FUTURE

Aside from the house renovations, our collective hopes for the future of this lovely old place are big. We want to install a hydro-generation unit to run off the stream that runs through the land. This will entail much work including the production of ecology and feasibility studies for Resource Wales, conservation and planning departments; producing a design that will hopefully have us using that generated power to heat the house so that we can reduce our reliance on wood for the burners. We want to integrate the hydro with solar too – both photovoltaic and thermal – so we use a diverse array of renewables that will take Tan y fron off the grid as much as possible.

We have a level well that leaks and while it’s okay for now, it needs a major overhaul in order to give us a larger supply of the lovely, sweet hill water we rely on for basic living.

Speaking of water, we need to capture and store a lot more to use for clothes washing and watering in the garden. Our future needs to be resilient, secure in the face of the extreme weather events that are becoming more and more common of late.

Buildings-wise, we have a rather dilapidated barn range we want to bring back into use. Part of it is already being used, but needs help, and the rest of it just, well, needs help! We applied to convert the range into living accommodation with workshops a few years back, but those particular plans were refused. We now know we stretched too much, asked for too much, and now we know the objections and what would likely be approved, we feel we have enough expertise here to put in a new application by ourselves. It’s also been suggested that perhaps the barns could be completely off grid when converted. Who knows? We all love a bit of blue sky thinking here and so the sky really is the limit!

Another thing we’d like to see would be ways to produce personal incomes here by Tan y fron Housing Co-operative renting out space/buildings to its members for enterprise. The members may also like to form a worker’s co-op in the future too. There is certainly scope for a holiday let here, permaculture teaching space there and who knows what else.

Of course, growing is at the heart of the place and we have plans to raise another self-watering poly tunnel to fill in a much-needed gap in our water drainage system, also to make the greenhouse and raised beds as self-watering as possible in order that we can grow more and grow it all more easily. We want to turn the bottom of the woodland, the part nearest the buildings, into forest garden while allowing much of the rest of it simply to do what it likes – our wild zone in which we’ll follow the natural paths and create small places here and there for humans to go and sit, watch and wonder, contemplate – to just be without needing to change or do anything.

We also have a hot tub waiting to be installed by the ponds, an outdoor kitchen to be designed and built, young people’s spaces to make, a new chicken house with solar roof…

You name it, we got it going on here. Exciting times.