Within an hour of arriving in Botton, a small, picturesque village in the UK’s North Yorkshire moors, I was standing in a farm field shovelling hay.
Alongside me were my friend Max*, his father, a co-worker named Richard, two volunteers and several learning-disabled residents of the Esk Valley Camphill Community. We spent the next few hours on a conservation project, moving hay, stopping regularly to lean on our tools and talk, and at one point gathering on a picnic bench beside the cars for a tea and biscuit break.
