‘JUST ONE’

Words by Hot Poet Jasmine Gardosi
Inspired by the community ownership of Fordhall Organic Farm

One. 
One. 
Starts with 
just one. 
Starts with 
Arthur: 
solo 
farmer. 
Working. 
Trying. 
Doing. 
Tiring. 
Battling 
private 
landlord. 
Silo-ed. 

Just one. 
Just one. 
Farm is 
just one. 
Outlier. 
Outside. 
One of 
its kind.

Children inherit. 
Brother and sister. 
Practically teenagers, 
up for eviction. 

Eighteen month deadline 
to save it from giants. 
It’s David, Goliath. 
The farm and the privates. 

Eight hundred thousand pounds. 
They need to raise it now. 
Keep it organic and 
keep it a family. 

Impossible. 
It can’t be done. 
Naive idea. 
They’re way too young. 

But their greenness 
is momentum 
and the hope grows 
exponential. 

So open the gate. 
BBC News. 
Radio 4. 
Telegraph too. 

Spreading the word: 
fifty pound shares. 
Buying the land, 
keeping it fair. 

One by one they come 
from just down the road 
and then all at once 
from around the globe. 

Community-owned, 
no longer alone. 
A hundred year lease, 
the freedom to breathe. 

Eight thousand landlords. 
Eight thousand saviours. 
Average Joes. 
Eight thousand Davids. 

All kinds of people with 
all kinds of reasons, 
diverse as the grass 
of the farm and its species. 

Pooling together and 
growing together and 
working together and 
voting together and 
seeking the measures to 
to free it from tethers 
of greedy developers 
keep it forever. 

The key is collective 
to keep it effective: 
diversity strengthens 
when we are connected. 

We all give grounds for community 
so the youth work can nourish the teens 
and the teens can breathe the country air 
and in turn they plant the greens 
and the leaves can feed the worms who work to turn the dirt to soil 
and the soil supports the fields which in turn will feed the sheep – 
a symbiotic give and take that feeds the land and we. 

The livestock can self-medicate on the variance of plants 
and the humans can self-medicate on the goodness of the land. 

The cattle graze with foggage farming which means that they run free 
all year round, health straight from the ground, fertiliser-free. 
A diversity of herbs is exactly what that needs 
and diversity of persons is how that comes to be. 

The volunteers and the care farm 
and the free trails and the cattle 
and the hazel and the clover 
and the deep roots and the shallow. 

Wealth in its mixture. 
Health in its richness. 
Question the structures. 
Lean into difference.

Dig in your heels. 
Trust in your roots. 
Join in the movement. 
Pull on your boots. 

Less landlords, 
more land loyal. 
Be lifelong 
land leaders, 
land lenders, 
land hearers, 
land learners, 
land easers. 

They’ll call us 
naive still 
but one small 
idea will 
breed and increase 
and can 
pick up its steam 
from 
just one. 
One. 
It starts with 
just one.