Still Rewilding — an Update

Hi again. It’s me. I promised to write regularly and then I didn’t. In fact, I have 4 false started drafts sitting there, all becoming more and more outdated.

So, today I’m going to bash out a quick little update. I’ve got so much to say, so many learnings. I wrote my last update over a year ago. Since then I’ve been busy.

I started a web design business, providing me with a tap root into the capitalist economy. Money is always needed to exist with some degree of choice within civilisation and using the lucrative skillset I’ve built over the years was an obvious choice when deciding how to make it. I’m not going hard to trying to scale or make as much money as I can. I have some wonderful clients that provide me a good living wage and that’s enough for my needs.

I’ve also now almost fully realised my plan for the vegetable garden and it’s surpassed all my expectations. The no-dig method has enabled me to quickly spin up a very productive garden and we have been harvesting vegetables for ourselves, friends, family and neighbours since the beginning of Summer. While we still buy things like lemons, limes, bananas, salt, oil and meat around 95% of our vegetables come directly from the garden. The YouTube channels of Charles Dowding and fellow Welshie Huw Richards have been particularly helpful in learning how to create this nourishing paradise.

And it’s not just filled our bellies, but our souls too.

The vegetable garden has become our favourite place to spend time. Our morning ritual now involves make a caffeinated drink and walking down to the garden. There’s just so much to look at and things change all the time. The buzz of bees or the ‘chup chup’ of black birds amongst the silence brings joy. In contrast to an existence within human civilisation I think there’s something enriching about spending time around living things doing what’s in their Nature — affected only by environmental conditions vs social etiquette.

I’ve been documenting the experience visually on Instagram and I think the best way to quickly show where things are at is with a screenshot from that.

Faced with a more uncertain world I believe the role of people growing food locally for themselves and their communities is going to increase in importance. There is so much more to reflect on — as I grow my garden, my self control and discipline I aim to get into a rhythm of writing shorter and snappier pieces and hope to share ideas for projects to enable more people to access growing their own food.