Brithdir Mawr Community
A community of people
living and working together
in a sustainable way
|
Brithdir Mawr CommunityA community of people |
I’ve
lived at Brithdir for just over 2 years (as of May 2006) with my partner Ben
& 4 year old daughter Josie. We ended up at Brithdir after visiting a number
of communities in England and Wales.
Before we came here we lived in Los Molinos del Rio Aguas in Spain. There we were used to living & working closely with our neighbours in the village. (There is an article about us living in Spain here)
When we came back to the UK we needed to live in the country somewhere with land because of what we do (we grow and sell vegetable seeds). But we didn't want to end up living miles from anywhere with no neighbours - and of course finding somewhere affordable in the countryside is difficult.
We'd always lived closely with other people - in a big house with lots of other people in Cambridge, then in Los Molinos, so an intentional community somewhere rural seemed like it might be the answer for us. We found Brithdir (and the other communities that we visited) through Diggers and Dreamers.
As with most things, sometimes living at Brithdir is wonderful, sometimes it can be hard work. Sometimes it has a lot to do with the weather; when its sunny and we're all outside and the gardens are growing beautifully things feel much easier than when its been freezing cold and raining for a week.
Maybe I'm particularly weather-sensitive, since most of my work involves gardening. I'm one of the members responsible for the bottom vegetable garden at Brithdir, which grows a lot of our annual vegetables. I also run a small seed company with Ben (the Real Seed Catalogue) and we rent land from the community to grow our seeds on. The west Wales climate isn't always ideal for seed growing, but at least we can be sure that our seeds are well adapted to the changeable British weather.
The aim of working towards enviromental sustainability and a low impact lifestyle is very important to me. While we do our best to achieve this at Brithdir, the difference that we can make is small. So (a question that I've discussed with many people many times!) is living in the countryside and growing vegetables 'running away', and should we all be living in the city, where we would come into contact with lots more people, and doing our best to change the world from there?
Actually, I don't think there's a good answer to that question. I definitely don't believe that as a country we can reach any sort of long term sustainable situation - environmentally or socially - without some fundamental changes in the structure of society. (There is a good link here which talks about the ideas of anarchism and the possibilities for a society without ) And I don't think that living in the countryside and growing vegetables will of itself get us any closer to those changes.
As well as that, I also think that intentional communities can be a good way of working towards social sustainability.
Other ways of building community
I don't think that everyone should live in an intentional community, but I think that they can be one way amongst others for people to take control of their lives and find a better way to live
If you want to be inspired by a vision of a successful society without rulers or government, read 'The Dispossessed' by Ursula le Guin. There is a good review here. There are also some good reviews on amazon (although I would suggest getting it from your library or local bookshop!)
Why Ben & I grow open pollinated, non-hybrid vegetable seeds
