Sheaf: Summer 2021 and Harvest 2022

Description

What does it take to regain a right relationship with the land and what we eat in a time of fall?

In 2020 the Dark Mountain Project collaborated with UK grain and pulse pioneers Hodmedod in gathering of regenerative stories and art about grains and the people who grow them. We invited three writers to write, in fiction, nonfiction and poetry, of days spent on different farms in Somerset, Suffolk and Essex, before and after harvest. That project led to Sheaf: Writers in the Field which inspired more writers and artists to venture out to meet more of the farmers and makers in their network.

This year Sheaf’s contributors have visited farms in Suffolk, Essex and Shropshire and ventured onto allotments in south London. They’ve met bakers, farmers and researchers, photographed the seasons and captured images of roots, flowers and seeds. They’ve imagined the future, seen how the present can be informed by the past and heard how the microscopic world shapes our lives – whether in the soil or in our bodies.

The result are two beautiful softback collections of interviews, fiction, photography, recipes and reports from the field.  A polyphonic swarm of interconnecting stories about agroecology, roots, peas, long straw deep time, future thinking, radical producers and seed preservers.

Writers: Cate Chapman, Charlotte Du Cann, Julius Honnor, Nick Hunt, Josiah Meldrum, Olivia Oldham, Joanna Pocock, Nick Saltmarsh

Artists: Richard Allenby-Pratt, Kit Boyd, Anne Campbell, Anne-Marie, Culhane, Popeye Collective, Freddie Yauner

Editors and producers: Charlotte Du Cann, Josiah Meldrum

Farmers and makers: Col Gordon, Fred Price, Peter and Andrew Fairs, Andy Forbes, William and Miranda Kendall, Vanessa Kimbell, Mark and Liz Lea, Paul, Tobias and Emma Watkin, Martin and Toby Wolfe, George Young,

Sheaf are all-colour softback booklets, 48 and 52 pages long, printed on recycled and FSC-certified paper