Both of my books, "Retreat" (2020) and "The Garden" (2025) had an aspect of left-wing politics to them. However, in sympathy to the research material (as opposed to bringing a forced perspective to bear on it) it wasn't appropriate to explore this in detail in the books. The lens of Eastern philosophy through which I surveyed the terrain, and which that generation favoured, gave a wider and more…
Head over here to read David Holmgren's review of my book " The Garden: Visionary Growers and Farmers of the Counterculture. " I often receive books to review from publishers, but recently I was sent an inscribed copy of a book, The Garden, directly from the author, Mathew Ingram. A year after my extended interview with him in June 2023, I received the manuscript for factchecking the material that…
Alicia Bay Laurel is the celebrated polymath - artist, author, and musician - who found international fame as the visionary communard behind the classic self-sufficiency book "Living on the Earth". Her latest production Eartha & Aetherias is described by her as an "eco sci-fi romantasy graphic novella." It draws upon her experiences living in Hawaii during the nineteen seventies and all that…
I drove down to Knepp yesterday with my friend Mags. The weather was stunning. We had a tour around the walled garden but the highlight for me was wandering around the estate itself. The place just feels so HEALTHY! The birdsong is simply incredible - Mags has a birdsong app on her phone - she ran it and there seven birds audible just where we were standing. The rewilding is all very well and…
A field of Einkorn and Emmer Wheat I photographed growing at FarmEd. I'm having a thing with Doves Farm Organic Wholemeal Stoneground Einkorn Flour . I've only rarely endorsed a product like I did with Hodmedod's delicious Carlin Peas . That's reserved for food so great that by eating it you're making the world a better place. Einkorn wheat is an ancient grain that was originally harvested as many…
Twenty years ago at my blog WOEBOT , in December 2005, I made a list of 100 records . For a couple of years I've been planning a 100 for the Sick Veg blog, but this time of non-fiction books. I first thought I would do it for Christmas - but I've had a little time free - so think of it as an early Christmas present. You're welcome. This moment has arrived because I'm clearing my decks. Last week I…
Great interview with Eliot Coleman at The Real Organic Project for his new book, " The Self-Fed Farm. " Coleman argues that vegetable growers can effectively generate their soil fertility with Green Manures. To the layman, the city-dweller, this sounds like obscure, agricultural jargon. Eyes roll. Why should anyone care about this? Because it's so totally critical, let me break it down for you: 1)…
I've absolutely loved Chris Smaje's previous two books. Smaje has been locked in life-or-death tussle with the journalist George Monbiot - bravely articulating what many of us think about Monbiot's celebration of lab food. Monbiot here is reduced to a very brief cameo - somewhat like a pantomime baddy; mercifully diminished. "Finding Lights in a Dark Age" is, instead, a much more personal book.…
Just when I thought I had read all the books by John Seymour that were pertinent to me I came across another. "The Self-Sufficient Gardener", which I should have discovered sooner, was referred to in Paul A.Lee's "There is a Garden in the Mind" - his memoir of Alan Chadwick and the Organic Movement in California. Published in 1978, two years after "The Complete Book of Self-Sufficiency" (1976),…
You'd have to have a hard heart not to chuckle at F.C. King's name. And this IS Sick Veg after all. I was delighted to find a cheap copy of this slender classic from 1951. I have restored it with a replica printed dust jacket. It was written in his capacity as the head gardener at Levens Hall in Kendall in Cumbria. King met Sir Albert when Howard was evacuated from his home in Blackheath, London…
A clean version of the presentation I gave at Capel Manor College, Groundswell, Green Gathering, and The Organic Growers Gathering.
I recently harvested my tomato crop and turned it into chutney. It seemed like a good moment to reflect on four years of growing.
I’ve mentioned it before that one of the quirks of researching history is that you are usually only presented with information which draws you further into the past. Sometimes it is possible to be unaware of more recent events and discourse. This is how I belatedly encountered things such as the “Zig Zag Zen” book, a landmark retrospective survey of Psychedelics and Buddhism, and the phenomenon of…
My research for “Retreat” was pretty exhaustive, however one thing you find researching a particular era is that all the references within books and among the rest of the material (interviews, articles, documentaries etc) only relate to then-contemporary or historic writing. So while it’s natural that research will lead you further into the past, it’s harder to discover more recent things which…
Jay Stevens in his kitchen in Vermont in 2022. For the past seven years, since 2018, my world has been dominated by work on the two books Retreat (2020) and The Garden (2025). There have been other projects during this time, the comic book TPM (2022) and my book about spirituality in alternative music, The “S” Word (2022), but these were essentially accompanying volumes to the big two. Not…
Mrs. Ingram and Celyn Brazier’s “Munch is Missing” is a total delight, a veritable banquet. The work involved in creating these books is mind-blowing. Commissioned by the MUNCH Museum in Oslo, Catherine went to exhaustive ends researching Munch and the cosmos which has woven itself around his art and ideas; even traveling to Norway to trace the artist’s steps. She painstakingly devised these…
To visit William Robinson’s oval vegetable garden at Gravetye Manor, we had to eat an expensive lunch, because the hotel that runs the site doesn’t let people wander around otherwise. I think that, probably without question, this is the most important historic vegetable garden in the UK. Robinson (1838-1935), who reacted against the artificiality and strictures [edit: and impracticality…] of…
Sadhguru's Save Soil Article. Interview with Matthew Ingram - Author of 'The Garden' Apr 23, 2025 Save Soil was delighted to speak to Matthew Ingram about his fascinating new book, “The Garden: Visionary Growers and Farmers of the Counterculture”. The book explores the transformative journey of the 1970s countercultural farmers and growers whose radical practices redefined how we grow and eat…
This is my third and final JADAM post. Beyond JADAM’s pesticide and JADAM Microorganism Solution the third preparation which has appealed to me is JADAM Sulphur . or JS for short. JS claims to be “Effective against black spot, pear rust, powdery mildew, downy mildew, etc.” That’s to say as an “organic” herbicide treating fungal problems. I don’t get much of this but what I do get I don’t like.…
Interview on NTS
Article for The Quietus Addicted to Humus: Matthew Ingram on the Revolutionary Potential of Compost Matthew Ingram, aka Woebot, is an author and researcher in countercultural history. He found his way into a wider study of countercultural activity from a start as a music journalist covering domestic avant-garde scenes like Jungle and Grime. His first major book, Retreat: How The Counterculture…
Article for WWOOF Writing in a postscript to his classic book “The Fat of the Land” in 1974, self-sufficiency guru John Seymour proposed of his smallholding at Fachongle Isaf, “If there were enough people on it — enough hands — I believe that our seventy acres could produce a dozen times as much food as it did before.” Quite soon after this, in defiance of his wife Sally who had previously urged…
The Organic Counterculture It seems like everybody wants to be the “real” rebel these days, ever since the idea of alternative culture proved to be the hottest-selling ticket in town. Did that process start with the rock group Nirvana’s “Nevermind” album, Apple’s “Think Different” advertising campaign, or the advent of social media platforms like “X”? Organic farmers and merchants must have…
Watts stack. With this, I am perhaps turning the last page on my research of the counterculture. When I finished “ Retreat ” I took a road which led me into the unusual terrain of self-help literature and the applications of psychoanalysis to business. That resulted in the comic book “ TPM ” which I remember as being incredibly satisfying to make. In due course, I’m going to do another print run…