Trading

I've come home from the harvest in Mosel, Western Germany, with an unexpected revelation swinging from my backpack: everything in my engineered, extremely online life exists to sell things, and I don't want to buy it anymore.In Kröv I woke up every day to go to work, and I ate food because I was hungry. I didn't avoid breakfast calories, I didn't push the treat button and grab an elaborate brunch to reward myself for sleeping 8 hours or to console myself for getting only 3. Coffee, bread, cheese, water. Get in the van, time to go. Lunch: packed or eaten back at the winery, never bought from a petrol station or sneakily picked up from a drive-thru. Tea: Made at home, eaten as a group. I ate out a total of zero times. I ate alone a total of zero times. In 9 days in my normal life, this is UNHEARD OF.I stress about money all the time, and at home, food isn't the only thing that dissolves my bank balance. I buy things because I tell myself that supporting makers, artists, brewers, distillers, independent shops and bars is a noble deed. That however little I have, I should be spending to support. I forget that I need to support myself. The profound realisation that money is just one tangible example of my doing this was a bit of a stunner.In Kröv we swapped things. Wine for different wine (or beer), grapes for juice, lifts in cars for a cooked meal, favours for favours. I picked mushrooms and made cider from gifted fruit. I spent no money. I was happy. That happiness has lasted, and it feels so precious and fragile, still burning in my cupped hands. I've made plans, slow plans, to keep it.Other Stuff

• Another week, another strange few internet radio stations I've become obsessed with. Shady Pines is a community station from Portland OG, and 20ft Radio from Kiev, Ukraine I've talked about before but it really is excellent (the link takes you to The Healing Hour)

• Ksenia Coffman spends a great deal of her time as a deletionist of Nazi propaganda on Wikipedia. Her aim is one of the most commendable there is: to get rid of bullshit on the internet.

• Acopon in West Texas is a brewery that loves cask beer. Ruvani de Silva has beautifully depicted their special part of the world in her first piece for Pellicle, and I am honoured to be able to share this milestone with her in a tiny way, as it is the first published Pelli piece I had the pleasure of editing. Also, can we say how incredibly gorgeous the photographs by JoMando Cruz are?

• Lauren Johnson-WÜnscher on attempting to reconcile her passion for biodynamics and Rudolf Steiner's racism.

My Stuff

• 7 weeks after Tom and I opened Corto, I wrote about what we'd learned for Ferment mag. "...Darryl, our decorator, painted the front of the bar in fresh turquoise a few days early as a surprise...A lifelong Wainwright fan, we’d been introducing him to different beers over the weeks he spent sorting out the interior of our bar. In return he gave us a morning of total joyous satisfaction in the form of a bright turquoise front door that greeted us from the top of the road one morning. An apparition."