I do feel guilty in a way, saying this, but hasn’t Corvid-19 made life better in a way? Like people are relying on each other, making do with stuff. Its like we’re a real community isn’t it? We have to help each other - I’ve given seeds and plants to people, they’ve given me all sorts of things like wood and I needed some nails. I don’t know, it just feels like we could be happier like this. Its like a trial run for a different life. A lot more people are growing veg. I do think some people will be disappointed when the slugs and weeds come out, they’ll probably give up when you can just drive to tescos again. But maybe not. i hope not.
We used to sell the fish we catch [mackerel, bass, pollock] to wholesalers. But now [post COVID] we are selling it directly to people. Its much better for us - we get a better price, and people seem to like getting it from us too: We take it straight to them from off the boat. We’re using a whatsapp group to let people know what there is. We’ve got a grant to get more iceboxes and things and that will help us do that more, because sometimes, when we get a big catch, we still sell it to the wholesalers now they’ve re-opened, because we worry it might go to waste otherwise. But maybe we will stop that soon, if enough people want it, and we can keep it in ice while we distribute it.
I say back to the land! I only feel alive when I’m outside. I’m trying to learn to live from/with the land. Experimenting with habitat, inhabitants. water retention and management. I’m learning all the time: I keep making mistakes. But we have to learn to live in these ways - in a way its like going back to the old ways.
I’m so pleased to be here because of this virus. At least here we’ve got more chance of surviving.
You’ve only got to look at Deiniolen or Cwt Y Bont, you’ve got gardens there, but not the sort of gardens where you could grow anything to sustain a family. But look at South Diss or Dinorwig itself, where people, quarrymen, were given plots to live on. So I think there was probably quite a strong distinction between the people who just took Assleton Smith’s quarry work, and the people who tried to grow crops, keep their own pigs and maybe a cow or two as well. I suppose you’d have a job trying to keep a cow happy up there but….
The advantage of self-sufficiency for the quarrymen, was you were self-sufficient.The advantage of self-sufficiency from the point of view of the Assleton-Smith family was that it gave these men and their families a stake in the land so they weren’t going to be prone to nasty wicked socialist ideas like confiscating the land from the estate. So naked self-interest on the part of the Assleton-Smith family.
When I was doing my undergraduate dissertation I was looking at people living in alternative, nomadic structures round here and how they understood what they were doing especially in relation to health and wellbeing and the environment. You could see people living without the creature comforts that we almost think of now as human rights: people were consciously choosing to live without them, or without ready access to them all the time. Getting their own water, creating their own electric, getting their own firewood to heat themselves. They have a different way of talking about their relationship to the place and landscape and health and wellbeing than people who live in houses with everything provided do. One of the main things I found is that some of the people were doing it as a good example to other people – if I can do this then maybe it will show other people they could do it too.
We’re in a perfect location to have sustainable living. There’s water, there’s wind, there’s solar, there’s land so where’s the planning to embrace all this? You can only do what affects you and your immediate surroundings. … See that development there? It was pushed through by the council, despite there being loads of objections. – it’s in a flood plain. And now the people living there are having loads of trouble.
I’ve kind of consoled myself with, especially when I’ve felt really unable to do anything, especially being poor as well, is consoling myself with that I have a really good bedrock of knowledge about land and food and then trying to build on that with foraging, creating maps in my mind of where there’s fruit trees, where’s good for mushrooms, where all these things are. I suppose it’s a kind of survival map in a way, it’s also a treasure map. And I know they are really important skills that a lot of people are only just starting to think about. And that’s about relating with our landscape. But I’m aware that the holes in that map are seasonal. There’s a big winter shaped hole. Some people know of all these little innoculous looking green leaves – I just go for the big juicy things – there are many many levels of refinement. Like fuscia berries and flowers and Yew berries – you have to be careful, the seeds are totally poisonous, but the fruit really gelatinous but super sweet.
Its hard not to despair of… in terms of electricity distribution, lets think of it like that. Ideally every village would have its own little wind turbine, recycling dept, composting area, everything would be kept ultra-local, so you don’t have to have the infrastructure needed to serve them from outside.
I always had a thing in my head – a human being in my environment, being symbiotic with it. Everything is over-processed – food is over-processed, lifestyle is over-processed.
We are going to have bee hives up there. There are people who are very commited to Nant that don’t live here but that do have a strong bond with it. The Climber’s Club in Ty’n Lon, when you get to know them, you meet them in the pub or the church or in the street and there’s one chap who is a bee keeper and he wants to get some real Snowdonia taste to his honey, so he’s asked to put his bee hive on our land this summer. So they can get Snowdonia wild flowers.
When I was in the women’s refuge, there was me, a girl from Bristol and a girl from Turkey. She always looked super glamorous, with 2 small boys and a baby on the way. She’d grown up on a remote sheep farm or something. And she used to make her own yoghurt, when we went on walks she’d tell us what we could eat. She taught me how to make rose petal syrup. And I’d show her stuff as well. It made me feel quite disappointed with people from Britain, although I know people here do make jam and forage and things, but there was something inspiring about it.
I just want to find some land to build - green oak buildings - a few houses, some raised beds, chickens, bee hives. I can’t understand why you can’t get land here. This virus has made all that much more real, hasn’t it? I’m self isolating because I think i’ve got the virus. I’ve got a tiny garden, I’m trying to work out how to grow things in it, and people are being really kind, bringing me plants to put in.
Well we are buiding - trying to build! - a polytunnel so we can grow more of our own food. We did that because of the virus - thinking how can we help? We keep free range chickens that we took from a battery farm. We’ve been distributing eggs for free to 10 people in the estate in Llanberis that Pat Llanber identified as being at risk. When we first got the chickens, they didn’t make any sound at all. They could hardly walk. it was awful to see them. Now they wander everywhere, look at them! They are so happy, one of the most traumatised ones now is so confident she taunts the dog! That makes us really happy.