To Pastures New

When I first started writing here, I wanted to tell some of the story behind the food we eat; to show the journey from a grain of wheat planted in a field, through the growing process to a loaf of bread on your table. If I’m truthful, I also wanted to shout that farmers are good and we care about the land to counter some of the misinformation in the media about pesticides and destruction of the countryside.

Over the years, the posts have deviated slightly from my original mission. The next generation have grown up and returned to the farm to set up their own enterprises, which have given me different things to write about. There turned out to be more recipes on here than I first envisaged and I’ve dragged you through my various (sometimes short lived) ‘phases’ like natural dyeing and sewing.

My enthusiasm for blogging has waned in recent times as other bloggers have moved to Instagram or simply disappeared, which has made it a different place to be. But recently, I’ve noticed a resurgence of interest in blogging. Perhaps the gloss of Insta is wearing a little dull with the proliferation of “Look at Me and My Wonderful Life!” feeds and people are returning to the more community based blogging.

A few years ago, we brought together all our websites and social media channels for the different family businesses on the farm and put them under the Slamseys umbrella. Ruth suggested that this blog was included too, but I was a little precious about it and wouldn’t include it. At the time, I was mildly obsessed with the notion that everybody should own a personal domain name (we’d had a bit of trouble with one particular domain name) and having set up annewheaton.co.uk, I was determined to use it.

But, recently I read an article about online consistency for businesses and realised that Ruth had been right and it made sense to make this a Slamseys blog rather than in my name, especially since I rarely use my personal Facebook or Instagram accounts and have Slamseys Farm as my twitter name.

As a result, I’m moving my blog to pastures new. From now on, you’ll find me at  www.slamseysjournal.co.uk writing about  printmaking and country life at  Life In Mud Spattered Boots.