Blog

A selection of our writings from 2009 to the present. If you'd like to keep up to date with our latest posts, please subscribe below.

Subscribe

Category: wild foods

Alba the brave (our week of screenings, meetups and foragings in Scotland)

Aug 23, 2026 | adventure, Alba (Scotland), camping, children's learning, community, community sufficiency, ecological economy making, enclosures, farming and colonisation, fishing, food culture, foraging, fungi, locavorism, neopeasant culture making, permaculture, rabbits, reculturing, relocalisation, revillaging, school of the road, social warming, travel, walked-for food, wild foods | 30 comments

We crossed unceremoniously into the rolling borders of Alba – the Scots Gaelic word for Scotland.

We headed to Ian Hamilton Finlay’s Little Sparta in the Pentland Hills,

to test out the right to roam principle in Scotland. We drove up the laneway and got as far as here (Little Sparta is just beyond the trees). We got out of our little hire car, stretched our legs and inhaled the good air, when

along came the farmer on a quad bike. “May I ask what you’re doing here?” he said in a stern though fair-minded Borders accent. “Can we not camp here?” Patrick replied, to which the farmer gave us a thorough explanation about the limited access to Little Sparta, which was currently closed and probably beyond our budget anyway. It was getting on, we needed somewhere else to test the right to roam. Nice fat cows, green pastures. Scotland was not in drought like the south of England only a pebble’s throw from here.

From Little Sparta we found ourselves winding and wefting through delicious country and popped out at West Linton, and pitched our tent on the village green (a corner of which begins here),

just across the way from this little cemetery.

We were taken by this little town and reflected on the town clock centrepiece. When town clocks began to appear across Europe and lives began to become ever increasingly organised by clock time, what was lost? This too-fast-for-pilgrimage adventure has had its side effects. Ordinarily when we travel by bicycle or on foot, time spreads out horizontally and it feels like a week is lived in a day.

Under the orders of a rental car and a full itinerary we are living in an industrial haze (an off-gassing city on four wheels) with little moments of getting out of the machine for connection and kinship.

From West Linton in the south we bolted to Findhorn in the north. When this itinerary of screenings was being crafted we looked on the map and saw that these distances (at least from an Australian perspective) where not that far. However, unlike back at home, when a journey is stated as being four hours long one needs to double that here in the UK.

When we get out of the machine our relating bodies default into a state of walked-for food creatureliness, craving the nourishments of Mother Country.

We arrived at Cullerne House at Findhorn, and pitched our tent among the happy cohort of permaculture students camping there.

We met a bunch of inspired folk and prepared for the screening and Q&A in this space.

Imagine 70-80 people squashed into these rooms to watch The New Peasants. The audience laughed and sighed, cried and cheered and afterwards asked a string of goodly questions late into the night. There was a wonderful buzz followed by a few days to have lengthier conversations and make deeper connections. Meet Kelly! Homeschooling mum of four, radical homemaker, powerhouse of positivity, AaF blog reader and super supporter. Kelly was the reason we came to Findhorn,

and she brought us many gifts, including her family’s heather honey. Yum!

We two adults have been fairly under slept on this journey so far. Another big gift was Kelly taking Woody out for a day of fishing. He caught a bunch of undersized pollock (lythe), that he put back.

After we adults woke from our nap, we explored Findhorn Ecovillage, stopping in at the Universal Hall,

and later visiting Sylvia and Cornelia, who had invited us for lunch (complete with delicious gifted apple tart).

Patrick spent an evening in a well worn Findhorn pub with Jonathan Dawson, who co-created Schumacher College’s Regenerative Economics programme. Both sipping a nourishing pint of Guinness over several hours, sharing their thoughts, work and experiences. It was a special night while Meg and Woody connected with homeschooling families living at the ecovillage.

The next day we departed this most northern part of our travels and returned to the fast road. Oh badger! We only ever see you in this state.

We returned south through lands misted in heather.

Being on a quieter road south we had a little more agency to pull over, the gift of which we take for granted back home.

While in Alba we have been learning more about the enclosures and The Clearances that have resulted in a handful of people having the majority of the rights to the land and income. We learned that while fiercely contested over the centuries by raiders,

access to land for growing food, and for hunting and fishing is mostly out of reach for the average punter. Unlike in Australia and the US, where hunting and fishing for subsistence is accessible to a broad spread of folk, in Alba – where land and inland waterways are largely controlled by a small handful of land owners – hunting and fishing is mostly a class concern.

We are understanding that the right to roam ethic is merely the elite classes throwing the mob a manky bone – ‘We’ll control the land, take all its riches, and have majority access to its wealth, and occasionally you mob can walk across a field, pitch a tent, and have a little fish (in designated areas). However, if you take a salmon or a deer from our lands to feed your family we will call this poaching. Hunting and fishing is what gentlemen do.’

In a charity shop we found a timely copy of Danny the Champion of the World. Not only a wonderful story for Woody to read but a manifesto for all who have self-respect, and want to safeguard common-folk life for the future.

On the way back south we stopped at a little village called Boat of Garten, where a local, Kevin, called us in. Kevin has been a long-time blog reader and when he heard we were coming Alba way he offered to host a community screening and meetup in his home village. We stayed with his gorgeous family,

and Kevin took us on a little journey before the gig, which included foraging wild raspberries,

and guiding us to a happy pop-up woodland pub called the Gather Inn.

This sweet woodland was full of people thinking and acting for the relocalisation of food and culture, and it was mightily intergenerational with zip lines, cubbies and magical hangs.

A pretty nice old homestead resided next door to the pop-up pub,

and when Patrick looked down after he took the above photograph he discovered a helpless little critter in the grass.

Sadly, this little newborn rabbit was likely not going to grow up and live a goodly rabbity life among the hedgerows nor bound about the fields where these grand old cattle folk graze. Highland cattle can withstand the brutal Scottish winters outside.

We have to keep reminding ourselves that these are indigenous species – rabbit, blackberry, cattle and thistle – and unlike at home, there is no government regime for spraying the plants or deliberately spreading virus among rabbit populations.

So much of the biota of what constitutes our peoples’ medicine is freely living here. “Hello yarrow, my old friend.”

We gathered at the community centre in Boat of Garten and Kevin warmly introduced us and the film. It was a bonnie night of connecting and many conversations followed,

including back at Kevin’s where he poured a few drams of his favourite local whisky before bed.

The next day Kevin took us for a walk in the woodland behind his home. We excitedly gathered up chanterelles,

and wild blueberries among the tick realm of the heather.

We glimpsed a Common lizard in the undergrowth,

and two boys in the tree tops.

We gathered Penny Buns,

and orange birch boletes.

During the morning’s exploration in the woodland with Kevin and his two children, Dusty and Sorley

a morning which included spotting two roe deer and conversations about hunting, poaching and augmenting community organised food security, we gathered up a capful of mushrooms to take on our way.

We returned to the big road, passing both little and large curios of interest, too fast,

and then, for about an hour, at a snail’s pace.

Eventually, we crossed the hypertechnocivil suspension bridge back towards Edinburgh,

and arrived at Chris’s permaculture oasis in Penicuik in time for dinner. Chris had a number of volunteers staying with him, including Eleanor from France,

and he’d set up some tents for us to sleep in among the garden and various building projects.

Chris was getting his food, shelter and energy needs in order, and his volunteers were helping and learning, obtaining practical skills, which they were actively seeking.

The town centre of Penicuik was just up the way,

and a brisk walk before breakfast offered lovely heights. It is considerably colder here.

On our second night at Chris’s, Patrick cut and cooked our little haul of woodland mushrooms,

as our contribution to a potluck. Meg gave an honouring of the food,

and Woody learned new games. There was much discussion about The New Peasants,

which we’d showed earlier in the day at the University of Edinburgh, in a room above and to the left of this grand archway at the Old Medical School.

While walking around the city, Woody spotted a ball kicking scene and we asked to join in.

After a kick we glimpsed a hillocky rock through the city streets,

and knew we needed to get there. So we adults walked and Woody flew

to Arthur’s Seat,

where we startled a mother pheasant and her chick (out of frame),

before descending into an eight foot high patch of nettle.

In many places in urban Alba we’re reminded of Ivor Cutler’s, Life In A Scotch Sitting Room, Vol. 2, Ep. 11,

and in other places high-walled fortification speaks of pre-industrial militarisation, which Ian Hamilton Findlay was dancing with at Little Sparta.

Today power and colonialism are more covert, camouflaged in neoliberal window dressing. It appears as though we are evolved and peaceful, yet we modern subjects of capital are part of the most destructive empire to have ever existed.

This is the Edinburgh ‘Futures’ Institute where Patrick had academic work to do, invited by the University of Edinburgh.

While his dad was co-examining a doctoral thesis, Woody was contributing creatively at the Fringe Festival.

After Edinburgh we journeyed south to Macbiehill to stay with (another) Chris and Erinn,

in their lovely home.

Chris showed Woody how to make a bowl on his lathe,

and Erinn took us into their garden’s young food forest.

We shared a few gentle days with these goodly folk, yarning and gathering stories, and drinking a delicious elder flower sparkling wine made from this purple variety,

and devouring a magnificent haggis. You could tell Woody was not enjoying himself in Alba.

Growing up as a forager since birth, Woody never fails to be delighted by land that offers hidden treasures,

and while the wild raspberry party roamed, and Chris tended the haggis, Patrick walked along the road and brought back a bunch of lush dandelion leaves and three mature horse mushrooms to add to a horta dish.

Before we left, Chris and Erinn took us around to their friend James’ place for a meetup. James is a permaculture teacher and is currently building his family’s home with larch poles.

James and his family might be the only ones in Alba to have mature grapes on the vine.

James gave us a tour of his woodland, and the structures he and his volunteers have built.

One volunteer, Sam from New Zealand (blue t-shirt below, with Woody and Arlo) had recently returned from an IDF prison after being kidnapped from the flotilla. He and Woody had a great time talking about the merits of being unschooled.

Our time in Alba was winding up and we farewelled our new friends, dropped off the hire car in Glasgow and headed to the central train station.

We trained and stopped, ate blackberries,

and bussed to the west coast,

where at Stranraer we came to camp. We bought some bread and cheese and walked the town, encountering a medieval tower-house converted to a Victorian prison,

and an Episcopalian house of worship,

before pitching our tent for the night.

It was a rough Friday night in the park. Alcohol and hotted up street cars raged the streets til late, and when we woke at 5.50am the next day to catch the Cairnryan ferry to Éire, we had no idea of the big day that would unfold. More on that to come.

For those in Éire, we are screening The New Peasants at An Teach Saor in County Galway on August 25. If you are local and would like to come along, please get in touch for more information. If you are further afield, An Teach Saor (Irish for ‘The Free House’) is a land-based permaculture community and gift-economy smallholding in County Galway.

Community Sufficiency – living within gift, non-monetary and subsistence economies

Jul 19, 2026 | animals in subsistence permaculture, Artist as Family online event, autonomous edibles, bees, belonging economies, bicycles, biological control, cars, collapse, community gardens, community op-shop, community schooling, community sufficiency, creative frugality, ecological economy making, ecological knowledges, economics, edible weeds, energy descent, family, farming, ferals, fermenting, fishing, flow of gifts, food co ops, food sovereignty, foraging, gift economy, goats, home economies, hunting, Hypertechnocivility, Insurance, locavorism, love, map, medicinal plants, mushrooms, neopeasant culture making, permaculture, post-industrial thought, preserving, rabbits, radical homemakers, raising boys, reculturing, regenerative culture, relationships, relocalisation, resistance, revillaging, roadkill, salvaging, storytelling, subsistence economy, subsistence permaculture, the commons, walked-for food, wild foods, wood energy | 0 comments

 
We hosted our third July online session last Thursday night, Community Sufficiency – living within gift, non-monetary and subsistence economies. Over a hundred people signed up and many asked goodly questions that expanded the consciousness of the subject. We hope you enjoy this next offering.

 
Here is the audio-only version,
 

 

 
or you can watch it.
 

We hope you are enjoying these sessions, and that they are adding to your deliberations, plannings and responding to the predicaments of our times.

Our next session is Joyful resistance, an online tour of Tree Elbow, our 18 year old permaculture home. We look forward to explaining all the main hubs, hacks and behaviour changes that have enabled our transition to living well with little money.

Responses to the predicament of our times (with David Holmgren and Patrick Jones)

Apr 21, 2026 | agriculture, animals in subsistence permaculture, appropriate technology, belonging economies, Big Tech, capitalism, climate change, collapse, Collective preparedness, commons, community sufficiency, conflict, creative frugality, David Holmgren, energy descent, farming, fear, ferals, food sovereignty, fossil fuels, gift economy, goats, government, health, hitch hiking, home economies, Indigenous Australians, locavorism, medicinal plants, neopeasant culture making, parenting, permaculture, propaganda, public transport, radical homemakers, reculturing, regenerative culture, relocalisation, School of Applied Neopeasantry, walked-for food, war, wild foods | 26 comments

~

In this offering, permaculture elder David Holmgren is our guest in discussion with Patrick speaking about this next phase of global energy transition, and thus societal transformation in the local context.

Here’s the audio version (1hr 52mins).



David and Patrick’s hour-long conversation is followed by a compost of goodly questions from community participants who gathered and shared food together for this event. We hope that this long-form drop will aid in your preparations for the coming months.

This event recently took place at the School of Applied Neopeasantry, Tree Elbow University in Djaara Mother Country.

Huge, hug-filled thanks to Jordan Osmond from Folklore Pictures (formally Happen Films) for both the sound and vision.

We’d love to hear from you about your preparations, priorities and musings at this time.

The road to Ladakh (in the steps of the ancient ones)

Sep 15, 2024 | autonomous edibles, building, culture, family on bikes, farming, food culture, food medicine, foraging, goats, health, interspecies relating, lifemaking, locavorism, medicinal plants, sacred country, social warming, street food, water, wild foods | 39 comments

We don’t like to find out too much before we venture to a new place, and we’re glad we didn’t know what was ahead of us when we woke at 4am to leave Manali at 5 in a 16 seat bus.

We climbed and winded through the dark for a few hours and as the sun broke we became aware we were moving into completely new terrain; a terra of glaciers connected to the Himalayas.

This is a dry-cold Mother Country,

inhabited by sheep, goats,

and shepherds.

India is a country of almost two billion people; most of whom do not live here, in the remote parts of Himachal Pradesh and Ladakh.

The scale of the mountains astonished us,

and as we climbed we began to feel cold for the first time since leaving central Australia months earlier.

The intensity of the climb, the winding and bumpy roads began to unsettle Woody. He had his first vomit

before our first road stop. He declined breakfast, but us adults had roadside chai and omelettes. None of us had jumpers to put on. Our wind and rain jackets were in our bags roped to the top of the van. Woody was grateful for the scarf his dad knitted him to keep him warm, and for his mum’s hugs.

This road from Manali to Leh will be closed in the coming months, due to snow.

We each had on all the layers we had,

and carried on climbing into the clouds,

and ice.

This high country desert is like no other environment we’ve experienced.

It was no smooth ride. Like the bus trip from Dharamshala to Manali, the driver threw us from side to side, racing at the hairpin bends, then braking suddenly. We don’t know whether it was motion or altitude sickness, but Woody threw up everything his body had, including his stomach bile, until he was just dry retching.

The physical intensity inside the bus was accompanied by the immense physical beauty of these lands.

The road was unforgiving in places,

and again, it was a journey encompassing a string of near-deaths.

What a magnificent place to die!

Much of the road didn’t have any barriers to stop vehicles going over the edge.

The vomit bag needed emptying regularly out the window.

Retaining walls, holding sections of the road in place, had given way.

As passengers, our attention flickered between oncoming challenges,

and spectacular beauty and life force.

As picture makers our beginner eyes marvelled as our stomachs churned.

It was joy and discomfort riffing each other, with fellow mammal Asiatic ibex coming into the mix at places,

and little settlements offering sustenance and motion relief.

We did not take the recommended pharmaceutical (Diamox, made by Pfizer), not just because of the long list of adverse effects these junk science tablets contain, but because we know we are hardier than the industrial medical complex gives our bodies credit for, and we trust the old ways – ginger, water, chewing and belching as one climbs, exerting little as one adjusts. Woody couldn’t stomach any of these things, except for sitting, exerting little.

As the hours passed, the road became wilder, and roadworks brought we traffic-species to a halt.

Desert rock became finer,

and more intriguing.

We stopped for lunch. Woody stayed on the bus and slept, while his parents entered a little Ladakhi café with fellow travellers.

We were all in a trance as we ate dhal and rice, and drank lemon, ginger and honey tea. The air was thin,

and our urine flowed more quickly than usual from our bodies. After lunch we visited the most beautiful dunny in the world.

Ladakh borders Pakistan controlled land, the Tibet Autonomous Region, the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh, Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir, and China. Until 1960, when the Chinese government blocked access, it was a centre of trade along the Indus Valley between Tibet, Kashmir, India and China.

As the day aged the temperature warmed, and for a while we felt the comfort of the sun.

We had travelled only 300kms in the first several hours when we reached a plain with momentary sealed and straight roads.

Such comforts were short lived. We climbed again, and twisted and vomited up into snow country,

reaching the dizzying altitude of 5,329m at the very climax of the journey.

We met frozen rock,

and overturned vehicles,

mountain ponies,

and Changthangi goats and herders as we descended into the Leh district of Ladakh.

As we approached Leh, the largest human centre in Ladakh, small-scale agrarian settlements popped up through the rock. Many of the roofs of the houses supported cut hay, drying for the coming winter.

The annual rainfall in Leh is 35mm. Farmers and growers rely on melted glacial waters, which despite the land’s desert appearance,

is in abundance in the rivers and irrigation networks that feed into the homes, farms and settlements.

After 11 hours of travelling, we arrived in Leh in the late afternoon. Modern, touristy Leh, we noticed, is being transformed by cold concrete,

while old Leh is built with thermal-friendly clay and rock.

In a clay, rock and manure version of shelter culture, Mr Adani and his mines are not required.

We walked from the bus station to a cheap hotel room that offered beds but no running water, dumped our bags and headed out to explore. It was at this point, Woody, who had vomited 14 times throughout the day, turned to his parents and said, “The beauty of that journey was so worth the discomfort.”

We found ourselves in a remarkable town,

with much history and prayer,

a town of 260,000 people,

built into rock and cloud,

with stupas on every corner.

and dogs, cattle and donkeys wandering the streets.

Leh is a town of cultural life force and of unmediated death,

of celebration and festival,

and, like much of northern India, it is yet another place of radically untuned traffic.

Local growers sell their vegetables,

their fruits,

and their saved seeds in the streets.

These farmers delighted us with their joy and wisdom,

and with their passion for their food.

We cannot get enough of the beautiful acceptance for earth-others inhabiting human-centric settlements in India.

Woody was particularly drawn to the local ass.

At times, we could not get enough air in Leh, at an altitude of 3,524m and with only 65% oxygen in every breath, we often had to stop and slow. Right. Down.

So much life attracted our senses in Leh. Old bulls scavenge the detritus on the streets,

and at the markets,

and little back alleys led us to quieter accommodations.

At Ree-Yul guesthouse, where we moved to after our first night, we met four Kashmiri motorbike travellers. We yarned in the sunny courtyard, they offered advice for our next leg, and invited us to take a pic with Woody on one of their bikes.

Each day we wandered the streets, seeking to lose ourselves in daily life here.

We beheld the preparations for winter, and the many local poplars (Populus nigra ‘Afghanica‘).

The stark qualities between human and more-than-human made forms.

The modern and makeshift.

and got among the forage-worthy plants,

such as the fruit-medicine sea-buckthorn (Hippophae rhamnoides).

These fruits, also known as Leh berries or Ladakhi Gold, are rich in antioxidants and essential minerals including potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron and phosphorous. Fresh off the bush they taste lemony and slightly astringent. On our last afternoon, we ordered a juice of this berry from a local restaurant.

For $15 we hired a motor scooter for a day and headed out of town a little.

The three of us on one little scooter slowly meandered up high above the town,

arriving at the 15th century Victory Fort on Tsemo Hill.

We paused for a while, looking out

and up

and through

remnant cultural structures of the past, as they stand in the present. We descended back into Leh and took chai,

before heading off to find one of the main sources of life in this little city, the Indus River. This took some time as the main road travelled alongside this mighty water serpent, but never within reach, with few side roads to take. We stopped for a lunch of Tibetan thukpa (noodle soup),

and with goodly nourishment in our bellies, eventually found a road to the river.

We spent time by the Indus, washing our feet,

yarning and knitting,

and it was here Woody learnt to ride a motor scooter.

Leh will remain in our hearts as the apex of this journey. Much like Hope Vale was on our 400 day bicycle adventure to Cape York, Leh is our most northern stop. As we ready to leave here, and descend south we feel a returning spirit enter us. Excitement for home, for reconnecting with friends, family and community. This air, albeit thin, is feeding us with new possibilities and projects ahead. We still have time in India ahead of us, and we remain present to what is in the now, but there is a turning at this juncture. There is both sadness and excitement.

Is there a time and place for binary thinking? Or, what mythos do you serve?

Dec 7, 2023 | appropriate technology, autonomous edibles, belonging economies, bush school, capitalism, censorship, children's learning, colonialism, community, community sufficiency, Compassionate anarchism, creative frugality, democracy, Djaara mother country, earth stewardship, edible weeds, flow of gifts, food medicine, foraging, Free to learn, gift economy, government, human rights, Industrial culture, lifemaking, love, media, medical fascism, medicinal plants, Mother Country, neopeasant culture making, permaculture, post-industrial thought, radical homemakers, regenerative culture, relocalisation, safetyism, social warming, state violence, transitional communities, Unschool, village rebuilding, walked-for food, wild foods | 16 comments

 

Do you stand against the abuses of institutional power in all forms and legalisms?

Do you stand against those who try to convince you health is dependent on industrial pharmacy?

Do you stand against politicians who fake democracy and grow corporatism?

Do you stand against industrial pollutants, contaminants and toxins that cause unnecessary disease and thus suffering?

Do you stand against anthropocentric capitalisms and socialisms, and the various city-centric ruinations they bring to life?

Do you stand against media that is permissive to the imperatives of Empire, power and global industrialisms?

Do you stand against the iatrogenocide that is the ‘Covid response’ by the state-Pharma nexus?

Do you stand against safetyism, paternalism and nanny statism, which render people immobile and dependent on institutions and industries that are manipulative and controlling?

Do you stand against the NATO/Azov nazi/US invoked genocide of Ukrainian youth by a reactive and bullish Russia?

Do you stand against the century-long genocide of Palestinians by British, US and Israeli colonists?

Do you stand against the extraction of fossil fuels and rare earth minerals used to power a false flag renewables industry?

Do you stand against cultural or political groups who silence and smear others based on their beliefs and values?

Do you stand against large-scale industries including factory farms, agricultural chemicals, pharmaceuticals and sweat shops that mistreat humans, animals and complex biota?

Do you stand against a King (and others like him dripping in privilege) arrogantly calling for an end to ‘convenience’?

Do you stand with the people of villages, towns, cities and suburbs who in their own power and capacity claim for themselves an end to industrial-scale convenience and consumption?

Do you stand with the flowering, fruiting and singing of Mother Country and Grandmother Gaia and everything else that is sacred and not industrially conformed?

Do you stand with life that enables more delicious life to cross over into necessary death and decay, and back into more abundance?

Do you stand for a future society that doesn’t help raise sociopaths or psychopaths into positions of power and influence?

Do you stand with eldership, mentorship and rites of passage, which mark the accruing of wisdoms, and the witnessing of all in the village, regardless of their stage in life?

Do you stand for the flow of gifts across all species and within all species?

Do you stand for distributed wealth, access to land for all, and subsistence economies that are earth-honouring?

Do you stand for the economic interweaving of community sufficiency and autonomous household productivity?

Do you stand with the rivers and creeks – the veins of the world that take life force to the largest biomes – the oceans?

Do you stand with mountains, caves, hills and rocks, and any undulation within the terrain of any Mother Country that enables the magic of surprise, and the shadow world from where wisdom springs?

Do you stand with the seeds that are our heritages, which have made our cultures of belonging, and will do so again?

Do you stand with the smallest biomes, bodily biomes and microbial communities, as extensions of Mother Country and Grandmother Gaia?

Do you stand with Mother Country and Grandmother Gaia, honour them in the way in which you live, and defend them from machine mind in whatever capacity you have to do so?

Do you stand with both individual freedoms and communitarian care, without one eroding the other?

Do you recognise that true consent is not possible when metered out by top-down authority?

Do you stand with pollinators, in all forms, recognising the monumental gifts they bring to lifemaking?

Do you stand with the fungal webs that rule the worlds of the world, including the unreal worlds of hubristic human Empires that will always collapse and turn back into the mycelial realm?

Do you stand with humus and humility, and recognise they have derived from the same root word?

Do you stand with your herbal and medicinal plant commons, the remnant traces of your indigenous liberty and soul, which continue to bring gifts to your health and to your meaning making?

Do you stand with ecological killing in order to take life that makes more life possible, outside of a ‘man-made mass death’ cosmology, where at arm’s length civilisational violence occurs on your behalf as an industrial-food-dependent vegan, vegetarian or omnivore?

Do you stand with empowering young people to obtain skills for the future, both pragmatic and sacred (such as deep listening and beholding, foraging, gardening, forestry and hunting)?

Do you stand with village rebuilding and grass roots, cultural, ecological and microbial diversity?

 

Here are the Forest & Free children after harvesting 1.5kg of narrow leaf plantain (Plantago lanceolata) seed heads for psyllium. This plantain is a common, ancestral (Eurasia) and abundant plant that brings healing food-medicine to our lives. The kids collected this amount in just twenty minutes. Each week they learn about a new food or medicine that is not under lock and key, so they can build the skills, knowledges and daily rituals to augment their own pathways to freedom, responsibility and wisdom. We run Forest & Free within a gift economy.

So, does binary thinking have a place? In the absence of binaries how do we form our values? Is it possible to live without binaries?

We’d love to hear from you. When is binary thinking problematic? When is it useful? Would you answer yes to any the above questions? All? We hope this post generates some goodly discussion, and serves the contemporary dialectic for what mythos, what world story, we want to serve.

Household gift economies, Blue Mountains style

Jan 28, 2014 | bike-camping, bushfires, family on bikes, foraging, garden design, gift economy, wild foods | 9 comments
This jaunt, this adventure, this research trip, this AaF-for-president-national-tour, this blessed extreme year on bikes in this new era of extreme weather, collapsing economies and peaking crude oil supply is the best bloody thing we’ve ever done. Predicated on chance encounters, uncertain destinations, biophysical challenges, autonomous foods and unpredictable weathers we approach each day as it so generously comes.

After a week in Katoomba the weather turned fairly wet and cold. We’d earlier met a particularly sweet family in a local park and they messaged us to come over and stay with them to see the bad weather out.

“Yes, we’d love to but only if we could do some sort of exchange, like a garden design…”

Our two babies, Woody and Lily, were born on the very same day, only two hours apart. But we had more in common than this remarkable fact. Food, what we consume and where it comes from, was a significant topic of discussion and so was the subject of permaculture. We took it in turns to cook and we showed off again the gentle delight of daylily buds by tossing them through a pasta dish.

Thanks Lily, Guy and Kirsten! So great to have met you and spent a few days in your home. After leaving Katoomba our new destination was just a short ride away to the town of Leura, passing through beautiful country to get there.

It was in Leura we stayed with another family, old friends through poetry networks: Ruby, Kate, Pete and Felix.

Despite being old friends we were keen to continue the communitarian gift economy exchange, sharing the kitchen work,

the gardening work (which included summer pruning, tomato bed preparation and compost setting),

and, on our last night together, some gentle foraging to make a Blue Mountains salad.

After adding olive oil, lemon and salt we had a classic bitter bowl of goodness to finish the meal.

We said farewell to our sweet friends of the mountains on a cool sunny morning,

and legged it downhill at thrilling speed. Our destination was to be somewhere along a river near Richmond, and so inevitably we passed both the regeneration and rebuilding that was occurring after the recent bushfires.

We arrived at Yarramundi in the heat of the afternoon and hopped straight in to the cool waters where the Nepean and Grose Rivers empty in to the upper reaches of the Hawkesbury River,

where we remained until dusk and prepared dinner,

fished for mullet and bass and aired out our bedding under the river she-oaks.

Much love and gratitude to the beautiful Blue Mountains and the people we met and stayed with. If you’re in South Australia, our thoughts are with you. More Catastrophic fire weather there right now, moving across to our loved ones in Victoria. With love and pedalspeed, AaF.