Seeds, Trends, Conference Friends

January Happenings, and an ORFC Report

Christmas has come and gone, and a bitterly cold one it has been as well. We are now twelve days into January and here I stand, once again having failed in my intention to update regularly and briefly. Please forgive me a big catch all post, before I try again!

Seed Sharing

I took a turn round the veg patch on Boxing Day and collected up all my boxes of seeds. As my regular reader will have noticed, I’ve spent an arm and a leg on new seeds of the domestic/dig for victory ilk for this year, and I did this on the clear understanding (with myself) that I could clear out and dispose of 75% of the huge backlog of out of date commercial sized packets I’ve accumulated over the last few years.

I’m proud to say I have done this, and passed them onto a local community allotment group. I did keep a small box full of in date seeds and ones that I knew I would like to grow a couple of, if I get the chance, but a huge cardboard box full was collected by the Plot Representative last week.

An Update on Being Content

The whole 2026 Analogue thing has slightly disrupted my brain. I first mentioned the A-word (this time around) here and I can say with my hand on my heart that I believed I had just had an original thought. Not a new thought, because I’d been talking about it for years and used ‘Analogue Days’ as a design in my (still incomplete) Permaculture Diploma, but a fresh idea for the coming year.

I am not vain enough to imagine I could have set the internet ablaze with my brilliance, and in any case, I discovered from Amy’s latest that sundry large scale trend reports had already predicted this development. Possibly because I am deep into Against The Machine by Paul Kingsnorth, I found this quite terrifying.

My independent thought was not independent. I had been influenced and led, like a sheep to the slaughter, to my brilliant idea.

For a deconstruction of the whole trend, you can do no better than to read Amy’s in-depth piece above. For my part, I will restate that it has become my only aim for the year to Learn To Be Content and that this will involve embracing and accepting all the aspects of the life I am blessed to lead, including, where appropriate, things digital.

Oxford Real Farming Conference

Conflict mired my wintery mind as we set off for the ORFC this year. Deep into exploring the need to disrupt and elude the machine, and to embrace extreme contentment, the conference felt dangerous. It has always had the ability to over-inspire, and cause me to dream up extravagant futures which really aren’t mine. I didn’t want to let it do that. Conversely, at the very basic level, we had the tickets, and we have been going for years, so if we are to celebrate being who, what, and where we are, then it was a straightforward decision.

Day One

We began with an informative session Natural Treatments for Flystrike in Sheep, which turned out to be one of our favourite sessions, highly informative and usable, we will certainly be researching further and implementing these techniques this year.

The first day’s lunchtime session for us was Chris Smaje’s Book Talk - Finding Lights in A Dark Age: Building Local Agrarianism This will be joining the TBR pile shortly.

Patrick Holden chaired our next session Funding Small Farm Futures which raised some interesting points, but I felt, missed some significant ones. I found it naïve to propose that the way small farms could win the market was by selling their story, without addressing the looming evil of supermarket farmwashing.

We were told that research shows that people pouring out milk all believe that it’s ‘Daisy’s’ milk, and that it is the job of the small farmer to introduce them to Daisy, basically. Maybe that was true ten or even five years ago, but today, sadly, they are in competition with the enormous marketing budget of the supermarkets.

They are the ones who’ve convinced them it’s Daisy’s milk. It’s not some sublime coincidence. It’s the label with the blissed out rare breed cow, grazing knee deep in daisies on ‘Sunnyhill Farm’ or whatever non-existent establishment they’ve used as the brand.

Lastly on day one it was our turn! My workshop Older Landworkers: Beginning, Continuing, Handing On was very thin on the ground. At first I was afraid I was going to have to admit defeat and not run it at all, but in the end, we had enough to run two small conversational groups, and it was rich with emotion and shared confidences. Several participants expressed gratitude that they were able to discuss things which, they felt, they had been utterly unable to talk about previously.

I am glad to have achieved the aim of presenting a session, and happy to be newly acquainted with the members of my group, whose stories were so valuable.

Day Two

On Friday, we sat down for a session on homeopathy, and at the very last minute registered that it concerned exclusively arable issues, so we hopped out and made for our next choice Whose Land, Whose Stories? Rethinking Heritage in the Age of Agroecology.

This was our absolute favourite session. We honestly wished it could have continued for at least another hour. Designed to help inform museums of the reasons why farmers and growers do not see them as relevant custodians of their stories, it challenged us to explore disagreement, interpret the context of museum collections, and generally hold difficult conversations around assumptions, and perhaps even disinformation.

It was really very thought provoking, and we are grateful to the Museum of English Rural Life, University of Reading, and the History of Science Museum for its provision.

Next for us it was back to the technical sessions and Practical Guide To Effective Integration Of Green Manures into Horticulture This was another richly informative session with lots of good things to incorporate into our growing. The passion of all three panellists made the time fly past and I wrote screeds of notes. I may watch this one back again when they go up on YouTube.

For our Lunchtime session we chose Farm Deep Dive : Diversification with Great Cotmarsh Farm since Great Cotmarsh is quite close to us, and James and Katie certainly have a lot going on!

Our final slot was Land Sparing vs Sharing : How Organic Can Deliver and I think maybe I was getting tired by this point, plus we chose ridiculous seats in the Court Room whereby I had to twist my already painful neck to see the presentation screen, but my notes suggest there was useful content, even if all I can remember is my sore back!

The Closing Plenary held moments of magic, but for me and for some others, also some dissonance. I think this may have given some weight to our provisional decision to skip a year, next year, and see how we feel about not going. Had we closed with the room singing a dawn chorus to baby Sam, it may have gone the other way.

Back to Normal

So now, we are back to normal, whatever that looks like. Neil is back to work, I am back to my various works, the sky is grey, and the year stretches ahead. I did fit in a visit to the Spinning Guild, and hope to go to a talk on dyeing with indigo and woad this Saturday.

I’ve started the next batch of Fire Cider, and now have a good clear out of the office and the spare bedroom (which had become the sewing grotto!) on the agenda, and of course, it’s Plough Monday which means, the farming and growing year starts here.

Image from the Ladybird book The Farmer © Penguin Random House