About us

This thing started with the idea of developing and sharing skills for living. The real skills you’d need in the event of a breakdown of society – say as a result of a zombie apocalypse or the rise of dystopian politics.

This was a pretty broad remit, so we narrowed it down to:

• growing our own fruit and vegetables
• rearing our own livestock
• developing survival skills
• exploring how technology can help with this
• sharing what we learn to encourage others in similar ventures
• helping new generations gain a better understanding of where their food comes from.

In 2017 we started a ‘practice’ smallholding, using it as a kind of lab environment for permaculture projects. We got some chickens, built a cob oven, set up an aquaponics system, got into solar energy, and dabbled with automation.

Over the next few years  we added a polytunnel, learned about beekeeping, and started growing a variety of crops to see what worked. We fought running battles with slugs, discovered the joys of growing chillies, and had our first proper harvests.

Fast forward to 2024 when we moved to more rural setting and are currently designing a 40 acre site in the Chiltern Hills.

We set up Natural Progress in response to interest from the local community for natural food and products with provenance – ethically produced from known, mostly organic sources. We started small, selling though word of mouth and via an online shop, trying out different ideas to see what worked.

We learn from failing often, understand ourselves a little bit more, argue a lot, but mostly through bloody minded determination, inch ever closer towards our goals.