Time

Time - we have no concept of it. Eggs, about a week. Milk and cream, we can get in about three months if we have a couple of cows, and if we know how to deal with them (including the bull). Wheat and rice, about six or seven months, but a lot more if we consider all the history from back way before. Other veggies, well, it depends on where you get your seeds from. Most seed sold in small bags are imported.

We talk about farming, but if we don't acknowledge that there are people out there, who know how to work the soil, and who understand the concept of time, then how are we going to feed ourselves?

I really liked this article in The Guardian about Irene, a 1907 sail ship that will be chartered to ship food slowly... Organic beer from the UK, olive oil from Spain, and then cocoa, coffee - and rum - back from South America. The whole point is to "blaze a trail for wind-powered cargo ships."

For Pike, this trip, which begins on Valentine's Day, is about romance but also about getting an important environmental message out. "It's great to be doing this romantic trip on a lovely old ship," he said. "But there's a bigger debate to be had about shipping in general. Is there an alternative to huge polluting cargo ships? We want to help launch that debate." Pike hopes, on the back of Irene's voyage, to set up a For Sail mark that can be used by traders to show goods were moved by wind.

The Guardian: Vintage ketch sets sail to launch slow cargo movement

Read more about this amazing ship on the Irene SS website:

Bridgwater is in Somerset, on the river Parret. In 1907 a lovely ketch was launched - a merchant vessel of 98 tons. She plied the seas with a grace and dignity until patterns of commerce changed and her majesty declined. Faltering and enfeebled the ship retired. A queen yet. Her reign was over, but her magic remained. One day a young man, a dealer in dreams and delusions, looked on her. "Let me sell you a dream young man", the ketch incanted. "It will cost you your life, your fortune, your soul". The dreamer looked and saw nothing of the peeled paint, the tarnished brass: he saw only a sailing ship of vitality and beauty: and he fell in love. He yearned to posses her; he fought many battles, he dreamed many dreams and one day the ship was his. The dream she sold cost him dear - but the dream was his own. He lives it still Lives it......or dreams it? What answer can there be to that which is not a question? Man and ship inhabit that fantasy world of reality, that real world of fantasy.

(Introduction from the book "Good Night Irene" by Leslie Morrish)