The day after our trip to Penrhos in Snowdonia, Carl, Debs, Pete and I headed out to Angelsey to visit Jules at Corn Helyg.
Jules has been living on her smallholding for just over a year, and (like most of Wales, it seems) it used to be entirely sheep pasture and she has her work cut out turning it into a permaculture paradise.
This is Jules, being justifiably proud at the quality of her first hay crop. She’s also very proud of Corn Helyg’s edible hedgerows, which have probably been in place for 400 years or so. (The age of a hedge is estimated by the number of woody species it contains, as per Hooper’s hypothesis.)
One of Jules’ major projects is an edible swimming pond. She has had the area landscaped, and the pond is filling naturally and should soon be ready to plant up. She also has a grant to plant 3000 native tree species, and she has put plenty of edibles on the list.
For more immediate food production, there is a veg patch:
and a polytunnel, with a hugelmound on one side that is home to plenty of wild edible such as sorrel and yarrow.
The contrast with Penrhos couldn’t have been greater, with Jules having had her feet on the ground for just a year. It will be fascinating to see how the project progresses.
On the way back to Caernarfon, we stopped at Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch. Because we could :)
