Earth Heart

Drop In Meditation Sessions

Llanfyllin Library Building // Every Monday  // 11:30 - 12:30
Oswestry Library // Wednesdays, March 4th, 11th & 18th // 16:30 -17:30

Chanting for Meditation

Llanfyllin Library Building // Saturday April 18th // 10:00 - 12:00

Nāda - A Day of sound and silence

The Rookery Studio, Treflach Farm // Saturday May 30th // 10:00 - 16:00
CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO AND TICKETS

Pop Up Market Stalls

Dragons Craft Shop, Llanrhaeadr-Ym-Mochnant
Saturday April 11th // Saturday May 9th // Saturday 13th June
10:30 - 16:00
Welshpool Tesco Car Boot Sale
Sunday April 12th
// Sunday May 3rd // Sunday 7th June
08:00 - 13:00

**PLEASE NOTE ALL OUR POPUP Market DATES ARE**
**Weather Dependent & SUBJECT TO CHANGE**

the EARTH HEART ROADSIDE HONESTY BOX Will Be ReOpening In April 2026

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27/2/2026

Nāda; A Day of Sound and Silence

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If our last update wasn't exciting enough, we are so pleased to announce our first full day event that brings into being our new year goal to craft "longer sound journeys, partnered in with our Holistic offerings to include guided meditation". We've spent nearly three years exploring how Annabeth's practice of Buddhist chants meets and relates to Nik's experience in classical Hindustani music as a sitar player; now we're really ready to share!

So, we are
 delighted to offer a whole Saturday of meditation, chanting and music inspired in essence by the ancient principles of Nāda yoga. You are very welcome to come for the morning or afternoon as stand-alone sessions but we'd love for you to join us in a whole spacious day of complete immersion in the sacred dance between sound and silence. 
Here's what you can expect:
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10:00 - 12:30: Chanting Workshop - Share in a space of meditative awareness before expanding into a sequence of mantras to prepare your body, breath and being for a deeper experience of stillness.

12:30 - 13:30: Lunch

13:30 - 16:00: Sound Journey - A meditative afternoon of sound, woven with sitar, mantras and the invitation to join sections of chanting on the journey.

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Each ticket gives you the option to include a homemade, vegan meal from the Earth Heart Kitchen (of course prepared with seasonal produce from the Earth Heart Garden!), or you can choose to bring your own. 

We're offering a wide range of ticket options because we want to meet as many different needs and schedules as possible; but we have to make sure we don't overbook in total, so we've given ourselves quite a mission on organising the tickets! If you'd like to join us but find we're sold out of the ticket option you want, please email us. As long as there are still spaces available, we can probably have a wiggle about and free up the tickets you want! Equally in the interests of inclusion, we've got limited spaces available for anyone who would be financially unable to access our tickets at the full price we're asking. Though we've done our best to make tickets affordable and believe they're really good value, we would genuinely like to hear from anyone who feels moved to come but just can't meet the cost. We understand. We want you to share in this. Let's talk.

It's also such a joy to say that as we come to write this post, less than 24 hours after going live with tickets, we've already filled about a third of our spaces! We're looking forward to continuing that trend and sharing our mutual love of these ancient and profound practices with as many people as possible. Are you free on Saturday the 30th of May? Might you be one of them? We really hope to see you there!ICKET UPDATE! Wow! We've  

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13/2/2026

TWENTY TWENTY (SIX) VISION

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As we share this exciting update, it seems like forever since we posted the news that we’d had our planning application validated. Well, maybe not forever but six months back at the end of July. We knew we then had to wait until September at the earliest to hear if we would be granted permission to erect ‘a glamping yurt with decking for holiday use, bicycle store, bin store & WC/shower structures and all associated works’. 
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Artist's Impression of the Earth Heart Yurt Site
That project title doesn’t exactly skip off the tongue and never really did justice to the full vision of the Earth Heart Yurt but with a good deal of help from a specialist agency, we were confident it was the language Powys County Council planning department would speak and so we settled in to await the result. If only it had been that simple! We really didn’t anticipate the amount of additional to-ing and fro-ing that was about to ensue.
Firstly, we navigated a complete redesign of the proposed parking spaces (including a loss of some of the wildflower area, sadly) in order to address visibility and sight lines for emerging cars in such a way that satisfied Highways without removal of a 200 year old hedge. Whew.
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Spacious!
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The Proposed Toilet and Shower Block
Then followed far more research than we ever thought we’d need to undertake into percolation tests for the installation of a new septic tank, which, given we’d proposed a compost toilet and were merely looking to drain a single shower, hand basin and kitchen sink, was in hindsight probably over egging the pudding. 
Thankfully, that eventually worked in our favour and following an assessment (and overdue emptying, whoops) of our domestic septic tank up at the cottage, we were able to replan the grey water drainage into our existing system. Yay.

Of course these things delayed matters somewhat and the initial September deadline had already sailed past without so much as a nod by the time we finally submitted the additional ‘compost toilet management plan’ to Environmental Protection. We’ll spare you the details but suffice to say we hadn’t expected to calculate the average daily solid and liquid waste produced by our anticipated guests; four hundred grams and three litres in case you wondered!
Then came the nervous waiting, anxious checking and fretful rechecking for further comments from different council departments. We were fearing the worst after so much effort and expense to respond to the various issues but finally, at the beginning of November we received the news we’d been hardly daring to hope for; our planning permission was approved! There followed at least 45 minutes of cautious jubilation until we read the small print, which was frankly boggling and demanded further information (and another chunky fee) for yet more approval under the worrying title of ‘discharge of conditions’. ​
So, we put together a detailed planting and biodiversity enhancement plan as requested. Actually, compiling a shopping list for native trees and hedging plants was rather joyful and we now know a little more about nesting boxes, bug hotels and keeping bats happy. Win/win.
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Wildflowers and Bug Hotels!
Happily, in mid January the condition of our discharge (it didn’t say how many grams) also met with approval, and now we merely have the trifling task of making it happen. Thankfully we’ve got five years to recover before we get started. Not that we want to wait even half that long at all!

So now what? There we were thinking the planning application process was complex and expensive enough, but now we’ve been through it and we’re in a position to turn diagrams into manifest reality, we know how woefully inadequate our original budgeting was. Maybe it’s kinder to say ‘wonderfully optimistic’ but ‘uneducated’ is more accurate. So what next? Where to start?
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Cue ‘visioning’. The first month of 2026 may already be behind us but last weekend we sat down at the Earth Heart Kitchen table (so oft the centre of operations!) and started thinking ahead to the rest of the year. The first question was how much we wanted 2026 to look like 2025, and how we would choose for it to be different. What do we want to cultivate and make more time for? What then, do we want to let go of, in order to make more time for it?

We started by revisiting our central ethos, our values, passions and driving motivations. ​
Ethical and personal responsibility, inclusion and collaboration, kindness and compassion, integrity, honesty and sustainability are all key, as is the promotion of lifestyle choices which reflect all these. We summarised by stating that we aim to ‘Do Everything with Love’ but that sort of statement can be vague when life gets gritty so it’s helpful to have unpacked it at the beginning.
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The Earth Heart Central Ethos
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From there, we’ve got our existing four areass of Kitchen, Garden, Creative and Holistic with the fifth area of Yurt being officially added.

​We’ve chosen to visualise these as five petals unfurling from our central values. 
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This helped us sketch out a slight shift of perspective on which of these petals to give more or less attention. We know we want to nourish and cultivate the Holistic whilst pursuing a different emphasis on the Creative. To resource that, there will need to be a little less Kitchen, though we’ll still be excited to cultivate as much Garden as the Welsh valley will accommodate! (It appears to be the wettest February on record so that might be a bit beyond our control.)
Sounds all very theoretical doesn’t it? What’s it actually going to look like? Well, it’s back to those petals and here are some things to expect from Earth Heart as 2026 gets underway:

Earth Heart Kitchen 2026:

We’re hoping the Lake Vyrnwy Farmer’s markets will continue from April and we plan to keep attending the Welshpool Car Boot Sales. ​
As we’re going to put a bit more emphasis in other areas, we’ll be keeping our market stalls to that one weekend a month. We may drop some vegan baking in to the roadside honesty box and there could well be one or two weekend pop up stalls at Dragons down in Llanrhaeadr but that will be a bit more ad hoc as it fits in around increased offerings in Holistic and Creative areas. 
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To keep moving ever more in line with our central values, we’ll be looking to source more organic ingredients, even if we can’t always source completely organic ingredients. This means prices might fluctuate a bit more but we’ll always try and keep healthy, compassionate and sustainable choices as affordable as possible. If we wouldn’t pay it, we won’t charge it!

earth Heart Garden 2026:

It’s not been a hugely promising start to the year for reasons of, well, weather but where there’s a Nik, there’s a way and you’ll still be able to source organically homegrown plants and veggies from our roadside honesty box most weekends through the summer, even if there’s no baking. Who says it has to be all or nothing!?
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Earth Heart Creative 2026:

Expect less jam jars and more journeys! You’ll still be able to find a few bits of up-cycled crafts, illustrated cards, poetry books and the occasional dangly thing in our online store and at Dragons Craft Shop in Llanrhaeadr but we won’t be prioritising new crafts and you won’t find it on our stalls.

​Do watch this space for more sitar recitals though, and hopefully at least one or two new, longer sound journeys, partnered in with our Holistic offerings to include guided meditation. We’ve already shared a new Sound Journey on our YouTube channel this year but we’ve further plans. Watch this space! 
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Earth Heart Holistic 2026:

Annabeth is continuing her study and practice of Reiki, healing and meditation. You can join her at Llanfyllin Library Building on Mondays from 11:30 — 12:30 for a meditation group that got started successfully in January. There will also be three taster sessions at Oswestry Library on Wednesdays 4th, 11th and 18th of March from 16:30 - 17:30, which may yet grow into a second group.  We want to make wellbeing as accessible as possible so all sessions are offered by donation, as is in person, distance and remote healing. If you’re interested, you can find out more and get in touch here.
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Earth Heart Yurt:

The first thing we’ll do to make way for the yurt is prepare the land. We’ll need to borrow or hire a mini digger and some digger skills, all of which will cost money, but we’re heading towards nesting and growing season so not looking to get started on that until autumn anyway, which gives us a whole season of summer market trading to top up the coffers; fingers crossed!
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So that’s the in-depth update on what has been and what shall come.

As we look across the sleet-saturated Tanat valley, the other side of which is shrouded in soggy February mist, it’s almost hard to imagine we’ll be graced by a busy summer season let alone a single dry day. Except of course for the fact that last year absolutely flew by and we know that somewhere under the muddy puddles, The roots are stirring. We know that somewhere, deep in the branches, the sap is rising, which means the buds are slowly, surely swelling and we know that yes, come April, there will be cake.
Our visioning day was fruitful; the process gifted us an opportunity to discuss more complex issues that can easily get skipped over and brought clarity to what sometimes seems like a disparate project. Despite academic and social pressure to choose one discipline and specialise, projects that blur boundaries on the surface, when pursued with authenticity and commitment at heart, can in fact communicate something far richer, deeper and more meaningful than anything that can be neatly compartmentalised into conventional categories. Having a few parallel projects can enrich the fruits of each, and it’s not always productive to pigeonhole creativity into one discipline. Earth Heart is a Human project, which makes it necessarily complex and at times passionately and beautifully messy. Seeing it all organised on paper was very affirming.
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24/1/2026

Maitreya's Mantra Sound Journey

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We were delighted to return to Forever Cacao Club last week, on a particularly special evening as part of the Reset and Restore weekend of wellness in collaboration with Aventurine Wellbeing. It was a real honour to be at the close of the Saturday night cacao dance and offer a journey of sound woven with Nat Bhairav on sitar by Nik and Maitreya's mantra by Annabeth. Maitreya is the Buddha of the future, the enlightening of consciousness that will arise again when our current world system has fallen away into darkness. This piece is therefore a love song to our individual and collective potential, a yearning for the evolution of consciousness itself. We hope you enjoy it!

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19/10/2025

Pumpkin Spice Flapjacks

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The Earth Heart Kitchen has been pretty productive over the spring into summer months but it’s been lovely to slow down a little at the arrival of autumn and have an opportunity for a bit more rest before the next busy season at the end of the year. It’s true, I have already made a batch of mincemeat but I’m very much enjoying the gentle shift of the season as we approach Samhain and the darker months. It’s a real season of reward; so much work has been done, so much energy spent in generating outcomes, yet here we arrive at a time of stillness whilst still benefitting from the abundant fruits of those efforts. We posted about Apple Day back in August (it came really early this year!) and I still had homemade apple spread on my toast this morning. As I write, Nik is preparing the spare demijohn for the job of racking off the cider and on this rather soft and gentle drizzly day, we’ll be enjoying my latest seasonal creation for a teatime treat; Pumpkin Spice Flapjacks!
This time last year, I made mini ‘pumpkin’ pies with our homegrown squash. They were really tasty and we enjoyed them very much… but they were quite a lot of work (filling all the mini pie cases carefully with pastry, blind baking, making the filling, pressing out all the little lids) and actually they weren’t great sellers. Maybe pumpkin pie is just a little too exotic for a Welsh valley?!
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I especially enjoy cooking with our own garden produce so this year, I really wanted to do something sweet with pumpkin again but there didn’t seem much point in going to a lot of effort for mini pumpkin pies for a second year. Flapjack is my go to baked treat which is endlessly variable and flexibly responsive to seasonal availability, however; and so it wasn’t a great leap to conceive the Pumpkin Spice Flapjack. As far as I’m concerned, I invented it. A quick online search will demonstrate that I’m not the first person to have invented it and there are a few different recipes out there, which you are of course welcome to investigate. This is my version though, I hope you enjoy both the baking and the eating!

Pumpkin Spice FLapjacks


Ingredients:
For the Flapjack:
  • 150g Plant Butter (I use Flora)
  • 100g Organic Coconut Oil
  • 200g Demerara Sugar
  • 25g Golden Caster Sugar
  • 1 Pinch of Sea Salt
  • 375g Porridge Oats​
For the Filling:
  • One Small Squash/Pumpkin (about the size of a medium grapefruit)
  • 1 Teaspoon Ground Cinnamon
  • 1/4 Teaspoon Ground Ginger
  • 1/4 Teaspoon Ground Nutmeg (less if grating fresh)
  • 1 Pinch Ground Cloves
  • 1 Teaspoon Dark Maple Syrup
Method:
  1. Start by roasting the squash. Slice it in half and scoop out the seeds (set them aside if you’d like to grow some more!) before placing it in a hot oven (200/220°f) for half an hour or so, until the flesh is soft and easily penetrated with a knife. You don’t need to use oil. Let it cool fully before scooping the flesh out with a spoon. (Depending upon the fruit, I’d highly recommend reserving the skins to be stuffed and re roasted, delicious!)
  2. Blend the pumpkin flesh, maple syrup and ground spices well, you can do that effectively enough by hand with a fork, and then set it aside. I like to make mine the day before and refrigerate it over night, which I think helps the flavours develop and the flesh thicken up a bit. You don’t have to do that though.
  3. When you’re ready to make the flapjack, begin by greasing and lining a baking tray (ideally with sides). Slowly melt the plant butter and coconut oil together in a saucepan on a low heat. Stir in the sugar and then the oats. Let it cook off a little, but not much and keep it moving all the time so the oats don’t stick and burn at the bottom.
  4. Transfer roughly half the oat mixture into the bottom of the tin and press it all down well with the back of a spoon or a small spatula so it’s compacted as much as possible. Gently spread the pumpkin filling on to the top, as if you’re buttering the bottom half of a sandwich. There’s a bit of a knack to doing this with a kind of downwards motion followed by a  gentle rolling out to the sides and corners, which can help stop the oats getting all mixed in to the pumpkin. Having said that, it really doesn’t matter if it gets all mixed in. You could probably mix the whole lot all together before putting it in to the tin in one go if you wanted to… I quite like the ‘sandwich’ method though.
  5. If you’re following me with that method, pat the pumpkin layer down evenly before gently scattering the remaining oats over the surface. Press them down firmly as with the first layer; you may find a bit of pumpkin oozes through or out the side. That’s fine!
  6. Place the tin in a pre-heated oven to roughly 180°c. If you’ve got a fan oven, it may be quicker but I tend to leave mine in for 30 to 40 minutes. It might even take a little longer, especially if you’re anything like Nik and you like your flapjacks with crusty burnt bits!
  7. Now, I like to plan ahead when I bake, so I would recommend letting the whole tin cool completely and then refrigerating it overnight before slicing it. In my experience, this makes it much easier to slice nice, neat square (or oblong!) pieces. If you’re feeling less patient, of course you could do it sooner, but definitely let it cool enough to not burn yourself and be prepared for a bit more crumbling! I say this makes 12 flapjacks… you might like yours bigger or smaller.

Next time I make this, I’ll be sure to have some pumpkin seeds in stock as I think they’d make a lovely topping, scattered onto the surface before baking, possibly even with a maple syrup glaze. I didn’t have any this time though and so I’d say that’s an entirely optional extra! However you make it, we hope you enjoy this little autumnal treat as much as we did!

Incidentally, the last recipe I posted back in February, Squash and Celeriac Soup, also used our homegrown squash, the fabulous Uchiki Kuri. If you fancy something a little more savoury, check it out! Xx


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26/9/2025

Solo Sitar Performance

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Earth Heart Creative had an opportunity to stretch some musical muscles this afternoon in the beautiful yurt at The Cross Keys, Llanfyllin. The warm September weather allowed some audience members to enjoy sitting outside to listen through the open door, but it was also pretty cosy inside! Nik focused on raga Bhairavi in three parts; the first (the alap) an  introduction to the raga, the second (alap jod) bringing in a pulse and the third (jod jhala), a fast piece in teenal (sixteen beats). To close the afternoon, Nik played a short dhun in raga Nat Bhairav, which you can enjoy below:
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With many thanks to Pete of local Art Blanc Combo fame for organising the afternoon, to The Cross Keys for hosting and to all the audience members for joining us! Watch this space for more performances soon!

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21/9/2025

Autumn Equinox Meditation

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Here we are again, back at the time of year where the natural world begins to invite us to slow down, take stock, rest and refresh. The autumn equinox is one of two astronomical points in the year when we find our days have equal hours of daylight and darkness, the other being at springtime.

At Earth Heart, we like to see the autumn equinox as an opportunity for a moment of stillness and reflection, a time to realign and find a similar balance in ourselves before stepping into all the winter season might bring.

This is a new 30 minute meditative practice, which we hope you will be able to find time to enjoy in your own way. The video is fully guided but your meditative experience will always be personal and unique!

If you find the practice supportive or beneficial, please consider supporting Earth Heart Holistic by making a donation at 
Buy me a Coffee.

​Thank you! Xx

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25/8/2025

APPLE DAY

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This week we've been enjoying an abundance of apples from our trusty old tree (we must have wassailed to her satisfaction)... as well as a few foraged local wild varieties too. We've got juice (fresh and concentrate), jam, crumble and some cider on the go...
​Watch this space for a return of the popular Toffee Apple Flapjacks too!
Check out our vlog over at YouTube for a flavour of the full appley fun!
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31/7/2025

Chickpea Update from the Earth Heart Garden!

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Back on the 22nd of March we posted a little update from the garden on our Instagram site to share that the most exciting thing going on in the green house at that time was... Chickpeas! Not a native crop, and not one you'd necessarily expect to flourish half way up the side of a Welsh valley but we like to apply creativity and curiosity to all our ventures so Nik thought it was worth a shot... Here's a little update to fill you in on how it went!

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19/7/2025

Plans Afoot...

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​Earlier his week, as I dotted fresh loganberries into a layer of stewed rhubarb, I mused upon the fact that since rhubarb and loganberry flapjacks were one of the things I made for the launch of the Earth Heart Kitchen in the first days of August 2024, the seasons have performed their inimitable dance once more… and the current incarnation of Earth Heart is less than two weeks away from being one year old! So, reflecting back, it seems appropriately timely that we have some rather exciting news to share with regards to plans for moving forward!

​If you’ve chatted more than once or twice to us at an event of any kind over the last twelve months, it’s likely that our plans to install a yurt on the land next to our cottage will have come in to the conversation. It’s a plan which not only precedes any of the other Earth Heart activities, but is in fact a large part of the reason for their existence; as ways to bring in a little revenue to fund the project. This week, we received notification that our planning application has been validated. 

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Excitement the Day Before Launching Earth Heart Kitchen!
Now, that’s not to say we’ve got planning permission, just that Powys County Council have acknowledged submission of a valid application along with all the necessary diagrams, documents, surveys and figures. That might not sound like much to celebrate, since we’ve still got at least eight weeks to wait for a decision, but it’s been a long time and a lot of paperwork to get even this far. 
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We submitted our pre-planning application two weeks after launching the Earth Heart Kitchen and received feedback from the council a month later. It was after ruminating the contents of that for a good few months that we decided to bite the proverbial bullet and enlist help from people who could calculate turning circles, produce scale drawings and commission ecological surveys. We started working with Glampitect in March of this year and it’s still taken us more than four months to submit! It’s also cost us something in the region of three thousand five hundred and seventy packs of peanut butter cookies, so you’ll understand that it’s something we feel rather excited about! (And no, we’ve not sold, nor even made, three thousand five hundred and seventy packs of peanut butter cookies.)
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Artist Impressions of the Earth Heart Glamp Site
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Proposed Plan
The summary of the application on the wonderfully mythically titled Planning Portal reads “Siting of a glamping yurt with decking for holiday use, bicycle store, bin store & WC/shower structures and all associated works”, which is not inaccurate, but fails to do justice to the full vision. We want the Earth Heart yurt to be a place for people to come and spend some time living a little closer to the natural world, to experience a gentle way of being that has minimal impact and treads the earth a touch more lightly than many of our modern lifestyles do. We won’t be entirely off grid as we’ll rely on mains water but we’ll be installing an accessible compost toilet and power to the yurt will be generated by a small solar panel. Landscaping will focus on protecting the beings that already live on the land and actively encouraging biodiversity with a small native flower meadow as well as perennial food plants for guests to make use of. As the project builds, we’ll be looking for other ways to support visitors to make consciously more sustainable choices too. Our ideas include schemes like discounts for people choosing to arrive by public transport, an electric vehicle charging point, E-bike hire and even a version of the Earth Heart Honesty Box that features a small ‘pay it forward’ food bank and space for other local crafters to showcase their work.
Of course, the project will be relying on local tourism for a majority of its financial viability but we do want it to be a space for the local community too and when we don’t have glampers (we’ll have a wood burner for cosy off-season use), we’d like to make the yurt and its facilities available for day hire by donation. We envisage it as an ideal space for use by healers, for acoustic rehearsals, small workshops and intimate gatherings. You might even have an idea we’ve not yet thought of!

So this post is a bit of a ‘watch this space’ teaser, but we’re quietly confident and we’re certainly creeping ever closer to realising the next stage of our mission, whilst continuing to let the multifaceted entity that is Earth Heart gather pace and grow itself organically from the roots up. Ultimately, Earth Heart is a place making project; we want to craft a space where people can connect more deeply with the world, to experience healthfulness and beauty in a place that feels safe, loved and cared for. Going forward, there will be all sorts of opportunities to get involved and  be part of that vision, we’d love for you to join us on this exciting journey! Maybe, just maybe, our next update will be more exciting still. The notional deadline for a decision is the 8th of September. With crossed fingers, take care until then!

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14/5/2025

(Belated) Beltane Abundance

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Beltane is traditionally a festival of fertility, productivity and the creative union of opposites. Nature is bustling, blooming, burgeoning and bursting with new growth, fecundity and is busy building towards the energetic apex of year. It's the realisation of potential in active, joyful progress. Birds sing, bees buzz and much of the plant world is coming into fullness. It's possibly my favourite time of year, and a joy to celebrate on one or all of a few dates; those of Pagan flavoured faiths may well mark it according to the calendar, Beltane Eve on the 31st of April for bonfires and staying up for revellry ahead of the first of May is favourite. In the UK, the early May bank holiday is always in the first week of the month and then there's the astronomical point of this Celtic cross quarter festival, which actually coincided with the bank holiday in 2025. This year, I didn't manage any kind of celebrating on any of those dates.
Spring Crafts
Fresh Produce
From the last week of March, right the way through April and into the first week of May we were indeed riding the rising wave of these natural energies, very busily bustling between work for Feature Greens and re-launching Earth Heart for the new Season. There were a lot of dates in the diary for both businesses and happily, they all dove tailed very neatly together so that if we weren't preparing for, building or striking a set in South Wales we were preparing for and stocking the honesty box or stalls at markets and fairs in North Wales. There was a sense of determined industry and we relished the satisfaction of realising our goals for these weeks to the highest standard possible. We dressed some great sets, we produced some quality goods from the garden, kitchen and crafts studio... and we had a lot of fun.
I wouldn't hesitate in describing April as abundant. I wouldn't exactly call it spacious though, either. And really, by now, I should know better. Some time in my late thirties, I reluctantly conceded that I am not, in fact, Super Woman. Much as I might like to think I have an infinite capacity for doing everything that interests, inspires and excites me, experience paints a different picture. Whilst I can for a time delight in burning the proverbial candle at ends it didn't even know it had whilst bathing in the torrent of dopamine that is the temporary reward of achieved goals, I do know that is not sustainable. In fact, I can even prove that by quoting the meditation I recorded for my last post in saying "rest is ultimately non negotiable if we're going to sustain all the activity in our often busy lives". But the illusion of my own endless capacity is irresistibly captivating to me and time and again I fall under its spell, only to eventually run out of steam and fall over. My habit is all or nothing, my pattern is crash and burn, so when I dish out sage advice on balance and moderation, you can be assured that I'm mostly trying to drive that point home to myself more than anyone.
Showing Off
So you may by now have guessed, I romped through April, skipped through the first week of May 'just a little tired round the edges', staggered over the finishing line that was a (surprisingly successful) Welshpool car boot sale and patted myself on the back for remembering to take a single rest day on the May bank hol. I then managed half a day of attempted normality before the extent of my exhaustion became increasingly unavoidable and I ended up practically bed bound for the rest of the week.
Thankfully, although I do still have a tendency to over stretch myself, I do get to reap the rewards as well as the consequences and I've created a lifestyle rich in choice. I've also got a lot better at catching myself and knowing tiredness for what it is, which makes it much easier to bounce back from; "no Annabeth, the world isn't ending, you're basically just an over-tired toddler, stop crying and go to bed, it'll all be fine..." So, we closed the honesty box for a weekend, the Beltane abundance of my imagination quickly became Beltane bed days as I did indeed lie in the bed I'd made, softly nibbling on humble pie.
More Baking!
Upcycled Glass
Nest Building
Happily, my days of (slightly enforced) rest rejuvenated me just in time to (quietly) mark a different May festival equally close to my heart. Wesak, on the May full moon, is the Buddhist festival at which we celebrate the Buddha's Enlightenment, as he sat under the Bodhi Tree at Bodhgaya two and a half thousand or so years ago and gently let go of his attachment to Samsara. I know that one of the reasons I find being busy so beguiling is my erroneous belief in the illusion of completion. I honestly seem to believe that I will, on one glorious day, actually get to the end of my To Do List. But of course we all know that the last item on any To Do List is always and without exception 'write next To Do List'. I've already demonstrated my imperfect ability to take my own advice, so perhaps it would be more appropriate to instead close with some advice from the second century Tibetan Buddhist teacher Atisha:
"Since there is never a time when worldly activities come to an end, limit your activities."
Well, that's a bit of a work in progress... But happily he also counsels that 'since you cannot become a Buddha merely by understanding Dharma' you should 'practice earnestly'. And I'm certainly getting plenty of practice, even realising that understanding is a bit slow in the development some times!

I shall be attempting a somewhat more measured May (although we're already half way through!) and June, enjoying the next dates in the season for many of the events we attended in recent weeks. At the top of this page you can find the locations of our upcoming stalls and dates when the honesty box will be open. Do check those before making a special trip, sometimes we have to make changes... To avoid double booking and exhaustion!

Thanks for reading... Until next time! Xx

Spring Baking

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