Blog
Our bitter harvest
For the first time since I chose to belong to this land, I have felt as if in my own body the urgency of its thirst. The psalmist’s analogies speak loud: the parched land craving showers like a shrivelled soul pining for the mercy of God, who sends down rain on the just and unjust alike, because all need to live.
The chorus of life
Farewell Izzy, Buffy and the girls. Thanks for the blue and brown eggs these past two years, not least those you left us among the feathers scattered in the coop like linen in a tomb.
The joy of the shepherd
The new Christopher Lamb – gambolling in a field on a farm near Hereford. The newly born “Christopher Lamb” makes a canine friend in his field near Hereford.
A Steaming Synod
My Wild Faith column in The Tablet of 5 January, on what good compost can teach us about synodality (and vice-versa).
Hive Minds
I pushed back when someone last year suggested bees. All I could imagine was a swarm on my back after some pheromone-triggering rookie slip-up.
Force of nature
In this full thrust of summer on our little farm, you’ll want me to wax about the gushing hedgerows, the meadow grasses spurting skywards, the thrumming of insects, that sort of thing.
Mercy on our lawns
Nothing says spring like the sound of polluting petrol mowers hammering nascent gardens into pristine striped carpets devoid of insects or mammals.
When soil smells sweet
In all the discussions about “building back greener” it is easy to overlook what is happening under our feet.
The Pope's miraculous well
Because I was noisily flail-mowing a patch of ground prior to digging in the saplings at the end of November I didn’t see or hear my wife until she was dancing in front of me miming monosyllables: THE … POPE … ON … THE … PHONE.
The point of wooly companions
We thought we were doing them a favour, but the vet was horrified. “Where actually, um, are they?” he asked, peering across our lush paddock. It was back in May, and our eight Ryeland sheep, delivered the previous day, had gone AWOL inside waist-high grass.
Power to the people
Since our 40 solar panels went up on a barn roof a couple of weeks back, we can’t stop looking at the app that shows where the electricity we use is coming from: the grid (boo!) or our array (yay!).
Happily cooped up and safe from Mr Fox
In Laudato Si’, which turned five recently, Pope Francis warned about the speed of activity rushing ahead of “the naturally slow pace of biological evolution.”