Something has lifted.

I want to start with a thank you.

The last six months have been hard, and I won't pretend otherwise. We've faced so many challenges from many different angles. And to be honest, it's been quite lonely trying to hold firm and keep the vision alive. The farm has felt the strain of it. So when I tell you what's happened these last few weeks has shifted things, I really mean it.

So many of you have come and got stuck in. You've turned up early, stayed late, brought your kids, brought your friends. You've done the kind of work that doesn't get photographed but is the actual difference between a farm that's surviving and a farm that's coming alive. We've moved through jobs that were stacking up since autumn. Beds turned. Seedlings potted on. Fences mended. The big stuff and the small stuff.

The energy on the land right now is different. You can feel it walking around. Something has lifted.

I'll say this honestly. A lot of us had drifted. Life has a way of doing that, and six months distant from a place is a long time. Coming back, working alongside each other, sitting down to eat together at the end of the day, it's reminded me what this is for. From what you've been telling me, it's reminded a lot of you too.

This is the reconnection we've always talked about. It isn't theory. It's just being here, hands in the soil, with people who feel the same.

And here's the bit I can't quite keep level about.

I cannot express how excited I am about where we go from here. I really mean that. We have a clearer strategy than we've ever had, and I genuinely believe we can make immense progress this year in bringing more of our vision into existence.

The plan for the network beyond our first farm is finally taking shape. Independent community farms across the country, each rooted in its own place, connected through one national platform. Our conversations with our own next estate, around 100 acres in Sussex, are moving forwards very positively. It all feels very real, and it's closer than it's ever been.

And behind all of that is the goal I want you to hold onto.

In the current food system, a farmer typically sees somewhere between 7 and 9 pence of every pound you spend on food. The rest disappears into processing, packaging, distribution, supermarket margin, fees most people have never heard of. Most farms can't survive on that. Most haven't.

What we're building is the opposite. Aiming for 90 pence of every pound you spend on food going directly to the farmer who grew it. No middlemen. No shelf fees. No system grinding the people doing the actual work into the ground.

If we get this right, and I believe we can, we won't just have built a community-owned farm network. We'll have built a working alternative to the supermarket system in this country. A whole different way of getting food from the soil to your kitchen.

This isn't about going into battle with anyone. We're not interested in that. We're just building something that, once you see it, makes such undeniable sense that the question becomes why anyone would do it any other way.

I'll be sharing more about all of this properly at Beltane on May 2nd. Our fire festival, the beginning, and the moment we begin opening up what comes next. I would love you to be there. Not because there'll be things to announce, though there will be, but because what we're building lands completely differently when you're standing where it's happening.

Come to Beltane. Come back to the land. Bring someone with you if you can.