Been away for a few days. Been looking at the sea. #sketchbook

Seriously how hard is it to say “This is an outrageous attack on our friends and neighbours who are in this country legally and have followed all the rules to get settled status, who are valued members of our communities, get to fuck frog-face”?

Sure signs of autumn on our place. If you farm livestock in a very low impact way you get all kinds of good stuff* All I need now is the waxcaps!! (Which are slow to show this year here) *you may need to wait a few decades for the results but it’s worth it!

Medics returning from Gaza say Israel deliberately targeting children with sniper, drone fire, Dutch newspaper reports.

In the least surprising news of the year… … I have questions about peat. If anyone here can answer them please do!!! www.scribehound.com/countryside/...

We have published our AI generated slop and stand by it and have explained why it might be nonsense in the documentation no one will read, now kindly fuck off.

Peat map The FINALE! My final letter (apparently) in a long line of letters about the terrible peat map… I’m drawing some pretty bleak conclusions about this I used to believe that ‘the truth’ mattered in science and that if evidence was presented conclusions could be adjusted, how foolish of me

Made with rubbish Graphite shavings and packing paper from a parcel The desire to use my hands to shape the wings of the birds swept over me as I tidied the table. I’d sharpened a graphite pencil, its shavings tipped onto the waste paper. They felt under my fingers unmanageable

You know that thing where something low level petty happens and it raises a whole host of red flags? Yeah That Fun* times in the world of carbon capture, big money and ecology… (*And when I say ‘fun’ I mean ‘playground petty with an unpleasant edge’.)

Yeah That’s a very nice sight The wood edged fields are worth their weight in gold in the summer, especially in a dry hot summer For all the talk about how bad livestock is this is pretty much perfect Land use layered Food and nature, in the same place at the same time, complementing each other

*Cough* @naturalengland.bsky.social the New England Peat Map… *cough*

This was eleven days ago. Has she found food? Is she still alive? Her face is haunting me. Gaza is facing a human made, hate filled genocide. It’s obscene. And yet people are floating plastic bottles into the Mediterranean Sea, filled with air, rice or lentils and hope they will find the hungry.

Peat map! The reply to the reply to the reply to the query about why the map is SO RUBBISH Apparently the map is good and also bad, fit for purpose yet also not, without robust surveys (by us? Unpaid?) my concerns will and also will not lead to the map being changed… Help me My Brain is melting!

This displaced and starving Palestinian woman sheltering at Gaza’s al-Shifa Hospital says she hasn’t eaten in five days, as Israel continues its suffocating blockade on Gaza.

We are receiving desperate messages of starvation from #Gaza, including from our colleagues. Food prices have increased 40 fold. UNRWA has enough food for the entire population for over three months, stockpiled just outside Gaza. Lift the siege and let aid in safely and at scale.

Over Two whole months since the peat map launch (and exactly two months since @naturalengland.bsky.social suddenly decided a user disclaimer was needed on the landing page of the maps website in case anyone actually used it) and still its full of errors (yet apparently 95% correct!)

More gannets A larger painting, but the birds stay tiny.

Dusk. Dartmoor. Nightjars nest. Ink and pencil Another small work, finding a way to show the feeling of a place, a time, and a bird (or two) The way the light changes as the dark settles in. The churring rising from the half light and the impossibility of seeing some birds!

As someone who lives and works here and cares deeply about the place, I'm feeling increasingly uncomfortable with the way in which Dartmoor has become a convenient media trope for the parlous state of nature in UK National Parks, and the tone of the debate around issues affecting biodiversity here.

Instead they seemed to have picked peat soils to survey and then rolled that data out across other soil types regardless of whether it’s right or not. Bad science… but who cares when the map is pretty and confirms your biases huh?

Over Two whole months since the peat map launch (and exactly two months since @naturalengland.bsky.social suddenly decided a user disclaimer was needed on the landing page of the maps website in case anyone actually used it) and still its full of errors (yet apparently 95% correct!)

Today has been shifting hay, moving cows and laying ink down on tiny gannets. Each of those jobs is satisfying in its own way, but I do love this delicate way of painting. Half fast and free and half very very precise!

Next in the new work series Dawn. Gannets fall. Ink and pencil 20x13.5cm Birds under 1cm This is already sold. Onto the next!

Dawn. Turnstones call Ink and pencils. 20x13.5cm Maybe it’s the weather that has prompted this flow of work? Not only making me think of early morning mist, but also, more practically, helping the inks dry as they mix on the damp paper! Whatever, this one is bliss

I have a question How much is a carbon credit? And is there much variety in price? Like gold standard ones vs bog standard? It’s just I’ve seen some simple WCC ones sold for £125 and that seems a lot. Ta muchly!

Settling into this new work. Finding a way to show here, how it can be, how I’ve felt it. The bones of the place and how the light moves. The scent. The coolness. How it sounds. Dawn. Dartmoor. Jackdaws call. Ink and pencil 20x13.5cm (birds tiny… the largest is 0.6cm long)

Next new work Dawn. Dartmoor. Ascending light. Ink and pencil 20x13.5cm Playing with the feeling of dawn on the moor. The shimmer of the light through the mist and the rising skylark above. The softness I love how the gold ink catches the light as you move past these works. Yeah. For sale. Dm.

Peat map…. The reply! Yes this is like some long running saga, sorry and all that, but I took a while to think about my reply to the reply to my email that followed my many many social media posts and (the fame) my small write up in the papers… Behold. My next email to @naturalengland.bsky.social

New work Dawn, Dartmoor, stonechats Ink and pencils 20x3.5cm Working with the ideas of light, peace, stillness. The quiet into which the birds first call. For sale. Message me.

Peat map! I forgot to say, I got a reply to my letter! It’s not 100% satisfactory (🙄) and it’s what I expected, but it’s also ‘interesting’ in a ‘lying in a dark room blinking slowly’ kind of way in places…

I’ve been working on new art today. Dawn, oystercatchers Ink and pencil. 20x13.5cm (the birds are 0.6cm long) For sale - dm me.

On #NationalMeadowsDay NOT a meadow. This is pasture (yes yes it’s a matter of semantics but still!) Created by and for our livestock. Not mown for hay but grazed instead. Grazed hard in the winter, down to its earthy bones. Then rested so it shivers with life in the summer.

#wildflowerHour not a grass but still its worth posting Greater Broomrape Orobanche Rapum-genistae Apparently it’s a good year for it.

Sara, one of the best people ever. A legend, so strong, so funny, so punk, her activism based on love and justice and food I’ve had (and cherish) 7 years of random messages bouncing between us pretty much saying ‘wtf?’ ‘agghhhhhh’ and ‘onwards’ So… Wtf? Agh! Onwards Towards Love, food & justice

Peat! And it’s mapping… UPDATE: There is no update! Yeah It’s still online, it’s still very badly wrong & I still haven’t heard a peep from anyone official about when it’s getting taken offline! Ah well, I guess for @naturalengland.bsky.social massive mistakes are just the way they roll!

It’s been a whole month since the peat map of England was launched! It’s still very wrong And it’s still online So I’ve written a open letter to @naturalengland.bsky.social I am starting to worry that massive mistakes are just a thing with the whole organisation. What else is wildly wrong?

Loss in a landscape Swift (3) Roofing slate with gold. Unfinished because I now have to face smashing it so I can then hold its broken shards up to the light. I don’t want to It’s beautiful But it needs to be destroyed… Just like the uk government is doing to nature Damage done needs facing.

It’s been a whole month since the peat map of England was launched! It’s still very wrong And it’s still online So I’ve written a open letter to @naturalengland.bsky.social I am starting to worry that massive mistakes are just a thing with the whole organisation. What else is wildly wrong?

21 years since I wrote this. Miss him. The kittens run over the mountains of the bed, And through its caves, It’s Father’s Day, He’s dead and not yet buried. How can I laugh?

Today’s peat map news.. It’s still up! It’s disclaimer is still useless And now… (Brace yourselves) It’s tricky to block a peat gully if it is in fact a road used by many people everyday… And rivers and streams, cascading over Dartmoor rocks are real and often actually natural!

Ah! I figured it out! (Or at least part of it) Peat map quiz time - How can I tell it was late afternoon when the aerial photos used in the @naturalengland.bsky.social peat map were taken? (Do I really have to explain the idea of shadows to a government body in charge of nature? Really?)

Found a orchid in one of our wet meadows - Dartmoor Any help identifying it would be appreciated because I’m not up to speed on them at all! Thanks!

In the latest instalment of ‘ways the peat map is wrong wrong badly unusably wrong’ we have…. China clay works! Not exactly known for their deep peat! Oh what a wonderful gift the @naturalengland.bsky.social peat map of England is. It just keeps on giving! 🤷‍♀️😑🤦‍♀️

So, using this this well studied place, Malham Tarn, to show off the new map… showing peat across the whole of that area And degraded peat at that, with a lot of potentially fixable drainage cuts and channels Where there is a well studied large area of limestone pavement rather than deep peat!

So a peat map question for you The video/images that @naturalengland.bsky.social used to launch the new peat map is of the Malham Tarn area. It shows the map layers including peat depth and damage and vegetation So, How bad can the choice of Malham Tarn have possibly been?

Is it just me that finds it absurd that I need to be pointing out to a large powerful English government body that Peat is a SOIL. Because it feels absurd, yet here I am! And todays episode in ‘the peat map saga is Peat is not WATER

I have a question… If you saw this disclaimer on an online maps landing page, after possibly reading that the map has a 95% accuracy according to a government department… Well, would you just click ‘ok’ and use the maps data as if it’s probably fine? (Alt text has it in full)

Yeah This place in may is heavenly I keep looking at those ‘what we want the land to look like’ images from rewilding, eNGOs & other groups, & they look like this I can’t do anything about mega fauna & don’t really want wolves, but I can & have changed my land while keeping on farming livestock.

Right In case you think I’m just all about bad maps Here, have some good grazed scrub, a fine dung beetle, a bluebell wood and some more scrub/wood pasture. Not peat, but good non the less! #dartmoor #farm

@jackwallington.com Jack, you asked for specific reasons why the modelling for the peat map was wrong. I understand almost none of what @lilybellesweet.bsky.social is saying, it’s not my line of work, I just understand that granite is not peat, but I hope this is interesting to you.