Fiona J Houston (aka Fi Martynoga) was challenged in 2005 to prove her claim that people ate better two hundred years ago than they do now. In order to keep to the almost entirely local food of her rural ancestors, she immersed herself for a whole year in the lifestyle of the 1790s, writing about it each month for The Herald. She has since brought out a fuller account, The Garden Cottage Diaries, and continues to lecture about her year’s experiment not simply for its historical interest but because it reflects on how we currently live. Fi has also contributed to Woodlanders, a book about people who live in, or work with, wood, and has recently edited A Handbook of Scottish Trees. Both of these were for the organisation Reforesting Scotland, for which she is a regular contributor to the Journal.  She is a member of the Tweedgreen Food Group and Carrifran Wildwood Steering Group.