Welcome to a special Permaculture Writer’s Club episode of the Sense-making in a Changing World podcast.
I am joined by the wonderful permaculture grower, forest gardener, youtuber and author, Liz Zorab who runs Byther Farm with Mr J – to live a self sufficient, eco friendly life. . She is author of the best-selling book Grounded: A Gardener’s journey to abundance and self-sufficency – put out by Permanent Publications and is finishing up her second book – the Seasoned Gardener – due out soon.
In this episode, Liz shares how she has created 2 amazing permaculture farms and has healed herself in the process – of how she got going on her successful youtube channel and how she has gone about writing her books. Liz is so generous in her sharing. This conversation is full of practical strategies and ideas from paddock to pen.
Click here to listen to the episode or watch it on the Sense-Making in a Changing World youtube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tJa06U25tgs
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Check out the full transcript below.
Morag:
Welcome, Liz, to the Sense-making in a Changing World show. It’s a real delight to have you here. It’s been a long time since we’ve talked about actually sitting down and having a chat and I feel like I know you somehow because we have friends in common and we’re both deeply into permaculture and I’ve read your book and your story. So it’s a real delight to have you here. Thank you for coming on the show.
Liz:
Well, thank you for asking.
Morag:
So you’re based in Wales; a beautiful piece of country. Maybe we can just start there like landing is a little bit of your world. Can you describe your farm and where you are?
Liz:
Absolutely. I’ve lived in Wales for a bit over 20 years and I’ve had three different sites here and we are currently in a county called Carmarthenshire, which is a beautiful rolling hills. It’s the edge of the Brecon Beacons, which is a national park full of amazing hills and mountains. We’re on the west side of Wales so it’s the damp side, but it’s also south, so it’s quite warm and we moved to the current site just over a year ago and we have four and a half acres, that I’m actually working on, and then there’s another six and a half acres that we’re renting, which currently is just fallow and where, I would say three quarters but probably more than that, is more like seven eighths Copper Mountain. So mountains of Wales are not hugely tall on a global scale. So we’re about 210 meters above sea level. It’s fairly windy. There’s a wind farm right next to us, which kind of should have given me a hint of how windy it might be here and we’ve bought a small cottage with some outbuildings and previously it was used as an equestrian site. So the land has been compacted for the last 10 or 12 years and I’m slowly teasing it back into a kind of space that I would like to see.
Morag:
So you moved from a much smaller place? And that is under an acre, wasn’t it?
Liz:
It was three quarters of an acre?
Morag:
So what was your motivation, I suppose, to upscale your homestead?
Liz:
We wanted to be able to keep some larger livestock than chickens and ducks and I wanted more space around me because the area was becoming very built up. But probably our biggest reason was just the sheer volume of traffic around us. So we were in between the two bridges that crossed the river seven, which actually meant we were in between two motorways, and the noise of traffic was just constant and as traffic volume increases, so does the sound and trying to create videos. I was finding I was having to buy more and more expensive microphones to try and mitigate that sound and I just got to the point where I said, “I can’t think because of the volume of the noise of the traffic.” So we decided that we would find somewhere that was much quieter and that’s what we’ve done and although now when the car goes past it sounds really loud because the rest of the time it’s so quiet.
Morag:
So what’s it like starting from scratch again? Because you develop such a beautiful garden there, a permaculture garden, your work was based around developing that space. Is that right?
Liz:
It was really the biography of that field and means my journey from being really quite unwell when we moved there to feeling really rather healed by the time we left and when we moved to the previous home and I started to feel really daunted. Three quarters of an acre, I’d never had something that large to play with before and I really didn’t know where to start and I actually asked my partner for permission to create a compost bin and right at the beginning, I just couldn’t believe that we had this space to work in. So when we moved here, I kind of took all the lessons I’d learned, they’re taking as much as possible, learning from all these mistakes and could just get stuck in really quickly and go, “I’ll try this and if this doesn’t work, it’s okay. I can observe what’s going on, make adjustments, and try it somewhere else.” And that’s exactly what I did. So within a month of moving here, I already had food growing in the ground. My number one aim for our first year here has been to restock our larder, to put in the basics and the foundations of the layout here and just to watch, to do lots and lots of observing. So hand in hand with that observation, I have had to get some food growing because that is actually my primary role.
Morag:
And I think that’s a really important thing to keep in mind. I often hear people talking about taking the permaculture design approach and spending 12 months thinking. I’m feeling torn between that idea of waiting and doing that. I think what you just did there enables us to kind of relax in that space and think. Of course, you start small where you get something going so you can actually feed yourself and replenish the soil and that can shift and change and adapt if you need to when the whole system gets designed, but really to start is really important. But before we talk more about your site, now, I wanted to go back in before. So you said you never had a site that was even enough to grow a garden. So where were you before you went to your first farm?
Liz:
So before that we’d been in a small rented property. The past before that I’d had a garden, but it wasn’t huge. So I had grown as many flowers and as much food as I could in it. I don’t really do grass, you can’t eat it, I don’t find it terribly productive and it’s just a whole load of work. So if I have a garden space, the grass goes very quickly and I fill it with plants that I do want to grow. So I’ve always had some gardening space, but nowhere near what has always felt like not enough space to feed ourselves and the reality is, looking back, we’ve probably always had enough space to feed ourselves. Not necessarily feed ourselves for the whole year round, or to be self-sufficient in everything. But we’ve always had enough space to grow something.
Morag:
And I think this is something that you really touch on beautifully in your book about the fact that we can be growing so much more than what we think possible in smaller spaces anywhere where we are and to make it so accessible and so doable. How you describe it makes it feel like it’s not this complicated process. You have to become an expert to be able to do it. It’s so accessible the way that you share it and present it and I think that’s really liberating for a lot of people. And your journey, you talk about going from sort of the bare ground to this abundance. I think it is super inspiring. So how did you get to be going from an ornamental garden to being this super abundant, permaculture, CSA farmer? What happened along the way?
Liz:
About seven or eight years ago, I became quite poorly, quite unwell, and my health deteriorated. We didn’t know what the matter was, but I was decidedly not right. And then we actually ended up with me in bed for about four months, just 23 hours a day or more. I literally got to go to the loo and then back to bed because I just felt so ill. So when we moved to our previous home, it became clear I wasn’t going to be going back to work in any of the jobs I’ve done previously. But I still wanted to find a way to contribute to some of the family. So I said, “Well, how about I stay at home and I grow as much food as I can as my financial contribution?” So rather than going to work to pay for clothes, to pay for petrol, to pay for the car, to pay for all the other stuff that happens when you go to work, why don’t I not run a car? Why don’t I try not to go out and use all the petrol? Why don’t I actually just do my economic contribution at home. And Mr. J, my partner said, “Yeah, that makes perfect sense.” Then I could work around how my body was, I could work at my own pace, I could slowly nurture the ground and slowly nurture me and so that’s what happened, we’ve just started. As I keep saying it, it did start really slowly, with a very small space and as I felt able to sort of nurture a larger space and pretend that I did that and so it slowly grew, rather than me going, “I need to fill three quarters of an acre.” I need to do just one small bit in front of me at a time.
Morag:
Whether you have something like what you experienced, where you were feeling so poorly or whether it’s just simply that you don’t have the time, or feel that you don’t have the time, that advice of just putting one foot in front of the other, one little piece of land, and then another piece, and then another piece, and it just grows at the capacity that you have. But you’re looking so amazingly well now and you’ve just taken on a massive piece of land. Obviously, this has been a miraculous recovery of sorts. Was it gardening? Was it the change of life? What do you attribute?
Liz:
I think it was. So the reason I was poorly is that my thyroid had started to malfunction. So it’s been kind of almost a multifaceted improvement. I’ve managed to get medication to help my thyroid. I have completely changed my diet. So we eat seasonally, we’re eating fresh, we eat food that I’ve preserved. So we have that in the cooler months. We’ve cut out our contact with an awful lot of mass produced food. So I’m not saying we don’t because we do eat some mass produced food, but it’s been minimized to things that either I can’t grow up or don’t want to grow. I can’t make sausages, I’ve tried making sausages. They’re just so much hard work. So we buy them, but we buy them from sources where we know how they’re being made, we know how the animals are kept. So it was some of improving our diet, some of the medication, and then an awful lot of living in a rhythm that works for my body and works for the way we live and that takes the pressure away, learning to switch my phone off, not checking emails, and to say no. Today, I’m just spending time doing what I need to do and most of that is being outside in the fresh air, listening, watching, experiencing, being part of this amazing world that we live in and I feel that I had got so cut off from that. The more I came back to the earth, the more that I came back to me, the more healthy I got.
Morag:
And it just seems to me that what you just described is an incredibly powerful story that I think resonates with so many people and particularly, possibly, even during the whole pandemic, that people connected with that and then also to really think about if we’re to address the global crisis that we’re facing, these things that you just described then of the slowing down, of the noticing, of the connecting, or re-localizing, all of those things are such a deep part of of how we can address the big picture. Some of those things would sometimes feel so intangible, but it’s right there in front of us that we can do something about it and I wonder whether that’s something that people have talked to you about since reading your book. What response have you had from sharing your story?
LIz:
I’ve had the most wonderful sort of pouring of emotion and reaction. People who’ve said, “Thank you,” it’s just kind of allowed me to say, “This is what I want to do, and it can be done.” So it seems to have a sense of giving complete people permission to go, “I want to do something differently” and an awful lot of people have shared their story of their ill health and how they’re now working in their gardens, in just balconies on community gardens, just getting outside and walking and they’re sharing stories of how well they now feel. So it’s not like a miracle cure or anything, but they are slowly seeing small improvements that are having a big impact on their lives.
Morag:
That permission I think, is such a huge thing. Because we do get so caught up in a certain way of being or a certain way that things have to look or a certain process that we have to take and I think that permission, giving ourselves permission to slow down and to connect and try different things to play in a different set of rules for living away. So how did you come across permaculture and then how did you find permaculture?
Liz:
I have been experimenting and I do like to experiment in the garden. I do like to just see what happens, because the worst it’s going to happen, it’s not going to work and that’s not a failure. That’s just one more thing crossed off the list that’s not working in this gap. So I know I won’t try that one again. So I have been doing lots and lots of experiments and lots of things that just kind of felt right and I’ve been doing some of these things for years and years and years and then I started reading about this thing, this design method, this way of doing stuff. I did that and I suddenly realized that what I’ve been doing instinctively were an awful lot of permaculture practices and the more I read, the more I could join the dots of, “I do this, but I have no idea why I’m doing it.” So I have no idea why it makes sense. And suddenly, I was reading about things that would say, “When you connect this with that and you do this and multipoint. You don’t do things, you leave things alone, to let them do their own thing.” All of a sudden, it works. So it was a bit of a revelation. I kind of stumbled upon it and it’s nothing I invented, nothing new. I don’t do anything out of the ordinary. But it was just a case of suddenly I was reading about permaculture and it just suddenly all the everything dropped into place. All the pennies fell into the slots and I kind of went, “Okay, so what I’m actually doing already is practicing permaculture” with some quirky bits and some of these quirky bits have changed us and we have learned new methods and got a deeper understanding of how the connections work and so some of the things I used to do, I no longer do because through my learning, through my reading, through talking to other people, I’ve realized that there are – I’m not gonna say better ways – there are just different ways that might have a more positive impact on the environment and that I really like.
Morag:
So you have food forests and sort of a market garden. Is that part of your old farm or is that what’s happening now? And how does that work with the permaculture approach, market garden, food box system? Can you describe what that might look like a bit?
Liz:
So as much as possible, I want the space that we live in to look like our garden and so if I’m producing food for ourselves or for our veg box scheme, it still looks like our garden. Just because for me, I want it to look pretty. Now I actually find rows of vegetables interplanted with rows of flowers, very pretty. So that helps and I actually really liked that jumbly mess of looking at a polyculture and yes it makes it harder to walk down a row and pick plants but emotionally it’s so much better to have that mixture and then for the wildlife around us, it’s perfect. So it’s a win win. So our last place, I kind of started off saying there’s a vegetable garden and I’ll make this a food forest and there’s some trees over there. So I call that the mini orchard and that’s the duck field and that’s where the chickens are and then I suddenly went, “No, actually the whole thing is a food forest” with these other areas that are movable and sort of almost transient. Because we move the ducks around, we move the chickens around, I moved where I grew vegetables, not every year, but a lot of years, I moved that around. So all of a sudden, instead of everything being segmented and segregated and separate, everything was joined and one section was part of another and I’ve very much redone that here.
So I have created a raised bed vegetable garden that’s within an orchard that is next to the food forest. So it’s next to the food forest and they all kind of integrate into one another and then there’s another gate that leads through to what is predominantly a flower field. We’ve got a couple of small fields that we use for the sheep and they’re done on rotational grazing across those fields. But again, I’m looking at this whole space as one thing with kind of movable areas and things flow into each other. So the ducks are kind of allowed in the veg garden in the winter, but then they’re in the orchard the rest of the year and in the spring. I’m gonna let them go through the food forest and so it’s all coming together very much like our last place did except everything that was very small. Because it’s all very new and it’s a much bigger space. So I’ve got to that point now where I’m standing in a half acre food forest. But having done that in the last place and seeing how quickly you can go from a bear field. So this abundant lush space, because we were there for five years but I didn’t actually start planting trees till after the first year. It was amazing. Nature did such a fantastic job. But just going, “Yes, we can flourish here.” And I have every faith that that’s going to happen here and in fact, at the end of our first year here already, we are seeing a massive influx of wildlife. This week has been a bit breathtaking in terms of the amount of encounters with wildlife that I’ve had in the garden. So just in the last three days, I was tending to some vegetables and I just heard this sound above my head and a bird of prey swooped over my head so low that I could feel the air from its wings on my hair, and my hair moved from that and it was just like, “Wow, that’s incredible.” I stood up, walked out of the vegetable garden to find a mole was making a molehill. I literally watched it. So quickly I got my camera and filmed a mole making this wonderful molehill and I could hear it, I could hear it underground, moving the earth and moving stones and that was such an amazing experience. And then yesterday, I was just telling a neighbor who came around and I was saying I can’t believe we’ve just seen this mole and we were walking towards the garden when a badger walked across the path in front of us. I’m not sure what a badger was doing out on the day, he really shouldn’t or she shouldn’t be out on the day. But it was just like, “Okay, so there’s a lot of nature here and it’s comfortable with being around us.”
Morag:
That’s so fantastic. So when you’re thinking about designing and developing your place, apart from noticing nature and thinking, “Okay, well this is going to be a place for nature and wildlife” What particularly do you do to make sure that you’re designing a habitat for all species where you are? What are some of your strategies?
Liz:
So I’m very happy to leave areas, particularly around hedges. I’m happy for hedges to become deeper and deeper and deeper. So I’m leaving all the weeds that grow under them over nettles, the brambles and everything. So the hedges are old here around the perimeter, but I’m just leaving them. I’m not cutting in close to them. I’m not hacking them down. So now there’s more shelter for animals. I’m very specifically excluding animals from some areas. So we have a very, very healthy rabbit population here and I don’t want to get rid of the rabbits, but I don’t want them eating the food that I’m growing for us to eat. So there are areas this time fencing off and rather than fencing the whole site and fencing small sections, which then allows that wildlife to continue to live. Everything I’m doing, I’m just trying to be conscious that for every action I take, there’s probably a negative reaction because I’m messing with nature. So I try to mitigate that by just ensuring that what I’m doing is going to then offset that action as well. So when I’m fencing areas off and then leaving other areas undisturbed, where I’m moving water and channeling that too. We have the huge advantage of it being a very wet area. So we’re doing quite a lot of taking water off the land as quickly as possible.
Morag:
It’s interesting because it’s completely the opposite from what I’m always trying to do, which is slow it, spread it, sink it, store it in the land. That’s my motto entirely.
Liz:
So I’m also collecting rainwater for use for the few short weeks a year that we don’t get enough rain to use in the veg garden. But there are other times when, for most of the winter, the rain comes down so hard and so long that it actually washes the garden away. So I put the polytunnel in last year. I planted it up very proud to my beautiful polytunnel and my lovely planting in it and we had a good old rain shower and the rain washed down the hill so quickly went through the polytunnel lifted all the plants up on one side of the polytunnel and washed them to the other side. Naturally, nature knows what it’s doing. So, when that happened the third time I said, “I need to put in some channels to at least guide the water in a direction where it’s not flooding out the polytunnel every time it rains.”
Morag:
So you’re okay where you are with rain, obviously, but sans you have ample sufficiency. What about on the other side of the range? We’ve been hearing stories in Australia here of how dreadfully hot and dry Britain is becoming.
Liz:
This year has been incredible. We’ve had high temperatures, but we have been lucky enough to have some rain. But my daughter who lives in southern England has sent me photographs of the kids playing in the park and I thought they were on the beach because the grass was just completely brown. It was just so dry and the land was cracked where it’s been so long since there has been any rain. I have got to say, in most places it has now rained. But there’s all those issues then we’re getting a lot of rain suddenly after it’s been very dry.
Morag:
Do you think or do you hear much about the new conversations in permaculture around thinking differently about water?
Liz:
Yes, absolutely. There’s a very real sense that we need to be so much better at keeping water in the ground at harvesting rainwater, managing our use of water, being more sensitive about our use and also looking at what we’re growing so that we don’t just rely on crops that are water heavy. You look at crops that are going to be more drought resistant.
Mprag:
How much of your garden then do you focus on perennials and those more resilient, robust type plants?
LIz:
Easily over half the garden is perennial in terms of trees and shrubs and I’ve done lots of experimenting with perennial vegetables.
Morag:
What are your favorite perennial vegetables?
Liz:
Well, asparagus. One of the things that I concentrate on is things that are high cost in terms of us buying them elsewhere. We can grow that one here.
Morag:
We grow that here too in the subtropics.
Liz:
So I can’t leave out all winter. So I do have to lift it and look after that and look after the little growth bits that are going to come back next year. Then there are kales and cabbages and things. So there are several kales, but the only one I really like is a Taunton Deane kale and the only cabbage I really like is an Asturian tree cabbage because it’s got a mild sauce almost sweet to taste. I’ve been trying lots of perennial veg, but what I’ve actually found is that the reason that I grow the annuals is because I prefer the taste. So some of it, we’re gonna have to retrain ourselves. We’re gonna have to retrain ourselves to eat things that, at the moment, we find a bit strong. Well, we just have to learn to cook it differently,
Morag:
I think that’s the thing, isn’t it? It’s actually thinking differently in the kitchen and thinking about blending as well. I get a leaf of this and a leaf of that and a leaf or something else and I have so many different types of things that are all mixed together. It’s not like okay, I have a blob of this particular vegetable on the plate. It’s a lot of different things and I’m really curious about how you use [inaudible].
Liz:
So just as simply as we grate it in salads. It’s just as simple as that. As part of my process of getting better, I have a really simple part of my diet. So I do eat quite a lot of what a lot of people consider quite plain food and for me, rather than it being plain, I can savor that individual flavor one at a time and then do and always make the combinations happen in my mouth rather than having put some together.
Morag:
That’s really nice. [inaudible]grows so abundantly here too. It’s one of those plants, I think, we need to really introduce so many more people to.
Liz:
If I wasn’t growing it to eat, I would grow it in the garden anyway, because I absolutely love the shape of the leaves, I love the form of the plant and those little yellow flowers, which then suddenly go, “Hi, we’re here!” It’s just beautiful.
Morag:
The sunflowers, the little mini sunflowers just scattered around there and the crowns that you’re talking about. Those little growing tips, the crowns, they’re so sweet. They just poke about at the top of the soil, you can kind of see them when you’re fasik around in the mountain. It’s beautiful. So you have another book that’s going to be published around about April next year. Can you tell us a little bit about what’s the story that’s emerging through that book?
Liz:
So that’s called the Seasoned Gardener, and it’s exploring the rhythm of my gardening year. Whereas most gardening books, if they’re looking at a year from January to December, and say this is what you sow and all of those cycles. It kind of turned that on its head a little bit and said, “I don’t necessarily think of plants as when I sow them. I think of them as when I harvest them.” When is it I’m going to enjoy them most. So this book starts in September and works its way through to August and it goes through different vegetables and fruits from the point of when we harvest them and it’s a look at my emotional and physical interaction and connection and my journey throughout the seasons and how I am part of what is going on around me, I am part of that nature, how I interact with it, how different elements interact with each other and interact with me as a gardener. So it’s a personal journey through a typical year of gardening. It’s got loads and loads of how to’s and when to’s and suggestions and hints and tips and this kind of information boxes and all be careful you don’t type things. It’s more of learning from my mistakes and hopefully people will still very much hear the same voice that they heard in Grounded. That one that is just in total awe the entire time at the whole process of nature doing her thing.
Morag:
I love that. I often think about being a gardener as opposed to similar ways too is thinking about rather than being a gardener doing something that in a way I am the garden gardening and that’s kind of deeply connected way of being in a space and the actions are determined by the garden in a way you’re not going out there with this plan to control and manage its response that happens when you’re out there noticing that’s really for harvesting. It’s not like, “Okay, well that says in the book, now it’s time to do this and now it’s time to do that.” It’s a responsive process and I think that’s absolutely wonderful. I look forward to that coming out next year and sharing that too and I’m sure it’s going to be as popular. Didn’t your first book, Grounded, get to the best seller number one list or something on Amazon?
Liz:
Yes, it got to number one in Organic Gardening in America on the Amazon bestseller list. I was so excited and incredibly grateful that people have told others about it and that the word of mouth has spread and that people have been able to enjoy that book. I reread it recently. I’m trying to read it, having not looked at it for the best part of the year. I kind of think there’s actually some pearls of wisdom in there that I’ve forgotten.
Morag:
Learning from your own writing. As being a sort of newer in the permaculture gardening and then you sort of took it all off. You also mentioned earlier, before we switched on the recording, that you’re also newer to the world of writing and I would love just to hear a little bit about your process or practice of writing and how you even came to the point of working out what you put in the book and how you go about writing it. Because one of the things that I read on your site was, you’re talking about how you can achieve more without exhausting yourself. You’ve got a garden, you’ve grown all the Fuji family, podcasts, YouTube, and a couple of books by the way. Where do you fit it all in? What’s your practice of writing and how do you frame it in your mind? What is the story that needs to be told?
Liz:
My day is very simple. I start by going out and doing the ducks and I actually garden first thing in the morning. If I can, I start my day by reconnecting with the Earth and the space around us. And what I want to write about, I had decided I was going to say that I’m going to write 350 words a day and if I do that every day for 18 weeks, I will have 60,000 words. Well, I realized that I don’t write like that. I am not one of those people who’s disciplined enough to sit down and say, “I will write this amount every day.” Because I’m writing so much from the heart. So I’m writing so much instinctively rather than researching and putting information to answer. So much of it is about how I’m feeling that actually I will tend to not write at all for maybe three weeks and then I’ll spend two or three days just at my computer writing because I’m feeling it. And gosh, that sounds very airy …
Morag:
No, it makes complete sense. It’s like when it’s present for you, that’s the mood you’re in.
Liz:
So I do that and in terms of framing a book, I write a synopsis at the beginning. This is kind of the layout of the book and how it’s going to be so I have that in my mind and then I will literally, so for the seasons gardener and it should split it into four parts, four seasons, I split each of the sections into three months and so just wrote. It was spring: March, April, May and then the subsections in that. So then I had all the headings and I wrote all the really practical stuff first. So there is all the stuff that I feel needs to be in there that I need to share and then I write the stuff that I want to share. So there’s stuff about factual information going on and then there’s stuff about my observations and my experiences and my feelings and putting these connections in and then I don’t look at that again for a while and I will go back to it and then I put in all the anecdotes with the humor. Because I’ve had time to digest what I’ve written and then it’s sort of that story will fit really well in there.
MOrag:
And I think you were talking earlier about sharing the story, so that it is not just a gardening book, although it is a gardening book, people can connect with it, because it’s sharing a story that’s coming from your heart. So it’s person to person, it’s like you kind of write for the person who’s reading and not to kind of try and tell them and teach them about something in a way. Then I wonder where the idea comes from? Where did that idea to write Grounded, for example, come from?
Liz:
So writing Grounded was very simple. Maddie, from permanent publications, actually came to me and said, “Will you write a book?” or, “We would like you to write your short story.” So she’d been watching me on my YouTube channel and so she knew my story. She knew that I could tell a story and so she asked me if I would put that in writing and I was very flattered and then I, of course, said yes immediately. I was more than happy to do that and then sat around for three months going. I’ve got no idea how to start.
Morag:
How did you start?
Liz:
I had a conversation with Hugh Richards, who at that point had written two books and he said, “Well, let’s sit down and write a synopsis” and I have no idea even what a synopsis really was. I had no idea that it was going to be the framework, upon which I was going to be able to build the book. So he sat and did I kind of just get all the ideas, chuck them down on a piece of paper all the things. I remember him saying to me, “What do you actually want to say?” and so I just wrote off the whole list of things I wanted to say and I ended up with with millions and squillions of post it notes and had written on them in different colored notes things that were factual, things that were opinion, things that were vegetables, things that were animals and literally just sort of was like a storyboard or laying out of where everything was going to sit together so that nothing was a big clump of this and a big clump of that. I wanted everything to be woven together and as sort of a patchwork of different information, different subjects and so some ways I’ve done that again, but without the visual aid this time, without the sticky notes everywhere. I’ve done the same for the Season Gardener and I think if I was going to be writing a purely instructional manual, I would still do exactly the same process. It would be what are all the ideas I want to put down and that doesn’t then exclude me adding anything else in or taking stuff out. But it’s a good place to start. It is like to sort of focus your mind on what it is that you do want to say.
Morag:
That’s fantastic. Thank you. That’s really, really clear and I wonder what writing this book has done in terms of how it’s changed your world?
Liz:
So writing Grounded changed my appreciation of just how special that journey was. Because I think when you’re living and breathing and just doing it, it wasn’t like I was. We didn’t start at the old place. I think fights will do this and I’ll write a book at the end of it. I’m actually just living my life and I was trying to just cope with being ill and pushing a wheelbarrow whilst also on to walking sticks and I’ve asked it that one quite literally, that whole thing of doing everything really slowly and a bit at a time that you can cope with this. And I know I keep going on about it, but it’s so important because what it did was allowed me to go from barefield to abundance. Just literally one step at a time, one small piece at a time and writing the book allowed me to realize what a blessing that was to understand the process that I’ve been through and to just feel so incredibly grateful that I was privileged enough to be able to take my time and soon to go on that journey to do that process and to end up feeling emotionally and physically, really very well at the end of that time. Writing the Seasons Gardener has allowed me to go a step forward and examine more closely my relationship with my surroundings and to look at the benefits that can be gained from understanding there’s closer connections.
Morag:
That’s beautiful. I was gonna ask you before what comes now? Because I know you’ve finished the book, haven’t you? The book is in process and what happens now to you? Are you running courses or are you just taking time out, going back to gardening? What do you do when you finish a book?
Liz:
So while I finished writing the words and then taking all the pictures for a book, that’s kind of only half of the process. So then the next section is, yes, I’m running courses and continuing to make videos, but then the editing process and the decision making process out of what stays in the book and what doesn’t, I find that such a personal thing that I’m very lucky with permanent publications that they give me so much freedom to give my input into how that book looks at the end, that the shape of it, the the feel of it, even right down to which colors are used in it. So I feel very lucky that I have that input. I’m not going to call myself a control freak, but I am someone who quite likes to have as much input as possible into a final product because in the end, that’s a real reflection of me and I want it to reflect what I’m trying to express and me as a person as much as I can. So, all the words have gone off and all the photographs have gone off to the publishers and the next process is editing it and Magic Holland, some prominent publications, and I had quite a long process that was Grounded in discussing words that we might or might not use. Is it baler twine or baling twine? Is it wood chip as one word or wood chips as two words? And they were really interesting conversations because I learned about myself as I’m really stubborn and I hadn’t realized just how stubborn I am until I was having that. What was needed to be in negotiation in a nice way, but it was a discussion but I kind of dug my heels in. It’s like no wood chip is two words and it’s plural and I’m mad, they’re saying, “Does it really matter?” And I suddenly thought actually, yes, some of it does and it’s not that it matters to the reader and it’s not that it matters to the contents. It matters how I’m feeling about it and so that book is actually probably way more personal than people might appreciate. So I suspect we’ll go through a similar process with editing the next book.
Morag:
It’s such a deeply personal process, isn’t it writing the book? It’s part of you and like you’re saying it reflects who you are. It takes people into your world and shapes how they then perceive who you are and what you’ve done and how all those ideas have formed. I know we’re almost at the top of the hour and I’m wondering if you could just maybe tell me a little bit about the kind of films that you make? Because I’m going to put all the links below to your books and your blog and your YouTube channel and also how in writing and blogging and filming and gardening, do you keep balance and you keep that pace in your life that is maintainable?
Liz:
The last one’s really hard one. Something has to give if you’re going to do as much as I’m doing. So what tends to happen in this house is house work. Without a shadow of doubt, I’m not a huge housework fan. I’m quite keen that the house is quite messy. I think when people come around, they expect it to be this beautiful place and actually it’s a place where we hang our hats and we go to sleep and I don’t have a huge need for it to look beautiful. So housework is one of these hygienic things, but that’s about it. It’s messy, so I save time that way. And I multitask as much as I possibly can. So if I’m filming a video, I’ve always got my phone near me. So I can also take photographs of things in case I want them for a book. So I’m just constantly multitasking. The types of videos that I make are a combination of some of my how-tos, just how to do something, how to grow a particular type of vegetable, how to get better yields, how to shoot and then others are marketers to farm vlog. This is what’s going on in the garden, or this is what I’m harvesting this week. This week’s video was I’m going to be doing a load of harvesting and then the whole video changed because of the mole making a molehill right in front of me and as I had been filming, about harvesting, we’d had the most incredible mist in the valley below us, which then rolled up and kind of swept all around me and saw this beautiful kind of cinematic video, but entirely unintentional, because nature had just put on this amazing display. So I filmed it and so many of the videos are instructional and then others are just kind of looking at the world around me that’s just happening around me and then lots of other videos are about other people. So I take my camera to other homesteads, to other farms, to other gardeners and I invite them to share what they’re doing, because what I think they’re doing is so amazing and so quite a few videos, particularly, during the winter months are our visits I’ve made to farms during the year or homesteads during the year. I don’t want to introduce these other people to viewers because it shouldn’t all be about me. I don’t know, I don’t have all the answers and to be able to share what other people are doing. I just think it is such a gift to be able to do that.
Morag:
It’s such an amazing thing and particularly when you know that there’s this richness of knowledge and experience and it can help to really round out the skill and experience that you can share and just break up some of that storytelling too. I find going out to different places. I’ve got a couple of tours on my editing desk at the moment. I just find it so inspiring. I always come home with plants and seeds in my pockets. That exchange that happens between gardeners when you go and just spend time together talking about things. I think it’s fantastic.
Liz:
I pretty much always come home feeling incredibly humble. It’s just like people do such amazing things and they’re just so quiet. They don’t need to make a big song and dance about them. It’s just kind of doing it. They’re just living their lives and then you stick a camera in front of them and you find all the struggles that they’ve been through and all the reasons that they’re there. They’re growing what they’re growing or they’re doing what they’re doing and you get to see a glimpse of a completely different way of life. A completely different set of reasons for doing what they’re doing and I find it incredibly humbling.
Morag:
On a very practical level, what kind of camera do you use? Do you use a camera or do you use a phone to take films?
Liz:
I do both. So I will add since I just got the fact that my phone will film in 4k. It’s wonderful because it just means I can use that and then I also use Joker to name a brand.
Morag:
Well, I’m just curious because it’s kind of helpful to know if someone’s doing YouTubing and wants to take films again.
Liz:
I use a Canon D90 or 90D, whichever way around it is, with a very nice artsy lens. But actually, 9 times out of 10, all the B rolls I use so that’s all the pictures that go over the top of people speaking, are all taken on my phone. Because it’s so much more immediate, I can just set up my camera and get it all at the right angle. Everything can take too long. Because the animal that I want to film is walking. So I just literally just grabbed my phone and didn’t take that. I don’t have time to say to a butterfly, “Just hang on now when I go and get my camera and bring it in.” So, I use both. But I think if someone wants to start making videos from my first two years I made or for 19 months, I made a video every day for 19 months. I’m saying I worked about six days a week, I put out a video and so my first 500 videos or something were all filmed on a very very old phone. So you really don’t need to wait to get any equipment. The only thing I would say is please get a microphone and they’re really cheap. So not a big flashy microphone, one on a wire that will plug into your phone that’s got a very long cable and you do put a clever hiding the cable but it means that you can stand back from your camera to show people what you’re doing. But then you’ve got a really clear sound because sound becomes less clear if you stand 15 feet away from your phone. Limitations and sounds make such a difference in video, but you really don’t need it. You don’t need a lot of equipment to start telling the story. No and actually the most important thing is telling a story
Morag:
Thank you so much Liz for taking the time. You’re welcome to share your story of your books and your films and your farm and your whole approach with this today. It’s just been an absolute delight to meet and talk with you and to hear that and I can’t wait to see your next book come out and I can hear there’s a lot of work still yet in that so best of best of luck with that and in the growing of your beautiful new place. What happens in winter at your place? Do you get snow where you are? Can you keep going? What’s it like there?
Liz:
I keep going, there’s very little snow. The UK doesn’t get much snow anyway. So mostly I keep going. It’s very wet. It’s very windy. But we have polytunnels and aren’t wet and windy all the time.
Morag:
Thank you and I look forward to the possibilities of future collaborations of some sort. That would be absolutely wonderful