Hazel Press

Tracie Hotchner is a nationally acclaimed pet wellness advocate and author who lives in Vermont, USA where she known as The Radio Pet Lady. Tracie is also the prize-winning author of seven books including The Cat Bible, The Dog Bible, Pregnancy and Childbirth. She is definitely a polymath, a woman of courage and independence, linguist, traveller, tennis and pickle ball player, storyteller, superb chef, all in all a person of action, honour and humour.  Listen to www.radiopetlady.com for all things related to pets and their people where one of her recent programmes was titled ‘Georgeous Reggae Music for Dogs (and us!) During Covied 19’.

Judy Allen is looking at a new plant, in a place where she’s always grown things she’s never grown before. She shares how this year has been a year of learning, of the balance and space between virtual platforms, technology; and tending the same patch of earth for the past 40 years.

Writer, Mentor and Tutor
www.sueburge.uk

This year, Julia Wilson has spent her holiday heaving straw bales to help with a natural build in south Devon. In the background you can hear a straw bale barn being constructed.

Julia mentions all the wonderful things on the planet, of which she is one: she’s studied horticulture, closed-loop systems, circular economics; she’s a feminist, thinker, doer, architect, environmentalist, and teller of giddy jokes.

Pause a moment and listen to how a storm gathers over the New Mexico desert with Lavinia Currier and her three dogs surrounded by pinon and juniper trees. Currier became a passionate environmentalist around the age of ten and has spent the last fifty years defending and trying to preserve our planet. She is also a poet, filmmaker, fearless horsewoman, rancher and more – a true woman of the wilds – she divides her time between New Mexico, Colorado, Hawaii and Virginia. 

As a puppetmaker, woodworker and storyteller Shere Coleman creates small worlds that enhance the world. She is also an exponent of Feng Shui, a political and environmental activist and a wonderful friend who delights in laughter and adventure. Here she is at work deadheading roses on a hillside above the city of Portland, Oregon where BLM demonstrations and all manner of freedoms are being defended and honoured by Coleman herself,  the Wall of Moms and  many remarkable local citizens. 

Anna Ilsley is an artist who paints strong female figures from a feminist perspective.  She recently moved to Suffolk where she lives and works with her ICU nurse partner Tom, who has been caring for Covid-19 patients. Ilsley and her new baby take long walks, explore shingle beaches, shady ancient woodlands and care for The Wadd a wetland and environmental initiative in their village. 

Rachel Donati feels life intensely, running in her veins and memories are strong connections with India and Italy, also a powerful sense of home that is interlaced with a soft spot for the thrill of adventure and the tap tap tap of stilettos. Donati has a poetic beat and vocabulary that transports us into her world where it casts new light on our own experiences and sometimes can make us re-feel past encounters.

Lena Stolle is sat on the steps of the composting toilet at Schumacher College. You hear the chimes hung just outside it, long and low, sending their reverberations through the redwoods.

It is evening, everything is lit from the side like stage lighting. Lena has been kneeling and stooping all day; and throughout lockdown – planting, weeding and growing. She shares a quote from Wendell Berry, written on the wall of the wooden compost loo. It is about one of the greatest, simplist of transformations, a true alchemy which can change how we think about our own waste, and unnecessary wastefulness.

“Whether we and our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”

Wendell Berry

Lena is a grower at Schumacher College, a mindful clown, an environmentalist and has a singing voice which would lift even the greatest songbird’s heart.

Here is a Fenland walk from the generous Alice Willitts, plantswoman, writer, storyteller, environmentalist, maker of beautiful poetry scrolls. She lives in Cambridge and has loved big skies all her life.