Last Thursday, Soil Voices went up to Langaford Farm on Dartmoor to give an invited talk/workshop about all things soily for a group of young people from the Bristol based Black2Nature group. We discussed all the wonderful things that come from soil, and how and why our soil is degrading. Although some of the participants had access to gardens, none of them had really thought that much about soil before.
We spent the first half of the session learning about soil, getting up close and feeling the cool-ness at the bottom of a soil pit despite the blazing heat of the sun, and then marvelling at worm traces and holes left by miner bees. In the second part, everyone went off with some paper and a pen and spent some time getting to know the soil through the use of all five senses. We live in such a visual culture, that we sometimes do not give our other senses a chance to experience the world – it’s amazing what you can discover when you stop for a moment and give yourself a few moments to listen, to feel, and to smell things.
Black2Nature was set up in 2015 by Mya-Rose Craig, a young bird-watching enthusiast who is an Ambassador for Survival International and a Charter Champion for The Charter for Woods, Trees and People. Read more about Mya and Black2Nature here:
http://birdgirluk.blogspot.com/2018/09/race-equality-in-nature-and-black2nature.html