The Making of a Permaculture Homestead
I am Beth. With my partner Will, and our kids Piper and Juno, we are developing our homestead, Cloud Cottage, half way up a hill in the Forest of Dean. Our aim here is to produce more than we consume. Will is loving our neglected home back to health again and I, with infinite slowness, (thanks kids) am setting up the homestead.
I spent a lot of time WWOOFing in my late twenties and early thirties – making hay with heavy horses, coppicing with woodland heart-throbs, building earth ships in France… With every new place, I whittled my future dream a little more. It turned out I didn’t want to be a farmer – producing food for other people. I wanted something smaller. A homestead. What started as 30 acres and a herd of cattle became 1 and 1/2 acres, some goats, some pigs, a flock of chickens, a forest garden, a vegetable garden. Even