For the Love of a Field

Gratitude to Frank Clarke and Bonnie Ngowi who visited the field with Mark O’Connell of the Apricot Centre to offer their ideas and blessings for the land during the early months of our guardianship.

Testing the soils of West Peace and creating a Soil Shrine in the farmhouse, with candles, flint from the end and a copper trowel - all to evoke a daily care and love of the field.

Dr Julia Wright holds aragonite crystals which are planted in the land. This stone is known for its capacity to nurture physical and spiritual connections to the Earth.

Creating a FieldShrine at the quench, the small area of naturally regenerating herbs and trees at the edge of the field. The area inspires us to imagine ways to bring this diversity from the margins to the centre of the field.

During Spring 2020, we gather the hardened clods of soil from the dry field of the last crop of sugar beet seedlings. We add gold leaf to the earth in honour of its profound value to all life.

Miche creates a picnic of locally sourced, seasonal, organic food to share with the field and signal to the genius loci the kinds of food it will yield in the future.

Jay Abrahams of Biologic Design has been able to share his many skills in water divining, permaculture design and soil testing, all to help us understand how to harvest, store and slowly release water from the land.

Bringing a singing bowl to the field to evoke new frequencies of thought and intention.

Thanks to Marina O’Connell, author of ‘Designing Regenerative Food Systems’, who guided us in co-creating a vision with and for West Peace. Integral to its future is the weaving together of wisdoms and practices from organic, permaculture and biodynamic farming.

For the Love of a Field has been skilfully and generously documented from the air by Mark Halligan of Airscape. Appreciations to Mark for his dedication to following every stage of the transformation, and generating new perspectives and information from high up.

Multi-instrumentalist, actress, singer, writer and educator, Anna Mudeka came to share her mbira and voice, calling in the ancestors to look over the field.

West Peace was first sown with a cover crop of oats, vetches, linseed and field beans in order to stabilise and nourish the soil. This was then planted with an organic wildflower and grass Ley with a zero-till drill, allowing the field to rest and restore for two years.

Zero tilling of our organic grass and wildflower ley was made possible by Rob Raven and his impressive drill which left an almost invisible seed run on the soil, without disturbing its structure or the roots of the sacrificial crop. The seed was kindly sponsored by Suffolk Environmental Projects.

Gratitude to Charlie and Holly Steed for teaching us how to cut and smell a good organic hay crop. This first cut of hay is being left on the field to add to the seed bank and provide a mulch for the newly established ley.

Foraging for wild sloes in the hedge around the east boundary of the field to make into sloe gin. One of many harvests from the hedgerow, which also includes elderberries, black berries, hazel nuts and wild apples.

Tim Sawyer Shepard joins us for an artist residency in which he observes the biodynamic horn manure preparation for West Peace field, 1 frame every 10 seconds for 57 minutes.

Spraying the biodynamic horn preparation on the newly sown organic grass and wildflower mix with help from Arthur Hobhouse.

Gratitude to Suffolk Environmental Projects for their generous donation of edible hedging plants for West Peace and to volunteers from SICON who managed to pant over 800 whips in one day.

In January 2023, we join Dr Julia Wright at the Oxford Real Farming Conference to share the story of For the Love of a Field as part of a panel discussion on Intuitive Farming and Other Natural Ways of Knowing.