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: youngtimers

Ecological participation (guiding child-led learning in a forest)

Jul 11, 2026 | alternative education, Artist as Family course, bush school, children's learning, community education, ecological knowledges, forest wisdom, Free to learn, home educating, homeschool, Industrial culture, interspecies relating, medicinal plants, Mother Country, play, post-industrial thought, praise, reculturing, regenerative culture, relationships, revillaging, rites of passage, unschooling & not at school, wounding, youngtimers | 4 comments

 

Greetings from wet wintry Tree Elbow.

Today we are sharing both audio-only and video versions of our recent online session, Ecological participation (guiding child-led learning in a forest). Once again the format is a one hour presentation by Magpie and Blue Wren (with cameos by Woody and Lilly Pilly), followed by 30 minutes of goodly question time.

Here is the audio-only version,

 

and here is the video.

And speaking of ecological participation, we also share here two recent videos from Woody’s channel, Making venison jerky and Chopping wood with a Viking-made splitter.

As always your comments and responses are most welcome, and if you’d like to book in for either of the next two online sessions, you can do so here: Community sufficiency – living within gift, non-monetary and subsistence economies and Joyful resistance – online house and garden tour (the nuts and bolts of our systems).

Sending you rainy, wintery love from our hearth,
Artist as Family

Neopeasant subsistence (a photo essay by Max Roux)

Jun 4, 2025 | belonging economies, Collective preparedness, community sufficiency, creative frugality, degrowth, direct action, earth stewardship, energy descent, farming, fermenting, food medicine, gift economy, home economies, homelife, interspecies relating, land management, lifemaking, locavorism, love, low-carbon, magic, Mother Country, neopeasant culture making, neopeasant forestry, permaculture, radical homemakers, reculturing, School of Applied Neopeasantry, social warming, storytelling, subsistence permaculture, SWAP (Social Warming Artists and Permaculturalists), transitional communities, village rebuilding, walked-for food, youngtimers | 32 comments

 

Last week we hosted a share house of five goodly youngtimers from the burbs of the city south of here. Max Roux was one of them. Max slung his camera over his shoulder as we forested, farmed, gardened, creeked, salvaged, ate, played, loved and listened to one another. This post is from the fruits of that connection and Max’s sleeves-rolled-up documentation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can see more of Max’s work here.

Can conflict end? (a new song in the family, and a young pup)

Jan 22, 2025 | celebration, children, conflict, culture, family, lifemaking, love, music, peace, song, Video, youngtimers | 20 comments

 

Hello! It’s been a while. So many spores of thought, of doing, of feeling and living have moved around us in these parts. A catch up post is imminent. However, in the meantime, we have a little sharing to offer.

This mid summer has seen the birth of a new song in the family. We sing and play it here, juxtaposed with 1950s super8 footage of family taken by Patrick’s grandfather, Fred Jones. It shows a post war time when life was less hectic and far less mediated.

It’s a peace song. The lyrics recognise that each of us has work to do to bring about peace and end war. Physical war. Ideological war. It’s a reminder song, for us, and anyone else who finds resonance with it.

By not giving power to those who construct conflict and by recognising the conflict we create within ourselves that feeds external conflict in our homes, communities and beyond, is for us the dance of consciousness.

This song was first inspired by Krishnamurti’s book of the same name.

Oh, and this is Lilly Pilly, laying beside Krishnamurti. She’s the newest mammal member of the family. More about her another time.

So, without further ado, here is Can conflict end? written by Patrick, edited by Meg and featuring the vocals of Patrick, Meg and Woody, alongside Patrick’s blackwood wattle guitar finger picking and Meg’s pear wood recorder playing.

Gratitude, in advance, for your deep listening.

Here is the audio-only version.

 

We welcome your comments, Dear Reader. What came up for you while listening and/or watching?

German Bakery (in Old Manali)

Sep 8, 2024 | colonialism, poem, rites of passage, travel, youngtimers | 18 comments

A poem by Patrick

 

 

I sit with young Israelis
in a German bakery
in northern India
their coffee arriving
to cigarettes
and laughter
in dream catcher apparel

I read Krishnamurti
with chai and jaggery
“Religion,” he speaks,
“…[mostly] a matter
of propaganda, of
vested interest, with
much property, with a
great hierarchical,
bureaucratic system
of spirituality.”

I can see
the destruction
of Israel
in its destruction
of Palestine –
for, can a home
(even 77 years old)
ever be home
if murder is required
to sleep in it?

My chai
a comfort of sorts
with sweet Israeli youth
leaving the promise
in high numbers
drifting here
with roadside
cannabis
unsettlement