Why am I writing a blog?

Why am I writing a blog?

I am a farmer. I am in pursuit of the health of body, mind, soul and spirit.

I am not alone when I state that we need to pursue the health of body and mind and of spirit. We need to steward the land that God has given us which in turn will nourish and bring peace to the people that eat and engage with the food we produce.

But farming nowadays is not the communal  vocation it once was. 100 years ago our small farm would have perhaps employed half a dozen men at a guess. Now it can barely justify one part-time employee. So it is hard to share knowledge on a day to day basis with people who have the same goals.

Add to this the fact that knowledge of local or landrace varieties of plants, animal breeds and production methods have been substituted by ‘scientific’ and formulaic approaches to food production, which removes the need for farmers to share in the way that they may have done in the past.

The result is that we are producing a fragmented and disconnected rural community,  and we are producing plants and animals that, being unhealthy in themselves, are resulting in poor health in the human beings that eat them. And farmers are stuck on large islands of land, often making so little profit that they are too busy to engage with these wider issues.

Can a blog solve this? No. Perhaps it is a first step though.