Our twelve acres in Cwmafan was once littered in drift mines, old cottages and (I'm told) a small pub. Since the mines shut down and the buildings were reclaimed by the land, the fields have largely been used as grazing land.

What we found when we started working on turning this and into something a little more diverse and productive, was compacted, poor topsoil, and large areas of rush, bracken and bramble threating to choke off the productive areas entirely.

Over the years since and with the help of some friends, we've slowly started to improve the soil, drainage and ecological diversity, planting thousands of trees, shrubs, and perennials, not only in productive forms such as our Orchard and Vineyard, but also in little pockets of pollinator friendly plants, hedging and more.

We have tons of plans for the land, with our new plant nursery being setup this year, our market garden serving vegetable boxes for the first time and bees hopefully going from strength to strength. Keep up with the blog here or our Youtube channel if you're interested in keeping track of what project we're chipping away at currently.