We’ve written a fair bit about the need to get away from relying on long and increasingly vulnerable food supply chains, with an emphasis on growing your own whenever possible. Here’s a selection of some of these posts:

Prefigurative action – September 1, 2021

Keeping it local and under our control – August 9, 2021

Healthy choices? – July 27, 2021

Building community resilience – securing the food supply – July 21, 2021

We don’t just sit here at the keyboard writing about this. In Keeping it local and under our control, we mentioned that we currently run / help out with four plots. Today, we went out to help set up a fifth plot.

A good friend of Alternative Estuary wanted some help in setting up some raised beds in her back garden. She supplied the soil and compost, with the generous help of East West Trading, we supplied the raised beds. Between us, we set up the beds, filled them with soil and compost and planted three of them out with over-wintering chard, spinach, onions and garlic. It may not seem like much but it’s a small but vital step away from a fragile food supply chain towards a bit more in the way of self sufficiency.

We’ve been working together on various community clean ups / community gardens over the years and have developed a way of working where everyone finds a role they’re comfortable with and gets on with it without the need for anyone to be giving out orders. Today was one of those days where self organisation wasn’t just some abstract political term – it was a reality.

Lastly, we’d like to thank Crops Not Shops who started out in Southend in the early part of 2020 for giving us the inspiration to turn towards this type of practical activism. We’ll do what we can to keep that vision alive and expand it’s reach…