Will’s World: 10 delicious confessions of a Groundswell goer

The present Mrs Evans and I have just spent two days at Groundswell.

It’s my favourite farming event, by some distance, and it’ll take me some time to properly process everything I learned and experienced there.

But here are my immediate thoughts, hastily gathered between the rush of jobs I’ve been catching up with back on the farm.

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1. I have no idea what to wear there. I saw outfits of all varieties, from standard farming attire right through to a group in inflatable cow outfits, and my personal favourite: a strapping looking fellow wearing what can only be described as a denim babygrow. Bravo to you, Sir.
2. I might be getting too old and cantankerous for camping in a field with several thousand others in proximity. I was kept awake by the person in the neighbouring tent, who I naturally assumed would be a large and hairy male farmer, snoring, as they were, like a chainsaw at full throttle. Much to my surprise, it turned out to be a very petite and lovely academic lady, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her.
3. Compost toilets aren’t for me at the best of times, and certainly not in stifling hot weather. The Victorians popularised the water closet for very good reasons, and that’s all I have to say about that.
4. I deliberately stayed away from all the policy-based sessions this year. I’ve heard all the big announcements about forthcoming big announcements too many times before, and I’m tired of being tossed crumbs.
5. Despite the challenges facing us as an industry and community, UK agriculture is far from down and out. The many different farmers I spoke to were solutions-focused, optimistic and extremely keen to learn. It’s one of the reasons I go back year after year, and I left determined to take this mindset home with me. Crack on, there’s good work to be done.
6. The best sessions are the smaller, nerdier ones, where enthusiasts gather to discuss everything from mycorrhizal fungi to beneficial insects. I attended one on curlews and made a few connections that will hopefully help me keep our chicks from being taken by corvids next year. It was worth the journey and ticket price for this alone.
7. As a lifelong book-lover, I get hopelessly starstruck when I meet authors. And so it proved once again when I met Richard Negus and Patrick Galbraith before their wonderfully entertaining session on hedgerows being the arteries of our landscape. I bought signed copies of both their books afterwards and stuttered my thanks like an over-stimulated small child.
8. I’m incredibly fortunate to have amazing friends who put up with my oddness and social anxiety and make me laugh constantly. It was great to catch up with so many of them and share a beer in the evening. Much love to you all.
9. British farmers produce some of the best and most diverse produce available anywhere on the planet, and there was a vast array of it on sale. I ate gorgeous native breed beef rolls, the best stone-baked pizza, sensationally spicy goat curry, and the most amazing dhal from Hodmedod’s, with all ingredients grown by their suppliers. Tip of the hat to my fellow food producers.
10. People are infinitely complex, and after all that high-quality fare, on the way home I could only think about a dirty Big Mac and fries and had to satisfy my craving at the motorway services. You can take the boy out of Wrexham, but you can’t fully take Wrexham out of the boy.