Elders 8 – Our seeds and Lil her bean seeds

The staunch and resistant elders rocked up in the summer rain, to be rewarded with such seed knowledge that we did not know existed.

But first, we shared our own seeds: In some cases our children and grand children. In some cases our dogs. In some cases the seed that represented a change in one of us (an extraordinary story of a sunflower). In Lil’s case it was the seed of her land. Yes, we agreed, a seed could be all of these things and was not necessarily a genetic link to us.

Lil spoke of her land in Ringsfield and how much she learned from it. When she and her husband arrived, it was a bare field. Now, it is a place you can get lost in, a maze of 14 different beans, some vines, an orchard, a nuttery, a flower garden, and so much more. We all want to visit, so definitely an Elders outing must be planned.

We played Lil’s game, fitting the name to the bean. Us who love words loved this game

Gigantium
Rhonda
Princess
Lazy Housewife
Czar
Cosse Violette
Yland Ylang
Jacobs cattle

After tea and scones, with an additional strawberry from Lil’s garden, we read the letter from the Kinda Kids and wrote our reply.

Inspired by Lil’s information that in the whole of the UK there was only one bean processing plant, we wrote to Adrian Ramsay the following letter:

Dear Adrian Ramsay, MP

We have just had a presentation about the importance of beans – for our nutrition and our land benefit, given by a local bean farmer Lil Newton of Ringsfield. She informed us that in the whole of the UK there was only one bean processing plant for human consumption beans, and that is in Lincolnshire.

This is not resilient. ‘Just in Case’ research outlines the lack of food resilience in the UK, and this is a paradigm example.

We’d like to recommend you encourage a competition to set up an East Anglian factory, perhaps close to Hodmedods, with an opportunity of youth employment.

From the Elders in the Woods, June 2026

Thanks Lil for coming to the woods.

And Greg found an amazing Devils toe nail.