Wow! That went quickly. This time last week I was at the Oxford Real Farming Conference with 1800 other people present in person, and 4,000 people joining online – making it the largest agroecological gathering ever to be held – excited and getting ready for the Soil Voices workshop that I gave on Friday morning with the help of Poppy Flint from the Underfoot project – find it here: https://poppyflint.com/project/underfoot/
The conference started with the beats of Japanese Taiko drummers that set the scene for the thrumming atmosphere that permeated the next two days. There were so many things I wanted to go to and so many things I missed – so hoping to catch up with some of the online sessions later, and already looking forward to next year. Apart, of course, from Vandana Shiva in conversation with Jyoti Fernandes, one of my favourite talks was Intuitive Farming and Other Natural Ways of Knowing, where I heard about the ecological journey of the wonderful Flora and Miche from Studio Fabre Hardy and how they got to know a piece of land – see: https://www.studiofabrehardy.earth/for-the-love-of-a-field-1 . They were followed by medical herbalist Eleanor Gallia who talked about her sheep and her relationship to the landscape of her field; and homeopath Jackie Pearce-Dickens.
Throughout the conference Poppy and I gathered lots of mini-soil stories that were written in response to prompts and posted into our wonderful compose/compost/decompose caddies. Thanks to everyone that contributed – we ended up with over 80 responses – and these are soon to be shaped into a collaborative poem. – watch this space. Now, I need to unpack!