a queen that needed to go somewhere; as she was close to Warre #1, she could simply be inserted back in in case she’d happened to find her way out and they were missing a mum, or otherwise because we had a very nearly dead family that giving them a queen could be a boost. However, this latter hive showed obvious signs of pests, so would the queen survive anyway? Was she out there because she was out of eggs so useless to the family? I decided to inspect the warre for signs of a visible queen, but I was alone so this was a feat; I suited up, tried and failed to get the smoker going, stood stock still peering into the box not knowing where to start.
Images: 1. A queen honeybee on the ground; 2. A worker (female) honeybee on the left and drone (male) honeybee on the right; 3. View into Warre #1 bustling with activity; 4. Brood comb with bees having died in their cells as they hatched.
The difficulty arose not in being nervous about thousands of insects who sting when defensive, but in how they had cross-combed the hive bars so making it impossible to loosen and lift the comb up to check for eggs and queen. Despite not visibly seeing honey due to how many bees were covering the bars, I knew based on how they operate that the top box was mostly honey and therefore unlikely to have any brood, so I jacked up between the boxes to reveal the middle one, consequently splitting a bit of honeycomb and a few cells with pupae that were stuck to the top box. Again, standing stock still not knowing where to start, and getting a few angry veil butts from guard bees, I decided to close up while I contemplated.
I still didn’t know where to put her. I didn’t think it wise putting her in the dying family because I didn’t think they’d recuperate quick enough for her to be useful. The issue with inserting her into the warre #1 is that she might not be their’s and they’d reject her. This is actually not a bad thing; if she was booted out then in all likelihood they had mother cells ready to hatch with a new mum and they’d be fine for egg-laying, but I hadn’t been able to see those cells nor an existing mum. If she’d managed to get out, and they didn’t have mother cells to replace her (which only happens if they’re ready to swarm or don’t like existing mum), and then I didn’t put her back in there, they’d slowly collapse in numbers without brood. If I put her in there, and she came from another family, there’d be consequences for those (as just mentioned, they may not have a replacement mum on the way) and then this queen would be killed in the new home regardless.
It was a toss up. She might survive, she might not. The family she came from might survive, they might not. The family she goes into might survive, or might not. After those hours of deliberation and both physical and emotional stress from decision-making, I put her into Warre #1. She was found closest to there, and as they were an active family were probably always ready to swarm and would have mother cells, so if they didn’t like her, they’d simply kill her, and if they did like her, then great nothing would change. I stood outside the hive for 10 minutes monitoring their behaviour. No queen was kicked out, foragers went in and out, activity stayed consistent. The next day I checked again and all pretty much same behaviour. We still had a carpet of dead ones and some dozy drones, but no queen and no significant increase in dead numbers. The other hives looked the same.
This whole saga is a story unto itself. It was a particularly vibrant month for beekeeping tasks and happenings, probably extrapolated by a sudden surge of warmth and sunshine after rain, and because we simply have a load of hives and a load of forage. I don’t know whether I should divert and write these stories of beekeeping separately; they’re wrapped up in the rest of my role of a kitchen gardener, but it’s also now a role that is a thing unto itself that constantly needs unpacking. I feel sadness when I see a dead animal around the space, or plants don’t survive. But this was real grief I was experiencing. A debilitating sadness that I didn’t know how to comprehend, and my mood was low, with very little bouts of lightness. After our first group inspection there was relief, and it shook me into the next stage of acceptance. Rather than a dulling of nurturing feelings, a richer understanding developed, so that a month later I’ve learnt a little more, and this will keep occurring.
One little additional tidbit to wrap up this segment on beekeeping comes from an unexpected chat with Paul aka Mr Thatcher. He pulled up to Groundswell with a trailer of straws, hats, wooden canes, skeps and honey. I of course asked about the beekeeping stuff, and he said that he kept bees, but they died two years ago, he felt responsible, and was unable to keep any again. I thoroughly understood. I wanted to say, it’s ok, it’s just how it goes, but I’m in a fortunate position of having other hives and other people to keep my spirits up, so while I sank deep into my discomfort, I’ve been able to comprehend the bigger picture. Is it like when people have two dogs or cats, so that if something happens to the other, they can carry on?
Images: 1. Three members of the Bee Team suited up after a hive inspection; 2. The apiary as of mid June with 3 visibly healthy families, a bait hive and two dying families in the back; 3. Foragers going into the national hive with pollen; 4. View into Warre #1 with heavily propolised bars.
There’s no real conclusion this month really, as I usually provide, because I’ve already given heartfelt stuff. There were wins and there were losses. It’s the name of the game with food production. I guess what’s key to state is that a community or kitchen or market garden — or even your personal garden — is vital in the wider ecosystem. I visited Groundswell where massive, ridiculously-sized farms need to operate in this changing climate (environmentally and politically) and yet are open-minded to the variety of solutions required to shift the system. There was no othering, and in fact horticulture and half acres were given room to speak. We cannot operate in a silo.
I’m actually finalising this post on July 5th — the UK’s general election results came in this morning. What has actually changed? Labour have got 4 years to show us. What’s interesting and optimistic, is a greater number of different voices (which unfortunately does include those from Reform). The smattering of different views across wards could call attention to how disaparate we are, but has also significantly highlighted how people don’t simply want to be carried along anymore. I feel and anticipate further grassroots action, and food (and fashion) really really has to front and centre.