My new passion is wandering around with my partner, getting to know plants. We are overwhelmed with the scent of privet and meadowsweet, delighted by the delicacy of hop clover and Yorkshire fog, surprised by vetch’s black seed pods, enthused by the possibility of acanthus (bear’s breeches) healing our house-mate’s dislocated shoulder.
Oh, the wonder of the Flora Incognita app.
We’re trying to develop a worldview of being in a peer-relationship with other beings, unlearning our anthropocentric, individualistic, mechanistic mindset.
It’s both strange and joyful to walk the same route each day and see the changes – who’s coming into bud, who’s setting seed, who’s growing up taller to get to the sun, who’s strangling the other plants.
For me, it seems like an easier challenge than developing relationships with other humans – I’m making more effort with my local plant neighbours than with my human ones.
I’ve never been very good at understanding people who don’t think like me (quite a lot of people), while at the same time we all (us communards) want to be doing popular education, community organising, people’s assemblies, and so on.
I console myself that we can’t do everything at once, surely that part of the project will take off once we attract some communards who love getting stuck into community activism.
Our job now is to develop our culture, skills and economic systems, so that we’ve got something to demonstrate to people.
One Sunday recently, we had a stall in Bentley Park (right behind our house) at the Bentley Bonanza – obviously the local outreach event of the year.
Let’s just say, we haven’t worked out how to pitch our message round here yet.
The stall opposite us was selling sealed plastic envelopes with mystery contents for £2 and often had a crowd round it.
The only interest in our beautiful new posters with their cool Bauhaus-inspired shapes, was someone asking how to play the game. Note for next year: have a game, offer mystery prizes for a quid, be shiny.
Our attempt to lure people in with home-made sausage rolls and cheap Vego chocolate was only partially successful (the mayor bought a bar, hurrah! – but we ate most of the sausage rolls ourselves), but a few people who already knew us came to find out how the farm was getting on.
One family who’d enjoyed the three-day solstice music festival at the farm reported their friends asking why they’d gone to the cult.
So, people have heard of us, yay!
This lack of organising practice is somewhat problematic now that we’re trying to promote a public meeting about the Drax power station (20 miles north) and the Reclaim the Power camp there next month.
We want to raise awareness and understanding about Drax’s planet-trashing activities and the rotten system it’s part of.
We want to use the camp’s closeness to activate local eco-conscious folk.
And, obviously, we want to use the camp to attract people to us.
But... we don’t really know how to publicise things round here, other than to the usual suspects: the Green party, the South Yorks climate alliance, the remains of XR North, various alternative types who follow us on Facebook.
Gosh, I’ve been here two years and I don’t know anywhere in town where I can put up posters or leave flyers, beyond the library.
It seems unlikely that the Doncaster Free Press or Greatest Hits Radio will run our press release, although we’ll give it a go. (Yes, we could perhaps be better at 21st century methods of communication.)
To be fair, we have decided to play the long game, looking more at a political education and organising strategy that spans a decade rather than months, using the permaculture principles of ‘small and slow solutions’ and ‘observation’ to get to know our place and see what works, without burning ourselves out.
We are starting a monthly local history, story-telling and music evening at the farm, really leaning into re-creating an oral tradition that brings in elders and youth, developing a sense of ownership, emotional ties to the land, an understanding of how people have lived, thrived and struggled here and the various battles for dignity and autonomy.
Even if no one else comes, we’ll have a lovely time and learn some stuff.
We’re also thinking of resurrecting Doncopolitan magazine as a freesheet – it worked before, to have a medium for local creativity, ideas for a better world, enthusiasm for place and culture, to spread that information around and make connections, attract contributors and make friends in all parts of Doncaster society.
And maybe we’ll go back to the tried-and-trusted tactic of a street stall in the city centre, attracting people for conversation.
The hunt sabs and the religious are still doing it, so it must still work – to be there in everyday life, pulling people out of the humdrum and opening a window to a world of possibility. And getting the goss on who’s coming into bud, who’s setting seed and who’s strangling who ;-)