Do good things
- Mar 25
- 7 min read
Words by Jamie Crocker
Growing food, telling stories, rethinking life from the soil up.
The first thing Seth and Poppy did when they achieved what they had been working towards for years was admit, rather awkwardly, that they did not enjoy it. After a decade building a film production company, after the long shoots, the pitching, the scramble for the right clients and the right briefs, they arrived at a project that, on paper, ticked every box. It was the kind of commission they had once described as the goal. When it came, it felt curiously hollow.
They had spent years honing their craft in London, working across the brand landscape, shaping narratives for companies with money to spend and stories to tell. The pandemic boom in film work only accelerated their ascent. By any conventional measure, they were succeeding. Yet the satisfaction they had anticipated never quite materialised. Instead, there was a growing discomfort that their creativity was being deployed in the service of systems they did not entirely believe in.
Post-Covid fragility sharpened that discomfort. Food shortages, disrupted supply chains, the dawning realisation of how dependent daily life had become on long and brittle networks – all of it forced a reckoning. They found themselves asking not what the next job might be, but how they might reclaim some sovereignty over the fundamentals: food, energy, shelter and community.
They did not torch their old life in a single dramatic gesture as Barbara and Tom did in The Good Life. Instead, they edged away from it, having the foresight not to shut up shop but to realign their film projects in a gradual and pragmatic way. With that resolved between the two of them they went looking for land.
The search took them first to the Highlands, where Seth’s family had relocated. For one winter they lived in Ardmurchan, accessible by ferry and ringed by sea and sky. The remoteness was bracing and the community generous, but the isolation was total. Both were in their early thirties. They still wanted connection to the wider world, to friends, to culture, to a sense that they hadn’t inflicted a Robinson Crusoe existence upon themselves.
Wales came next, but nothing quite fell into place, with 11 potential properties slipping from their grasp. Then, almost by accident, they found eight acres in Devon. The purchase, surprisingly, was straightforward. It was also very affordable, which, with hindsight, should have started the pealing of alarm bells. Once ensconced, they realised that they really would have their work cut out to realise not just their dream but to install rudimentary facilities that the rest of us take for granted. At first, they tried to do everything. The early months were filled with the blur of bees, the honk of geese and the cluck of chickens, of raised beds and renovations to a seventeenth-century cottage that did not yet have reliable drinking water. They set out to build a version of self-sufficiency inspired by the 1970s revivalists and the back-to-the-land manuals of figures such as John Seymour. They absorbed lessons from permaculture forums and American homesteading channels. They approached the land with an almost religious-like zeal. The result was exhaustion.
Top Left: View from the bedroom window | Top right: The 400-year-old cottage | Bottom: The beginnings of the market garden in the top field
They were proud of the meals they produced entirely from their own efforts. Sitting down to eat food they had grown and reared themselves carried a particular charge. Yet that pride was tempered by burnout. By late summer, Seth found himself looking forward to winter simply for the promise of rest. The life they had constructed in pursuit of sustainability had ironically become unsustainable.
The realisation was sobering and insightful, and over a slow and honest conversation one evening, they admitted and concluded that humans have never thrived in isolation. The ideal of total self-sufficiency, however seductive, ignored something fundamental: interdependence. In attempting to opt out of one system, they had recreated another form of isolation, swapping urban anonymity for rural self-containment.
Not ones to abandon hope and relinquish their shared dream, they realised that the way forward lay in community. Seth enrolled on a regenerative agriculture course at the Apricot Centre in south Devon, a not-for-profit farm offering training to local residents. There, he encountered a deeper understanding of the food system and its role in climate change. He also encountered people: growers, land workers, neighbours with decades of local knowledge. Even when their practices differed, their experience was invaluable.
They began volunteering at a community garden. They attended workshops, signed up for work days and listened more than they spoke. Slowly, the farm ceased to be a private project and became part of a network. They grew more food, but life felt easier as tools were shared and advice taken on board and put into practice.
Top Left: Preparing firewood for winter | Top right: Lunch from the garden with community volunteers | Bottom: Expanding the market garden with community volunteers
For Seth, whose forebears had long since traded rural livelihoods for the pull of the city, working the land carries a sense of rediscovery rather than return. He speaks of reclaiming knowledge lost through urban migration and industrialisation. Yet he is wary of romanticising the move. The countryside, he argues, has often felt closed to newcomers, particularly those from cities or from different backgrounds. If land is to play a role in addressing environmental and social crises, access must broaden, and those who have worked the land for generations must not be excluded by city migrants with big ideals. It has to be a two-way street where education and acceptance play their part if anything is to change for the good.
Do Good Things is the name they gave their project. It is an instruction rather than a description. They are careful to point out that “good” is subjective. For them, it currently means regeneration, independence from what they regard as a damaged food system, and a commitment to community. For someone else, it may mean something different. The emphasis is on action.
They are not naïve about the structural challenges. Small-scale growers operate within policy frameworks that have historically favoured large agricultural businesses, so that grants such as the Sustainable Farming Incentive have only recently become more accessible to smaller holdings. Without supportive policy, it is difficult for community-led farms to compete without overwork and underpayment. There is, Seth notes, a strain of martyrdom within organic growing – an assumption that devotion to the cause requires personal sacrifice.
Their response has been to diversify. The farm yields vegetables, but it also yields stories. This is where their background in film has not been discarded, just redirected. They now work primarily with clients in farming, sustainability and nature-led living, applying the same narrative skill to subjects that align with their own practice. The authenticity of living the life they document strengthens the work whilst also supplying a revenue stream that aligns with their ethos.
Top left: Learning how to keep bees | Top right: Freshly harvested Charlotte potatoes | Bottom: The first totally self-sufficient meal: goose reared and butchered on the farm with parsnips, potatoes, greens, herbs, onions and garlic harvested from the garden
On Instagram, where Do Good Things has built a substantial following, they operate within the constraints of short-form video. There is a candid acknowledgement that sometimes the hook must come first. If a slightly arresting clip secures 17 seconds of attention, that window can then be used to leap to a discussion on soil health or seasonal eating. They are already planning something that has more depth and moves beyond the compressed format to explore the complexities of regenerative agriculture and rural life.
The bloom of their online presentation, young family, productive land, meals assembled from the garden, can attract idealisation. They try to counter that by discussing the trade-offs. Before Devon, they lived on a narrowboat, stripping and refitting it themselves with little prior experience. Three winters were spent heating with a stove, relying on solar panels and managing 400 litres of water every fortnight. That experience prepared them for the realities of land-based life: the constant negotiation with weather, the need to anticipate storms at three in the morning, the acceptance of mud and rain.
They are clear that they were fortunate. When they arrived at the farm, there was at least a roof and electricity. Others start with less. They do not present their path as universally replicable. Instead, they encourage alternatives: community gardens, allotments, community-supported agriculture schemes and volunteering. Access to land, they argue, does not require ownership. Nor does community require a formal commune. It may be as simple as renting in a village and participating, offering skills and receiving something back in return.
Seasonality has become central to their practice. Eating entirely according to what the land produces recalibrates appetite. Tomatoes are anticipated for months, not purchased year-round. Winter is treated as a period of retreat and maintenance rather than relentless productivity. They speak of rest in terms of the physical, creative and social as well as the need to align energy with daylight.
Energy independence is on the horizon. Plans are being drawn up for ground-mounted solar and potentially micro-hydro from a stream. The immediate aim is to reduce electricity bills to zero; full off-grid living remains a longer-term ambition, requiring investment in batteries and insulation, but the plans are afoot.
Looking ahead, the objectives are both modest and expansive. They intend to formalise a harvest box scheme for their local area, which will probably entail refining their growing methods. They also want to reach wider audiences with stories that challenge the assumption that food simply appears on supermarket shelves.
If there is a thread running through Do Good Things, it is not withdrawal but participation and inclusion. They’ve arrived, made mistakes, recalibrated, and begun to engage. The rebellion, if it can be called that, lies not in slogans or protests but in planting seeds, sharing surplus, and inviting others to consider where their own food comes from.
For all the resonance of its storytelling, Seth and Poppy are clear-eyed about the practicalities. The narratives shared under the banner of Do Good Farm are not what sustain the land itself. In truth, very little of the work currently undertaken turns a meaningful profit. The farm, as he describes it, is a container for several interlinked enterprises, each with its own purpose and trajectory. The long-term intention is that the produce arm will, in time, wash its own face, covering costs and paying fair wages to growers, but it is designed to operate on a not-for-profit basis rather than as a revenue engine. Storytelling, meanwhile, is viewed as a separate strand: a means of earning an income that allows the wider project to continue. It is an important distinction. For both Seth and Poppy, the goal is not to suggest that small farms must amass tens of thousands of followers to survive, but to explore a model in which creativity and cultivation sit alongside one another, each supporting a broader vision of what a modern farm can be.
