The question of food security seems to be very alive in the community at the moment. This is an area where I think it is fair to say that there has been a pretty high level of satisfaction with our efforts over the years.

Our Earthshare scheme was the UK’s first organic, community-supported agriculture (CSA) farm, providing weekly local, fresh veggies to the equivalent of 200 families every week of [...]

Another camera crew is in town at the moment, shooting another film about life in the community.

We have become a good deal more careful about who we let in with movie cameras following the debacle several years ago with the three-part Channel Four series, The Haven, that made us look and feel rather foolish. Our naive hope had been that the film would try to depict something of [...]

It is a great time just now to be in Scotland. There is a tangible sense of freshness, excitement and opportunity in the air. Most surprisingly in this age of disenchantment and cynicism with all things political, a significant source of this new energy is developments in the sphere of mainstream, party politics.

In short, we have a new, fresh SNP administration in Holyrood that almost overnight seems to [...]

Last week I drove my friend Judi Buttner to Loch Ness to officiate at a wedding. Judi is the Findhorn Foundation’s official marriage celebrant and can legally perform weddings not only in the community but anywhere in Scotland. The Foundation has, for at least ten years, had its own celebrant so that community people who do not, as a rule, want a traditional church wedding could have the kind of [...]

Following on with the theme of the ageing population of Findhorn and (everywhere else, really) I would like to approach it from the perspective of one of 60s generation who is now in her sixties. Since it was we who instigated the cult of youth and coined the phrase ‘don’t trust anyone over thirty’, we can hardly complain if there are those who now feel that there are way too [...]

One of the early Findhorn luminaries, David Spangler, once famously said that a major challenge for Findhorn would be to avoid becoming a New Age old people’s home. I notice that I have been recounting this anecdote over the years with a certain self-satisfaction, sure in the knowledge that this is a fate we have managed to escape.

After recent visits to a couple of ecovillages where youth truly are [...]

Last week’s blog saw me down at the Green Heart of Hawick festival, celebrating GEN’s recognition that the battle for sustainability would be won on the streets of our villages, towns and cities, with ecovillages more akin to research laboratories than models to be widely replicated.

And yet, as I come back from another working weekend away – this time in Sweden (of which, more below) – I realise [...]

Green Heart of HawickI spent the weekend down at Hawick, a picturesque town in the Scottish Borders. The event was an environmental fair and conference called Green Heart of Hawick, put on by the irrepressibly enthusiastic Michael Shallis and his team.

The fair had everything, from films (including Al Gore’s "An Convenient Truth" and the wonderful "Power of Community" about Cuba’s response to its peak oil crisis), talks [...]

This week, as many others, our community newsletter, the Rainbow Bridge, carries news of one or more members leaving the community. In an ecovillage of around 500 souls, this level of turnover does not present too much of a problem.

There are still several people here who first came to Findhorn in the 1960s and a good number who have been here for 20 years or more, so there [...]

What a puzzling time to be alive. In the world that surrounds us, beauty and the comforting familiarity of seasonal rhythms. The ospreys have returned from West Africa and are putting on a grand fishing display in Findhorn Bay.

The last of the winter snow still lies deep on the mountaintops, glistening and melting in the now warm spring sunshine. (I spent last weekend walking in the magnificence of [...]