I am feeling very inspired after attending a LILI course on Low Impact Smallholding over the weekend. It was held at the LILI HQ which is a community called Redfield in Bucks and was run by Simon Fairlie of Chapter 7 and author of Low Impact Development.

It was a very detailed course covering things like planning law, how to choose a plot, what to do when you’ve got it and how to derive an income. All very essential information and delivered by someone with intimate knowledge of the subject in a very relaxed and informal manner. It was also good to hang out for the weekend with other people also looking to do similar things to us.

It was quite frankly superb and my heart has come away urgent for us to move onto our own plot of land and start planting. Head says that having three kids one of whom isn’t one year old yet it’s probably best to wait.

Either way it has become much more of a feasible option now with the biggest challenge being to find somewhere in this country that is even mildly affordable…

If you’re seriously considering setting yourself up with a  smallholding I’d highly recommend this course.

We’ve just come back from a weekend visit to an Intentional Community that’s a cross between an eco village and a co-housing group. The place is called Trelay, in Cornwall and it has totally thrown us; could we really move somewhere like this? It’s too weird to do something like that, right?

We came across the concept after seeing some reasonably priced flats for sale on rightmove that came with 10s of acres. Upon further investigation it was clear that the flats were a in a large subdivided house and that all residents had a share of the grounds that they were expected to help out with maintenance.

It turns out that there are loads of them around the world and plenty in the UK of varying ideological basis (religious, vegan, eco, singing etc) some of them are hard-core communes where you share facilities an income and others are a collection of private spaces with shared resources and a common view of the future.

Trelay fits into the latter camp. It’s a 30 acre farm with approx 12 private living spaces ranging from 3 bed houses to 1 bed log cabins) plus a barn and a range of outbuildings. The residents – who are all ‘normal’ – have an optional communal evening meal and share the work of managing the farm. Individual families have their own pet projects (for example the pigs, chickens or the sheep) whilst the allotment is shared labour. They have woodland, pasture and recently planted an orchard. It’s a new community so there’s still much to do but it’s clear that the people there are passionate about preparing for their future.

After three rather intense and busy days there we’re really not sure what to do now. The place was amazing and the thought of living somewhere like that near the sea and being able to share the burden of running a holding really appeals but do we want to move in with a  bunch of strangers?

More investigation needed. I’m attending my small holding course next week, also at a community, so that should give us some more insight.

UK related links

• UK co-housing network
• Diggers and dreamers
• Community network UK