Watching
We come in out of the twisting misty gentle rain that is typical of Brittany, this western edgeland, as it is of Wales, Cornwall, Devon – edgelands where I was brought up and have spent most of my life (the last 40 on or near Dartmoor, that cauldron of mist and wetness).
I’m a bit upset to have heard a hunter shooting close by in this wild woodland – too close for comfort, but primarily I’m upset at whatever he managed to kill, assuming he did: another rip in the fabric of things. Then I tell myself that if people eat meat, at least this meat is not intensively-reared but wild-caught.
But in my dream world, we wouldn’t eat each other – by which I mean we humans wouldn’t consume our other-than-human kin. Unlike, for instance, a lion, we have choices.
Now from the kitchen window I’m closely watching a migrant redwing just yards away beneath the walnut tree, which has so generously provided some of our vegan protein the last two autumns. The bird steadily and methodically beaks a leaf out of the way, flings it over its shoulder, then on to the next. Every so often it stops and intently stabs something from under a leaf, swallows. Every leaf or two it stops to look around, too, alert, watchful; then continues.
It’s a beautiful bird: its speckled breast paler than a thrush’s, clearer; chestnut-brown eyeliner wide of the creamier feathers above and below its eye; rusty patch only on the underside of the wing and just below, on each side. I don’t know how endangered redwings are. I do know that to see one this close, solo, is a treat, though I have heard them often enough in the trees, as flocks, since they arrived here in the autumn.
Any migratory species is, of course, vulnerable: to exhaustion, to predators, to weather, to changing habitat and climatic conditions and food sources on its journey and at its destination.
The last few days, on the path down into the woods, I’ve been listening to the fluting of a thrush’s spring song. Beautiful, uplifting – and about two months too early.
We cannot pretend that the climate crisis has nothing to do with these changes. ‘Of the 28,000 species evaluated to be threatened with extinction on the IUCN Red List, agriculture is listed as a threat for 24,000 of them.’ (Plant-Based Treaty)
I find myself paying extra-careful attention, almost urgent attention, to any creature I see nowadays, as if witnessing everything on the brink, everything we hold dear on this little planet. In me, simultaneously, sit the twin pulls of joy and the possibility of another small heartbreak at each instance of the damage, trouble and suffering in our world.
We have the great good fortune, almost miraculous good fortune, to live on a little planet that is, or was, perfectly calibrated to support organic life from insects to plants, trees, fish, animals, birds, humans in the equally-amazing interdependent ecosystems that occur in the natural world. One degree colder or one degree hotter and this harmonious system changes. We cannot expect to pump more than twice the amount of carbon dioxide (nor of course other pollutants) into the atmosphere than existed before the Industrial Revolution and not affect this homeostasis.
I would like to think it’s not too late. And as I say below, we are not as helpless to change things as I sometimes fear.
The potager
At last the rain has eased, and I can get onto the veg plot for the first time in days – weeks, even. I’m replacing the saffron crocus bulbs (yes indeed, very late in the year) that voles have uprooted and eaten, and experimenting with garlic oil in the bulb-hole and around it as a vole repellent. I don’t know if it will work (next day: so far so good), but now I really stink of it. I take off my jacket and sweater and still the house stinks.
Considering how late we started with our potager, in the early months of this year, it’s been fantastic. We layered cardboard from our move, woodchip from fallen branches and prunings, and bought-in organic compost to begin, as I think I’ve already said. The soil now is rich, dark and friable enough as to enable us to weed it quite easily, so that’s what I’ve been doing this afternoon, with my friend the robin in attendance.
We’re still harvesting two sorts of annual kale, perennial kale, rainbow chard, red and green cabbages, leeks, an occasional parsnip, the last few beautiful carrots (keeping a tiny stand of the red ones, ‘rouge sang’, below, for Christmas lunch), and watching the purple sprouting broccoli swell. I’ve pulled the last beetroot, but we have ample stores of squashes, beans and potatoes from the rich dark soil.
And how pleasing it is to make really tasty meals, such as this one, below, in which all the veg are our own.
Being a quiet activist
So Cop28 has just come to a close. I’m not naturally a cynic, but I still know that it will be business-as-usual: we won’t actually wean ourselves off fossil fuel in any near future and nor, given the size and funding of the meat and dairy industry lobby present, will any serious attempt be made to limit, at least, the Western consumption of animals and their products. (Studies suggest that intensive livestock agriculture is responsible for more polluting emissions and the resultant environmental disasters and climate change than the whole global transport network combined.)
However, at least the importance of weaning ourselves off fossil fuel was officially recognised. And OK there was general agreement that we need to move beyond fossil fuels at some indefinite stage in the future... maybe by 2050, far enough away for the industry to feel safe...
And another good thing was the delivery of the Plant Based Treaty’s SAFE AND JUST report. The animal welfare and environmental cost of industrial agriculture is such a big issue now that we cannot possibly ignore it. I’m torn between horror at the results of industrial agriculture, and a more positive response to the fact that it’s now ‘out there’, and there are things we can and must do.
Moving to a diet without animal products has transformative potential, reducing food’s land use by approximately 3.1 billion ha (a 75 per cent reduction), which is crucial if we want to mitigate the climate crisis, restore biosphere integrity, and provide healthy food for all. (PBT)
In the Guardian on 4th December the Scientist Rebellion, which includes 1447 scientists who recognise the urgency of our situation, and of whom 33 are or were authors of the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) climate reports, have signed an open letter urging the public to become climate activists or advocates. ‘We are terrified,’ they warn. ‘We need you.’ The article states that we have known since at least 1995 that climate change is anthropogenic. Yet there are still people who believe that our current frighteningly fast climate change is not anthropogenic, human-made. I spoke to one last week.
Hot on the heels of COP28 comes the EU decision to allow glyphosate – a known carcinogen and destroyer of so much – to be used legally for another decade.
It’s easy to bury one’s head. It’s hard to face all this, and for me at least the temptation is to feel hopeless and helpless (and stay awake at night dwelling on all this).
But there are things we can each do.
So I suggest that the time has come for us all to be activists and advocates. We don’t have to shout, damage property, be out on the streets and get arrested. We don’t have to set up any ‘us vs them’ scenarios. All we need to do is to know that together we do have the power to change things; and that change has to happen in our own lives first. We don’t have to shout about it; we can just experiment. Let’s find a positive way to deal with all this.
I have never forgotten anthropologist Margaret Mead’s wise words: ‘Never doubt that a committed group of citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’
Here’s a thing: if we sincerely care about the environment, we can take a two-pronged approach, because it’s not ‘either/or’.
We can campaign for systems change, whatever that might mean for you: signing petitions, writing letters, using consumer power to buy or not buy certain things.
And we can make the changes in our own personal lives. Systemic change requires a critical mass of personal lifestyle changes.
It is up to us. And there are small steps we can each take. There are things we can each do. Consuming less in general. Stopping flying. Minimising driving. Being aware of ‘food miles’ when you shop (and buying local in-season veg). But the best possible contribution you can make is to reduce or eliminate animal products from your diet. I’d be delighted if you’d consider trying what I will be suggesting in this and future posts.
That cookbook
Some of you know that over the last few – er, several – years, I’ve been writing a vegan cookbook. The first 30-odd pages is ‘what you need to know’; the rest 100+ recipes from ingredients we grow on our own land, and that should be easy to source for anyone looking to eat locally and seasonally (for here in Brittany we’re basically growing what we grew in Devon).
Trouble is, I have realised recently that a) it needs photos, which in turn means that b) it will be hard to find a publisher to take on such a book (the costs of photo reproduction are very high, and I’m not a celebrity chef, so it’s quite a high-risk book), and c) that might involve cooking at least 50% of those meals all over again and finding a good photographer to be there and witness; and d) the bit requiring stats etc is sufficiently boring and rigorous as for me to convince myself I’ve done a good day’s writing by creating a new recipe instead of redrafting that section.
I have wondered about serialising it here on Substack. I’m still not sure; nor how I would do it without monetising it. Would people pay for vegan info and recipes?
I’d love ideas, if you have any?
‘Animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than blacks were made for whites or women for men.’
Alice Walker
Veganuary – a great place to start
What a wonderful thing that so many people now are interested in a vegan diet. Much of this is to do with the January meat-free initiative Veganuary, which gives much free support, resources and recipes to people starting out, and the numbers signing up are growing hugely year on year. It’s a wonderful initiative, and if you have wondered about, or might consider trying, a vegan diet I urge you to take advantage of it.
Millions have now taken part. This year, 2023, over 700,000 people from all over the world signed up to eat only vegan food for the whole month. (The 2022 campaign fielded 629,000 sign-ups in addition to the thousands who’d signed up in previous years.) Around 35% go on to remain committed vegans.
I’m currently considering what if any vegan diet follow-up I might be able to offer myself after January (once again, ideas welcomed).
Meantime, according to the World Bank, in 2023 a staggering $23 million per minute is being spent on subsidies worldwide in the animal agriculture and fossil fuel industry, the two main drivers of the climate crisis. A 2023 One Earth study, which analysed major EU and US agricultural policies between 2014 and 2020, found that £35bn of public money was spent on meat and dairy. (PBT as above)
So one of the most impactful things we can do is to go plant-based. It’s not as difficult as you might think, and once you get the hang of it it’s very easy to make delicious, inviting and nutritious meals, with the added advantage of not being part of an exploitative system. There are many good reasons for going vegan, and over the next few weeks I’ll explore them further.
I know it’s not easy to swim against the currents of cultural consensus, family habits and tradition. I know it’s easy to feel too uninformed to make sure one is getting enough nutrients on a vegan diet. I know many people – because some of you have said so to me – are interested, but don’t know where to start to implement such changes. I know it would be all too easy to buy processed meat substitutes instead of cooking a wholefood diet from scratch. It is as easy to eat a terrible junk food diet as a vegan as it is as a meat-eater.
I will address these things, little by little. Here, I just want to say we need to move away from thinking, as I suspect many people in the West do unconsciously, about meals as meat accompanied by veg. Think about a colourful tasty plate of wholefoods and veg, with something (pulses, beans, nuts, hummus-type dips) for protein, as in my photo above.
Meantime, my own reasons for being vegan are:
Animal suffering
Land use animal agriculture (feed production, grazing and farm units) occupies 83 per cent of the world’s farmed land, of which three-quarters could be rewilded back to original ecosystems or reforested where appropriate for the wider local environment. (Plant-Based Treaty) The rest would be enough to feed the world on a plant-based diet
Deforestation for grazing or crop-growing to feed intensively farmed livestock, subsequent erosion and landslides
Water stress due to the extractive industrial livestock industry
Environmental pollution industrial-scale animal farming is responsible for more environmental damage than the whole global transport system; and that’s without looking at all the chemicals and antibiotics usually involved
Human starvation 82% of the world’s starving children live in countries where the grain and soy crops grown are destined for export to the West to feed intensively-farmed livestock for meat
Personal health assuming we have informed ourselves on our nutritional needs and how to satisfy them via wholefoods and vegetables, preferably organic or at least unsprayed, a vegan diet has a lower risk of issues such as bowel cancer (associated with red meat), breast cancer (associated with dairy), diabetes and cardiovascular issues, and can also help in various diseases, such as arthritis. It seems that one might also expect greater longevity
Congruence for me, it’s to do with living a lifestyle that is in tune with my beliefs and values. I don’t want to put myself through the guilt of being an animal-lover but eating them.
If you didn’t see it, I recommend George Monbiot’s article in The Guardian of 14th December. The comments below it are sometimes illuminating, sometimes ludicrous, sometimes so far from what seems to make sense as to be mind-bogglingly stupid. Oh and there are climate deniers.
A dilemma and a challenge
I live with someone who is sympathetic to my own commitment to a vegan lifestyle (it’s more than just what I choose to eat). TM shares the cooking and cooks vegan for us both. The way we work on this smallholding is basically vegan (with the exception of some straw-and-gooseshit from our neighbours as mulch), permaculture-based (more on that anon), organic of course, and as much as possible both closed-loop and no-dig. I’ve mentioned that before.
But TM is not vegan, but lacto-veggie. We buy local cheese, and also butter, for him. And yes, I still miss both (though even he has arrived at the point where he prefers plant milk to dairy).
And there has always been the question of keeping animals here. We have more land than we need, and I have spent my life surrounded by animals: whether domestic animals such as cats and dogs, or hens and ponies, or occasionally goats; or wild and injured animals and birds that friends and neighbours used to bring me to tend from my childhood onwards. Animals for me are a source of immense joy and companionship. It’s strange, therefore, not to be surrounded by animals I know and love; and due to the hunting tradition here there is not as much wildlife as I expected.
This has raised questions about keeping eg a house cow, or goats, or chickens. Or, of course, ponies – my own particular deep love. TM, who did a professional smallholding training, practice and then some teaching of it in his early twenties, feels that a possible future might be small-scale farming that includes livestock. I understand his view but don’t completely share it.
I point out to TM that in order to have butter and cheese a cow needs to be kept lactating, via a calf each year. (Isn’t it odd that we’re the only species that drinks another’s breast milk, and into adulthood too?) What does one do with a male calf? Would he be willing to kill and eat it? He has said that, having been part of a pig-killing once, he wouldn’t relish doing that again. (What’s better, then, shipping animals that have trusted you off, frequently over huge distances with all the stress involved in that, to a slaughterhouse where you don’t have to witness their end?)
Our neighbours here mostly farm. (To my distress, much farming here is of intensive dairy, veal, pigs and hens.) They imagine that we are going to be keeping loads of animals; or if we don’t, I imagine that they expect that we will be keeping the land neat and tidy, which can be more of A Thing in rural France than you might imagine (and which would mean fossil fuel).
This is a dilemma and a challenge. TM and I debate it. I’d love animals here. BUT.
Many of my adult years have been extremely stressful; partly until relatively recently because of serious family illnesses and my own role in tending those family members, but partly as a result of dependant creatures who eventually get ill or have an accident and die. Underlying all that from my 20s onwards were the stress levels associated with the responsibilities of being a single parent struggling to pay the rent on a self-employed person’s arty earnings each month, and I have now arrived at a time when I am truly glad not to be responsible for more than I already am, and not sure how much resilience I have to manage extra stress if and when.
We might have to ignore the expectations of local people and simply allow much of the land here to rewild, in all its initial untidiness, as that was always part of our intention. Animals and land use is such a big issue: animal agriculture uses 75% more land than the same land used to produce plant-based foods for direct human consumption.
Our land here, a few hectares, is relatively tiny, but it’s a stand, to grow plants and perennial crops such as fruit and nut trees, and to allow natural forest regeneration and the associated biodiversity and habitat rather than keeping fields for grazing.
It’s my bit of quiet activism.
Roselle, your heart for life and land is so sweet! I think (and hope) that serializing your recipes here on Substack would be a great idea - it seems like there would be a very interested audience who would be grateful for vegan recipes, which are still pretty limited in the scope of things. I wonder if there might be a hybrid approach, in which you share the important message of your book in more traditional published format, while providing some recipe teasers and then referring readers to your online materials for full-photography-recipes? Best wishes finding the right path forward for this project, I know it's close to your heart and important to share!
Roselle, I agree with you that veganism is the way forward for all the reasons you state. I’m almost a vegan but I admit that I do eat eggs from organic free range chickens. I wish I could keep chickens because they are so lovely but I have nowhere to put them. Chickens are one animal you never need to kill.
When I lived in Italy I borrowed a broody hen and gave her a clutch of eggs to hatch. She produced a brood of the most beautiful, wild chickens and two cocks, all of whom flew into our nut tree to roost every night. When we went away our chickens looked after themselves, going down to the forest to look for food. Finding the eggs was always a challenge because our chickens hid them in obscure places.
I too had a veg patch and produced all our vegetables organically, channelling water from a nearby spring and making enormous compost heaps. I now have an alottment in Stroud- England.