Our work at Burscough Community Farm is grounded in compassion, community, and caring for the land.
Editor’s note:
This piece was originally written during a period of reflection prompted by a series of short films exploring young people, anxiety, and confidence.
Our Farm as Teacher approach — sees the landscape, the work, and the pace of the farm as a lens for understanding wider patterns in wellbeing, rather than a set of quick fixes or solutions.
A reflection from Burscough Community Farm
Over the past few years, I’ve had the privilege of spending time with many young people who’ve come to the farm — some through volunteering, some through our Reboot Your Life courses, and some simply because they needed a change of scene.
The more conversations I’ve had, the more I’ve realised how different their world is from the one many of us grew up in.
Part of what helped me make sense of this was a video I came across featuring the writer Freya India. Her words stayed with me because they put language to something I’d been noticing but hadn’t quite been able to name: why so many young people feel stuck, anxious, or disconnected — and why even very simple things can feel overwhelming.
Over time, I’ve come to realise that the farm doesn’t fix people.
It simply reveals patterns — about how humans build confidence, how anxiety forms, and what happens when everyday, real-world experience quietly disappears.
The young people I’ve met aren’t unusual cases.
They’re just the clearest signal of something wider happening in modern life.
This piece brings together three reflections that have grown out of those conversations, my own memories of childhood, and the insight Freya shared.
1. They grew up in a different world — one without everyday freedom
When I think back to my own childhood, the first word that comes to mind is freedom.
I’d get on my bike in the morning and disappear all day with my friends. We roamed fields, got muddy, got lost, argued, made up, and learned how to handle life by bumping into it.
It wasn’t structured.
It wasn’t supervised.
It wasn’t planned.
And because of that, it quietly built confidence.
Talking to young people today, I realise many of them never had that kind of everyday freedom.
As Freya India describes so clearly, they grew up in a world where entertainment, communication, and information were always available — often without any real human interaction. The unplanned moments that used to shape our sense of self gradually vanished.
Not because young people made bad choices.
But because the modern world simply stopped offering them.
So when someone arrives at the farm feeling anxious or overwhelmed, I try to remind myself of this:
They’re not “behind”.
They just never had the world we had.
2. It’s not their fault they feel anxious
I spend a lot of time talking with people aged roughly 18–24, and a consistent theme is anxiety — not just in big, high-pressure situations, but in very ordinary ones.
Asking a question.
Meeting someone new.
Joining a small task.
The more I listen, the more it makes complete sense.
For older generations, social confidence wasn’t something we consciously trained. It was built through constant, low-level exposure: neighbours, shopkeepers, friends knocking on the door, awkward moments, misunderstandings, and sorting things out face-to-face.
If you grow up without those experiences — if your social world mostly happens through a screen, if unpredictability is avoidable, if awkwardness can be edited out — then anxiety isn’t surprising.
Of course ordinary situations feel intimidating.
Of course the body panics at real-world interaction.
What we’re seeing isn’t a mental health crisis caused by weakness.
It’s a confidence gap created by a lack of everyday, real-world practice.
Young people didn’t cause this.
They inherited it.
I remember one young volunteer freezing completely because they needed to ask where something was. Such a small thing — but it showed me how little chance they’d been given to practise being uncertain, awkward, or unsure in real space.
This isn’t fragility.
It’s a lack of opportunity.
3. For some people, nature offers a quiet way back
This is the part that gives me hope.
Not because I believe the farm is a solution — it isn’t — and not because I claim any special expertise. But because I’ve seen what happens when pressure is removed and the pace of life slows.
And it’s rarely dramatic.
It’s not “transformation” in the Instagram sense of the word.
It’s much gentler than that.
It’s the moment someone lifts their eyes from the ground and notices the trees.
The way shoulders drop after half an hour outdoors.
Finding belonging sideways — by watering seedlings next to someone, or quietly helping move a wheelbarrow from one place to another.
Nature doesn’t ask for performance.
It doesn’t judge.
It doesn’t demand confidence.
It simply creates space.
And for some people who feel stuck, that space is the first thing they’ve had in a long time.
I’ve met young people who want to change but don’t know where to begin.
Who want connection but freeze at the thought of it.
Who want to step outside but feel trapped indoors.
What I’ve learned is this:
the first step doesn’t need to be big — it just needs to be real.
The farm simply slows the world down enough for that first step to feel possible.
A final thought
I’m not writing this as a professional or an expert.
Just as someone who has listened, observed, and reflected.
Young people today aren’t failing.
They’re navigating a world that quietly removed the very conditions older generations depended on to become confident, capable, socially comfortable adults.
If spending time outdoors — in nature, in community, in real life — gives even one person a way to move forward, then it’s worth offering.
And if you’re reading this and feeling stuck, I hope you know this:
You don’t need a plan.
You don’t need confidence.
You don’t need a breakthrough.
You just need one small step — even a nervous one — back into the real world.
Sometimes, that’s enough to begin again.
Find out more about the Reboot Your Life programme — and how to take part — on our Reboot Your Life page.