Bog Myrtle & Peat

It’s been fun to play with a new blog at “And The Yellow Ale”, and I’m slowly working out how publishing works at substack. During the last few weeks on that platform, I’ve published a series of short-to-mid-length essays on cattle, art and wildlife, and I’ve also been updating and resharing some of the 2,000 blog posts which have been posted here since 2009. It’s all very useful, particularly as I try to draw various threads together for new writing projects.

At the moment, the writing on Bog Myrtle and Peat is wrung out of spare moments between work… particularly late at night or first thing in the morning. I’ll always continue to write here for free, but responding to a number of readers who have suggested that they’d be willing to pay for my writing, the new idea is to design a plan for Substack which means I produce one substantial article a week which is only available to paid subscribers.

I’d also like to take commissions from subscribers once a month – I’ve always been recklessly self-interested on this blog and followed my nose, even to the point of boring my readership sideways. But it might be fun to invite suggestions and steering from readers – if there’s something you’d like me to work on, I’m all ears. On that note, I should also work on getting better at finding comments and being more available to feedback. I’m rubbish at that, but I should try harder…

I’m not sure if this is going to work, but the substack software is pretty good and I’m very grateful to existing readers who have already donated or subscribed to a monthly contribution. As a vote of confidence, it’s hugely appreciated. Donations can be any size, but I’ve set a subscription as low as the software will let me go – £5 per month.

I’ve always been very lucky that I have time to spend on writing, and also that people enjoy this stuff and engage with it. But I am really starting to stretch my legs now, taking on ever-more ambitious ideas which strain my ability to keep working as I’ve always worked. Hopefully this new idea will help to keep the whole project growing!