Nature Notes

About this book

Tim Deane's Nature Notes is a collection of articles that appeared in The Organic Grower magazine between 2009 and 2021. The notes are reflections of a life on the land, that of an organic vegetable grower and farmer intimately connected to the soil and working with the living ecological systems and cycles that sustain its productivity. They are both light-hearted and informative and although Tim makes no claims to being a 'proper naturalist', these notes provide a unique window into the nature of a small Devon farm on the fringes of Dartmoor, its fellow inhabitants and passing visitors. It is that empathy, observation, and attention to detail which made Tim such an accomplished grower; a true pioneer of the organic growing movement. Whether you have a garden or farm, or simply care about the environment in which we live, this book will provide a new perspective on the natural world around us.

Contents

Foreword by Phil Sumption
Introduction
1. Bees, birds, cats and clover
2. Timing is all
3. The Holly bears the crown
4. 'There's a flower that shall be mine
5. Confusion, clarity, obscurity
6. The Hornet Drum
7. Pheasants, predators and penguins
8. Water, weeds and consciousness
9. Soil associations
10. Chicory blues
11. What's in a field name?
12. The Merry Month
13. Eating disorders
14. "Pray you, tread softly
15. Almost a vegetable
16. Bird business
17. The swallows' summer
18. The night
19. Land and water
20. Life chances
21. Spiders, from Mars?
22. Where are the birds?
23. Light
24. Two onion kind
25. Some hardcore natural history
26. B is for beaver?
27. Animal spirits
28. Summer skies
29. Mind that tree
30. Hip, hip
31. A sense of purpose
32. Invasive plants
33. An elegant sedge
34. Cabbage Whites
35. Leeks, from salt to silt
36. The opposite wood
37. Water's ways
38. A bit about ivy
39. Stones
40. The turtle's voice
41. Nuts!
42. Winged life
43. Small lens - big world
44. Whaterver next?
45. Seed sense
46. Plant life
47. While hedging
48. Dandelions
49. Adam/Had 'em
50. Survivors
Epilogue: Two valleys and a farm
About the author

Customer Reviews

Biography

Tim Deane was born in Devon. He left and returned to the county several times during boyhood and as a young man. Following university and an undistinguished degree in archaeology and history he fell happily into casual work on a farm. This provided just enough experience to secure a permanent job on a mixed farm – beef, sheep and arable – in the Scottish Highlands. After two years he returned to Devon and spent a year at an agricultural college, leading to a post as a stockman/tractor driver on another mixed farm in Cornwall, where he spent six years.
In 1984 Tim, his wife Jan, and their two young children took on a small, abandoned farm in Devon. With no electricity or running water and a tumbled-down farmhouse, they were homesteading while learning the business of organic vegetable growing. Somehow they stayed solvent by selling their produce on the wholesale market but greater security came with the establishment of a vegetable box scheme in 1991. The first such scheme to market the entire output of an organic vegetable holding directly to individual households in this way, this was the immediate model for the subsequent expansion of direct marketing with the relative financial security that it provided.