In Rough Patch - How a year in the garden brought me back to life; Kathy Slack shares all the lessons she learned from her own story of recovery from depression.

She shared her plant story with us in series 2 in an episode called Kathy's Radishes. As we sat by her veg patch she explained why it was so powerful to see life in the soil and discover its potential to grow food. In the conversation in this Offshoot episode she tells us why it was so important for her to get those lessons down on paper.

We talk about what she wants readers to take away and as she explains; a book like this when she was struggling would not have solved her problems but she would not have felt so alone. And we find out how a cow can perhaps teach all of us something about just being present.

And Kathy being so generous with her recipes and her expertise - I ask her for some advice on what to grow this year!

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Our Plant Stories is presented and produced by Sally Flatman

The music is Fade to Black by Howard Levy

Welcome to our Plant stories and an offshoot episode. These episodes always seem to come from the plant stories and I guess, just show how plants are so endlessly fascinating and powerful.

The latter, I think, is illustrated by this conversation with Kathy Slack, who you may remember from series two, and an episode called Kathy's Radishes.

When you're in a situation where you have to be driven to the doctors because you can't drive, or you can't make tea because your brain can't compute what needs to be done, or you can't face going outside hardly, making something grow feels really empowering.

Well, recently I went to a bookshop in London for the launch of Kathy's new book, which is called Rough Patch How A Year in the Garden Brought Me Back to Life. There was food.

And you won't be surprised to hear that this book also features recipes. I really wanted to talk to Kathy about her book and share that conversation with you. So here it is. The book is now available.

I love the book. I love the book. We're going to talk about the recipes. I'm sure. I loved the recipes as well. I think that's great in a book. But I wanted to start, I guess, by asking you what made you want to write the book.

It's been. Gosh, it's been a really long process. And honestly, the first thing this is so me,

I just sort of flunked out of a really good job and went to pick vegetables for a living. There's nothing. It's not really much to tell it. And she went, oh, no, that is. There is a story there.

And so I had a first crack at it because, you know, I'm an only child. I always did my homework. I'm a good daughter. So I was just like, oh, right, okay, then we'll do that. And I had a crack at it.

And she looked at it and she went, yeah, you're kind of holding back. Which I knew I was really. I hadn't really come to terms with what I wanted to write because it never occurred to me. So I left it for a while.

Then we did the cookbook, because that happened to sell miraculously. So I was like, right, well, concentrate on that then.

And kind of went right back to the beginning. But I kind of cracked at least the structure by then. So I felt that gap was so useful because I'd got a structure and I just rewrote like 98% of it and put recipes in and tinkered around with it and made it funnier and made it darker and just took it to the extremes a bit more and went from there.

Did you have a reader in mind?

I suppose yes and no. No, because when I first started, I'll be honest, a lot of the motivation for writing it is quite selfish in that I just wanted to get it down on paper in a way that I wouldn't forget the lessons that I'd learned from the soil, if you like. And it's so there feels so flimsy and so ephemeral, almost that and when life gets very busy, it's very easy to forget those things that you see when life is tranquil and you're thinking great thoughts. And so I wanted to get them down for that reason.

Like, we didn't even know what burnout was then. So I felt like if I'd had something like that to read, then I might not have felt quite so alone.

It might not have fixed it, but I wouldn't have felt like I was the only one.

It's interesting you use the word selfish, because I read it and thought, this is incredibly generous that you are sharing so much of yourself and so much of your story in a way that all of us can relate to and see parts of the way that the world lives, the way it drives, the way we motivate ourselves, the way sometimes we don't even realise how we're taking on attitudes or ideas. I just thought it was incredibly generous.

Oh, well, thank you. I suppose that it is quite exposing and actually that has been a really unexpected benefit of it because I'm quite a private person generally. And then to be this honest and this open about everything that went wrong, and a lot of it is, Is really not edifying at all.

It's kind of, It's a huge release.

Particularly when you've been the sort of person who's spent so much time thinking about how you come across to other people and worrying whether people like you or not, and then suddenly to just put all the worst stuff down on paper and go, yeah, all right, read it is really, it's a bit frightening, but at the same time it's, it's mostly just such a release to have it all out there. And you kind of go, right, well, if you know that, then that's all I've got. There's nothing else doesn't get worse than that.

Where did the idea for recipes come into it?

That just feels so you to me, because, you know, you, you, you do substack, you open, you know, you've sent me to the, to the shop at the end of our road.

We have an amazing shop at the end of our road, which is a kind of veg shop where everything you could possibly ever want in terms of vegetables is there. And if it isn't, then Rosie will get it for you. And so I've read your recipes, gone, oh, I need to find this. Where is it?

You know, and gone to the end. So I, I see that as something you love. And when we talked, clearly cooking, creating is just a big part of you.

But where did that idea to put them into the book come from?

Yeah. By the way, I need to come and visit that shop. That sounds amazing.

It's wonderful.

The, the recipes were always going to be in there because it's, it's kind of the, it's the culmination of...it's what I grow for. I know some growers grow food because they like the process of growing food.

Those tend to be the sort of people who enter the village show with their big marrows and things. Whereas I am a cook and I grow food because I cook it and I'm only interested in that.

So really it's the, like, the story can't be finished until there's a recipe with it. Like, the leeks aren't really ready until they're in a pie. Does that make sense?

I like it.

So, so I always, I always wanted recipes in it. And because the story is so much about how I found as well as comfort being out in nature and in the garden, but how I found peace but agency and creativity by cooking it, they had to be in there. They had to be in there.

And also I feel like sometimes how to put would be really easy to write a very middle class misery memoir. I had everything. It all went horribly wrong and. And I feel like that's a bit.

My diamond shoes are pinching and I wanted it to be something other than that. I wanted it to be joyful and I wanted it to be useful. So recipes are joyful and useful to me. So they went in there.

You're quite kind of self deprecating about your kind of ability to grow vegetables. And yeah, I'm reading it and you've got gluts. So I'm thinking this is a woman who does know how to grow vegetables. Or do you?

I don't know. I mean, was that something you learned or was that, you know, what's your philosophy on that?

Well, I'm self deprecating about it because I kind of revel in having a space where stuff can go wrong and it really doesn't matter.

It's kind of what I love about growing veg and why I don't understand flowers and plants generally and herbaceous borders just fill me with horror and terror and anxiety. Because if you get...I think maybe we talked about this last time, like if you get a shrub wrong, it's an expensive mistake and you feel like that's been years of work and effort and it's done for. Whereas I think we did talk about this in the radish episode. With a radish, you just have a go again four weeks later. It's brilliant. And I love that.

I mean, how many spaces are there in life where you can get things really, really wrong and it doesn't matter. It's totally inconsequential. Actually, it looks quite beautiful.

I've just, just finished tidying up the veg patch after it's winter and it was really messy and in a way it was kind of I mean, it looks ne lovely now, but in a way it was kind of sad to clear up all that debris and that mess because it's kind of wild and lovely and strangely imperfect. But I embrace that and revel in it.

What are you growing at the moment? Anything. Is it too early to do anything at the moment really? Isn't it? Yes. I've got broad beans, you know, I've got my bought beans in. Well.

Well, only because we really wanted to plant something just to make ourselves feel like, you know, that something was going to grow in the middle of the museum of Homelessness garden in winter.

Do you know, I've got a packet of broad bean seeds coming in the post as we speak, because I had the same feeling. And the potatoes are arriving as well and the onion sets are arriving to go in in probably late February, really.

I do have some perpetual spinach which has survived the winter. I've just cut back all the sludgy stems that got buried under some snow and that's reshooting quite nicely. Same with the chard.

There's some parsnip somewhere, the soil. I think I'll have a dig around and try and extract some more of those and. Yeah, that's kind of it, really. Oh, there's a bit of kale left.

There's a bit of cavalo nero still to come, but again, they're looking a bit sorry for themselves. But that time of year, isn't it?

It's that time of year when you start. You spend most of your time planning what you're going to grow next time around, don't you? Really?

How do you describe. What terms you like to use?

Sometimes I feel like I want to reclaim the phrases like Stephen Fry does and say when I went mad. But you have to be careful on the context, who you're in front of when you do that, because you don't to offend people, but that's how it felt.

I felt like I went mad. So I don't know what I call it, my episode.

Well, I was going to say that the time lapse from there to now. Do you feel there's been a shift in our attitudes towards mental health, towards our mental health. And the impact that nature can have on us when our, when our brains are feeling frayed.

Enormously, enormously.

So when I was signed off work people, my bosses were amazing and, and hugely ahead of their times and they said to me, it's, it's no different from if you'd broken both your legs. In fact, it's probably a bit more serious than that. So let's take it seriously. They were amazing, but I think they were in a minority just because not because of any malice, just because of lack of understanding.

Whereas now we are so much more aware, particularly in a workplace which I think is 99% a good thing and 1% a bit much, which I talk about in the book. I have quite a lot of reservations about talking about mental health as openly as we do.

I think it's wonderful that we do overall, but I think we can. Well, there's all sorts of potential disasters and pitfalls, but. But from a nature point of view, I feel like lockdown really changed things.

And the pandemic and all of us being so removed from day to day life and finding so little stimulus that actually going out into n. It was like we all looked up from our phones and went, oh, oh, look at this. I don't have to get in the car and go to the Peak District to see nature.

It's just, it's right here. I just, I need to go outside. This is great. And I think that was one of the few great things to come out of the pandemic.

When you talk about nature, you really talk about getting your hands in the soil.

Yeah, yeah. And I, and I feel like.

And this is where I draw a distinction between 'getting out in nature' in inverted commas and growing vegetables, because I feel like you go out in nature and you can look at it and you can experience wonder and awe and a sense of yourself as part of a greater world. And that can be...make you more mindful and that can be restorative and comforting and things. But.

And the same with gardening generally, but with growing your own food, you get that. But you also get this sense of agency that when I had depression, I was lacking in spades. You know, I couldn't, I couldn't make tea, I couldn't drive, I couldn't function. But when that lettuce seed grew, I had made dinner for myself.

I mean, yes, it was just a lettuce, but something had come from nothing and it was useful. And to me, that's the really big difference from just going out in nature for a walk, though, I love that. And that has its own benefits.

But creativity came from growing vegetables, and empowerment came from growing vegetables. And a sense of being in control again came from growing vegetables. And I don't get any of that from growing a rose or going for a walk.

It's interesting because someone came into the somebody new came to the Museum of Homelessness garden just last week, and they'd arrived just before I arrived, and they had said to somebody very clearly, I do not, I'm not coming here to weed. I do not want to weed. I'm interested in growing things that will sustain me. And it was so interesting.

I thought of you at that point and the book, and it was very clear. We talked about what those things might be, and one of them was soya beans.

That, you know, it was interesting about what it was that that person felt. It was not about weeding, just being in the space. It was about sustaining myself. Which, again, talks a bit to what you've described, I think.

Yeah, And I love that word, sustaining yourself as well, because it's. It's not just about the food that sustains you. It's also that sense of yourself being capable, again, is very sustaining. Yeah, I like that.

Well, one of the things I feel when I read a book like yours is you hope that we as readers come away with a better idea of how we should be, how we should behave, what we should say to a friend who finds himself in this place. Can you tell us a little bit about. About that? Because I think that that is really a key message, because sometimes you just don't know quite what to, what to say.

No. And it's so hard, and it is.

And I think it's difficult because it's such an individual experience, and everyone's experience of depression is so different that I do hesitate to offer advice to people about how they should react or what they should do if they have that diagnosis as well. But for me, there's an episode in the book where I describe what it's like when I'm growing. I'm. I'm in the veg patch, and I'm at my friend's veg patch who I eventually started growing at, because I was like, this is working for me. I need more space. And he lent me his veg patch, and I'm sort of weeding away very quietly, and I can really feel like I'm being watched.

And I thought, no, just being. Let's don't do that. Let's. Let's not get paranoid about absolutely everything.

But I was so convinced that somebody was watching me, but I knew I was alone. And then there was this great snort behind me. I screamed and turned, jumped up and turned around, and there's this cow.

And the benevolent Farmer Brown, as he was called, has these beautiful cows with this lovely, silky, wet nose and these massive, docile eyes and eyelashes. And it just stood there like, oh, hi. It didn't flinch. And I was like, oh, my God, my heart has stopped racing. I kind of went gradually back to my slightly awkwardly, like, are you staying? Yep. Evidently you are. Went back to my weeding. And this cow just stood there for ages, like, oh, you're weeding.

And it occurred to me that that sort of companionable, companionable silence and community is really lovely and very healing. Like, that cow didn't. Obviously it couldn't. I'm stretching the analogy here, but you know what I mean, it wasn't trying to fix anything.

It wasn't offering advice. It wasn't telling me that things would be okay and it would all end soon. Because that just. It's just no use.

It was just sitting with me going, oh, hi, you're here. I'm here. Let's just be, shall we? Nothing else. Don't really need to do anything else, do we? Well, that's what I took it to be doing anyway.

And I always say to people, if you don't know what to do, actually doing is not the important thing. Just being there, like that docile cow, reliably, quietly there, is really powerful. I think you can't fix it. Don't try.

You write very beautifully descriptions of places and times in the book.

And just as you've described that incident, it reminds me of another one in the book, which is the opposite to not doing, which is when you're at Daylesford in the wonderful vegetable garden and you are overseeing a visit from a very busy group of people who have come for a day out. Do you want to describe that incident to me? Because it really did make me laugh out loud.

And I'm sure it made me laugh out loud at the time as well. And I really made an effort to remember that day because it felt like my old world and my new world world had collided. So I had got a job... I'd recovered enough to go back to work, I tried to go back to advertising, which was a hilarious disaster, more of which in the book. And so I quit permanently.

Cat food's not your thing, basically, is it?

Basically. That's the spoiler. Yeah, I don't do cat food. And I'd got a job at Daylesford Organic Farm, which has a cookery school.

And I was working in the cookery school and I was giving tours of the veg patch to. Which is. I mean, I call it a veg patch. It's this huge, like, 10 acre market garden and it is blissful and it's bigger than that now, but at the time it was 10 acres and I was giving a tour to a group, a corporate group, who'd come for an away day, like a bonding day. Cookery schools are perfect for group away days. And they were some corporate, like, media company type.

And I knew what they were going to be like before they arrived because the poor team secretary had been on the phone to me pretty much every day in the run up to it, organizing it, going, um will there be WI fi?

Yes, there'll be WI fi. And can we make sure there's lots of booze?

But I also need the time for the CEO to have some chats with some people because, you know, and, yeah... And can it be a competition?

There must be prizes, like, yes, of course, you know, So I knew what we were going to get and they arrived and they were all like, heads down in their phones and there was no signal. I can't get signal. What are we going to do? Like, where. Where are we that we can't get signal? They were hilarious.

And they were all sort of jockeying for position and stuff and. And then I took them out into the kitchen garden in one of the breaks and it was the most beautiful day.

It was quite early in the summer and everything just looked magnificent. And very quietly, phones go in pockets and people start, they kind of look up, literally, but also in their minds as well, and they. I mean, like, it wasn't a revelation to them, but you sort of wander around and you pick up a lettuce out of the ground and go, try this.

It's really peppery. And they look at you like, you just picked that out of the ground. I can't. You. You want me to just put that in my mouth? I'm like, yeah.

Where did you think they came from? What did you say? But because life can be so removed from the point of growing. I can see why you don't remember that. I didn't understand that.

And then they taste it and they go, oh, my God, who knew? Well, I know it took me a while, but I know now as well. And then very gradually they sort of, it was just so lovely to see people go, oh, oh, look, this is, this is amazing. Actually. I'd never. How did it never occur to me that this is where vegetables came from? And that's what they do.

They grow from nothing into something and then I eat it.

That's incredible because the problem is that in between that they grow into something and I eat it is this massive process of washing and packaging and transporting to a supermarket and my secretary going out at lunchtime and buying it for me in a salad from pret. And then I eat it and there's no connection with it anymore. So just to see, see that little glimpse of people go, oh, wait.

Felt like I was reliving the same experience that I'd had when I discovered vegetables and went, oh, hang on, there's a connection here. And it's restorative and I feel strangely lighter for it. And it was really, it was really fun. It was really fun.

It feels like a slightly out of body experience for you though, because you're kind of looking down watching this scenario play out. That, that, as you say, could have been your life if you went back 10 years.

Yeah, yeah. It was quite a sliding doors moment.

It's beautifully told. There were lots of beautiful descriptions in the book.

When you're, when, when you do, you know, you describe moments in your life and things that, you know, you, you write about it beautifully, basically. And the pictures are, pictures are in our head at that point. As, you know, as, as we're reading it. What do you hope listeners will take away from it?

No, that's wrong. They're not listeners, are they? That's me. What do you hope readers will... What do you hope readers will take away from it?

They can be listeners as well because it'll be an audiobook form as well, read by me. Lord help us all. So I hope joy, really. Although it's dark in parts, I really hope that it's a joyful and um well .

That it's just a joyful read. It should be. I hope it's inspiring a bit and I hope it gives people some ideas of what to grow and some recipes to cook them with.

And maybe if you've never grown anything before, there's a very detailed explanation of how to grow basil at the end of the book. So if you've never grown anything before, start there. But mostly I hope it makes people feel happy. And laugh a bit because it was a pretty dire situation, but good things came out of it.

We don't do how to grow in an offshoot normally, but I couldn't leave Kathy without asking her for a bit of advice. For this year.

I would give the advice that I always give to myself at the beginning of every year, no matter how many years I grow vegetables for, which is don't try to grow as much as you think you can.

Because I always, particularly at this time of year when there's nothing in the ground and I get so overexcited and I think I'm going to grow melons and I'm going to grow these really difficult aubergines. I'm sure it'll be fine. And I'm also going to grow this really unusual heritage variety of kale that requires X, Y, Z.

Because it's so exciting this time of year, isn't it? It's just promise. And then.

And then I'm just disappointed because I do too many experimental things and it doesn't work and I run out of time and then I just berate myself. So I would say pick at most, particularly if you've never grown anything before, pick maximum five things that you really love and start there.

Or if it's the first time you've ever grown anything ever in the history of ever. Just pick one thing. Just. Just grow a lettuce. Enjoy growing a lettuce. Nice and easy. Or a pea shoot.

Pea shoots are excellent because they grow so quickly. They're really tasty. They're cut and come again. You can grow them on a windowsill. Enjoy that. See how that goes until July.

And then plant some other stuff if you feel like it. Don't. Don't go too far.

Our Plant Stories is an independent podcast presented and produced by me, Sally Flatman. And if you can spare a couple of minutes to leave a review on your podcast app, I'd be very grateful.