Highland Seedlings

An education-led micro-smallholding in the Scottish Highlands.

People

I’m Mairi, an academic, veg grower and community builder. I live slowly and quietly at Highland Seedlings together with my partner, Seamus, and our many pets. I’m a writer, teacher and imagineer.

Fearn Free Food Garden

We run a small community garden in Hill of Fearn, in the Scottish Highlands, where we grow free food for our local community with a group of volunteers.

Community

Our slow-living community is hosted on Patreon, where we teach courses in all sorts of slow living skills, and write about living quietly.

Follow us on Instagram (@highlandseedlings)

Here is what I’ve learnt from the past few months with Kitty about kids’ clothes:

This is my happy space. Dirty, baggy dungarees. This particular kind of (kids) gardening gloves. Baseball hat. Planting things, so many things. The peas were grown two seeds to a module and are planted out like that - as many as we can cram in around this structure in one of the big beds in the community garden.

Early June in the tunnel. Peas and dwarf beans racing away. Radishes all harvested and eaten. Lettuce at its prime, eaten twice a day at the moment. Sweetcorn and tomatoes from @corrymeadow huge and happy. My own tomatoes catching up, with peppers and chillies starting to grow a bit. Cucumbers sluggish but alive. Strawberries happy. To the left of the bed, wood for extending this bed and for building one in the centre.

It’s the beginning of June and somehow, unexpectedly, the three big needs at the top of the garden are all planted up! We’ve never managed that - we always aim for May but life gets in the way. But this year we’ve managed it! There are still gaps where we can pop more plants in, but the bulk of our sowings are in and the beds are occupied.

I often read stuff about how kids just eat all the fruit, all the time, from the grocery store. We… don’t live like that. When the fruit is in season we eat it. When it’s not, we don’t. We savour those strawberries and raspberries, and the rhubarb and apple and plums, when they’re ready. Kitty is really chill about a lot of things, including food, and we’re yet to have a ‘but I want that banana’ supermarket tantrum. We spend a lot of time talking about needs not wants, and about appreciating the garden, and about the work that goes into producing our food (like the bread they bake, or there’s nothing for breakfast). And so far it’s really working and they’re thriving and appreciating those early strawberries. Today they brought one back for me - of the two that were ripe. 🥰

I don’t really grow flowers. I spend my limited energy on food - things that sustain us throughout the year - rather than on things I can’t eat. There are plenty of flowers in our space - perennials, self-seeded things, stuff that just kind of arrives - but flowers are always and afterthought for me. Most years I’ll sow some sweet peas, sunflowers, cerinthe, cosmos and marigolds. And every year I grow purple peas, and they flower like this, and that’s all the pretty I need.

Get yourself the kinds of friends that share their giant early kohlrabis with you!

We let Kitty loose with a knife and they returned with this mighty harvest! Bringing in food from the garden is a daily task in our household, and they are fully part of it - caring for our communal needs, and looking after the animals and plants that sustain us.

Our asparagus is 3 years old and we’re finally able to harvest as much as we like - this is today’s batch!

Living quietly is an act of resistance.

We live slowly and intentionally, and we want to help others do the same – from growing their own food to resisting capitalism in small, everyday ways.