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Webinar Transcript : Cultivating Medicinal Mushrooms  26.01.2021

Webinar transcript ‘Cultivating medicinal mushrooms with Hossein Hekmat 26.01.2021. This webinar is a part of a series run by ‘The Roots Project’ X Kirkstall Valley Farm. The Roots Project is a fundraising, and resource platform for refugees and migrants. To learn more, support and donate check out or linktree : www.linktr.ee/therootsprojectuk

  Seren Oakley (Host): I’m Seren, I’m with Kirkstall Valley Farm, and this is Hossein.

Hossein (Speaker): Hello

S: So, Hossein is going to be our mushroom man for today. I wanted to start off by – I don’t know if any of you know Merlin Sheldrake is, but there’s a really nice bit in his book that I think could intro quite nicely into what you’re going to tell us about mushrooms. So, it says “Mushrooms provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the way we think, feel and behave. Yet they spend their lives largely hidden from view and more that 90% of their species remain undocumented. The more we learn about fungi, the less makes sense without them.’ So, Hossein can you tell us, what are mushrooms? Firstly, before we start, and what you do in relation to them maybe.

H: I can. I discovered mushroom cultivation. Well, I’ve come across adaptogens a few years ago in pursuit of holistic health. Trying to figure out why conventional medicine doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. So, I mean one of the biggest influences on me was Paul Stamets. You may or may not have heard. Hopefully. He’s a person who really embodies something that I’ve always wanted the world to progress to which is the spirituality of science and the science of spirituality. The understanding that the holistic approach to the planet in terms of how we look at ourselves in terms of individuals. The way mycelium works both metaphorically and literally teaches you that the planet is one, the universe is one. But they’re actually connected in scientific ways. Mushrooms have networks underground caused mycelium. They spread out. They have a symbiosis with the ecosystem that they’re in bringing nutrients to things that need it, trading nutrients with plants, bringing nutrients from the mother tree to like a seedling. They seem to have been around a lot longer that mammals. A few million years ago, if I’m correct they helped bring plant life from the oceans to the land. Most people don’t realise humans are more closely related to mushrooms than plant life. Because they breathe in oxygen and they breathe out carbon dioxide. So, when I kind of got into understanding natural, more herbal solutions to human issues. Adaptogens became a big thing.

S: What is an adaptogen, for people who don’t know?

H: There’s different ways to explain it, it’s a natural holistic product, that has a lot of benefits for your body, but also tells your body how to improve itself instead of giving your body what it wants. It’s like a key to a programme that it unlocks a process in your body where things improve. Typically, adaptogens are things tat tell your body how to adapt to stress, so often it’s adapting to physical or emotional stressful environments. Or improving your ability in those ways. A couple we’ve mentioned in podcasts before, for example, Ashwagandha; is a nootropic. It improves cognitive function. It has benefits for thinking and cognition. It has some prospects in that regards for things like Alzheimer’s and dementia. It regulates hormones like testosterone naturally, down regulates cortisol the stress hormone. These things have multiple properties. If you follow the trail of natural adaptogens you’ll inevitably get to mushrooms, to fungi.

S: What are some of the first adaptogenic mushrooms you got into? And what do they do?

H: So, Lions mane is one of them, you’re familiar with as well. It seems to have the properties that ashwagandha has for the brain, but a lot more pronounced. I’ve got some notes here actually. There’s a lot of adaptogenic mushrooms that I’m quite into and most of which I’m growing but there’s a couple more you need a bit more time to do so. Lions manes a good one you can grow at home. It’s got a lot of benefits, and helps with ulcers, and tumours. It’s an anti-inflammatory as well. There’s a study from 1987 showing it’s beneficial for throat cancers, and gastric cancers. A few other benefits are that it’s one of two types of mushrooms that causes neurogenesis. It helps the neurons regrow and repair. Which is something you can’t really find in the synthetic world. It’s actually quite rare anyway. That’s a really good adaptogenic property of lion’s mane, the neurogenesis. Specifically, the outer part of the neuron, it helps that part grow, which could be damaged by, you name it PTSD, Stress, Depression, all sorts of issues. Again, it highlights a perspective of a human made issue, resolved or addressed with a fungus. As we know fungi adapt to the environment and try to help it balance out. So, on a physiological scale, they have a lot of potential to help us, because we are basically the planet, conscious. Just like the fungi we’re not really separate from them. But there’s this illusion that we are. There are a few other benefits to thee mushrooms that we’ll talk about today. They all have a common theme between them, they all have a massive boost to your immune system, they seem to be very effective for a few cancers. And they all have an anti-inflammatory effect on your body as well. A lot of medicines that help your immune system, caution needs to be taken with them, because they can cause inflammation to your immune system. Most thee mushrooms don’t seem to do that. They have what exerts call, immune-regulatory properties so hat means they regulate they boost it, but they have an anti-inflammatory effect as well, so people with an auto-immune disease should look into a few of these.

S: Other than neuro-performance, are there any that really benefit with physical performance that you’d recommend to people?

H: Yeah, to be honest! Quite a few of them have positive effects on your body, you mean like physical benefits, you mean like exercise and physical performance? Cordyceps are a good one, you might have heard of, in the wild they grow on insects. They’re a little more difficult to cultivate at home because of that. There’s a couple of strains. There’s a very famous Tibetan one. There’s a lot of benefits to taking them the list is massive. But again, like with all the other adaptogenic mushrooms, they have a benefit for immune system, some studies show anticancer properties, and anti-inflammatory properties, but with cordyceps, studies show - for example - they all seem to have a speciality property on top – (with cordyceps) is athletic performance. They oxygenate your blood, I think it’s to do with how they affect your blood, they have a life prolonging effect as well. These are studies that are still going through, mainly because there’s no profit big pharma kind of studies for them. But cordyceps is something I would recommend to someone who would benefit from, if they’re suffering from anything, a disease or an issue that slows you down or you require, or you require extra athletic performance. Just generally we need to start a culture.

I used to be in the gym industry, the fitness industry, you observe a lot of artificial profit-based solutions. People are addicted to getting bigger and more muscular. You reach a certain age, and it’s a given in the personal training scene where, they reach a certain age, they all start taking testosterone. Whether on their own, or they go to their doctors and ask them to top them up. But if you have a bit of knowledge, you can have your performance naturally improved adaptogens do that, they tell your body to give it what it needs. Cordyceps have those benefits, they seem to create a lot of circulation, they improve athletic performance to the point, this would have to be quoted properly, but a bunch of athletic teams were accused to be doping because they were taking cordyceps, cordyceps have some anecdotal stories of athletics being affected quite positively to the point that people think they’re doping. So cordyceps would be a really good one. For anyone wit hypothyroidism that would help a lot with as well

S: Before we move on to the process, because I’ll show the video after this, how did you move from the supplements and eating mushrooms to the decision to start growing mushrooms yourself

H: I think there was a lot of spare time during lockdown. I’m self-employed effectively, with more focus on sports massage therapy, but that’s not really happening. So, you have a lot of time to learn thigs and do things during lockdown, so it just felt like it was meant to be. I was already following that path of holistic and natural medicines. You get to a point where you do your own research and things and you realise what we’re taught, and what the reality of what can help us is based on profit. It’s based on funnelling us into a system, where if you feel like you want to help people improve their lives, health, improve their mental health, you’d be channelled into a degree that ignores a lot of things, the university system is funded by a capitalist system that wants you to just, kind of go into an industry, and make profit, make money. So, decades of watching medicine fail, and realising this more and more. I remember seeing years ago the negative effects of pharmaceutical on myself, my family members, people I care about, so it kind of woke me up to the anti-pharma stuff that everyone’s now picked up on, but still has very little power against. That’s the drive, the drive comes from realising pharmaceuticals are not here to help us, they’re here to make to profit. When you live in a world where everyone’s taking testosterone when they turn 25, and you pop an ashwagandha and a cordyceps, and you know. You’ve done the research and you see the people behind it, you see like Paul Stamets, or Merlin Sheldrake, these absolute legends who want to make the world a better place, so we can make the planet a better place with less suffering, so you know the planet will survive a lot better, that’s the drive that makes you want to do your own research. I’m not talking about some paranoid conspiracy talk; I’m talking about the basis of what science there is out there. Why it’s not prominent, why it’s not on the news, why Phizer, a company with evil, evil, evil track record, where they’ve caused deaths in children in places in Africa, and just shell out millions and millions in dollars, to make up for it’ company like that is trusted and accepted as a solution to COVID-19. Which we know is making endless profit for the billionaires that really aren’t here for our benefit in the first place. When that’s accepted, I don’t think it’s going to get that many results, and when people don’t really know what medicinal mushrooms are, that’s what I want to tilt the balance of.

When you get the knowledge, and you get into mycology and understand these breakthrough mycologists and what they’re doing, you understand that one or two of these mushrooms, is enough to covid proof you. With a healthy lifestyle, where you’re eating the right foods, making sure you’re getting your zinc, your vitamins, there’s nothing that comes close to enabling your body to do what it’s meant to do. With the help of you body and the earth extended, because that is your body, that’s the earth. So, we live in a world where people are conditioned to trust medicines that are no good for anyone apart from the people making profit, and often they’ll cause adverse effects. We need to change that because those drugs aren’t good for your physical health or mental health. But what I’ve found is that adaptogens, fungal based or not, counter the negative effects of pharmaceuticals.

S: Let’s go through to the process I think, when we do it would you rather, we go through the pictures, and explain what’s going on in the pictures first or go through the video and then talk about that at the end?

H: Lets go for the pictures and talk a little bit about that first.

S: Cool, I’m going to share my screen with everyone, yeah.  So, what is happening in this picture?

H: That’s a aby lions mane growing out. Lion’s mane has, as the name suggests kind of like a beard, or some people say like a brain, or some people say like a fluffy pom pom. Most would agree it’s a pom pom mushroom. The good thing about lion’s mane is it’s also a gourmet mushroom. Like it really tastes nice, fry it up with some garlic, some sesame seeds. The aim is to really be growing enough to eat it really as opposed to buying or taking the extract. So, the process with most medicinal mushrooms is, and we’ll go through more later is you need – it’s micro biology – you want to kind of, if you’re using spores, you want them to germinate, they need to be in a completely sterile environment, no other bacteria, or other fungi are there. Because they’ll compete with them, and in a lot of cases, if it’s a predatory fungus, they’ll kind of take over. So, there’s a lot of sterilisation.

With this Lion’s mane I kind of grew it out. On grains, so what I did was bought liquid culture. I ordered liquid culture from gourmetmushrooms.co.uk they’re based in Leeds. They’re a really good mushroom supply company. The person who runs it, is a big fan paul stamets. I’ve got his book here. This is the main for of inspiration, and thing that I learn from. Apparently, this lions mane that I’m growing, is a Paul Stamets strain. So, he met Stamets, and he kept it and he’s kept it for a while. What you need to get is liquid culture, or spores in grans that have been prepared. Typically you hydrate the grains, s you soak them for 24 hours, then you simmer or boil them for a bit, so they absorb moisture, but then you drain them so they’re dry on the outside. Close to when you’re ready to eat them, if you were to eat them really. It’s a process of putting them in jars, carefully prepared jars, you’d sterilise them. So what most people do is use a pressure cooker, between an hour or two of 15 psi, it kills all the spores or anything competing in the grains. Then after that it’s a case of finding an environment, or like a still air environment, to put your liquid culture, which is the mycelium in a liquid form, or your spores which have germinated, into the grains to incubate for a while. With Lion’s Mane for example for a few weeks, or even a couple months if it’s a big bag. Often with gourmet medicinal mushrooms, the incubation temp is higher than fruiting temp so when you’re ready to fruit you lower the temperature. Another thing that mushrooms really like is humidity, I use a fogger here. But anything to make humidity around it. I’ve got bit of a Lion’s Mane culture here to show actually. This is something I’ve used already, so I don’t mind opening up and exposing it to air because that would usually contaminate it. The mycelium of lion’s mane is a bit whisky; it doesn’t look that strong. It’s a bit sporadic. Some mycologists might see this and think of is that contaminations. But it’s just the way lion’s mane grows it’s a it sporadic. This is what I use instead of a petri dish, you can sterilise and use these cups. You can put a little bit of this into the grains, to inoculate it, or you can make liquid culture and put that in. So that’s Lion’s Mane. It’s gorgeous and it tastes beautiful.

S: I’ll go to the next image. What are these?

H: So, these are bags, sawdust bags. I was in the process of filling them up. You can grow a lot of these medicinal mushrooms on sawdust. Supplemented sawdust. In fact, that’s the main method. Grains are a way to get the mycelium in something high nutrient so it’s strong. So, you can put the grains to sawdust as well. Usually, you hydrate it to something known as field capacity. What it is is I get a formula from the supplier. With this beechwood sawdust, for every 1kg of beechwood sawdust you put three Litres of water, and that should hydrate sufficiently, for the mycelium to grow out on and the mushrooms to grow. I put it in a spawn bag or a grow bag, and these are autoclave-able, so you can kind of have them at about 15-16 psi which is about 120 degrees centigrade, and they’ll sterilise what’s inside them. So similar to what we said with the grain jars. You put these in a pressure cooker, sterilise them, and once they’re out they’re ready to inoculate. Then you can the liquid culture in there, you can put a piece of mycelium in there from agar or petri dish. Some people do spore syringes in there. It just creates a potential for variations in genetics.

 S: and what is that?

H: This is liquid culture, I was talking about, an if I’m not mistaken that’s enoki in a jar. It’s a medium where the mycelium can grow in water. So, you do the same kind of process, if you want to create liquid culture, from spores. For example, you could get spores of a mushroom from a vendor, they usually come in a syringe, and you inject it into the medium. The medium is usually a small percentage of carbohydrate, 4% by weight. I’ve used light malt extract here, which is another way of having a nutrient broth. I put 1g to 600ml. Then you put it in the pressure cooker, because tit’s liquid it only needs to be sterilised for 25 minutes. Once it’s sterile you can kind of inject it or put a piece of mycelium in there as well again it has to be in a sterile environment. Usually like a still air box, something I can go into later, or another episode. Where you can open the top and be confident nothing else can get in. Then you spin it out, you spin it out everyday for a week or two. As you can see the bits of mycelium grow. Then the bits in between, are just like the water medium.

I think there’s another one here as well you can show. Maitake, or yeah hen of the woods… Yeah, so the last one was Maitake, this is Enoki. It’s actually looking a bit healthier than the other one. When you spin it round it breaks up. It’s actually got a jelly fish like cloud. I love it it’s beautiful. That’s healthy-looking mycelium, from enoki. Basically, I bought the spores, so it was already in a syringe ready to spread, and then I expanded it to liquid culture. That’s the benefit of liquid culture you can just keep expanding it for a while. Then have more of it.

S: We’ll go back to this picture as well.

H: This is a very interesting thing, so those sawdust blocks that we showed earlier. This is a shitake fruiting block that’s already. I can kind of go into the benefits of shitake as well, because its one of the tastiest gourmet medicinal mushrooms so it’s like a very potent anti-cancer mushroom as well. So, I’ll go into polysaccharides as well. So, the way mushrooms work and their adaptogenic properties, is in some of the compounds called polysaccharides, and there’s a type of those called beta-glutens. These are basically very complex carbohydrates, that can work with and bind proteins, and the complexities are like a key that work and unlock something in your body, to create an adaptogenic effect. So, a few studies I’m looking at here, there’s a study from japan that show it has anti-cancerous properties, there’s a study from 1978 from a scientist called Shiharo, where it almost completely performed regression of many solid tumours that were looked at. There’s a poly saccharide called KS2 in it for example, it’s a powerful anti-carcinogen, anti-tumour. Again, it’s an adaptogenic compound that binds to proteins, it tells your immune system what to do, how to deal with it better. Another notable benefit of Shitake for example, is its immunity boosting properties there’s a study from 1993 that shows it can reverse the effects of herpes, it can slow down HIV, and has immunity boosting effects in it as well. There’s another study Seren, that you might like, that says, fermented shitake is a lot more effective. They say fermented shitake is even better.

So, this is a shitake block. Even compared to other medicinal mushrooms, it does take a bit longer to mature, and most mycelium has a white-ish colour and so does shitake. But after a while it goes brown, and that’s when you know it’s ready to fruit. So, this is a shitake fruiting block, that we’ve actually harvested, and eaten, it’s been put out for it’s second flush because shitake usually does a couple of flushes, it just takes ages. It’s worth it though.

S: Yeah, I’ll play the video now. I guess if you want to just talk over it because it’s quite fast moving but we can always watch it twice through if people want. Hossein if you want me to stop the video at any point just let me know because it is in sections so we can just stop it.

H: Sure, Sure. I’m ready.

S: So, this is the cloning from shop bought mushrooms.

H: So, this is a still air box, I was referring to earlier. You clean it up first, wipe it down with alcohol. 70% plus iso-propel alcohol, or Dettol or both. Then you wait half hour for everything to settle in there. Anything you need to work with, you put in there. So, I’m working with a scalpel, exacto-knife in there. Cloning’s a really good way to grow mushrooms, you don’t necessarily need to buy culture from anywhere. You can clone from the wild or even super market, as we’re doing here. So, this is shimeji mushroom. Another mushroom that has a lot of benefits, similar to Enoki, which I’m growing at home as well. The process is you find the healthiest happiest one, amongst some healthier friends as well, that’s like a healthy cluster. You find the best one.

I’ve been a bit extra careful here and sprayed it down as well so it’s clean on the outside. A lot of people don’t do that. You spread it apart and you get a little bit of the flesh, ad that’s all you need. You put the flesh in a petri dish, that you’ve got the medium on already, similar to a liquid culture the medium, it’s like a gelatinous version. You watch it grow out and as it grows out, over the next few days, weeks. It takes a couple weeks to grow properly then you can observe it see if it’s healthy, the healthiest strand that’s kind of coming out from where you’ve planted it, you can watch that grow out. You can keep doing that until you’ve got a healthy culture. That’s also how you eliminate contaminants, especially if you clone from the wild. You’re going to have other fungi contaminants competing, likely to be with the mushrooms. Same with shop bought, you can’t guarantee it being sterile. Here we can see I’m opening up the flesh of the mushroom, so I can get into the middle, cause in the middle it’s less likely to have contaminants, even if it does have contaminants, it’s going to have less of. I’m flame sterilising the head of my needle here. This is all happening in a still air box, that’s why it’s a bit blurry, it’s PVC.

I’m taking a little bit of the flesh from the centre of the mushroom, to minimise the risk of contaminants being on it. I’ve got a little piece there, just putting it into the middle. Once you get used to this kind of stuff, I want to get to a place where everyone’s doing this kind of stuff, like it’s plant work. Like Myco-phobia is the reason none of us are doing this kind of thing. Everyone could do it. Everyone should do it.

So I’ve got a fogger here, which creates a moist environment for mushrooms. That’s the top of a bottle which I’m growing Enoki mushrooms on Enoki’s have a different way to fruit they cultivate and fruit to grow short and thin. So, I used a method to make them grow long and thin by reducing carbon dioxide levels.

This is Hen of the Wood, maitake. Another mushroom with loads of medicinal benefits, similar to maitake. So, this study from 93, from a guy called Chan-young; reduces tumor mass. I’ll go into Maitake a little bit as well. The thing with maitake is as well, again we’re talking about man made problems. I don’t know too much detail about hormone effecting pharmaceuticals, but I have observed a lot of common issues that happen in modern society that happen with men and women. I’ll go into what Enoki does in terms of certain tumours or cancers.  As well as having all the benefits we’ve mentioned, is a very effective treatment for treatment resistant malaria. So that is something to look into. A natural treatment to help malaria. Also, there’s a study that shows – this is in the Paul Stamets book. 76% improvement in pregnancy rates, in women who were not ovulating due to PCOS. So, PCOS, 76% improvement rate in pregnancies, for women who were not ovulating before. Now, you could say – how did that happen in the first place? I don’t know. But pharmaceuticals in general are a massive part of why we have that issue in the first place. I’ll go into Enoki as well, and how that affects men.

Yeah – so these are three shitake clone plates that I’ve grown before. So, when I grew out the shitake, I took a piece of the flesh from an area that had nice big mushrooms around it. I think in the video I’m trying to show what it looks like, but I’ve got a sample here that I can show. It’s gorgeous, it puts a smile on my face. The fractal-ness of it. I’ll show you now, if you can see. So that’s the mycelium of shitake, that I’ve used before ad gown out. I’ve kind of put some of it in the fridge. It’s gorgeous. It has similarities with so many things in nature, it looks like an eye, or a mushroom top.

Here is another process, where I’m taking a bit from one petri dish and putting it into another. Tis is like the clean up process where you take the healthier process, and moving it to let that grow out. So, once you get to your mushroom lock that your growing, you’ve got the healthiest part. The most contaminant free. It kind of becomes, similar to like a whisky where people say single malt is better than multi malt. Especially when you’re doing this stuff, the spores will have multiple genetic so you’ll want to isolate the healthiest genetics and transfer that.

That’s a T2 transfer, that means I’ve transferred it twice. From the original petri dish onto the second petri dish.

Sweet.

S: There’s a question in the chat, we could answer that quickly if you can see it, it’s from Goldi. It says ‘I live outdoors most of the time, what advice do you have for growing mushrooms in unpredictable environments? Like it can get warm and cold quickly and sterilising things can be difficult.

H:

You can kind of sterilise things without a pressure cooker. You can steam sterilise things, but you’d have to do that for a good 24 hours, to really – endo spores are an issue. Spores are actually really cheeky. They can survive a lot. They hide in the middle of grains like ‘Don’t tell anyone and I’ll like come out later, and BOOM’ they take over the grow so, predatorial fungus, or bacterial spores. They have this defence mechanism, where they can deal with a lot more heat and pressure. When that heat and pressures gone, then they start evolving, and the DNA changes and they start becoming the fungus. If you don’t mind putting something on the hob for 24hrs, you can do it.

In terms of unpredictable environments, you would have to incubate at warmer temperatures, that’s just a given. Some of these you could incubate at as low as 15 degrees, these medicinal mushrooms. I would recommend using strong aggressive strains. Oyster mushrooms are a very tasty gourmet mushroom. I plan to grow some; they seem to be to be fastest most aggressive strain. Some of them are really fine with cold environments. You’d have to look at incubation as well, because incubation is always warmer. All these mushrooms will grow in the cold. All of them will fruit in the cold. It’s just whether they will incubate. So you want to normalise the temperature but I would also look at your local environment specifically, and see what advice there is online also. I’m coming from the perspective of someone who’s like learned this stuff, got into this stuff. But I’m definitely not a specialist. Or a mycologist. An amateur enthusiast. Which we should all be, cause that’s the whole point of the culture, is to normalise it; where we have mushroom grow kits in the kitchen. Some people even put them in the bathroom, once the mycelium has taken over the substrate and it’s quite strong, you don’t really have to worry about contaminations as much as you would. Especially a clean bathroom would create a good steam level for it. For humidity I’d look at Oyster mushrooms. They do have some medicinal benefits. Some Oyster mushrooms have closed to these [mentioned mushrooms] kind of benefits.

 S:  We’ll open it up as well, if anyone else wants to unmute themselves or type any questions in the chat

H:  Robbie?

Robbie:  Thank you. Lots of good information there. I’ve been getting into medicinal mushrooms. Mainly foraged ones that are picked out and about. Turkey Tails and Birch Polypore’s and things like that.

Growing medicinal mushrooms is something I want to get into. So I was kinda thinking like it seems like a bit of a mine field of so much stuff, but what do you need to start a simple grow? I mainly wanna grow Lion’s Mane

 H:

So what i would recommend is, if you want to get into it quickly.  There’s a couple of methods. I started with kits. I got a Lion’s Mane grow kit and from that I cloned  instead of getting the culture.

If you want to start from a base level and growing them regularly, I would recommend getting a good liquid culture from a vendor. There’s no guarantee that they're completely sterile but pretty much [are]. They use a Flow Hood which is this thing which blows sterile air where they can work on and they cost £100s.  I use the Gourmetmushrooms.co.uk Liquid Cultures and they worked absolutely fine.

Liquid cultures are better than a spore syringe, because someone's already isolated the good spore genetics and hopefully taken away any contamination from it.

So if you are going to start growing, you can buy the liquid culture, then in terms of equipment, I use jars.

I’m an audio/kinaesthetic/ visual learner. I love books as well when there’s a passion and enthusiasm but I’ve learned so much from university of YouTube.

R: yeah

H:

Because there’s a lot of talented enthusiastic mycologists in the UK and in America to learn from, that I’ve kind of become obsessed with [watching]

Basically you can use jars and there’s a process where you do ‘Culture’ to ‘Grain’ to ‘Substrate’ or you can grow straight from culture to substrate. All these gourmet/medicinal ones grow on woodchips or supplemented wood because they’re used to growing on or near trees.

The other category of medicinal mushrooms which were seeing a revolution in, grow on different substrates. For example , the Psilocybin based ones are part of a mental health revolution. I think its an example of how we’re going to make the world a better place. They don’t grow on woodchips, but they're definitely powerful medicinal mushrooms. But the rest of them [medicinal mushrooms] grow on supplemented woodchips.

 The only drawback t large scale mushroom growing is the big plastic grow bags, but the good thing is it’s the same industry that’s finding the solution to the plastic problem. I don’t know if you’ve heard, there’s a lot of beautiful intelligent people working on engineering one of the 50 species of fungus that eat plastic. But you can get grow bags with filtered air patches that don’t let bacteria in. You can get about 20/30 fairly large ones for about £15-£20. I get sawdust and supplement it between 10-15% with organic wheat bran. That kind of gives it the equivalent [nutrition] of what a tree would have , then you bring it to “Field capacity” with water, put it in a pressure cooker at 15psi for 2  hours.  15psi pressure cookers are very very difficult to get in the UK, because in Europe and the UK they're usually 10psi, which you can experiment with. There’s the Idea that you just do it for 2/3 times as long [as the 15psi would] it will work.

You can steam sterilise as well. You put the big blocks in a pan, but you’d have to boil it for 24 hours so you’d have to figure out having to keep boiling the kettle and adding more water in.

If you see it as process that you’re passionate about, it’s a wonderful thing and if you eventually save up and get a pressure cooker , the most common one that everyone uses is a ‘Presto 23 quart’, it’s like a 21.5Litre pressure cooker with a pressure gauge. In America it’s cheap, like $100 but for us to buy it’s about £130 plus import duties etc on eBay. If you can save up its worth it, otherwise if you can find a way to steam for 24 hours, then you can get your substrates prepared.

Otherwise, I think we can segway this [mushroom cultivation] culture with grow kit culture. Depends how deep you wanna go. If you wanna be someone provides the grow kits as well or someone who provides information on growing or just a mushroom product user, either way that’s welcome from the mushroom world.

With grow kits, they send you it already covered in mycelium, ready to fruit. That’s when they send you it. They're usually not that expensive. The £1 Shiitake block £7 and I think they had one over 2kg at £15, something like that.

S:  I’ve posted the website that you use

H: Bless bless

Another thing I’d say is do what you’re doing now. Ask ask ask. I nagged so many people with so many questions. I bought 2 Shiitake blocks and get texting him about what to do J

R:  Cool, that sounds good. Ill definitely do a bit more reading on it too. What was that book you had, also?

 H:  This is definitely something I’d recommend. My friend lent me it but I’d buy it a 1000 times:

Growing Gourmet Medicinal Mushrooms – Paul Stamets

R:  oh Paul Stamets, cool

H:  yeah , this isa good reference book. The only thing it doesn’t include is Cordyceps but its absolutely amazing. For indoor and outdoor and medicinal mushrooms.

Does anyone have any more questions ?

I did wanna mention Enoki. They all have these common benefits: on of the polysaccharides in Enoki is called Flamulin. From a study done by a scientist called Ying, from China in 1987 that shows 80-100% effectiveness for treatment of Sarcomas and Carcinomas

They have unusually low cancer rates in areas where these mushrooms are consumed in Japan. Studies of anti cancer properties go back as 1968 and another from 1990. Alot of these studies were initiated such a long time ago that you wonder how the worlds, where the information is geared towards making more profit.

Another property of Enoki I wanted to bring up is it shows fantastic results for prostate cancer as a speciality. Enoki is good for enlarged/tumourus prostates. It’s kinda cool because you see these specialities they do as well as the common benefits among them. Like for example with Maitake and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.

I did wanna mention a couple more mushrooms whilst I’m here. So these are all mushrooms I’m growing or intend to grow:

There’s a couple more mushrooms that are like wood conk style. There physically a bit more dense.

These are medicinal but not really gourmet. So you either do extracts or teas or tinctures.

This might be most famous of medicinal mushrooms you may have heard of so this is Reishi.

There’s loads of studies showing disease resistance, [life] longevity and improvements of thyroid issues. Cancer fighting properties. Been used as an ant cancer medicine in asia for 100s of years. Includes very complex Beta Glucans. Some species have 40% Beta Glucan content - really high adaptogenic content. Ive noted a bunch of things for example the way it stimulates T – Cell production, immune system boosting while maintaining anti inflammatory effects on the immune system.

Good for blood health. A study from 1989 mentions it regulates blood sugar and lipids. Another study from China (Yung 1995) showing significant reduction in lung cancer cells. A study from Japan shows its toxicity to cancer cells  (Mizushima 1998)

Reishi has show significant reduction in HIV cell production in humans from a study in 1994 and there’s another study proving it fights DNA damage.

 Reishis’ all over the world as well in different forms. Ive not seen too much of it in the local, local areas like Meanwood/Woodhouse but what I have seen is Turkey Tail.

Turkey Tail’s everywhere; if you do some research you’ll see you’ll find it in warm countries, cold countries in different variations. you can find it in Woodhouse ridge before all the critters get them, they're quite pretty.

There’s a study from (Nakazuto 1997) (Sugimeshi 1997, 1994). Im mentioning the studies so people can reference it and also so it’s not some generic advice you may hear from people about things. These are serious studies.

Paul Stamet’s mentioned, combined with chemotherapy, it increases the survival rate of many cancers with the help of its main Polysaccharide known as PSK . A study (Kobiashi 1995) shows it reduces cancer metastasis. It’s also a powerful anti free radical. There’s another Polysaccharide in it called PSP which inhibits HIV production. So that’s 3 different [medicinal] mushrooms that fight HIV.

Othere Polysaccharides in it include RPSB. They all have a bunch of benefits including immunomudulation and anti inflammatory benefits.

Studies show Turkey Tail has a great effect for treating Leukaemia and it has strong anti microbial properties.

So these are really really good Covid time mushrooms.

There’s an anecdotal story about Turkey Tail too. If like me you follow Paul Stamets you may know about the story of his mother he mentions in his lectures where his mother in here 80’s called him one day... yeah Catherine, do know this story?

Catherine:   Nods

H:  Yeah so she had incredibly enlarged breast. Doctor gave her very little time [stage 4 breast cancer] her doctor or friend mentioned a study about Turkey Tail and she mentioned her son Paul makes Turkey Tail. Paul gave her 8 Turkey Tail extract capsules a day (I have 2  day) and he famously in his lectures brings his mum on stage 10/15 years later, well into her 90’s alive and healthy J.

Sorry my housemates just cooking :D

Has anyone else got any questions of advice or anything you want to tell me or I’ve missed. Any Mycologies here? ... sweet

Seren: I think we’ve had quite a lot of things for us to think about.

 Thanks, let’s wrap things up here. Thanks a lot for teaching us all this . are there any websites or resources you’d like to suggest before we go. Ill post the links to the roots stuff as well in the chat for next week.

Hossein: I want to thank Seren. You’re a legend. You see magic all around the world and you bring it to light and you inspire people to do what they might be a little shy to do. Thanks so much because you bring so much light to the world. Eternally love you

Seren:  And you man

H: sorry what did you ask again?

S: Links

H: oh yeah, for learning I use YouTube or these peoples websites. So as you get into mushrooms you’ll hear Fresh Cap Mushrooms alot. They have a website and are on Youtube. They're a really informative Gourmet/Medicinal Mushroom group. They have a lot of videos where they show you indoor and outdoor cultivation.  All the stuff that I’ve mentioned about the benefits, they go into a little more detail. In their videos they have this massive massive Reishi mushroom the size of a table and its beautiful. So that’s FreshCapMushrooms

There’s ‘Fresh From the Farm Fungi’ as well. They're a specialist mycology centre. They show you how to grow. I’m following them now and they're growing and experimenting with Cordyceps at the moment. They're still in the experimental stage where people are trying to work out the best way to grow them.  What we grow is Crodyceps Militaris, which is easier to grow and more potent than the rare Himalayan Cordyceps Sinensis that only grows in insects. If you ever see an orange twigletty thing sticking out of grass in fields, that’s Cordyceps, pick it and try to clone it from the wild.

 There’s a few mycology places and websites based in the UK as well but I forget. They usually have the word mushroom or fungi in their names

I would definitely recommend Paul Stamets. He’s got his own website too. For more specialised people, he’s got links to the studies he’s done and part of or any studies pertaining to mushrooms helping the world.

Another shout out Id recommend as well is Natura Studios. They're on instagram too and there website is https://www.naturadesign.org/ [corrected]. They're quite legendary, revolutionary people  as well. Ive talked to the main guy who was a design student who got into mycology. They're designing a vegan leather based on a mycelium structure. Theres people growing mycelium based objects and things at the moment. But he’s supportive of the fungi eating plastic [movement] as well. I think the fish and everyone would benefit from that. S: we’ll add the kinks in the chat H: thank you bye

[therootsprojectuk]

Webinar Transcript with HS2 activist Goldilocks - 12.01.21

Webinar CONVERSATION WITH HS2 ACTIVIST GOLDILOCKS 12.01.2021

A transcription of a discussion between Goldilocks and webinar participants. A lockdown fundraising project coordinated between ‘The Roots Project’ and Kirkstall Valley Farm. The fundraising is supporting destitute refugee housing and community intergration projects

 https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/the-roots-project-1

For more information on The Roots Project links are available via their linktree:

https://linktr.ee/therootsprojectuk?

Seren Oakley(Host): I think everyone who’s come to listen to Goldilocks speak, um I don’t know who’s come from where but Kirkstall Valley farm and The Roots project are kind of the collaborators bringing this together so um there is a link for a Crowdfunder to raise money for migrants and refugees in the chat, if you can at the moment and if you wan to or if you want to share that with anyone interested. Um yeah, so I guess the first question for Goldilocks. Goldilocks is an activist who’s been working with the HS2 camps. Maybe if you go into a bit of what HS2 are doing and who they are.

 Goldilocks: I guess I can talk about like, sort of introduce myself, and a little bit about HS2. Um, I don’t know. I’ve kind of like written something down so, so I want to talk about first how HS2 describes itself, because I feel like if anyone’s heard of HS2 before it’s probably been n BBC news right? Or like something like that. Where it’s been like their angle on it. So HS2 describes itself as like this green solution to like all the economic imbalances we have between the north ad south of the country. A state funded infostructure, and it’s actually the biggest structural project that’s happening in Europe. So, HS2 stands for High Speed 2, so it’s the second High Speed 2, so it’s the second High Speed train line in this country. It’s supposed to connect London to Birmingham, I its first phase of works, which is a phase of works that is happening at the moment, and then it’s going to go like up North, connect up to Leeds and Manchester and to some airports and then Crewe and possibly Glasgow. It’s currently looking like, this might be cancelled, hopefully, fingers crossed.

 So, construction and deconstruction works have already begun for phase one. HS2’s been old as this eco-friendly, like progressive means of transport, that’s gonna fix all of our problems, that’s going to make less cars run, and people are going to fly places less despite the fact that it’s connecting up airports on its way.

Um claims to be creating jobs, one of their biggest selling points, but like we’ve got to think about lik the cost like no matter how sustainable and how progressive it is, like it is just pushing this idea of like endless economic growth, and like always making sure people are like occupied and working hard, I don’t know, it kind of really comes back to like, just a lot of bad ideas around capitalism and what people should be doing with their time. The first kind of, I guess when the first train lines were built in this country, they cut loads of trees down to build the sleeves and we’re kind of seeing that destruction kind of mirrored in HS2 now, that they’re felling loads of woodlands to make way for this line. I can talk a little bit later about the economic and ecological and human costs of things when it comes up.

S: How did you get involved in it?

 G: So I used to live in Leeds, I did some uni there, and then one of my friends was on the camps in like January (2020) and December last year (2019) and I was seeing all this destruction sort of happen like they did like a lot of livestreams o Facebook and a lot of like outreach stuff online, they dropped me a message to e like there’s stuff we’re planning, it’d be cool if you could come and support so I went down, I was just planning to go down and visit for like a few days to help out Harble Rd camp, which is one of he cams just outside London, actually in Boris Johnston city Cambridge, and that was January last year, um it says my speakers not working. But, can people hear me okay? Cool. I might just not be able to hear you back. Yeh I just kind of fell in lov with especially like the community there and the really beautiful area that it was at the time before HS2 kind of moved in, um the Harble road camp now, you used to be able to walk  from like the road camp all the way to one of the other camps at like Denham and ow like everything is boxed off everything has like fencing around, and like cleared or like felled or just not accessible to the public anymore, and there’s like two lake and you used to be able to walk around like the whole of both of them and now you just can’t and for people in that area, that is like just outside of London where people would go to just hangout and have some time in nature, and that’s just kind of been taken away from people. I kind of moved onto the campaign full time, I was very lucky to have to be working in a bar, for it to be closed, for me t be like “Right if I’m going to be in lockdown somewhere I may as well go and do it” like with people I love, like go and do this thing and kind of have ability, and decide whether I was going to stay there forever or not and yeah I kind of decided to stay, um , yeah, that’s kind of how I got involved. Just through kind of word of mouth. It’s really difficult to kind of know about these thigs unless you know people in these circles, and I think we need better outreach as a campaign, yeah.

S: Are most people in the same boat, that they’ve just heard through word of mouth or?

G: A lot of people, yeah, or they’re from other campaigns or they live in the squatter’s scene, everything is really transient which hasn’t really changed during lockdown. I don’t know, make of it what you will, but that’s just a way of life for some people. A lot of people heard about what’s going on through XR, and through HS2 rebellion, and other little groups. Kind of like locals get involved, obviously cause it’s right o their doorstep like what the fuck is happening out there, like um particularly around the celvin-steeple claden camps area there’s like a really strong like community of resistance against HS2, direct action side of it which I’m involved with has only been going for like the last three years, we often don’t really give enough credit to that this is a twelve year long campaign and people have been having their lives ruined for like 10 years, they did a lot of the ground work before we were even there, like especially Calbert. HS2 had pans to go through peoples back gardens and take hoses away from people. Locals kind of rose up and said ‘Nah you’re not doing that!’ but I just wanted to highlight that yeah, they also exist.

S: Yeah, like how have – What’s the min focus been for activists fighting that? How have they been going about it, is it just mainly like taking over the land or have there been many like legal disputes from you.

G: Um I guess, I guess so far, it’s mainly been about the ecology being destroyed and about biodiversity loss so, let me just get the exact numbers up so that I don’t say the wrong thing. But, HS2 is going to destroy 108 ancient woodlands, 33 sites of scientific interest, nearly 700 wildlife sites, 5 internationally designated wildlife sites. Loads of big conservation projects are happening um so a lot of the focus has been about the ecological damage that’s being caused and so a lot of like the narrative so far has been : there’s people and they’re going to go into the woods ad their going to live there and wait for eviction, and save the trees and if that’s what people are passionate about then that’s really important, we do that but this is about a wider network of problems.

Sorry U can just hear my voice echoing downstairs, it’s really funny, there ae people in the house listening to this. But yeah, so far it’s very much been like the tee defenders sort of side of things um but I guess some people are more concerned about like that this isn’t a good use of ta payers money, like particularly when the NHS is suffering and this project is costing what it would cost to build like 300 hospitals that’s also a concern that people have also like about like communities didn’t really get a say in this, this wasn’t democratically decided like it’s a huge chunk of money and a huge chunk of peoples taxes and they just haven’t got a say like it’s very authoritarian of hs2 to kind of come in and be like ‘ No we’re going to build this train line and work for us, and we’re going to take what we want’. There’s been like a lot of take recently about how this isn’t just about railway and I think there’s some like really cool things that we can explore there and like loads of other like movements that’re going on and a lot of the people building these things ae the same people are the people being exploited and I don’t know, solidarity is really important with these campaigns, and it’s something I’d really like to think a lot more about, like tying all these things together. So maybe I guess we can talk about mainly in terms of the pandemic like Hs2 have continued to like work through that and it’s been really quite damaging to like communities that are like especially vulnerable like people in the construction industry have had the highest rates of COVID-19, because they have been forced to go to work without proper PPE and being allowed to socially distance. I don’t like how HS2 continues to mistreat its workers as just disposable and their like ‘Oh we need to continue to do this amazing project that’s going to fix all of our problems even though we’re the ones perpetuating the problems in the first place’. Yeah.

S: Have you seen, because I’ve seen some videos from the cams where I think it’s bailiffs, who are not being COVID-19 – not paying attention to any of the rules surrounding COVID-19, especially towards the start of the pandemic. How has that kind of affected you guys? Has it had an effect on anyone getting COVID-19?

G: Um.. I mean, I don’t want to sound like a COVID-19 denier or anything but we haven’t had, until it got to winter there wasn’t really, like COVID-19 wasn’t really a thing on the camps. So, it was kind of like yeah evictions were still happening and stuff and people were being left with nowhere to go but it’s not like, like the people there all kind of were there out of choice or they new that they had other places to go. It hasn’t, COVID-19 hasn’t really affected how much work HS2 has done and like we re really lucky to have not caught COVID-19 from like bailiffs and stuff who’ve been travelling all over the country evicting people even though that’ something we were talking about at the time. I imagine there being a pandemic has put people off coming here it’s also like I don’t know I wouldn’t be here if that hadn’t happened in the first place. In a weird sort of way.

Yeah, like it’s not just squats, protesters have made tree houses that are being evicted during the pandemic as well, it’s like people are being kicked out of their homes and their farms and like getting their businesses taken away from them like their source of income taken away, and they’re not getting compensation to go ad live somewhere else.  So, say you don’t get as much money to go and buy a new building, you many only be able to rent a place, and it’s really difficult to rent houses at the moment because there’s a pandemic and estate agents are being a bit like “Hmm that’s not really quite on” or like being able to move in with family who are also vulnerable, it’s kind of like this knock-on effect that HS2 is having, they have these things called compulsory purchase orders. Which means they can just buy land off people, and those people don’t get a say in it and they also don’t get a say in how much money they get or when they get give, like you’re not aloud to do all these things, like you’re not allowed to go to the press, you’re not aloud to talk to protesters, you’re not aloud to have protesters on your land, you’re not allowed to talk to certain people or like drive through your own driveway at certain times because HS2 are there and it’s just really, really bad that people are being blackmailed into what HS2 want them to do, and yeah non of that has stopped during the pandemic there’s been absolutely no sympathy for anyone really. It almost feels like they maybe accelerated works because there’s less resistance happening.

S: How has, which laws exactly have been put into play r have they been specifically tailored for hS2 from what they’re doing?

G: So there’s a piece of legislation called schedule 17, which is basically the thing that allows hs2 to go ahead, so included in that is all of the compulsory purchases and temporary purchases, which is when they take a piece of land and they don’t pay you for it and you get it back in X amount of years, for example, one farmer has had , he’s like in his 70s, he’s had his land taken off of him, he’s going to get it back in 17 years’ time, like he probably won’t be around in that time to see the outcome of this. Like, the state that they give it back to you in is like very much up to them. They could cut everything down, or turn it to mud. It’s very much up to them, sorry this is a tangent.

So, yeah, there’s this piece of legislation called Schedule 17 which is HS2 can break loads of environmental laws as well because it’s deemed like necessary for the project and the greater good for this, also in terms of what they’re trying to push on protesters it’d be injunctions which is a piece of law which a private company can buy, and that then means these certain rules which people are meant to follow, and if they don’t then we’re going to put you in prison, ad we’re going to fine you loads an loads of money. I might talk a bit about that later if you wanted me to talk about trespass, and stuff as well.

Things that people have been charged for, for protesting has been like section 241 which is like a trade union act, like oh you’ve stopped works how dare you, things like aggravated trespass, like criminal damage and things like whatever.

Yeah, in terms of policing and actually enforcing the laws, police basically listen to what HS2 have told them to do because HS2 have given them loads of money and they’re all basically working together because it’s all the same state.

S: yeah so, have there been any authorities that have backed what you’re doing and supported you through legal trials or anything, cause I know there’s been like no media coverage of what’s going on , but anyone who’s been like pushing for it within a higher structure?

G: I know that Chris Packham’s tried to take HS2 to court to no avail, because like the court is on the side with HS2. I know that when we’ve been in court for like injunction cases before, HS2 have like hand picked the judges that have overseen that case because the 3 or 4 judges that were proposed before were like too sympathetic to protesters. We had some like a good barrister who gave us some good advice; who does stuff like this for squatters and protest occupation, things like environmental protesters. Um I don’t – There’s not really a lot going on, on the legal side I know there’s a petition happening at the moment, with 1000s and 1000s of signatures, and hopefully that’ll mean parliament will debate maybe postponing or cancelling HS2. But, yeah I don’t know too much about that, that’s not really something my activism involves I guess.

S: within your activism, what have you skill wise gained and what’s been affirmed since joining the camps.

G: I guess being on camps, all the practical skills that come with that like building things, is something I never thought I’d do. Spending not a lot of time outdoors in the past few years you lose that confidence to go out and do stuff, like learning to climb has been really, really freeing as well. I don’t know if you can do that now, it’s pretty fun. Also just learning how-to live-in communities and build communal spaces from like the ground up and make decisions together like learning how to communicate with other people as well in ways that you don’t generally do outside of this. Like this feels like we actually take peoples feelings into consideration a lot of the time and the space around us, and what impact we have on the environment. A lot of skill share and stuff do happen on the campaign. Crackley camp which I near Cannellworth, t the northern end of the line, like over summer. There were lots of people going there for the first time doing like workshops and skill shares, an learning your rights or doing non violent communications or like how to tie certain knows or things or how to cook for big groups and I guess all of these things are skills you don’t really get taught until you kind of put your mind to it in this sort of setting.

A lot of things we were like working on, obviously that’s a huge learning curve. Like I’ve seen people not know what to do to running with ecology work and stuff like that, or doing all the research themselves like talking to other people and learning what they can to do that or like, reading up on all the legal side to it, how to defend yourself in court and like there’s such a broad list of things to do, it’s kind of hard to pin point one thing.

S: I did have a question, I think it was on laws of trespass, and how that kind of affects the protester.

G: Okay trespass is usually like a civil matter, and the government is trying to make it like a criminal act, so let’s keep it civil guys… So, trespass is when you go onto someone else’s land without their permission. So if you’re out hiking and you go into someone’s field or if you’re like living in an empty building or something like that, it’s all encompassed I what trespass means. Like if you go onto someone’s land the owner can ask you to leave. And if you don’t do that whatever. They just ask you to leave it’s a civil matter, as long as you’re not like disrupting what they’re doing then like it’s still civil, if you start disrupting it that’s when it becomes aggravated trespass and that’s when it becomes a criminal matter. So for example like the postman isn’t trespassing because when they come into your garden they’re there to do a job and you kind of it’s somewhat informed , it’s somewhat allowed to happen, so hs2 use the civil injunction to stop their work from being disrupted which is basically like I guess there’s this list of rules which means you’re not supposed to trespass or you’re not aloud to standing front of the gates, and you’re not allowed to trespass on the land and that basically means if you get caught doing those things they can take you to court over it or you can be arrested . There’s been like a case last year were someone allegedly broke an injunction like 17 times and hs2 wanted to get him in prison for two years and like he basically got away with, I think he got a suspended sentence , so between that and going to prison that’s kind of the less harsh end of it. I don’t know, and also because it’s painted as like you know it’s just trespass, it’s just being peaceful trying to defend things, and protect trees and nature. But it very much feels like the kind of issue of trespass comes up in discussions like this a lot and it raises questions like who does this land belong to?

Who gets to decide the right make decisions about it especially untouched bits of woodland, like who gets the right to be there? Who should it be preserved for? Thinking about maybe protecting it for ourselves, or for future generations is really important for some people. In terms of like how it affects protesters like yeah you’re living on sites where you could be evicted because it could be considered trespass, or like the bailiffs will come in like “oh you’re trespassing” line, no “you’re trespassing” like “no , you’ve just walked into our home”

S: yeah, what is like, going back to you said like some people just think it’s about protecting trees and stuff, what would environmental repercussions of everything be in the long term, for these people who do want to look after the land for future generations?

G: S I guess what I’m going to talk about what HS2 are doing in terms of mitigating the damage they’re doing, and then we’ll kind of go from there I guess. So they’re doing really bad mitigation. They’re building habitats in places that these habitats have never existed before. Which for example, near Jones Hill hey want to build a pond, but there’s no pond near jones hill, like what animals are going to go live there or migrate to that pond. They’ve often tried to plant trees but often, said that they can’t afford to water them. But, then also happen to be able to afford security to stop activists from watering them. Those trees, they often plant the same kind of tree which just means that if one of those trees gets sick then they’ll all die. Or like um planting trees that were suited to the environment. They basically just bulldoze anything in their way. Calvert Jubilee was a really beautiful space. I spent a few weeks like helping set up the camp there, and spent a few weeks living there, it’s just so beautiful. There’re these lakes and like loads of ancient oaks around it and loads of birds, and it would be where birds stop off on their migrations over seas and it was just a really nice area, especially during lockdown. That reserve was like a lifeline for people, that was the only way of going outdoors, or being in nature and being able to socially distance from people. I was there the night before we took the camp and there was a lady there who travelled quite far to go and see it before, she knew it was going to be destroyed. She was telling us that she used to go looking for these rare Orchids there, and there were ancient grasslands. You could tell they were ancient because of how the ants had built their nests there.

Another thing HS2 do is they put down this netting over badger sets. So, badgers can’t go back to their sets after they’ve left and they have to leave. They can only do that at certain times of the year. So, it’s like a game with the activists to try and stop them from putting that netting down or disrupt that work before its time for them to fell that woodland. Other things they’ve done before is like putting concrete and stuff down badger sets which has bee really awful to see, or with the bat roosts they put all his wire netting around some of the trees so the bats couldn’t get back in or out. At Jones Hill we now that we had bats still in the wood, and HS2 knew which trees they were in and HS2 shone flood lights on them to stop the bats being able to like nest and stuff, it’s under hand sneaky tactics, to try and stop it happening and to say “oh there’s no bats here” although they’re putting up bat boxes in peoples house and stuff to try and mitigate for that, but it’s not the same as their natural habitat. I was actually talking to - I got arrested – and the lady who arrested me was telling me, she lost her house to HS2, we were just stood there outside the police station just chatting for hours. She was telling me HS2 used to come to her house and pretend to do bat surveys there cause the people who’d been hired to do them didn’t actually know how to do them. They’d just give her £1000s of pounds just for coming and pretending to do these surveys and her house before it was taken off of her, and it’s just so fucked that they can get away with that especially doing that to the police and the police were like hang on. That’s just a brief overview of what HS2  is doing to the kind of ecological destruction.

Yeah, on a more personal level there were these things called blissgliffs which are like large door mice, and they live in all of the beech trees around Tring, because someone let them out and they’re just an invasive species, but they’re so cute. They’re just like these big door mice and I had them living in my tree house, and there were two big nests, and they would keep me up all night and steal my food and break into everything but at the end of the day they were so adorable and I feel really bad that they were made homeless during eviction cause like it’s sad to see the animals dying, not great.

S: No. Do you think there were any actual ecologists working or are working with HS2?

G: HS2 have an ecology coursed school thing. I’m not really sure. I’ve not really looked that much into it really. I’d quite like to a bit more. Often ecologists will show up who aren’t trained properly or they’ll show up and be disguised as security because they know protesters will berate them about how much actual ecology knowledge they actually know. Some of them showed up at Jones Hill and we told them, we know where the badger sets are, we’ve done the surveys, you don’t need to come int the woods. Their way of looking at like badger sets was just like sticking a stick down it and being like ah this one doesn’t have badgers in it. If you were a good ecologist, you’d know it didn’t have badgers in it based on the signs around it show that it hasn’t been touched for a while, because there’s leaves in it. Stuff like that they don’t know their stuff and actually mitigating their damage is not up to the standards you need to if you were going to d a project like this for like. I mean it’s happening anyway so you might as well try I guess they just haven’t really done that.

Other things like about HS2 that they probably should have realised. They made like an Instagram post about how they so many good things for adders. But just the fact that they’re building a train line through the middle of England is just going to divide the adder territories in half. There’s been this happening in the past with building roads, building things like that it means that adders are really suffering and often end up interbreeding with their families which, dividing the country in half with a train line is just going to make that 10 times worse. Any good ecologist would give this the red flag and they’ve done this time and time again, and HS2 just haven’t listened. The woodland and other various organisations have been like HS2 = Bad, and HS2 just haven’t taken that on board.

S; Yeah, that’s awful…

G: train lines are actually really bad for animals as well there’s I think it’s a Spanish study that shows that train lines kill about 36 animals per Km, so if that’s applied to HS2 it’s about 30,000 animals killed on the line per year.

S: They have no plans for like over passes for animals then?

G: I don’t know, probably not I imagine. I don’t know yes or no to that one sorry.

S: What can like, I guess it’d be nice to open up the conversation to everyone else if people want to get involved at the moment?

G: Yeah, Absolutely. I did get sent a few questions on Instagram but I don’t know if the people who asked them are in this call. I’m happy to answer them anyway.

S: Yeah, maybe if you go through those questions that would be nice.

G: I didn’t hear there sorry.

S: I said yeah, it’d be quite nice to maybe go through the Instagram ones.

G: So, the first one was ‘How do we get more activists on camps during felling season? And that’s from someone I know who is on one of the cams at the moment.

So, felling season is generally like October, to march / early spring, I think. So, the question there is basically, how do we get people to stay on camps over winter, it’s cold it’s really grim, it’s a rally busy time for people like Christmas and new year, especially during the pandemic people don’t necessarily want to move outdoors into a community that they don’t know. I understand why that makes people a bit anxious, and why it’s pretty inaccessible as well. Like, getting people into the camps is something we can try and do, someone said to me the other day this campaign very much speaks the language of camps and if something needs defending go build a camp there, or go build a treehouse, go build a community, or whatever, kind of wait for eviction and then you wait for felling to happen.

The James Hill eviction was at the start of October. They haven’t touched like a single tree hardly. They’ve cleared some of the undergrowth. I think they might have even today only just come in with ecologists or Aubryists. Just because you’re protecting one bit doesn’t mean they’re not going to fell absolutely everything around it. They could fell jones Hill straight away; they can use that contract and go and fell like some of the Oaktree’s near by and fell like Grimm’s Ditch which was like another woodland near by with loads of badger sets in it. I don’t know, how do you get people on camps? The camps themselves I guess, building we’re doing spaces with a better infrastructure. Having spaces for people to work. I know there’s a few students on the campaign who are struggling cause they’re like “OH I can’t charge my laptop, I can’t go to my lectures” It can be quite stressful for people.

Especially people who can’t drive themselves p ad down the country. If you don’t live near by, I think personally we just need to start thinking a bit bigger than the cams, and working outside that. Hs2 have bought loads of buildings that are sitting empty. Hello!? As well as that, thinking a bit more, less defensively camps are very much about defending the space, where we could be like, we know where all the compounds are and where all the machinery is. Like c’mon. We know who the people are that are working for them. I don’t know. I’m not on a camp during winter, so I probably should think about what’s made me do that.

Someone asked me: What have the police interventions been like on the HS2 sites?

I grabbed a quote from a report by global diligence LEB, which was commissioned by a group called ‘Not One More’. The report looks at how the UK complies with international civil and political rights things, and the report claims that “The British police have systematically violated protesters rights under international law, targeted individuals based on gender and disability a pattern of behaviour by the police is suppressing environmental protest across the UK through unnecessary, and disproportionate violence, intimidation, and harassment. This appears to be indicative of state policy to deter people from exercising their rights to assembly and expression” That’s the quote from the report.

Basically, it’s just saying that like the police haven’t treated any protesters well but specially to like environmental protesters. They’ve really had the shit kicked out of them. This has always been a thing. It’s quite - kind of when the police show up to things, I get quite anxious cause I know even if I’m not doing anything wrong right now, there’s still a chance that they might nick some people. Particularly Thames valley, can be quite violent, like they’re paid for by HS2. They are the HS2 police. I don’t want to be around them ever. Often, they will over step their jurisdiction, during the eviction at Denham, even though like we were on the metropolitan police side of the ricer, it was the Thames valley police who showed up, and even though it was like, when they were cutting people off the traverse across the river. That was a thing that happened. Even though it was on the met side, it was a Thames Valley operation, so they’re in direct communication with HS2 and very much work for HS2, and happy to collaborate with them. I think the police are just there to protect the state, the capital and big companies, because that’s what they do. We can’t really expect them to be nice to us.

I’ve been pretty lucky with my own interactions with the police because I’m young and white and able bodied and it’s kind of like, I don’t even want to say shocking because it’s kind of like you expect it now with how they treat black and brown people on this campaign has been pretty horrendous. I’ve seen people like being specifically pointed out or targeted or arrested when it could have been any one of us who’s stood there. One of my friends I think he’s put in a complaint, there was a guardian article about it as well. Having his head knelt on by the police, when I spoke to him about it at first, he just kind of brushed it off, and kind of treated it as if as like that’s like the normality, that’s how your supposed to be treated by the police and that’s really wrong.

Especially when the vast majority of the police view it as they’re just there to do good, good lawful things and to protect people when that’s really not the case. It’s never an experience I’ve had, that’s been the case. People are often arrested for really silly things and then give ridiculously harsh bail conditions so there’s a set of bail conditions that people keep getting and it basically means you’re not allowe d near HS2 sites unless you live there and it means you can’t protest freely and you can’t – like you can get arrested for like being in a footpath near where there might be possibly some HS2 works going on, which to activists is fucking annoying.

Then the actual court process means having these fell conditions for like a year because it takes so long to get around to protesting all these ridiculous arrests in the first place and then people end up getting let off, like we all have a one in a hundred rate for people actually being convicted of anything like what’s the word, prosecuted for like anything they’ve been arrested for. The entire criminal justice system depends on how the police interact with us, its kind of comes out with how we deal with HS2 like it’s just bad. Just the police make me angry, I think. I think, there were some more questions but I can’t find them, but if anyone has any wants to send me some questions, that would be really cool.

S: Yeah, just in case quite a few people have some questions, people type into the chat and then we can go in order of who has a question maybe?

I had a question about basically youth and elder’s collaborative activism on HS2. What’s the kind of relationship been like between older activists and younger activists, and who’s taken on what roles, assuming not all the older activists are like up in the trees and stuff, but assuming they’ve got quite a lot of knowledge around it?

G: That’s such an interesting question. I’ve never really given that much thought, I guess, it’s kind of hard to divide in my head who do I see as the younger activists, and who do I see as older activists, and what they do because everyone is very mixed. Age doesn’t necessarily denote that you’ve got experience right? Like people came to this campaign and it might be their first direct action campaign and they might be in their 50s. But, there might be people in their 50s who’ve been doing this their entire lives I guess maybe the interactions between experienced people and non-experienced people, there’s often – it can sometimes feel like especially with men and people who are perceived as more masculine, people can maybe think that they’re someone to look up to or a leader in someway which is really weird because we’re supposed to like; we often like ourselves organising as like anarchists, where everyone has a voice and everyone’s kind of equal and that , but it’s obviously doesn’t play out like that. People have these little biases in our heads, people we think we already have ideas about. Often it can be like older people will. I don’t know, I think maybe the younger people stick together and the older people sort of stick together, and maybe like this assumption that older people don’t want to go and do like mad stuff like climb trees. But, often they’re the ones with the experience as well, I don’t know it can be quite nice to have these figures to look up to but you’re still on the same land with them anyway cause you’re – everyone has their own things that they’re good at, things that they need support with.

         Yeah it was very strange over the summer there was a lot of young people who came to join the campaign, who were really psyched to do actions and it was kind of like, hold up like hand people the wheel let them like let them do the cool thing that they want to, it shouldn’t be for anyone to act like anyone’s parent and be like no that’s a bad idea, like if people have the energy then go for it.

S- I think that someone’s posted a question.

G How do you cope with (broken signal) ? I think it an be rally easy to fall in love with a place, that’s a lie, personally for me I really struggle to fall in love with places that I know are going to be like felled, and cut down, and demolished, but then it also never happens any way because I really love the spaces that we make and the people that I’m with. So Calvern for example, we didn’t know if we were going to be evicted on the first night or whether the place was going to be there for weeks and weeks, like the time I was there I was like this is such a beautiful area and I haven’t been to that site since because I’m like – I don’t know , I did once but it was at night so I didn’t really see much, I haven’t seen the full  scale of the devastation and I don’t know if I want to , because I don’t know if its just going to make me sad and it’s going to make me lose hope , I think it is important for us to face up to the things we’re trying to fight against, cause the perspectives useful and you can do whatever you want really. I think like, at Denham , like when there were still trees there and kind of like, seeing the trees come down was really sad but I was kind of like the fact these trees have lasted a little bit longer ( broken signal ) because we’ve been here, and this whole movement is going to be a series of loses and I think it’s really important to not get lost in that and remember what we’re good at, and the things that are positive, like were building and keeping around and stuff , yeah.

I guess sometimes getting a bit of time away, and like I went to Leeds recently and I was like oh my god, it’s so grey and horrible here. But, that was quite nice cause I could come back and be like, ah I like green things. That was kind of cool.

S- I think there’s another question.

G – What are your arguments against building HS2 in the first place: i.e increasing economy, creating jobs , connecting the north and south , do you think these things will actually happen? I did talk a bit about this at the start. How HS2 describes itself, and I could go through and pick at every argument they make, but there’s websites for that already, and the stophs2.org website has lots of debunking on there, it’s really cool. I guess no I don’t think these things will happen, especially as there’s a pandemic and no one’s taking the train anyway and everyone’s remembering zoom exists, like I can’t imagine all of these people here being in the same room at the same time, but we have the internet, so it doesn’t need to be like that right? I think the kind of North South divide isn’t going to be fixed by an expensive train line that only goes to Birmingham, I don’t see that happening I don’t see it happening under the governments and HS2, I don’t see it happening under any government that exists as we know it.

Increasing economy, what does that mean? More money for rich people, and we will still have to pay taxes and they won’t. I can’t see HS2 being a solution to that. I don’t know the actual facts and figures for the money side of things but I do know that it is not economically viable. For example ‘X’ is how much a ticket is going to cost, and all of the primings that they have done for it, all of the money it will generate for the government despite the fact HS2 LTD is a private company. Despite it being state managed and state funded it will end up being a private company, getting sold off to someone.

 All of the pricing that HS2 have done, are based on the idea that every train that leaves a station runs on time and is full of people, which is unlikely to happen again after the pandemic and we are going to have to continue distancing from each other for years. The line is going to be finished in between 10 to 17 years time. I think in 17 years time tramlines like this will not be necessary. The technology that was designed for it, even 10 years ago, is not relevant anymore, and it is not going to fix the economy.

 I don’t think that creating jobs for the sake of creating jobs is going to boost the economy, it’s just going to waste peoples time.

 Q: Do we need more elders? I’d like to ask if you agree that we have been crippled by Coronavirus because we have not been able to do actual outreach in village halls, meet and greets ect. In past campaigns like anti-Fracking, Sheffield trees etc, they would hold tea and coffee meetings on the high street. Have you got any ideas on how we can combat this?

  Goldilocks - Do we need more elders? Absolutely. The more people the better, whether that’s young people or older people, its still people. I do think that outreach on the hughstreet is something that is very familiar to people and its good to do that because its something that people don’t feel as alienated from. Whereas, there’s people on the high street that would never dream in their lives of coming and moving to a camp and eating Vegan food. But they might want to take a flyer and come to a meeting where they can talk to their parish council for example. All of those things are important, and if its what gets people to start thinking about these big ideas around self organisation and how they can make changes then that’s important.

 I think a lot of that work was done before the direct action campaigns and the anti-HS2 campaigns started, and maybe it has dropped down a little bit, but without that work being done in the first place I’m not sure if people would have picked up the work around buildings camp and stuff so much. I’d love to see what the anti-Fracking campaign worked, I think that would be an interesting conversation to have.

 Also, I think when we think about the campaign its always about stopping HS2, or being as much of a nuisance as possible. Where I see it, its about stopping HS2 very firmly. But communities don’t necessarily need that, if someone is grieving because they have just lost their only access to nature then they need someone to support them through that, and that is what community is as well. That’s what outreach is for, about building networks and communities. Even if people don’t come and move to camps or start stopping HS2, it means that two people in a village meet up and have a cup of tea and decide to get an allotment or something. Anything else which is not directly organising against HS2 is still important and I guess if we can facilitate that in some way then that’s really cool.

 Q: What can someone who can’t go to the camps do to support the work against HS2?

 Goldilocks - Things like this, coming to these talks is really important because we can share what we know about the campaign, the camp side of things. So thank you for attending in the first place. Inviting your friends to these things as well, is really important. Spreading the word as far as possible. Supporting other campaigns. I don’t know where you’re from but there’s things like this happening all around the country and around the world and building bigger awareness and bigger networks of things that are happening can be important. In Leeds at the moment there’s an Armley trees campaign, so network rail want to fell some trees in Armley, and there’s somebody trying to organise people to come for years and hasn’t really gotten anywhere, so if you really do want to do something then maybe get in touch with them. Theres also things like the Stonehenge action group, camps that have been set up and there’s protests happening against Leeds Bradford Airport. Theres a group called GALBER?? who are a group against Leeds Bradford Airport, who are working with XR Leeds to do some really cool stuff. Theres coal mines that are being built. Well, I say being built, they’re being dug and they need support.

 Other things as well, we have a fundraiser, there’s currently a centralised group fundraiser. ((add in link)). Money donations and things like that. Doing artwork and stuff like that, doing reading or bits of research or writing. Theres an amazing website called TINAR.COM, who are trying to gather bits of work or bits of writing, rants, comics and things from basically anyone who wants to speak or share something. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about HS2, it doesn’t necessarily have to be directly related to this but you could write some things for that. Maybe having a read of that and thinking about if you’d want to write anything. Petitions and stuff sometimes help. Writing to MP’s, but I think this is something that Swampy said, talking to the BBC after an eviction he said ‘we’ve got to do this sort of stuff because would you be here if it wasn’t for people like me doing stuff like this - If i had written to my MP you wouldn’t have come along with your cameras today, I don’t think so’.

 Q: Why is the government pushing ahead with HS2 when we have successfully conducted business across the country without travelling, why can’t they stop this going ahead?

 Goldilocks - I think I’ve mostly covered this but I think by this point it is just a vanity project. Its peak, look at this amazing thing that we are going to build even though we don’t have to. It’s the same reason rich people have lawns, because they can have unproductive land, or they can have something pointless just because they can. Also, have you ever tried to tell a tory not to do something? They just want to do it more, they’re just children.

 Q: What can we do to stop HS2 from our sofas?

 Goldilocks - I’m happy to put some links to some cool stuff in the chat at the end of this that might be useful for people to get involved (LINK BELOW). Also organising actions in your own town or city, even if you can’t come to the camps, that’s really important.

 Q: Are you in camps right now and how are you coping with Covid?

 Goldilocks - I am not in a camp right now, I am in a squat instead, which is quite nice because its a little bit warmer and a little bit drier. We have had some concerns with Covid. Obviously now its Winter everyone is a lot closer together and being indoors together more, and its a bit riskier, especially with the other strain and another wave happening and stuff, and businesses being open and then closed again. But in the summer it wasn’t that much of a worry. Maybe we should have taken it a bit more seriously but it didn’t feel like there was anyone with Covid which is really strange to say. I wouldn’t recommend coming down if you have had contact with loads of people or if you are vulnerable yourself, it just wouldn’t be particularly safe.

 If people do want to come down then just keep your distance, bring a mask, just be really sensible about it. Think about who you’ve got to go back to and who you hang out with before you come down. You’ve got to remember these camps are peoples homes, people are in a bubble, a household, and you have to be careful with that.

 I know Ross from Jones Hill was live-streaming this morning and he was talking about the impact on actual HS2 workers, and what risks the things that HS2 are doing pose on them. So, people coming into the site but they weren’t wearing masks and they weren’t keeping their distance from people in their own workplace and people are being so flippant about it, and just treating people like they are disposable, its not on. There was a weird period of time after the eviction of Harvil Road when their way of dealing with us was just saying ‘two metres, two metres,’ and threatening to take their masks off. It was like, who are you? It was just really bad. Really bad practice.

 Q: Do you have any kind of NVDA code when it comes to dealing with the police?

 Goldilocks - So for those of you that don’t know, NVDA stands for Non-Violent Direct Action. I’m probably not the best person to speak about this. I guess it really depends on the parameters. So say there was an action happening and we’d discuss the parameters and what people are comfortable with. So IF there were people who wanted to organise an action, it would probably be best to discuss whether its going to be a non-violent actin or not. Or maybe what their plan is for dealing with the Police. I know in some groups like Youth Strike and XR that I’ve worked with its been like, okay there is someone with an assigned role to be a police liaison, or assigned the role of being a go to wellbeing support person. But it doesn’t feel like that on the campaign, people fulfil the role that they are comfortable with. If you are doing work with your camp or your affinity group then things happen quite organically.

 I have got a lovely bond with my affinity group, and we are starting to understand each others boundaries, and what people are comfortable with. Like non-violence or how we’re going to deal with the Police, or what support we do and don’t want. But if you’re new to the campaign, don’t have the expectations that everyone is going to act the same as they have in other activist spaces. It can be very strange for me when people assume that other people are cool with being around the Police, or that they want to do only non-violent stuff. It feels very strange and there’s a lot to unpack there I think.

 In terms of dealing with the Police, they’ll turn up and they’ll probably just be really horrible to you and then it’ll be really difficult not to be really horrible back to them, and some people have more restraint than others. Some think that others should have more self restraint than they do. But a lot of silly arrests happen because people shout at the Police, but the arrests wouldn’t happen if the Police weren’t there in the first place. Thats what it comes down to. In terms of dealing with the Police, Police station support wise, there’s generally always going to be someone to pick you up from the station, and we try to make sure people are really looked after when that happens. That can be really stressful times for people, especially if its violent or someones first arrest. After the eviction, it was nice, everyone came out of court and everyone was there to greet them.

 If you want to run NVDA training at a camp I’m sure nobody would be opposed to that, its a tactics amongst other tactics and shouldn’t be seen as more or less valuable. It depends on situation as well. If you were wanting to do an action that involved lots of families or lots of locals then probably going in with balaclavas and bolt cutters wouldn’t be the way to go.

If anyone has anymore questions that would be good, if not i have a few more notes of things I wanted to talk about, I don’t know if I’ve said them all or not.

 So, HS2 is planned to come up to Leeds. There will be a second phase of building starting sometime soon. I know they have started some pre-emptive works around Hebden Bridge, a lot of the land they take is not directly on the line. But yeah, HS2 is coming up to Leeds. IF people want to build a camp, now is the time for the reasons i’ve mentioned of Hambi and Germany worked so well is because they have ages to build the camps and establish these communities. They really rally up support from other activists for their camps.

 So yeah if you want to look at setting up a camp that could be good. Especially in South Leeds. I’ve looked at the map and it looks like its all going to be decimated, its very bad to see. It ties in quite nicely with a lot of other movements and I don’t know I feel that Leeds has a very strong activist network, especially in the time that I was there. It would be really cool to have a camp up that way.

 Q: What was your favourite camp?

 Jones Hill, its got to be. I moved to Jones Hill in June or July, and I was like right, I’ll be here for two weeks until eviction and then i’ll move onto something else, and in October, the eviction happened so it’s just lovely to have this amazing community there over summer and be in these beautiful woodlands. There was one camp down the road and you could just pop there for the day and do some painting, then come back up to see my friends and hang out. We ended up with 11 or 12 treehouses. You would go up to everyones treehouses and you could tell who’s it was just by how it was decorated. People put so much time and energy into building that camp. Even when we felt that eviction was imminent, we still did the washing up and stuff. Still trying to just keep being people. It was just a really nice summer. In the winter its obviously a lot colder and there’s no leaves on the trees. I visited the other day and they’ve built a little barn out of an old theatre set and its got a really good woodturner in there. The people there are really solemn and hardworking,  and they’ve been nailing it with all the ecology stuff. There was one or two people working on the ecology things, and they basically bought the woodland a few more months because they were doing so much for the bats.

 Q: Do you have a link to maps that show the route of HS2?

 Goldilocks - Not ones that I can give you.

 (Link to map posted in webinar chat - **COPY IN LINK**)

 I’d love to hear a little bit more about Kirkstall Valley Farm and why they’ve decided to do this series of webinars, it seems like a nice idea.

 Seren - I’ve joined the steering group, so they’re a CSA so they’re a community start up Agricultural project to benefit the community directly. So, they’re all crowdfunded or self funded. They’re going to hire and grower this year and then distribute veg boxes to the local area, but they’re in conjunction with Kirkstall Valley Development Trust, which is another community project which is working towards creating more biodiversity, wildlife and community organisation in Kirkstall. So, three days a week the give out food packages, they run stuff like kids clubs, looking after kids when families can’t do.

 What I’m working with them on is doing more stuff to link them to the Roots Project, as well as stuff for people who have to shield or distance to have some integration into ecology and environmental teachings. So we’re using that as a fundraising platform for refugees and migrants living at Abigail House at the moment.

Goldilocks - That sounds really cool. Some of my friends are trying to get a bit of land at the minute to start something, and seeing all of these other projects happen, we could do something like that one day, and just start really cool things. The furthest we got with growing things on this campaign was we got two different evictions of this tomato plant being moved from squat to squat, from bit of land to bit of land. Then it ended up on a broken canal boat, and then we moved before we were able to get the plants but it would be good to have some stability to grow stuff at some point. It would be really fun.

 Seren - I think its really important. Especially with stuff like HS2 happening, stuff that’s good for the land as well, not just relying on mass agriculture.

 Goldilocks - Being in a community is such an empowering thing and its one more step away from being self-sufficient. Even if you go skipping you’re still living in the ashes of capitalism I guess in some way, or even if you’re not buying stuff all the time its still one further step removed and an extra skill you can bring to this fight in being able to grow stuff.

 This has been really lovely, its been good to catch up and stuff as well.