Karen Peters January 2026

Substack Crone-ing

Mud & Wool.  A Fairy Tale.

I was going to write a fairy story about Mud & Wool for my feedback.  You know a ‘once upon a time’ kind of a tale.  That would have been ok because the whole of it is rather wonderful  … and as I learned whilst sojourning there … I am a writer.  

However, the thing about stories is that they aren’t quite real enough.  They float about being airy and wispy and perfect and all that and they inevitably have happy endings.  They mostly don’t have long patches of grey, downright miserable, dis-spiriting weather, they don’t have scatterings of artistic temperament and they don’t have very much excessively real MUD!

So, although it will become fable one day and we will all be woven into the warp and weft of its telling, time will create this magic.  Instead, I’m going to share what I learned during my stay.  

When you purchase several acres of tired, unproductive land because you have a vision of how it might be used differently, together with a smattering of buildings that are perhaps significantly less watertight, less sheltery and much less insulated than might be ideal, the first thing that happens is that you may stand on your head, turn out your pockets and give them a good shake just in case you discover a last, lingering penny.  Odds are … you won’t!

Then, you embark on several years (five so far) of intensely hard, dirty and back-breaking physical labour - planting life, slating roofs, moving rubbish and creating spaces.  Believing all the time that your dream will hold, that your plants, fruit bushes and trees (thousands of them … not just hundreds) will accept their new homes and thrive and begin to do their do.  That your dreams for the future can survive long enough to make it into next week, then next year … that the birds will return and live in your hedgerows, that the wild creatures will sniff you out and become familiars of your space and then finally, that people too, with their own creative fire, their own stories and dreams, might be tempted to come and see what is being birthed.

And all of that is pretty much what Jo and Adam have done here.  Astonishingly.  Unbelievably.  Beautifully.

What they offered me was a month completely outside of my own life.  Where I could empty away all the direction that I had received and re-discover my own internal process.  Where I was able to apply and discard tools that I might have appropriated and see what showed up.  And delight myself.  Blend dreamtime, awake time and writing time into days that formed and coalesced and disintegrated autonomously.  As the energy chose.

Mud & Wool is the creative brain, heart and pocket-emptying vision of Jo and Adam who pour hope, intention and sheer, physical graft into it.  

Today is Sunday and I am in church.

Let me describe this place to you ...

My body is cornered on a sofa

and swaddled in wool

whilst a single, clear, beam of light

illuminates this new, pure page

brightening the ink

enhancing the words

facilitating the offering.

Outside my window a lone tree stands

buffeted on all sides

by the latest gale

and I guess she might be beech

because fragments of dark copper

cling to her arms

neither relinquishing their own battle

nor exposing her limbs completely

determined to continue their task

of adornment

adoration

to the very end.

Beyond the tree is a swathe of land

re-purposed for the future.

Gently gathered from the barren hold of generations

to become fruit-full again.

The body and grace of her mud

cherished and sown with

30,000 seedling sisters for my soul tree

to bring food and shelter and hope

when the dark days come....

and they, approach with speed!

And this newly sanctified church

grows and is nurtured by the hands of 'ordinary people'

who have the courage to look beyond

our bleak and unhappy patch of history

where we are led by charlatans and fools

to weave sturdy beauty for the future

with threads that draw us forward

a kindergarten of creativity

where scattered seeds come together

and emerge into a framework for a tomorrow

which may not be-come fully till we are gone

but which without this vision

may never have been birthed at all.

Thanks for reading Crone-ing!

Metamorphosis

KAREN

FEB 12, 2026

I think the world wants us to go quietly,

to hang up the hands

that rocked the cradle

on the peg beside the door,

to gratefully stroll away

from all the roles we held before

and recognise that when old happens,

we have no agency anymore.

Women have to be beautiful, you see.

Draw the eye.

We have to be tempting to perpetuate the lie

that it is because of our nature

we all fell from grace.

The one enormous bite of fruit that forever cast our place

as second.

Well, hear this.

Look at me!

There is still magic afoot and always will be.

This wrinkled old face that you see

is a celebration of the shell that held me well

as a child,

as a girl,

as a mother

and now as the crone.

Life, it seems,

carries us further,

beyond the silencing,

the cast-down eyes to disguise

the fire that lurks within.

So be you witness as I slough that skin,

the mere cloak of flesh that I found myself in.

Only when life might seem to be done,

children grown,

careers flown,

nothing more to be said,

the very days of my life,

when I am waiting to be dead,

turn out to be the ones more full of joy and wonder than any

time before.

Now I can plunder the whole of life's beauty. ....

the task of upholding belongs to those who came through

me.

There is nothing to fear.

This is why we came here.

why life seems such a muddle

a permanent struggle of our love and our labor but

what is now clear though it's taken a year

and one month to discover

there's no rush

no requirement

no authority to please

we need only to focus as the world falls to its knees

we accidentally turned right and allowed

our diseased minds to believe

that all that glistened was gold.

We know that was never true.

About face, my children

we must depend on you.

Put your foot to the spade.

Turn your back on the din.

The patriarchy is over.

time to wash away that sin.

But do not feel alone.

Sometimes we forget that we are such a tiny part

of the might that is yet untested,

this ever-beating heart,

this unmitigating, terrifying force that can tear all order

apart.

It has taken so long for me,

my whole life,

to see that she,

Nature,

will always be free.

So now I entrust you.

I know your eyes too have seen more than they should

of how far we can run

down the path to perdition,

the road to Undone.

But dear children,

we see you, we hold you,

we are here to embolden you.

Wrest the fabrication of power from the miserable few.

There is a glorious future

and it stirs in the soil.

Let us muster our wisdom of age and with grace

let us burn away the folly that desecrates this place,

this glorious earth,

this wonderful land.

Let us sing, let us dance,

for the change is at hand.