Interview with Blair Beattie, November 11, 2020

When Blair Beattie was a child his favourite pastime was playing in the local nature reserve. As an adult, he followed his heart in and out of restaurants, photography, travel and fashion, until he found himself creating medicinal and market gardens and learning from mentors like soil and compost guru, Paul Taylor. And then he came across Farmer’s Footprint, an organisation dedicated to restoring regenerative farming practices, and he became so inspired that he decided to join their team. Blair is one of the most relaxed, confident, optimistic and warm-hearted people I have met! We were both rolling our eyes over some of the craziness this past year has produced but his sense of humour prevailed. If you’ve been finding the year stressful, you’ll enjoy just basking in his energy during the 30 minutes or so of our conversation. I wanted to interview Blair because I’ve decided to donate 20% of the profits of my latest novel, Power of the Light, to Farmer’s Footprint. This newest book is about a boy whose father has cancer and how they respond, and one of their strategies (eventually) is to move to a plant-based diet. Farmer’s Footprint was created by Dr Zach Bush, who felt that he could make greater inroads into his patients’ health by helping to eliminate pesticides such as glyphosate (Roundup) from our soils and encouraging a return to healthy farming practices. Thank you for watching. Please share if so inspired!