Newsletter – Issue 15

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the 15th Leach Press and Oakist Press newsletter, 7th September 2026.

The aim is simple – once a week, I'll send a short update covering new books, new videos, events, projects and life at Oakwood.

Thank you for subscribing and supporting independent publishing.

The newsletter archive is now live on the website. Each issue also includes a photo appendix from around Oakwood.

New Oakist Press books

Four new books have recently been released through Oakist Press.

If you've bought and enjoyed any of these books, a review on Amazon, Goodreads or social media really helps independent authors reach new readers.

New Leach Press book

New videos this week

Oakwood Rewilding Project

Work continues at Oakwood in Llanbrynmair, although this has been another relatively slow week on the practical side. A bout of norovirus rather curtailed my enthusiasm for charging around the field, so nature has been doing rather more of the work than I have.

The biggest news is the progress with our Woodland Trust application. We have now made it through Phase 2 and the planting proposal has been approved. The next stage is a site visit, which should help determine exactly what trees are most appropriate for Oakwood, where they should go and what support may be available for the planting. It is good to be moving from proposals towards something rather more tangible.

We have also identified a local source offering free trees, although we are still trying to make contact. Between that and the Woodland Trust scheme, this winter could turn into a fairly substantial planting season. Separately, I have sourced acers from Welshpool for a small maple copse of around thirty trees, which should eventually provide another distinctive patch of woodland and some spectacular autumn colour.

Plans for the cider orchard are also taking shape. We are starting modestly with ten traditional apple trees, chosen to give us a useful range of flavours rather than simply producing eating apples.

• 3 × Breakwell's Seedling – bittersharp; the main cider apple
• 2 × Ten Commandments – cider/culinary
• 1 × Arthur Barnes – sharp and juicy
• 1 × Grenadier – sharp acidity
• 1 × Ashmead's Kernel – intense sweet-sharp flavour
• 1 × Blenheim Orange – richness and body
• 1 × Green Purnell – sweet juice to provide fermentable sugar

The mix is deliberately weighted towards a dry cider. Breakwell's Seedling provides the core bittersharp character, while Ten Commandments adds further cider qualities. Arthur Barnes and Grenadier bring sharper acidity, Ashmead's Kernel adds an intense sweet-sharp complexity, Blenheim Orange contributes richness and body, and Green Purnell provides sweeter juice and fermentable sugar.

Together they should give us plenty of scope for experimenting with blends rather than producing ten trees' worth of essentially the same apple. The trees have been ordered on M25 rootstock and should be around 1.8 m in height, some feathered, some not.

Around Pond-da-Rosa, planting has already begun. Several willows are now in the ground around the pond and across the flat former Lake Rose area, where the damp conditions should suit them well. Wildflower seed has also been scattered around the pond margins. With the recent rain, the pond itself is beginning to fill again, while the surrounding bare and disturbed ground continues its gradual transformation.

We are also investigating a rather more ambitious way of keeping Pond-da-Rosa supplied with water when necessary. A fast-running stream lies about 250 m away and below the pond, and we are looking at whether some of the stream's own energy could be used to pump water uphill without electricity or solar power.

The most promising possibility is a hydraulic ram pump, using the natural fall of the stream to lift a smaller proportion of its flow to the required height. There is still some measuring to do, particularly the available fall, flow rate and total pumping head, but if the numbers work it could provide an elegant off-grid solution requiring very little energy input or maintenance.

The change of season is becoming increasingly obvious across the rest of Oakwood. Many of the grasses and wildflowers that dominated the field through summer are beginning to collapse, brown and return their material to the soil. We are largely leaving this process alone.

The main exception remains dock: any fresh seed heads that appear are still being removed to prevent another large contribution to next year's seed bank. The aim is not to eliminate dock, but to stop it overwhelming everything else while the vegetation becomes more diverse.

The recent high winds provided another job. All the young planted trees have been checked and secured to their stakes where necessary. They have survived their first summer, so the next challenge is getting them safely through a wet and windy Welsh winter.

Work around the polytunnel continues too. The summer crops are gradually winding down, although the tomatoes have been particularly good. I have also started constructing raised beds around the outside of the polytunnel using old fencing recovered from Erika's garden.

It is another small example of the Oakwood philosophy: before buying something new, see whether something supposedly finished with can be turned into something useful.

The Oakwood chicken project is edging closer to becoming an actual chicken project rather than a collection of timber and wire. The house is now in position and the framework for the run has been assembled beside the woodland. The important next stage will be taking Elsi to choose some birds.

Erika and Elsi are also planning another addition to Oakwood's growing collection of inhabitants: bees. Erika is sourcing the necessary equipment, with the longer-term hope of establishing hives and producing our own honey.

With the mixture of meadow, woodland edge, bramble, fruit trees and wildflowers developing across the site, there should certainly be plenty flowering around them.

One plan that will now almost certainly wait until next year is the campsite. We are simply too late in the season to make much of 2026. Interestingly, potential campers continue to turn up in the local pub, particularly walkers using the Glyndŵr's Way, which suggests there may be a genuine demand.

Public liability insurance is already in place and Justyn has agreed to act as general manager when we eventually get things running.

The Art-a-Van has meanwhile been completely stripped and cleaned, on the outside at least. There has been no further physical progress on its stand-alone solar system, although the system has been planned and I have been sourcing inexpensive panels. That can remain a winter project.

There has also been the usual collection of less glamorous but necessary jobs. The horse trailer has been reorganised so that the quad bike can live under cover there through the winter, rather than needing a separate storage shed. Over at the static caravan, the stove flue has been cleaned out ready for the colder months.

Neither job is particularly exciting, but both are reminders that September at Oakwood is increasingly about preparing for winter as well as planting and rewilding.

Elsewhere, Justyn has been strimming back some of the woodland around his area while deliberately leaving other patches untouched to continue rewilding. A very large ash also had to come down because it had developed a substantial lean and was becoming unsafe.

Losing a mature tree is never particularly welcome here, but in this case there was little sensible alternative. At least nothing will be wasted: some of the timber will provide firewood, while suitable sections can be retained as deadwood habitat.

We continue to maintain the paths around the site, but otherwise this has been a week in which Oakwood itself has been doing most of the interesting work. Pond-da-Rosa is filling, summer vegetation is falling back, seeds are dropping, leaves are beginning their turn and the whole site is shifting into its autumn phase.

Perhaps that is no bad thing. Rewilding does not need a major human intervention every week. Sometimes being temporarily flattened by norovirus is simply nature's rather unsubtle way of reminding you that the field can manage perfectly well without you.

DJ news

No sets this week. After doing two last week and then being flattened by the nasty virus, a week away from the decks seemed sensible.

The December ska and punk all-dayer in Newtown – celebrating my 60th, along with Erika's, Justyn's and Gibby from the tip's birthdays – is now well into the planning stage. All welcome.

Modelling

Nothing new this week.

Coming soon

Work continues on a number of current and future projects, including:

• Further video episodes of Physics, Consciousness & Reality
• Further video episodes of Living on the Road, Waterways or Off-grid in the UK
• Further video episodes of Crime, Punishment & Justice (although not until one of the above is complete)
• Further videos on off-grid living, continuing on the theme of solar, with a full solar design example next
• New Oakist Press releases:
  • Monique & the Thingies (Tom Rantula – in final stages of production): follows Monique and Malachi, two rebellious spider monkeys who leave Monkey Island after giants destroy their forest. Seeking the “perfect thingi”, a better way of organising society, they travel through strange animal communities governed by surveillance, religion, authoritarianism, hierarchy, tradition and claims of superiority. Their adventures are comic, dangerous and increasingly political, exposing how power can corrupt even apparently orderly societies. Gradually, they discover that freedom cannot safely be entrusted to rulers or supposedly higher authorities. Their journey ultimately points towards cooperation, mutual aid, collective decision-making and individual responsibility as foundations for a freer society.
  • Resources and the Future: An Anarchist Perspective (Dicky Dread – just incorporating edits and an introduction from Jude Daniels): asks what happens when societies built around endless economic growth encounter the physical limits of a finite planet. It argues that money and markets can obscure the realities that actually sustain civilisation: energy, materials, ecosystems, land, water and biodiversity. Drawing on physics, ecology, history and numerous case studies, the book examines energy, food, technology, wildlife, scarcity and social organisation. Rather than proposing a rigid utopia, it explores a resource-based future founded on sufficiency, ecological stewardship, decentralisation, cooperation and mutual aid.
  • Books from Marge Hunter, Saz Denny and Stu Schotnes
  • Education: An Anarchist Perspective (Dicky Dread)

Author's note

A slower week for me, but not for Oakwood. The Woodland Trust proposal has been approved, the cider orchard is ordered, Pond-da-Rosa is filling again and winter preparations are under way. Perhaps the useful lesson from a week spent largely flattened by a virus is that rewilding carries on perfectly well when the rewilder is temporarily taken out of service. The land, unsurprisingly, doesn't wait for me.