Soil-idarity Forever
Hello dear friends and earthy worms.
This month I am sharing a couple of things I have been working on/composting.
I am currently burrowing deep into the world of soil, and soil ecology/microbiology. Sometimes literally.
In the works is a written piece called "Soil Punk, Or Composting as a Methodology for the End Times", about soil, fascism, and how soil and its infinitely intricate webs of death and decay might help us navigate the deeply troubling times we are in. However, like all good decomposition, it's taking its sweet time.
To whet your appetite (because I am learning that not everyone is as immediately excited about worm poo as me), I wanted to share a handout about soil I made for the wonderful folk at Brighton and Hove Organic Gardening Group. If you click on either image you'll be able to access it as a PDF too.
And side two:
And if all that soil has made you hungry, I am honoured to have been a contributor to misery meals: a crip community anti-cookbook for when eating and cooking is hard
[in their own words]
"misery meals is a 260 page choose-your-own-adventure collection of recipes, art and resources by mad and disabled, queer and trans, global majority people world-over, to be used always, but especially when we’re feeling miserable. This is an intuitive guide for when we need to eat but aren’t sure exactly when or what or fucking how. Think of it as an anti-cookbook.
The wisdoms of disabled, queer and colonised people were never the purview of those communities alone. Everyone needs to know how to nourish ourselves when we can’t move, when we have limited ingredients, when we’ve lost all hope. We could all do with the space to listen to and work with our bodies just a little bit more. We deserve it!"
The cookbook is...
✮✮✮ AVAILABLE TO PRE-ORDER IN THE UK NOW!!! (click this) ✮✮✮
All proceeds will go towards supporting misery, a mental health collective, outdoor education programme, ancestral wisdom hub & sober rave by & for queer/trans people of the global majority, based in London. Find out more here.
And finally,
I just watched an excellent film by Dan Saladino and the Gaia Foundation about Dr Debal Deb who, over 30 years, has conserved 1,460 indigenous rice varieties from the most remote communities of India. If you remember the first piece I wrote, all about seeds, you'll be familiar with the intentional erasure of seed diversity and sovereignty across the globe and the urgent need to protect and tend to heritage seed varieties against the forces of corporate greed.
The film follows Dr Debal Deb as he re-weaves these heirloom rice varieties back into the hands and soils of small-scale farmers across India, whose sovereignty has been eroded by decades of industrial agriculture and neoliberal extraction. Debal named his seed bank- now distributed and maintained for future generations by the communities he has worked with- Vrīhi , Sanskrit for rice. Debal hopes “it will germinate in the minds of the people, as well as in the fields”.
I invite you to let this film and the work of Debal germinate in your mind [link here] and, as the Spring begins to unfurl, perhaps germinate some seeds in a little corner of soil.
