Ray Lovegrove

From the UK - now #Homesteading in rural #Sweden

#EcoAgrarian #Christian (and single!)

🌿 Reviving the Old Ways🪵 #Localism #Ruralism #ForestLiving

[Ray Lovegrove @bearhouseman]

#SimpleLiving

[Ray Lovegrove @bearhouseman]

The iron rich rocks found here in #Småland produce some very fine snail shells. #molluscs

[Alton Benes @alton_benes]

Langham Church Grass Cutting Team in 1955 (Langham Heritage Group) #Essex #ruralhistory 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[ALEXIS ™I ❤️🇷🇼• @dufitalexis1]

Britain has lost around half its hedgerows since the Second World War. The wildlife that depended on them has followed a similar trajectory. 🌿

The old field boundary — a strip of blackthorn, hawthorn, dog rose, and elder two to five metres wide between cultivated ground — was not wasted agricultural space. It was a functioning ecological system that maintained pollinators, pest predators, and farmland birds across centuries of working land.

Each hedgerow is a nesting corridor for grey partridge and skylark, a foraging habitat for brown hares and hedgehogs, a site for solitary bee colonies, and a windbreak for the crops alongside it.

The field cultivated to its very edge gives the maximum return this season. It removes the populations of beneficial insects, farmland birds, and small mammals on which stable long-term production depended.

The field with a hedgerow yields a few percent less per cultivated hectare — but remains productive across decades without compensatory chemical inputs. The documented declines in grey partridge, lapwing, and skylark across the British agricultural landscape since the 1970s are directly linked to field consolidation and hedgerow removal.

Practical equivalents for the garden or smallholding:
- A strip of wildflower meadow at least one metre wide at the plot boundary
- A clump of nettles in a shaded corner as a habitat base for red admiral, small tortoiseshell, and peacock butterflies
- A native mixed hedge of blackthorn and hawthorn in place of post-and-wire fencing
- A section of uncut grass between rows of fruit trees

#HedgerowHabitat #FarmlandWildlife #NativeHedge #GardenWildlife

[Alton Benes @alton_benes]

Over the garden gate, The Bank, Bidford-on-Avon, Alcester #Warwickshire #ruralhistory 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Alton Benes @alton_benes]

“Old Grass Cutter, Selworthy Green” #Exmoor #Somerset (Vowles postcard from Mark Crombie/Flickr) #ruralhistory 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Ray Lovegrove @bearhouseman]

@LivingTricks_ All fruits are female, they contain the seeds for the next generation.

[Jim Beattie @JimBeattie18]

Meadows Ridge
Woodcut on paper
Gordon Mortensen.

[Beauty Explorer @beautyexplorer0]

Swedish countryside

[Alton Benes @alton_benes]

Straw plaiting #Bedfordshire c 1905 (photo by W H Cox) #ruralhistory 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

[Michael Thomas of Sharon 🌳🌳🌳🐑🐕🏡 @MichaelTG09]

Don’t forget to occasionally go out in the dark all by yourself and look up.

[Rama Tyagi @jaihindrama]

From seed to plate in our School Nutrition Gardens 🌿
Children proudly harvesting what they grow — learning nutrition, responsibility, and love for nature.
Healthy soil, healthy children, healthy future. 💚
#SchoolNutritionGarden #GrowYourFood #HealthyChildren #ghaziabad

[helen warlow @HWarlow]

Nigel Fletcher English artist
Love these urban back garden paintings very homely and for me comforting
The yellow here is fabulous

[Michael Thomas of Sharon 🌳🌳🌳🐑🐕🏡 @MichaelTG09]

@PonyWes @OldHollowTree *Technological progress* is stopping up the source of decency in the world.

~Nicolas Gomez Davila

[Michael Thomas of Sharon 🌳🌳🌳🐑🐕🏡 @MichaelTG09]

The disorder of our current age will not be healed by further complexity and transgression but by a return to simplicity and limits.

[Andrew In The Hills @TLMFarming]

Build a sanctuary upon your land where your family can flourish into the perfection of supernatural Charity

[Giga Based Dad @GigaBasedDad]

Yes 😎

[Alton Benes @alton_benes]

Shepherd, Wilmington, East #Sussex (photo from the Long Man Inn) #ruralhistory 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿