We have finally purchased a really interesting 26 acre chunk of land (deciduous woodland and overgrown coppice, rough overgrown pasture and wetlands too) on the Wrexham/Shropshire/Cheshire border of Wales and England.

We are absolutely delighted as it means we can finally finally after five years of a slightly strange nomadic existence in large rented [...]]]>

We have finally purchased a really interesting 26 acre chunk of land (deciduous woodland and overgrown coppice, rough overgrown pasture and wetlands too) on the Wrexham/Shropshire/Cheshire border of Wales and England.

We are absolutely delighted as it means we can finally finally after five years of a slightly strange nomadic existence in large rented houses all over the UK begin to make an area of the country a permanent place to reside and call home. This purchase has been a bit of a dream come true for us as we have tried and failed to buy some (wood)land for over two years now since we first started the buying process on a lovely woodland near our house at the time in Worcestershire. That purchased failed when we were gazumped and so did several other attempted purchases, some failed because our solicitor uncovered some ‘interesting’  aspect of the access conditions and one memorable one failed because we were too slow to make an offer despite whizzing up to Wales see it from Cornwall on the day it came on the market and making an asking price offer the following day.

Ever since we sold our house in London and started to rent rural houses instead we have committed to ourselves that we would *first* buy some land  and then we would find somewhere to live near to it as land is harder to find than houses and we are not able to combine the two due to lack of funds (or is that due to the extortionately high price of houses in the UK at present?)

We first saw this piece of land advertised on an agent’s website who specialises in land sales (Roger Parry) in March. Darren had a weekly search through all the agents’  websites and suddenly found this one with no photo. He got in the car to have a look at it and the following day I went too. It was a warm sunny day and I instantly fell in love with the place as it had huge skies, was private, was on the edge of a nice village with a school and a shop and only four miles away to a market town with good rail, road and canal links.

The purchase was made with our pension pots. We had contacted Peter Jones at SSAS Practitioner.com earlier in the year and as luck would have it the monies were transferred to our new combined pension pot ready for the purchase of land just the week before we found this piece of land. The story of  Buying Land with Pension Funds, how we were able to convert the stocks and shares pension funds from our decade of being London full time earners into woodland and pasture is written about in detail by Bealers on his blog.

I think we were both assuming the sale would fall through as the previous seven (or was it eight?) had so when in mid May our solicitor contacted us to say the contract had actually been exchanged and the purchase completed we could not believe it. Darren was halfway through his permaculture design course with Steve Jones (from Sector 39) as the tutor in Oswestry which is only a stone’s throw from the new patch and so his entire group went for a field trip there on our first day of ownership.

Since the purchase in May we have left the extraordinarily lovely and picturesque smallholding we shared with our very fine neighbours just outside the very special Mid-Wales town of Llanidloes and have instead taken a 2-acre smallholding in a pleasant Shropshire village just a few minutes drive from the patch our pension now owns.

The move came about after several camping trips on the land and associated 3 hour round road trips with car sick kids. As I had extracted the children from the local school to educate them at home and Bealers’ internet software business was able to be located anywhere in the UK we couldn’t resist the pull of the nice house in a nice village just a short trip away from the land where we want to spend so much of our ‘spare’ time.

The latest move has been a great success in that the kids are back in a really great small village school where they are thriving and making high quality friends, Bealers and I are able to set about bringing the woodland into a productive, sustainable source of timber and other functions as well as enjoying the masses of flora, fauna and restfulness a woodland environment offers.

The fact that we are lucky enough to rent another smallholding (our second or is it our third if we count the experience of the Cornish community?) we are now really transitioning to a portfolio of rural livelihoods by keeping hens and selling their eggs, cakes and lemon curds, obtaining a small flock of Badger Faced Welsh Mountain lambs to breed from for meat and fleece products, embryonic horticulture and permaculture designing skills, forestry and childcare.

The remaining question is where will decide to live if we aren’t going to rent other people’s fine houses for the rest of our time on this Earth?

The course is brilliant for so many reasons: a hugely knowledgeable, witty and great tutor in Steve Jones, a great spread of home made food treats to snack on throughout the two days, a wonderful [...]]]> I spent another hugely enjoyable weekend in the company of my Mid Wales permaculture design course mates.

The course is brilliant for so many reasons: a hugely knowledgeable, witty and great tutor in Steve Jones, a great spread of home made food treats to snack on throughout the two days, a wonderful couple of venues with inspiring landscapes, being able to get away from my own day-to-day existence for two days but mostly because the group of twenty attendees is comprised of really interesting, humourous people who all have similar views to me on the way the future is likely to pan out and are passionate about the steps we can take to try to fix the environmental problems our planet is facing.

We had loads of laughs together which is for me a key indicator of how well the group gets on, we learnt loads, went on a few interesting practicals (eg. the pictures above was taken above way above Roz’s house where we spent half the weekend – the house being an incredible example of a five hundred year old Welsh long house set in the Elan valley where three enormous hills meet. The landscape in which the house was built is preserved and is very much as it would have been before the house was built and we walked up to consider the huge ancient oaks which have grown on the well weathered slopes for centuries) and continued working in small teams on a permaculture design for a house and garden site which is presently a blank canvas. We were also given loads more time than on previous weekends for chatting, snacking and mingling for which we were all grateful as it takes a while each time we reconvene to reacquaint ourselves with one another and find out a little bit more about where individuals  have come from and what they do in between the course weekends.

I worked with my little group on ‘zone 2′ of the overall re-design of the lovely modern bungalow and third of an acre grounds we use as a venue but is newly owned by a couple who are both on the permaculture design course. We are the garden zone (zone 0 is the people, zone 1 is the house, zone 3 is energy and zone 4 is wild elements). The group I am in is a group of four and I feel really really lucky to be working with such intelligent, inspirational folks.

The seven month course will end with our final weekend session at the end of March and although I know that the group will disperse naturally at that point it is most likely that many of us will stay friends and continue to stay in touch and involved with one anothers’ personal projects.

I’m mildly envious that Bealers is booked on to Steve Jone’s May PDC at Treflach Farm, Oswestry as I could, quite frankly and quite greedily, repeat the course again and enjoy it especially as I know he will meet some very cool people.

Having been in this part of the country for almost exactly a year now it is clear that we are living in  place which has drawn many people with similar viewpoints to the same location. For the first time I feel I am living amongst my own kind and for once feel conservative and suburban compared to lots of folks we are getting to know and I like this far more than feeling way-out, kooky, hippy and/or a bit wierd.

Bealers pointed out to me quite early on in my enthusings about the permaculture course and the people on it – that it was a huge benefit of being on a course near to home in that it was an easy way of tapping into and creating a community of people with a permaculture way of thinking in one’s locality.

Clever Roz who very kindly hosts the course at her incredible home decided to set up the Mid Wales Permaculture Network after attending the Permaculture Design Course last year so that people can get in touch with one another and stay in touch after an intensive experience like the course we are on. Its such a simple idea to set up a website but no doubt a lot of effort to keep the content fresh but in doing so Roz is acknowledging that throughout permacutlure there is acknowledgement that without people care there would be no permaculture as it only can occur when land and people are connected and well looked after.

With a bit of luck and a whole of concerted effort between individuals, local communities, virtual communities and there is a chance that our descendants will still be leading happy healthy lives five hundred years from now just like those incredible oaks above Roz’s beautiful solid old

We rashly decided to bundle the kids, their snacks, water bottles, changes of clothes, travel sickness medication, favourite snugglers etc etc into the car to embark on a spur of the moment thirty-six hour, 500 mile round trip from our [...]]]> Hello. Just a little update from the chair in from of the wood burner.

We rashly decided to bundle the kids, their snacks, water bottles, changes of clothes, travel sickness medication, favourite snugglers etc etc into the car to embark on a spur of the moment thirty-six hour, 500 mile round trip from our home in Mid Wales (next to our lovely neighbours) to Worcestershire, Somerset, Dorset and Monmouthshire to view various properties we had seen advertised on Rightmove and Globrix property websites.

We nearly didn’t go as Bealers was just back from a long extended business trip away from home and his journey back here by train was over four hours and was clearly exhausted (and with a newly broken toe too). We thought perhaps our time might be better spent in the garden. We could have considered hanging out with our kids in the garden and go nowhere but then woke up on Wednesday and decided we needed at the very least to take the opportunity to rule out or rule in areas we had heard might be contenders for our next/final property purchase so we can begin to put down roots somewhere.

We took with us a long spreadsheet of places that had caught our eyes – mainly agricultural land but some were disused nurseries with massive greenhouses, some plots had woodland and streams and one was a small rural house with a very large garden. It was nice seeing areas of the country we had lived near to whilst growing up in Bristol but hadn’t ever been to. We stayed over night in Frome, drove through Bath, Bradford-on-Avon, visited Crewkerne, Gillinghamd and Monmouth. We called the agents as we drove and asked if they were still available and whether we could view them and found a Somerset pub to stay in.

The kids were, considering how much time we were in the car, brilliant and we had many a belly laugh trying to play eye spy with a three year old (something beginning with ‘L’ = ‘lellow flower) and we all enjoyed spending time in the warm spring sunshine and being in new pretty places.

On the drive home we decided that one of the places we had seen was an opportunity too good to be missed and perhaps we should offer to buy it with the money we have kept safe since we sold our house in London four years ago.

This morning I called the agent and made an offer. This afternoon they called us back confirming that the offer had been accepted. We are hoping to complete the sale swiftly as have tried to buy seven or is it now eight different properties during the last few years and have been gazumped by people with higher offers after our lawyers have started working on the purchases. It’s always so demoralising to have plans altered like that so are attempting to mitigate that happening again.

Exciting times.

At present we are about to celebrate our happy first year anniversary of moving to Mid Wales with our very wonderful neighbours and enjoying all the rural-micro-co-housing-on-a-high-altitude-smallholding-near-a-great-market-town lifestyle has to offer us. Not only [...]]]> We have a major ongoing dilemma which occupies our thoughts pretty much constantly about where we are likely to live permanently.

At present we are about to celebrate our happy first year anniversary of moving to Mid Wales with our very wonderful neighbours and enjoying all the rural-micro-co-housing-on-a-high-altitude-smallholding-near-a-great-market-town lifestyle has to offer us. Not only is our cosy home set-up working out to be better than any of us could have hoped for but the area we have landed in has attracted lots of people who are very much on a similar wavelength to us.

Today I went to the Cwm Harry Land Trust a community garden project where they had organised a seed swap. I took the children as Bealers is away and saw several people I already knew from (a) my permaculture design course, (b) my local town and (c) the recent beekeeping course I went on. I was introduced to a really cool couple whose place I can see across the small valley from our hillside pad – Bill Bleasdale and his partner who together make fantastic cider (Welsh Mountain Cider) using their own apples but also supply a huge range of hardy apple trees raised on their own grounds. The kids loved rummaging through our bags of seeds and sharing what we have a surplus of for things we have none of and we all enjoyed looking round the newly created Cwm Harry gardens. It made me itch to get back to our own plot and get pruning the unloved, leggy blackcurrants, digging out more nettles and generally inject a bit of energy and care into our own lost gardens. As I got out of the car later my lovely neighbour offered me a cup of tea in the garden as they had already started trying to get a bonfire going to dispose of the brash offcuts resulting from weeks of heavy pruning.

On the drive back from the seed swap I had mused about the benefits of living in a place where there are so many likable, energetic good folks to hang out with and explore ideas with versus (yet another) new place which may not have such a ‘green scene’ as our current area but instead might have a milder climate and lower altitude for growing food and beekeeping, better access to rail network and medical services as well as potentially fewer miles to reach our immediate family members in Bristol and Normandy.

This has been an area for consideration since we left London with our three year old twins and sold our house a year later knowing we were unlikely to ever return. We assumed we would buy a house fairly quickly with the proceeds from that sale but actually five years on and several attempts to buy houses/a share in an intentional community/various woodlands later we are still feeling like nomads who wish to stop the journey and put down actual and metaphorical roots now.

It is gut wrenching to think about moving again. It would break our hearts to say goodbye to our favourite neighbours in the world (especially the daughters of each family who truly are like cousins to one another) and the idea of packing up this incredible house we are lucky enough to call home (a huge 500 year old timber framed longhouse)and an office in town to move to a new area where we know no-one is enough to make me start quaking but somehow I know I must face the prospect of all of this if we are to achieve our self-imposed long term goals of having a high degree of self-sufficiency from a piece of land and a shelter we can call home and can pass on to our children to use in the future. We do have a degree of self-sufficiency here (or at least the potential of supplementing our bought food with food we have grown ourselves) as we have up to 7 acres to use as part of our tenancy but the fact is we are in an area noted for its challenging growing conditions, a good hilly four mile hike from the small town we are near to and as nice as that town is it does not have a train station, a hospital with an A&E department and is a tremendously long journey from our families in Bristol.

Each year that passes feels like another that has not been spent tending our own patch of earth and growing trees and shrubs which may still be productive when we are no longer around but descendants of ours are.

At least here we have got into a really nice rhythm that seems to suit us all. We are spending regular, frequent sessions in the garden trying to prune neglected fruit trees/bushes, weed huge areas of nettle roots, and compost/mulch sunny areas in preparation for the growing season ahead. The women are at home far more than the menfolk (my poor neighbour sustained a serious back injury whilst at work a couple of months ago and is now on long term sick-leave plugged in to a tens machine and on mind altering pain killers for a lot of the time) and their kid and my kids play together whenever they are not at school. Together we share many cups of tea and meals, trips to town, cooking and crocheting tips and in many ways life is absolutely heavenly. Acknowledging this makes it much much harder to contemplate living anywhere else but here for the foreseeable future but meanwhile neither Bealers or myself are at all comfortable having cash in the bank instead of the solidity of a patch of soil somewhere that is ours.

I’ve heard the new song Mine Smell Like Honey [...]]]>
I’m looking forward to the release of a new R.E.M. album having loved them since they first played on my Walkman roaming around Bristol as a young lass and the local band I hung around with collaborated and toured with them.

I’ve heard the new song Mine Smell Like Honey on the radio and think its a great song to rock around the kitchen to. Good on them for continuing to write and record. I’m still loving those Stipe/Mills harmonies two and a half decades on from first hearing them.

Speaking of smelling like honey… my neighbour and I joined the local beekeeping society last week (Montgomeryshire Beekeeping Association) in order to attend their one-day introduction to beekeeping course. They are keen to keep the beekeeping movement growing and so offered the course at a low cost of £20. The membership fee covers interesting insurance aspects such as repayment of the loss of equipment if we have to have hives destroyed by government agents if the colonies we keep contract a notifiable disease!

The course was held at the very beautiful Gregynog Hall and I went along knowing far less about the subject than Mr Neighbour as had borrowed a few books from the library but they had sadly not been opened over the Christmas period as hoped.

My neighbour, however, had spoken to beekeeping friends of his, read several books on the subject and already had plans on creating a homemade hive or two – well on the way to becoming a proper wannaBee…

I wasn’t even sure why I was going on the course other than the fact that I like a day out, have a sweet tooth for honey, like bees and all that they do for pollination and have an inquisitive nature especially where traditional rural pursuits are concerned.

I sat at the front of the class making copious notes while Brian Goodwin, President of Shropshire Beekeepers, explained the craft of keeping bees for honey and demonstrated a huge array of related paraphernalia required to keep the 50,000 to 80,000 stinging insects safe from harm while they create the honey food stores and I came out keen and eager to get cracking on this potential new hobby and income stream. I love that we could potentially become self-sufficient in sweet honey (far more nutritious than empty calorie sugar I now understand) and especially loved that all of Brian’s beekeeping equipment he passed around the group really did have a fantastic smell of smoky honey.

I’m really looking forward to speaking with my friend Janet who has kept bees in Worcestershire for many years. I remember calling on her when I had a swarm of honey bees high in a tree several years ago.

The only predicaments now are how to afford the essential kit (quite a lot required even just to start beekeeping), where to obtain the first colony of lovely bees from, whether they will survive let alone thrive at this high altitude and where to position the hive(s).

I’m already spending regular time now in the garden whenever I can getting rid of the dense web [...]]]> I intend to spend much more time in the garden than I did last year (I blame endless unpacking and house sorting on that) and aim to get a higher vegetable yield this year (weather permitting!).

I’m already spending regular time now in the garden whenever I can getting rid of the dense web of nettle roots, liberally spreading well rotted horse manure, fresh chicken manure and straw from their housing and home made compost around and mulching heavily with cardboard to reduce the number of weeds. My aim is to spend about an hour each afternoon outside after the day’s indoor jobs have been done.

We’re planning to create small designated raised beds for growing and mulched pathways for walking on all as near to the house as possible recognising that the further away the growing areas are from where we naturally spend time (near the washing line, the large pond, the workshop) the less likely we are to notice when plants need weeding, harvesting or watering.

Runner Bean seeds

Most of my seeds came again from the Real Seed Company who are so lovely and give explicit instructions on how to carry out one’s own seed saving.

They say on their website ‘WE DO NOT SUPPLY HYBRID SEED OR GM SEED,
We only supply Real, Open Pollinated seed. Here’s why:
Real Seed breeds true, so you can save your own seed.
But that’s not the only reason . . . real vegetable seed is better:

You will be told that these new leeks are ‘more uniform’, ‘straighter’ and so on. But what about flavour and adaptability? People seem to forget that we want to eat & enjoy these things – food is not just a commodity!

For all those local to us here this is reposted from the Cwm Harry Community Garden Blog which our permaculture tutor Steve Jones is involved with:

There is a great UK network: Seedy Sunday that encourages gardeners and growers to save seed and to swap them, and it is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Of course it doesn’t have to be a Sunday, and we are holding the first Newtown community seed swap event on a Saturday, 19th Feb, as Cwm Harry Land Trust, from 10.30 am – 3.00 pm.

For all sorts of reasons SELLING saved seed is against the law, but swapping saved seed is encouraged, and even if you have none to swap yourself, you can always make a small donation, or agree to volunteer on our garden project in return for any you do take.

There is a UK national Heritage Seed Library, managed by Garden Organic which exists to conserve rare varieties of vegetables, but it is really important that all gardeners get involved in saving at least some of their own seed.

Why save seed? Lot of reasons really, here are a few good ones..

Saving money is an obvious reason – its all FREE!
Promoting biodiversity and local strains of seed
Conserving older varieties
Building links between local growers in the area
Building local food security
This informal event is free to enter, (donations accepted but not expected), we will be offering some talks on seed saving and growing techniques and offering tours of our community garden. There is lots to know about seed saving, some plants are really easy to save seed from and grow on the next year, whereas others need some specialist skill or attention for success.

If you would like to help organise or contribute to this event in any way please get in touch. Otherwise, just come along on the day, no need to book!

[NB: Look out for a local seed swap event near to you in the coming weeks prior to the beginning of the busy spring planting time. If you can't find one perhaps organise one yourself...]

Each time I go I am re-acquainted with a group of twenty or so people already part-way along a journey towards a [...]]]> I spent last weekend away on the fourth session of my Full Permaculture Design Course (PDC) in Llandrindod Wells – a 14 day course stretched over 7 months of one weekend per month.

Each time I go I am re-acquainted with a group of twenty or so people already part-way along a journey towards a more sustainable existence but also learning how we can further our thinking and practical applications of nurturing our own areas of land, communities, local economies. I have met people within the group that I know will be long-term friends.

The Permaculture Design Course is something I’d been really keen to participate in ever since Bealers and I both went on an Introduction to Permaculture course in July 2009 at Bristol’s Windmill Hill City Farm. During the two-day course we learnt a lot and met some cool people (including a lovely couple who we are now trying to establish a housing co-operative with!).

I knew instantly that it pulled together loads of the things I had enjoyed about my Biology and Education degree at Warwick but also many of the things I have been interested in for a number of years such as local food and community initiatives, organic gardening, recycling, better quality of life for families, moving away from a highly consumptive lifestyle towards a more fulfilling environmentally aware existence with more self-reliance and practical skills involved.

The problems of the world as we know it are many but just a few that come to mind are:

• human induced climatic chaos,
• polluted water ways and atmospheres,
• depleted fish reserves,
• deforestation,
• eroded soil structures,
• mad economic systems based on how quickly resources can be dug out of the earth and converted into cash regardless of how much harm it does to our life support systems,
• violent societies,
• huge disparity of affluence and billions without access to basic water or sanitation,
• our heavy addiction and dependence on fossil fuels to provide many of our human needs

For those of us reading about, practising and exploring Permaculture however, it does feel like it has the potential to be the solution to many of the terrible situations we and our children are facing up to.

(with grateful thanks to the UK Permaculture Association for the following excerpts)

“The word ‘permaculture’ comes from ‘permanent agriculture‘ and ‘permanent culture‘ – it is about living lightly on the planet, and making sure that we can sustain human activities for many generations to come, in harmony with nature. Permanence is not about everything staying the same. Its about stability, about deepening soils and cleaner water, thriving communities in self-reliant regions, biodiverse agriculture and social justice, peace and abundance.”

“Neatly summed up as “Earth care, people care, fair shares”, the permaculture ethics give purpose to our work, and connect us with the many millions of others who are also working towards a fairer, healthier and more harmonious human culture

1. CARE OF THE EARTH: Provision for all life systems to continue and multiply.
Permaculture works with natural systems, rather than in competition with them. It uses methods that have minimal negative impact on the Earth’s natural environment. In everyday life, this may involve buying local produce, eating in season, and cycling rather than driving. Its about choices we make, and how we manage the land. Its about opposing the destruction of wild habitats, and the poisoning of soil, water and atmosphere, and its about designing and creating healthy systems that meet our needs without damaging the planet.

2. CARE OF PEOPLE: Provision for people to access those resources necessary to their existence.
As a part of this planet, you matter! This is about ensuring the wellbeing of both individuals and communities. As individuals, we need to look after ourselves and each other so that as a community we can develop environmentally friendly lifestyles. In the poorest parts of the world, this is still about helping people to access enough food and clean water, within a safe society. In the rich world, it means redesigning our unsustainable systems and replacing them with sustainable ones. This could mean working together to provide efficient, accessible public transport, or to provide after-school clubs for kids. When people come together, friendships are formed and sustainability becomes possible.

3. SETTING LIMITS TO POPULATION AND CONSUMPTION:
By governing our own needs, we can set resources aside to further the above principles. Setting limits to population is not about limiting people’s free movement, tight border controls and a one child policy. Its about working to achieve a stable human population, using a number of key strategies. These include: access to family planning; helping people to meet their basic needs of clean water, adequate food, and basic healthcare and education; education for girls.

The third ethic recognises that:

a.    The Earth’s resources are limited.
b.    These resources need to be shared amongst many beings.

Permaculture seeks to divide these resources fairly amongst people, animals and plants alike, not forgetting future generations who will need food, water and shelter just as much as we do now. Its ‘one planet living’.”

There are some great books and films available to those wishing to find out more about Permaculture. Introduction to Permaculture courses are also being run in lots of different locations. I would highly recommend getting yourself on one if only to meet some other cool people who are scratching their heads at the crazy modern sci-fi existence they find themselves living in.

Our first introduction was on TV watching the very excellent ‘A Farm for the Future‘ made by Rebecca Hoskins,

For books (order via your local library) look up any book by Patrick Whitefield or David Holmgren.

You can also purchase back issues of the lovely Permaculture Magazine or a years subscription of quarterly editions.

After the completion of my Permaculture Design Course I hope to begin a Diploma in Applied Permaculture Design as well as re-design the way we use the land we have here for our use with the house we are renting to be more productive, wildlife friendly and energy efficient.

Mid Wales Permaculture Network PDC 2010-2011

We have landed in a rural area near to a small market town which has a definite ‘alternative’ streak to it. There seem to be plenty of interesting folk living here, doing interesting forward thinking things and drawing more interesting [...]]]> I have met lots of great new people here during the past week or so.

We have landed in a rural area near to a small market town which has a definite ‘alternative’ streak to it. There seem to be plenty of interesting folk living here, doing interesting forward thinking things and drawing more interesting folk to the area. I’ve met several writers and people who are into exploring the way our futures will be shaped by the way humans have behaved in the past.

Our new chums Leanne and Andy at The Loop Project kicked off our exceptionally social and busy week with a visit to  ’Loop Project Presents – a chance to meet people, share knowledge, challenge assumptions and discuss ideas’ another thought provoking film and discussion afterwards with people they have met here since they moved to the area a year ago.

My top chum The Neighbour and I went to watch ‘Food Inc‘ with them (taking homemade nibbles and booze to share) which was absolutely brilliant and horrifying all at the same time. Afterwards we chatted with the others who had come to see the film about the modern world of food production, why our local town doesn’t have a farmers’ market, how the attitudes at the local primary school towards food influence our children. It was a great evening, with a surprising amount of good humour despite the heavy topics being discussed and lots of lovely camaraderie.

During the week I kept bumping into people I had met at the Loops Project’s screening (mainly in the wholefood cafe or in the organic veg shop next door where Leanne volunteers) and having coffee with them or standing chatting for ages. It was a lovely feeling to have so many new people buzzing around town having a bit of a wibble about things they are involved in. I met a cool couple who are new to town with their two year old and a new baby due any day. We chatted for so long in the veg shop about communal living, how they had been hugely influenced by ‘The Moneyless Man‘ that my little one was bored to tears by grown up chitter chatter and was trying to drag me out of the shop to get me home. They were living temporarily out our landlord’s farm which is near to ours so I invited them over for longer and comfier chats at our house the next day. They came with their new friend who has been living in a yurt for a few years but who used to live at our little holding in a caravan. It was a fab little get together especially as The Neighbour had a work friend over at the same time who lives at the same housing co-op that The Loop Project Presents was held at (phew this is getting complicated!). We all had a great old time sharing tales of communal living and how life in a deliberately set-up community can be brilliant or not very brilliant depending on the other people, communication, visions and agreements.

That evening I cooked supper for three out of the five other people we are hoping to set up a housing co-op with so it had been really good timing for me that I’d had so many people chatting about communal life earlier in the day. It was a good evening and we got lots done (it is a labyrinth of complexity trying to buy a property, carve it up into different residential units and work out what we will do with the shared parts) but it was a big shame that Bealers was away working for a few days and missed it.

A day later I went with my two-nearly-three year old, to a parent-run playgroup set up by families who are home educating their children, intending to home educate their young children or just thinking about the idea. I met a couple of mums there that I have seen around town and at school picking up older children and it was lovely to find out their names and chat together. The playgroup had a lovely structure to it – playing, painting and then bread making for the littles, story time, a sing-song session then out for a blustery walk into the woods along a rushing stream and lots of puddle splashing. We came back for a proper sit-down lunch comprising all the homemade veggie dishes each parent had brought with them and the bread rolls the kids had kneaded earlier. It was great but after so many months of not going to anything like that I was a little overwhelmed and still haven’t decided whether we will be making it a regular weekly fixture in our diaries.

On Friday evening we had a call from our landlords inviting us for dinner. I explained that evening dinners were tricky without organising a babysitter so we went for lunch instead. Our landlords are very cool people who bought the amazing 16th century timber framed house we live in 20 years ago as a near-derelict project, did it up but to old-fashioned rustic standards (lots of recycled butler sinks and slate floors which have seen better days feature in our lives), created amazing gardens sheltered from the strong winds by lots of trees and hedges they planted having watched their polytunnels blow away too many times.

They used to go and watch badgers in the next valley in the grounds of a ruined house and chapel. They heard it was for sale ten years ago and bought it. Again they did up the house (another 16th century timber framed long house – the twin of the house we are in) and have also renovated the chapel and several old timber framed barns. The setting of their place, Old Chapel Farm is utterly breathtaking. The have huge productive gardens and livestock too but whenever we comment on how inspirational they are they simply say that they have had so much help from their WWOOFERS over the years and that they couldn’t have done it without them. They have on average 100-150 volunteers stay with them throughout the year! We had lunch with them, their daughters,  our children and one PhD student volunteer from Aberystwyth . Afterwards Bealers went with Nellis the volunteer and our landlord to their woodlands to help set up a pole lathe under canvas.

When I got home from our lunch date I was delighted to see that The Neighbours’ visitors had arrived with them safely – a really special couple who had been seriously considering living at the Cornish community we all met at. They had decided against moving their really suddenly not long they were due to move and the loss was a big shock to us all. They had put their reasons in writing and as the months went by we tended to see what they had seen prior to moving there. It was absolutely marvellous to see them again especially as they seemed so full of vitality despite a year of terrible health issues. I joined them on a little guided tour round the gardens and up the hill and loved that they could see how great our little set up is despite being ankle deep in mud.

So many nice people in one short space of time. It’s weeks like the one just past that makes me want to stay in this part of the world as have spent too many years on the road feeling a bit of a nomad.

Today and yesterday little S and I spent a nice quite couple of days at home with over an hour in the garden (in the sunshine!) digging up nettle roots and noticing things that we might want to do to the garden to make it prettier and more productive. We have a small polytunnel so S made a cafe for the chickens inside it in the mud with her bucket. The Neighbour came out too today so we chatted about what we might plant where, how it’d be nice to have a camping area of the garden, where we might need some menfolk to lop down or lay untended hedges which have now grown into trees. We collected a few eggs then went back indoors for tea, bread making, yoghurt making and  getting supper ready for another visit from the new friends we are hoping to buy a small farm with. I made a strange but delicious concoction of root vegetables (celeriac, swede, parsnip, carrot), onions,garlic, leeks and a dried chilli plus a couple of handfuls of soup mix (dried split peas, red lentils and oats) with loads of shredded savoy cabbage thrown in at the end to just to warm through.

Tomorrow we will go and visit another family of local friends – another home educating family round the corner from us (actual distance about 2-3 miles but they are considered very near neighbours in this sparsely populated area). They too have a very cool lifestyle and have a beautiful place ‘Oakwell Barns‘.

I’m so happy to be meeting so many people as it does make this latest home feel like it might be a  long-lasting home area.