A Year of Books
My friend and fellow Substacker Sam Cooper and I have had a busy year in the writing department, and I want to thank you for supporting the work that we do in helping bring real food to the world, from garden to kitchen. Every like, comment, share, book purchase makes a huge difference for the projects we do independently and collaboratively - and so thank you again.
We have not stopped writing, at the moment we have just embarked on our next project which is to us the logical succession to our book The Self-Sufficiency Garden. It will be serialised in some form here on Substack for all of you to enjoy as a series, and this will commence in the new year.
Edible Perennial Plant of The Year
Earlier today on my YouTube channel I released a video showcasing the standout plant of the year, which you got to enjoy the first proper harvest of it on video in the last Huw’s Garden Diaries; Mashua. If you want to source mashua, eBay is a great place to look. At the garden we have just started to make the first steps towards creating a mail order plant nursery specialising in resilient plants for permaculture projects and edible landscaping, and limited numbers of mashua tubers/plants will be available next year. Stay tuned for updates.
The Weather
It has been so nice to have some cold weather recently and give the garden a proper winter reset as you can see from today’s diary. It now means that I have closure that it is the end of the season, and the opportunity to focus on brainstorming (and planting more fruit trees) has now arrived.
The spell of cold weather was followed by a string of stunning sunsets. A friend told me that they don’t understand how people cannot appreciate the sunset and walk on without noticing the incredible feat of nature. Not to mention the fact that no two sunsets are the same. Watching sunsets is one of my favourite hobbies, and I usually plan my day around being able to capture the sunset if the weather is suitable. Sadly there were fewer sunsets this year than I would have liked, but at least it made every other sunset all the more special. Here is a photo of a recent sunset over my hometown in Wales.
Perennial-Based Food Systems
There is currently a lot of chat about what is a sustainable diet, and how farming can become more sustainable. This is an area that truly fascinates me, and is the reason behind why I started my podcast to explore this with as many different voices as possible covering all aspects of what a sustainable food system could look like.
One thing that stands out to me is that I have yet to see a terrestrial ecosystem that is powered by annual plants. It is the perennials that create resilience, balance, and abundance. The benefit for annuals is that we can intensively farm them; according to the FAO, more than 40 percent of the world's daily calories come from three staple crops: rice, wheat and maize. Therefore, our food system does anything but mimic nature, and so I want to explore exactly what a perennial-based or perennial-first food system would look like for my context in Wales, as an alternative to what we have now.
I have a couple of interesting podcast episodes that look more at what a permaculture/land first diet and approach to food production may look like with James Reid (Tap o’ Noth Permaculture) and Patrick Holden (The Sustainable Food Trust). One of my projects next year is exploring what a UK grass-powered garden would look like (taking slugs into account), taking inspiration from the work Jim Kovaleski has done with his grass-fed market garden. There are many areas that I want to explore for this subject, and so I really hope you find the upcoming pieces of writing, videos, and podcast episodes fascinating and thought-provoking!
Watch the grass-fed video below:
Thank you for watching and reading, and I look forward to catching up with you again soon, Huw
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