Hello, I'm Compostwoman

Hello everyone, I am Compostwoman and I am writing this to introduce myself a bit more.

I live in Herefordshire with my husband and 9 year old daughter. We have lived in rural Herefordshire for 12 years in a house surrounded by nearly four acres of woodland and garden. These four acres comprise three acres of mixed broad leaf deciduous woodland, a small meadow with a pool, orchard, veg plot, polytunnel and garden. Before we moved here we lived in a suburb, but always wanted to get back out into the countryside as both of us come from farming/smallholding backgrounds.

We manage this land organically, for the benefit of our wildlife visitors as well as ourselves, and aim to be as self reliant as we can. We grow a lot of fruit and vegetables and eat our own produce for a lot of the year. When we are not, we try to use local shops in our nearby market town or organic stalls at our local Farmers Market. We store lots of our produce, make all our own bread, cider, jams and chutneys as well as some wine, yoghurt, butter and cheese.

We have our own water supply and sewage treatment facility here, which is not common in most areas of the UK although it is quite normal around us. We are still on mains electricity but hope to install some photovoltaic panels in the next few months to reduce our grid dependence. A solar thermal water heating installation provides us with lots of (free!) hot water. Oh, and we use fuel from our own wood for the wood burner, also.

Pv's went up in May 2010 and provide us with a lot of our electricity! (added Feb 2011)

We are fortunate here to have enough land to grow most of our own veg, keep chickens and I am working on us rearing our own meat. Our woodland provides a playground for children and a place for me to carry out environmental education work. The wood is a comfort to the soul, a wonderful wildlife habitat, an endless source of fun and wonder and of course provides us with wood to burn.




Compostman and I support our local community as much as we can and have worked hard to
try to make our personal and wider environment here as sustainable as we can. We are by no means "deep greens" in our lifestyle though. We have two cars as it would be hard to live here without them, a TV, computers and we live a normal life ( I think?) BUT we are not aiming for perfection but rather to do the best we can at the moment. As and when we can, we work on the rest

Compostman and I spent many years working as professional research scientists in Electronics and Material Science related areas, but we no longer do that anymore due to retirement (him) and voluntary redundancy (me). In the last 15 years I have switched career path completely and I now mainly work as an Environmental Educator. I volunteer to teach Organic Gardening at my daughter's primary school and I help run a successful after school Eco Club which Compostman also helps a lot with. I am a Forest School Leader, so I work with children helping them experience the wonders of playing in woodlands as part of their school day. I also teach adults. I am also a qualified Holistic Therapist and enjoy making household and personal care items.

I have been a keen organic gardener and composter for many years and am a Master Composter - a volunteer community compost advisor with my local council and Garden Organic (the working name for HDRA). I go to various events such as county shows, give talks and demonstrations, take schools assemblies and enthuse about compost to all and sundry!

We have lived here for 12 years now and most of the time its great fun, but hard work sometimes. (not so sure about mucking out chickens in the pouring rain!) We are blessed to live where we do and I am very conscious that I am SO lucky to live here.

I work doing something I adore, I LOVE talking to people about making compost, gardening, growing their own veg and getting out to experience playing in woodland! I am so happy if someone says “ I grew some herbs” or “ I tried washing with Soapnuts” or “I started making compost”

I am passionate about helping children AND adults to live a more sustainable life and see the wonder of our natural world. And I get to do all these things everyday

Anyway that's me and why I live like I do and why I like this forum so very much.

Hello you

Ah ha! You made it in here