Episode 26: One Planet Living with Tao Wimbush and Morag Gamble at Lammas Ecovillage, Wales

For this episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World Podcast , I am in Lammas Ecovillage, Wales with the founder, Tao Wimbush.  I loved visiting this community and was so warmly welcomed by Tao. I hope you enjoy this conversation - full of so many practical tips for one planet living.

Lammas is an off-grid permaculture village with a community of 50 adults and many children, with interesting natural homes and is the first One Planet Development Ecovillage in the UK. Tao tells me how it is possible to buy land and build a home like his for around 20,000 UK Pounds. That's incredible! There is a lot of potential for young people to create land-based communities like Lammas in the Welsh countryside very affordably. We tour his house - it's beautiful and hand-crafted from local resources.

Tao and I talk about the ideas behind One planet Development,  how the village works and why people come there. He helps others make a shift to this way of life through education and consulting and is an expert in One Planet Development.

Tao is the author of 'Birth of an Ecovillage' and presented an internet TV series 'Living in the Future'. His background is in architecture and carpentry, and he's lived in a wide range of alternative communities, and dwelled in tipis, yurts and roundhouses.

I recorded this conversation pre-covid when I was in Wales last year, and will release the extended version with tours of the landscape and common spaces soon.

Lammas was featured on Kevin McLeod's Grand Designs.

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Transcript

Morag Gamble: 0:00

Welcome to the Sense-making in a Changing World Podcast, where we explore the kind of thinking we need to navigate a positive way forward. I’m your host Morag Gamble.. Permaculture Educator, and Global Ambassador, Filmmaker, Eco villager, Food Forester, Mother, Practivist and all-around lover of thinking, communicating and acting regeneratively. For a long time it's been clear to me that to shift trajectory to a thriving one planet way of life we first need to shift our thinking, the way we perceive ourselves in relation to nature, self, and community is the core. So this is true now more than ever. And even the way change is changing, is changing. Unprecedented changes are happening all around us at a rapid pace. So how do we make sense of this? To know which way to turn, to know what action to focus on? So our efforts are worthwhile and nourishing and are working towards resilience, regeneration, and reconnection.

Morag: 0:56

What better way to make sense than to join together with others in open generative conversation. In this podcast, I'll share conversations with my friends and colleagues, people who inspire and challenge me in their ways of thinking, connecting and acting. These wonderful people are thinkers, doers, activists, scholars, writers, leaders, farmers, educators, people whose work informs permaculture and spark the imagination of what a post-COVID, climate-resilient, socially just future could look like. Their ideas and projects help us to make sense in this changing world to compost and digest the ideas and to nurture the fertile ground for new ideas, connections and actions. Together we'll open up conversations in the world of permaculture design, regenerative thinking community action, earth repair, eco-literacy, and much more. I can't wait to share these conversations with you.

Morag Gamble: 1:54

Over the last three decades of personally making sense of the multiple crises we face I always returned to the practical and positive world of permaculture with its ethics of earth care, people care and fair share. I've seen firsthand how adaptable and responsive it can be in all contexts from urban to rural, from refugee camps to suburbs. It helps people make sense of what's happening around them and to learn accessible design tools, to shape their habitat positively and to contribute to cultural and ecological regeneration. This is why I've created the Permaculture Educators Program to help thousands of people to become permaculture teachers everywhere through an interactive online dual certificate of permaculture design and teaching. We sponsor global Permayouth programs, women's self help groups in the global South and teens in refugee camps. So anyway, this podcast is sponsored by the Permaculture Education Institute and our Permaculture Educators Program. If you'd like to find more about permaculture, I've created a four-part permaculture video series to explain what permaculture is and also how you can make it your livelihood as well as your way of life. We'd love to invite you to join a wonderfully inspiring, friendly and supportive global learning community. So I welcome you to share each of these conversations, and I'd also like to suggest you create a local conversation circle to explore the ideas shared in each show and discuss together how this makes sense in your local community and environment. I'd like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which I meet and speak with you today. The Gubbi Gubbi people and pay my respects to their elders past, present, and emerging.

Morag: 3:28

Have you ever wondered what it's like to live off grid? Well, it's my delight to invite you to join my conversation today on Sense-making in a Changing World with Tao Wimbush. Founder of the Lammas Ecovillage in Pembrokeshire West Wales. This is UK's first one planet ec ovillage f eatured on Kenneth Mc Cloud's G rand Designs. Lammas is an off-grid permaculture village with grassroot homes. It's based on 150 acres of land thereabouts with 50 adults and numerous children. It's an amazing example of how to live lightly on the planet and also a fabulous place of learning. Tao and I talk about the ideas behind One Plant Development and how this village works, why people come there. He's the author of Birth of an Ecovillage. And he presented an internet-TV series called Living in the Future. His background is in architecture and carpentry, and he's lived in a wide range of alternative communities, dwelled in teepees and yurts and round houses. But we also have a chance during this conversation to tour the house that he's crafted. It's beautiful for only around 20,000 pounds. He says, you can set up this kind of land-based living with your house and your land in places like West Wales using one planet development. So he helps people do this kind of shift. Transitioning to a la nd-b ased way of living through education and consulting. And he's an expert in one planet development. I recorded this conversation when I was in Wales last year and I'll release an extended version with tours of the landscape and the common spaces, to o, on m y YouTube channel at a later date. But in the meantime, I hope you enjoy this introduction to the Lammas Ecovillage and what one planet living is all about.

Morag Gamble: 5:27

Hi, I'm Morag Gamble from Our Permaculture Life and the Permaculture Education Institute. And I apologize, my voice seems to have disappeared somewhere in England, but, I mean, today I'm here at the Lammas Ecovillage with Tao. Tao Wimbush has been here for 10 years at this ecovillage and it's a pioneering ecovillage in many different ways. So I'm really delighted to be here today with you to hear more about how this place got started and what it is, and also how has been so influential in changing public policy around how ecovillages can conform here in Wales.

Tao Wimbush: 6:07

Okay. So, the Lammas Ecovillage started from a grassroots movement putting pressure on local government to create a policy to enable people to move back to the land. And we began with nine families. And in doing that, that was about the same time that we persuaded the government to scale up the One Planet Development policy. So they covered the whole of Wales.

Morag Gamble: 6:35

Can you say a little bit about what the One Planet Development Policy is?

Tao Wimbush: 6:40

Um, One Planet Development Policy is radical in the UK because it enables people to live in the countryside. The UK planning system is based around the town and country planning. There is a philosophy that says people will live in the towns and the countryside shall be reserved for industrial agriculture. And so what One Planet Development Policy does, is it says, No! No! No it doesn't have to be that way. There's a place for people in the countryside. So long as they're living sustainably, building with natural materials and continuing to be productive, with the land, those are the three principles. So, yeah, so we're kind of part of that movement. And since the original nine families came here, we've been joined by a whole load of peripheral families. And the One Planet Development Policy across Wales is really scaled up. So, you know, there are dozens and dozens of us now.

Morag Gamble: 7:40

So it is quite radical[inaudible] I think we could do well with having something like this in Australia as well. Cause we have the same, it's called the urban footprint beyond that urban footprint that described[inaudible] as well, except for industrial griculture, or if you're a happened to be a developer and bought up the land 20, 30 years ago, and you might be able to support that suburb but it doesn't have a sustainability kind of agenda on that type of tone. So this is absolutely brilliant.

Tao Wimbush: 8:12

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it came about, I mean, in the UK came about after the second world war and under a completely different set of parameters at that time, the UK wanted to preserve its agricultural ability here, and that was a time of plentiful and cheap fossil fuels. So it kind of, you know, it made sense. Let's put the people where we can service them easily. You can pipe the food and the water and pipe out the waste, but it's a different age now it's a different age and a different time. And yeah, there's this kind of concentrating people in towns and cities brings with it a whole load of problems.

Morag Gamble: 8:56

And I think also the other side of it is that there isn't an imagination of what is other to that until something like this, because the other image of what development is sprawl and you don't want that. So we stop and so the imagination to think of something completely different that can fit in maintaining the beautiful natural landscape, enhancing it actually creating more for a space, creating more productive space and creating greater levels of wellbeing. It makes sense in all those ways.

Tao Wimbush: 9:30

Yeah. And here in Wales, it particularly excels in these Upland areas. We've got a lot of Upland. I mean, here we're 180 meters above sea level, land that would be traditionally used only for grazing for sheep, which is as, you know, very inefficient way of growing food. Um, and it's not very suited to large machines. And so we come in, we bring in permaculture design and we can rearrange them as, so that instead of being one part of the farmers income, lamb being the cash crop, um, we purchased a whole range of stuff.

Morag Gamble: 10:14

So let's just tease that out a bit. So you're talking about the permaculture design, so is permaculture underpinning this village? Do you see it as a permaculture village?

Tao Wimbush: 10:24

I do see it as a permaculture village. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, my approach to permaculture is kind of not so rational..in a way. My training as such was at Tipi Valley. So I come from a roots perspective and a kind of practical perspective about the human relationship with the land base and with each other and with the world around us.

Morag Gamble: 10:53

And you know what you've got.. So what you've got here then is how many people and how many house lots and how much land are we working with?

Tao Wimbush: 11:04

We, uh, we are now about 120, 150 acres now, approximately 15 households, uh, probably 50 adults plus the kids. Yeah. I don't like to be too firm about red lines yet. Cause it's interesting, in many ways we've kind of, we are merging with local communities there are people who come and rent houses locally so they can c ome t o t he c ommunity.

Morag Gamble: 11:32

That's fantastic. So in terms of any kind of overall agreements about what you do together that defines.. Then what defines your community? What would you think are some of the, maybe it's about the way you work together or is it about the kind of way that you livein the land or..

Tao Wimbush: 11:53

I would say what defines our community is that pioneering spirit, that desire to explore what it is to live in harmony with the natural world and have space to do that and the freedom to do that so that it can manifest in different ways.

Morag Gamble: 12:12

Yep. So it's a little bit like we were talking earlier about, it's not that dropping out, it's actually dropping right in to explore different things and to actually say emerge a new story about what it means to live well.

Tao Wimbush: 12:24

Yeah. And it's interesting you say that. I mean, I've been quite privileged. I've lived in alternative communities a long time and I've seen a lot of families drop out and then drop in and that, and that is a kind of process itself takes people time cause you kind of like kind of rewire...and re-educate yourself and create a space so that you can tune in and drop in. Yeah.

Morag Gamble: 12:56

That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I'm glad you said that because it's kind of, it's not an, either[ inaudible] isn't it?

Tao Wimbush: 13:05

It is. People are motivated by different things. Some people move to this lifestyle to drop out and some people move to this lifestyle to drop in to something. Yeah. But that, that process, I think, is a process that needs kind of respecting and honoring and recognizing that something that, you know, take some quite a lot of time, many years for most people. And I think and is it kind of is a thing in itself it's a rewire.

Morag Gamble: 13:37

Yeah. It's true. It's true. So, on a very sort of practical level, how do you make decisions together? Do you, or are you more independent in your own lots? Like what sort of level of community decision-making or interaction or economy, some places you've lived have been more communal, others sort of more independent. Where do you sit here in Lammas? How does that work?

Tao Wimbush: 14:05

I think on different levels, it works in different ways. In essence, we are fairly close to the conventional model of you have your lot, your territory, and within that territory or autonomous and the degree to which you interact with your community and the way in which you interact with your community is up to you. You know, that there are formal structures that you can get involved with. And there are informal arrangements, which you can get involved with and people can, can define that interaction in their own way. Some people approach it from a free economy perspective. Some people have quite formal, trade exchanges. Some of the management is quite formalized. For example, the hydroelectric system needs quite s tructured management, whereas other things are much more intuitive and fluid. For example, t here's t he celebration and the music and the cultural expression.

Morag Gamble: 15:12

So there's two things, it just popped out of me.Two things I wanted to pick up on. One is the hydro electric. And one was a question about the commons here. So maybe let's start with the hydro electric in a practical sense. You have a shared hydroelectric system.

Tao Wimbush: 15:27

Yeah. So on the practical sense, some of us have it. So there is a hydro electric system that serves the original[inaudible]. That's the kind of micro medium scale hydro. Today it's running at 15 kilowatts and then that's shared out amongst the households, but that does go up to 25 kilowatts when there's a lot of water.

Morag Gamble: 15:51

Is that enough for your household needs?

Tao Wimbush: 15:54

It is enough because we kind of work backwards. It's plenty. Yeah. From my perspective, we've got washing machine, fridge, freezer, teenagers, laptops, stereos, power tools, etc. and Hydro by its very nature is kind of dependent on the water flows in the landscape. And so most of the supplement that with solar. O kay. S o when there's periods of drought, we've got, yeah, we had a drought, seriously.

Morag Gamble: 16:41

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We had some, what's the sort of, is it drought? Something that people even, I thught there'd be a word for drought in Welsh. Maybe there's none.

Tao Wimbush: 16:53

I'm not sure there is in Welsh. No, no. We had 10 weeks of hot dry weather, which for Wales, it's absolutely...

Morag Gamble: 16:59

It's common for us, but not here. Cause I hear that you kinda get.. I've been watching little, little rain water butts on the edges of houses thinking what's the point of that? We've got 50,000 liters of water stored off the side of my buildings because we need to build in that resilience in times of drought. It's hard to see you're experiencing these here.

Tao Wimbush: 17:22

I mean, we approach water management in a slightly different way. I mean we have to design a landscape to be able to cope with[inaudible] them is one of the things we have to be able to cope with a lot of water in a very short span.

Morag Gamble: 17:34

What's your rainfall..

Tao Wimbush: 17:34

On average 1.6 meters a year That can vary quite a lot. I would say that could go up to 2.4 or drop to 1.2, but you know, there are periods. It's just like we have to kind of manage for that event. And then we also have to manage for if you've got polytunnels and greenhouses and things like that. So it's a kind of combination of kind of getting it to flow through the landscape quickly and storing it.

Morag Gamble: 18:11

So how do you do that? Do you have like little stop gaps where you, when you want a store it, you can actually slow it down and be like, I remember in Ladakh up in Himalayas is they would have like little sections where they would stuck it with all of bits cloths and mud and actually stopped the water from moving. And then when they want to flow, they would open up and let it flow. Do you have that kind of thing or is it just.

Tao Wimbush: 18:34

Here is more ponds.

Morag Gamble: 18:35

Okay. Right. Yeah.

Tao Wimbush: 18:36

So I'll show you our rainwater harvesting pond and we capture it in ponds and then we can use those ponds for other things, biomass, harvest crops, etc. And then we position them intelligently in the landscape. So we can then use that.

Morag Gamble: 18:52

Direct to food produce. And so what about for your household use? What do you use for water?

Tao Wimbush: 18:58

So for drinking water, we share a spring which is up in the valley, which is fantastic. Um, yeah. And that provides our kind of domestic needs. For our livestock needs and for our horticulture needs, that's all[inaudible].

Morag Gamble: 19:16

Okay. Yep. So the last question, maybe we go from a bit of a walk about was about your commons. So you have your individual plots, but are there spaces where you have common building, common land and that sort of thing.

Tao Wimbush: 19:29

Yeah. We've got a community center, we share track ways. We share foot paths networks. We share a village green, we share a bitw oodland.

Morag Gamble: 19:39

So how does that work when you buy in, some money goes towards the community infrastructure management development..

Tao Wimbush: 19:50

Kind of. Yeah. Some of that initial money goes towards the commons. With our community center. We were blessed to get a grant UK government. And so that's been.

Morag Gamble: 20:05

What happens in the community center?

Tao Wimbush: 20:05

All sorts of all sorts of things. We have kind of socials, which can be kind of socials, music events, there's a choir, a regular choir there. There's a Christian group that kind of meets, there's meetings. It's also a venue for courses, craft, one planet living. Or we do family camps. There's a kitchen in there so we can value add to our produce. And then there's also a little, whole f ood s hop. So whole range of things?

Morag Gamble: 20:44

How does that work? I would love to, I would love Crystal Waters to have a shop open all the time. Even with 250 people, it doesn't seem like there's enough to keep it going to have someone in the shop all the time.

Tao Wimbush: 20:58

Nobody mans it. Self service.

Morag Gamble: 21:01

It's brilliant. Yeah. You go, this is what you're buying. And then you write down in the book, the money you put in.. It's just the whole foods, bulk foods ordering together, putting what you want. I want y our idea. R ight. I'm going to tell one of those when I get home. It's g ood. V ery e asy. Excellent. A ll r ight. Well thank you t hat I think maybe we might sort of, if it's possible just to go for a wander through and see what t hat h as i s in the commons and the various particularly also the food systems t hat you've got growing.

Tao Wimbush: 21:34

Sure. Great!

Morag Gamble: 21:35

Thank you. Cool. So we're now inside Tao and Hoppi's house. And this is obviously natural building. Tell us about what's going, It's a beautiful house.

Tao Wimbush: 21:50

Oh very simple construction, stud wall construction, sheep's wool installation. We built, it cost us 14,000 pounds to build. It's got three bedrooms. So yeah, it really works for us so very, very simple.

Morag Gamble: 22:07

So let's go back to the price of things, because this is something that's a really big issue for a lot of young people around the world. About just housing affordability, homelessness for young people, it's just going through the roof and even homelessness in Australia. I mean the women over 55 growing little homelessness because of the lack of affordable housing. So you're saying this is 14,000 pounds to build this really beautiful home. And it's not a small home it's lovely. It's 90 square meters.

Tao Wimbush: 22:41

And then also that the price of the land for that, you were saying is how much.. I would say averaging between 6 and 7,000 pounds an acre of land.

Morag Gamble: 22:52

So your house and your land in Upland Wales, you're looking at about 20,000 pounds.

Tao Wimbush: 22:57

Yeah. I mean, generally if someone's going to do a one planet development, then I would, I encourage people to have 30,000 pounds behind them to start bearing in mind you need to buy really three acres minimum.

Morag Gamble: 23:13

For the agriculture.

Speaker 3: 23:16

Yeah. In order to have enough land so that you can be productive, have a bit of income from it, grow some fuel, etc. And then bearing in mind, you can borrow on top of that here you can borrow against land. We've spent 75,000 on a seven acre plot over 10 years. Putting in all the infrastructure, which is a lot of money.

Morag Gamble: 23:39

It's a lot of money, but it's still affordable in concept of, if you think about a standard house and little piece of land in suburban Australia, people are spending four or$500,000.

Tao Wimbush: 23:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think the average house price of a house in the UK is now something like 230,000 pounds.

Morag Gamble: 24:00

About the same as Australia. That's huge.

Tao Wimbush: 24:03

Contextually it's affordable and it's still, you need some money behind you.

Morag Gamble: 24:08

So the access to land there's, there's lots of land that is available. Yeah,

Speaker 3: 24:12

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lots of land across Wales. More and more becoming available.

Morag Gamble: 24:25

I mean, it's interesting, isn't it? Because I've heard, I mean, looking at different models for how we house ourselves is a really interesting thing. I think it was in Italy or Spain, actually. I can't remember now the s aying that the government w as actually paying young people to go and live i n and restore village homes on the rural areas as a way to h ouse people restore you know, rural areas and bring back economy a nd economic vitality into those areas. So there's so many different ways of doing i t. That's really exciting. I t hink.

Tao Wimbush: 24:58

Yeah. I mean, under the one planet initiative, you could live in a car van, you could live in, you can have a teepee, you can live in a cabin, you could live in a cop house, you can live underground. You know, it's kind of like you've got that freedom and in a way, that's the carrot. You can build your dream house so long as you're living sustainably, being productive and be able to..

Morag Gamble: 25:18

Which is really quite interesting because I think, you know, in a lot of other parts, it seems like there's so many restrictions on what you build and how you live, you know, in terms of the housing stock, it has to be, you know, a certain type of heritage restrictions. Whereas here, you're saying as long as it's sustainable..

Tao Wimbush: 25:36

I mean you still have to meet the building code, building regulations, so if you're building a house rather than a caravan or a 10, it's got to have fire safety features, it's got to be robust, etc.

Morag Gamble: 25:51

Yeah. So what are the, what are the features that you've built into this house that you think are really interesting and differently? I mean, I've noticed outside, there's sort of, there's this sod roof outside talked about, you know, wool installation. Is that a common thing here? Um, cause I noticed that you've got lots of more produce.

Tao Wimbush: 26:08

I mean, the main thing about this house is that it was built to be quick. We were in a situation, we had young kids, we were living in caravans. We needed to put up very quickly. So simple stud walls, Bush, Bush, Bush, Simple house shape. Yeah. And, you know, get yourself into the loop quickly and effectively. Yeah. Um, so then you can kind of move on to the land and carry on and have some fun.

Morag Gamble: 26:44

And where did you get the timber from and all that stuff?

Tao Wimbush: 26:47

So most of the timber is either from a local woodland or from our own woodland. Mostly we milled it ourselves. So we get mobile. So mill in ourselves. Yeah. It's the finish is plaster lath. Like thin strips of wood. Off cuts, thin strips, and then passed over. It's deliberately built off the ground when we go outside, you'll see it kind of on so that no matter what, it's always dry in here.

Morag Gamble: 27:19

That's interesting because we have buildings up off the ground in Queensland because we want the air to come under and cooler buildings. So you've got them up to.. So how to keep it warm as well as dry.

Tao Wimbush: 27:35

So we've got the, there's a range behind us, which we can cook on. Also we dump some of the electrical excess from the hydro.

Morag Gamble: 27:46

Very nice, nice, excellent. Yeah, it's a beautiful space. And so here is a main room, dining room, kitchen... Upstairs you've got.

Tao Wimbush: 27:57

One of our bedroom is upstairs and then the bedrooms through there.

Morag Gamble: 28:02

Gorgeous! And you grafted, all these archways and..

Tao Wimbush: 28:09

You know cheap brown wood. Just used what we can. I mean, this has no commercial value. So..

Morag Gamble: 28:15

Isn't that..isn't it amazing something that has no commercial value actually looks like it is so much more beautiful. It's a shift thinking about resources and the same with, you know, like this beautiful, for me this is a gorgeous archway. It's probably just, did you pick something you thought, Oh, that's really nice.

Tao Wimbush: 28:33

Yeah. Just a few round wood features. Just some natural wood.

Morag Gamble: 28:44

It kind of makes you feel more comfortable in spaces that have natural form in it. You feel at ease.

Tao Wimbush: 28:50

Maybe we come from the forest. Maybe it's something deep.

Morag Gamble: 29:00

Oh I'm just going to show your wash. I hope you don't mind.

Tao Wimbush: 29:01

Sure!

Morag Gamble: 29:01

This is the washing, the ladder, everything's stacked. It's a beautiful permaculture design here. That's great. Thank you so much. All right. I'll head on outside now. So that's all for today. Thanks so much for joining us. Head on over to my YouTube channel, the link is below, and then you'll be able to watch this conversation, but also make sure that you subscribe because that way we notified of all new films that come out and also the release of the extended tour of Lammas Ecovillage where we go into the landscape and the common spaces too. And also you'll get notified of all the new, interviews and conversations that come out. So thanks again for joining us. Have a great week and I'll see you next time.y