Earthman

Sailing, skiing, vegetable growing wine drinking. living in the middle of a muddy field with my four legged friends enjoying the present and curious about life

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@karenfthompson That’s true love ❤️

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@karenfthompson @boswelltoday And yes it’s been raining off to Southwold tomorrow so hopefully drier just checking how far lavenham is ?

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@FlowerdewBob Keep going just loved your wry comment from the Diss GQT about all the self seeded plants in the gravel garden 😆

[Mr PitBull Stories @MrPitbull07]

In September 2007, a bird weighing barely more than a pound lifted off from Alaska and flew across the Pacific Ocean without stopping once.

No landing.
No food.
No water.
No sleep on the ocean.

Seven days and nine nights later, she arrived in New Zealand.

Her name was E7.

She was a bar-tailed godwit — a shorebird small enough to fit comfortably in your hands.

Scientists had long suspected these birds made one of the greatest migrations on Earth, but nobody had ever tracked an individual bird across the entire journey in real time.

E7 became the proof.

Researchers fitted her with a tiny satellite transmitter before migration season began.

Then they watched in astonishment as the signals kept moving south.

And south.

And south.

More than 7,000 miles across open ocean with no break.

What makes the journey even more unbelievable is how a godwit prepares for it.

In the weeks before departure, the bird transforms itself into a living fuel tank.

E7 spent late summer eating constantly, nearly doubling her body weight in fat reserves.

Then something extraordinary happened inside her body:

Her digestive organs began shrinking.

Her stomach and intestines partially atrophied because they wouldn’t be needed during the flight.

At the same time, her heart and flight muscles grew larger and stronger to handle the nonstop effort ahead.

By the time she launched into the sky, her body had essentially rebuilt itself for one purpose:

Survival in the air.

Once E7 left Alaska, there was no room for mistakes.

A bar-tailed godwit cannot rest on the ocean like a seabird.

If she landed in the Pacific, she would drown.

So she kept flying.

Hour after hour.
Day after day.

She navigated using the sun, stars, Earth’s magnetic field, and atmospheric patterns scientists still don’t fully understand.

She rode favorable winds southward while slowly burning through the fuel stored inside her body.

And when the fat reserves finally ran low, her body began consuming its own muscle tissue to keep her alive.

After more than 200 straight hours in flight, E7 finally descended onto the mudflats of New Zealand.

She had lost over half her body weight.

Her digestive system had effectively shut down.

Her muscles were severely depleted.

But she survived.

Within hours of landing, her organs began rebuilding themselves again.

The tiny bird that crossed the Pacific started eating, recovering, and preparing for the next stage of life as though this impossible journey was simply normal.

And that’s the part scientists found most humbling.

E7 wasn’t some miraculous exception.

She was just the first godwit carrying technology that allowed humans to witness what her species had quietly been doing for thousands of years.

Every year, tiny birds rise into the Arctic sky and cross an entire ocean powered only by instinct, endurance, and a body engineered by evolution to do something that still feels almost impossible.

A one-pound bird.
Seven days nonstop.
Over 7,000 miles of open ocean.

And somehow, she knew exactly where she was going.

[Give A Shit About Nature @giveashitnature]

In 2010, Andernach, Germany planted 101 varieties of tomatoes in the town center and told everyone to take whatever they wanted.

It was so popular that they did it again, adding beans the next year. Over time, they added onions, fruit trees, lettuce, zucchini, berries, and herbs, all free to the public and maintained by the city.

Andernach is now nicknamed the "edible city." And they're not alone.

Philadelphia has been doing a version of this since 2007. The Philadelphia Orchard Project has helped establish 67 sites across the city with thousands of food-bearing trees.

Baltimore is planting fruit trees on sidewalks. Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and Asheville all have public urban orchards.

A mature apple tree produces 400-500 pounds of fruit per year. A mature pear tree can produce for 75 years.

Cities pride themselves on their tree cover. We've decided that trees are important, but we haven't fully decided those trees should feed people yet.

Would you support urban fruit trees and vegetables in your city?

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@karenfthompson @boswelltoday Rumburgh

[Massimo @Rainmaker1973]

Nothing really special: just a bunch of piglets happily enjoying a water slide.

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Keith the Apocalypse Bringer received a visitor this week. A young woman with a clipboard, a fleece bearing the logo of a national rewilding charity, and the kind of clear-eyed certainty that comes from having read three books about ecosystems and never having stood in a wet field in February.

She had come to assess the farm for what she described as "rewilding potential."

Keith was eating a bramble at the time.

Visitor: Hello. I'm here to talk about transitioning the land away from livestock.

Farmer: Keith does most of the talking.

Visitor: I think we could really restore this landscape if we removed the grazing pressure.

Farmer: Have you noticed Keith.

Visitor: The goat? Yes. He'd be moved.

Farmer: Where to.

Visitor: A sanctuary, ideally.

Farmer: Keith was at a sanctuary. They asked us to take him back.

Visitor: Right. Well. Without the grazing, the natural succession would take over. Scrub, then woodland.

Farmer: That's bramble.

Visitor: Yes. Scrub is part of the natural process.

Farmer: Bramble is what Keith eats.

Visitor: The whole point is to let nature take its course without human interference.

Farmer: Keith is a goat. Goats are nature. Goats have been on this hill for several thousand years. The hill is the way it is because of goats.

Visitor: Domesticated goats aren't really wild.

Farmer: Neither are the trees you'd plant. Neither are you. What's your point.

Visitor: I think we could see the return of some really exciting species without the grazing.

Farmer: Like what.

Visitor: Well, eventually, lynx. Wolves.

Farmer: To eat Keith.

Visitor: ...

Farmer: You want to remove the goat to bring back the predator to eat the goat.

Visitor: When you put it like that.

Farmer: When you put it any way at all. Keith is doing the job. Keith is doing it for free. Keith has been doing it since the Neolithic. The bramble eats the field if Keith doesn't eat the bramble. You can hire a contractor to come up here once a year with a strimmer and do half as good a job for several thousand pounds, or you can have Keith, who works seven days a week for cheese.

Keith, at this point, kicked over the clipboard.

The visitor packed up. She left a leaflet.

Keith ate the leaflet.

The leaflet said "Wild By Nature."

So is Keith. Nobody at head office had thought about it for quite that long.

[H @countrymousie]

Yesterday I asked Mellors if he could just pop a plank over the deep ditch so I could easily walk over. Today I awoke to this.

[Earthman @Snohrap]

How about just letting things manage themselves without profit

[Moorland Association @MoorlandAssoc]

A gamekeeper has found one of his legal traps illegally damaged - and the timing could not be worse.

We are at the most sensitive point of the year for ground-nesting birds. Across our moors and farmland, waders and other red-listed species are laying eggs, incubating, or already rearing chicks.

Predator control divides opinion, and we understand that. But the evidence is clear: the targeted, lawful work of gamekeepers, farmers and conservation organisations is the main reason our estates remain strongholds for curlew, lapwing, golden plover and other threatened birds that choose to breed here.

Damaging or interfering with a legally set trap is a criminal offence. Every incident is reported to the police, and traps and snares are replaced within 24 hours.

Gamekeepers work hard to give every ground-nesting species a fair chance to hatch and raise their young.

Sabotage doesn't just cost estates time and money, it costs chicks their lives, and it sets back the recovery of some of our most threatened birds.

Please leave legal predator control alone. The future of our red-listed waders depends on it.

🎞️ Courtesy of Calderdale Moorland Group

[H @countrymousie]

This made me laugh out loud

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

Our great-grandparents ate from a far wider range of animal foods than we do, and the variety was the point. Every part of every animal carried a different set of nutrients, and the kitchen knew it without needing a label.

The dripping bowl, white enamel, on the cold shelf. Standard in every British kitchen until 1985. Now a museum piece.

Liver and onions on a Wednesday. Kidneys on toast. Tripe, heart, sweetbreads, brain. 11% of UK households now buy any red meat offal at all, and three-quarters of that 11% are over fifty-five. One generation from gone.

Brawn, the pig's head set in its own jelly. On every market stall in England until 1980. Count the producers on one hand.

Trotters. Once thrown in for free. Now sold as a delicacy.

Kippers. On every breakfast plate from 1843 until the herring fishery collapsed in 1977. The under-forties have eaten a Frube where their grandfather ate a kipper.

Jellied eels. London's staple since the 1700s. Thames eels down 90% since the 1970s. As of November 2025, no pie-and-mash shop in London serves eel pie. They are out of eels.

Cockles, winkles, whelks, sold from a wheelbarrow outside the pub with vinegar and white pepper. Tubby Isaac's ran ninety-four years and closed in 2013.

Native British oysters. Half a billion through Billingsgate in 1851. Three for a penny in Dickens. 5% of historical stocks remain.

Marrow bones. Spread on toast with salt was a child's tea. Now a restaurant starter your grandmother would not recognise.

Lard. Suet. Goose fat. Beef dripping. Replaced in one generation by a plastic tub of seed oil.

The variety did not vanish.

It was quietly removed from the table while we were looking at the menu.

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@karenfthompson Yay I had my own steak and kidney pie and had the dessert at the same time cheese to follow xx

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@Avabelly__ The other way round actually

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@Avabelly__ Beautiful one day the dog will not be here and those paw prints will be very precious

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@melchizepepe @SamaHoole Zoo plankton or Phytoplankton!!!?

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@SamaHoole @GrandvilleOR The lower in the food chain the better

[Earthman @Snohrap]

@SamaHoole @Do_Ya_Thang_ Good point but how do we work round this the message is good

[The Adventurous Soul @TAdventurousoul]

Pure talent on another level 🔥