Lady Farmer and The Good Dirt’ s creators Emma and Mary Kingsley.
21-day self-guided“ Slow Living Challenge.” The book was released the very week that the global lockdown took effect. Ironically, the subtitle is“ Cultivating Sustainable Simplicity Close to Home.” We marvel at the timing, and consider it a sign that the book’ s appearance was perfect for its purpose in the world.
Now ten years from our inception as Lady Farmer, we find ourselves looking back on a tumultuous decade that has included a global pandemic, extreme political polarization, an acceleration of climate change related weather events and significant threats to our democracy. During this time, it seems that, as a whole, humanity’ s separation from the fundamentals of what we call slow living has only grown deeper and wider.
In the earlier days, you would have heard us encouraging the idea that individual actions and choices for more sustainability would grow to become the basis of a paradigm-shifting movement, one that would eventually extend
Photo: Mary Ball
to the powers that be. After all, consumer demand is the engine of capitalism. It followed that producers and manufacturers and policy makers would finally respond to
We are now, however, seeing an ever-widening crack in the hull of our common vessel— one that no amount of recycling or mending or thrifting or chemical-free DIY product use can hope to repair.
the growing desires of increasingly informed buyers, shaping the marketplace in the direction of a more sustainable existence on this planet, the one and only lifeboat that carries all living things.
We are now, however, seeing an ever-widening crack in the hull of our common vessel— one that no amount of recycling or mending or thrifting or chemical free DIY product use can hope to repair.
To be clear, we don’ t mean to suggest that individual behaviors and choices are for naught. On the contrary, they are extremely important. By all means, we are here to support the growing numbers of yearning souls who want to reclaim our inextricable place within the web of creation. We are here, as we have been for the last ten years, to explore all the aspects of a slow living lifestyle, the intentionality of choices in food, clothing and spaces that encourage presence and a deep awareness of our connection with the life within and around us.
What has shifted is a sense that the greatest power in these choices is not how it changes the world— but how it fundamentally changes us. And consequently— this is how we change the world.
The seeds of slow living, as it turns out, are actually not so much what we wear, eat or buy. It’ s actually more simple than that. They are found in the connection we have to all that is life-giving and sustaining, from the soil under our feet with its billions upon billions of life forms to our fellow humans( all of them) and everything in between— every plant and insect, every creature of the air and sea, every bark, bud, moss and bee— our communities of organisms, creatures and people.
The seeds of slow living are planted when we seek those connections and discover the most powerful force in all of creation. It is love, profound love— deep love— that we’ re looking to cultivate and share. This is the next direction for Lady Farmer.
Our culture is well versed in an anthropocentric— or human centered— concept of love. What we
30 plenty I autumn harvest 2026