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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?!
Pumpkin Spice FLapjacksIngredients:
Method:
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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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!
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
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!
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. 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.)
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!
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.
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 
For me, meditation is always an experiment. Never the same, not always predictable. It's about building awareness of what is actually happening in my experience, in a world that most of the rest of my time encourages me to be distracted from it. I hope you feel able to find around 25 minutes to join me on an experimental journey into balance and equanimity! 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
We were very excited to offer our latest adventure in sound to the Forever Cacao Club community at the March Cacao Club last Friday! Titled The Birth of Tara, it weaves together the chants of Avalokiteshvara and Green Tara with Raga Bhimpalasi in Alap. Cacao Club is the monthly event held by Forever Cacao, a small, artisan chocolate company who have a direct and highly responsible trade relationship with the Ashaninka community in Peru who in turn harvest, ferment and dry the wild grown, organic cacao that is then shipped to a small Welsh village (not very far from us at all), for alchemising into pure, ceremonial grade cacao and award winning chocolate bars. Annabeth discovered Cacao Club at the end of 2019 and says "it was the first time I'd found a regular place to go sober dancing since I stopped drinking every weekend after losing one of my best mates to alcoholism. The (highly unpretentious) ritual evening begins with a meditative cup of freshly prepared cacao before launching into a few hours of dancing courtesy of the accomplished resident DJ Pablo (who also just so happens to make the cacao), and is rounded up beautifully by a variety of practitioners offering healing sound baths to integrate the evening. Finding Cacao Club was an unrestrained delight and it's become a highlight of my month ever since." So, it was an honour and a privilege for us to bring our latest journey to the event and we hope to do it again some time! For now, you can immerse yourself in the gentle melodic waves of our final practice before the night here (and listen out for Lacey the cat purring her approval at the end)!
Time has been doing that strange thing where it feels long and short all at the same time! In some ways it feels like a really long time ago that we were in full Christmas Market flow... And in other ways I can't quite believe the snowdrops are over, the daffs are bouncing merrily at the roadside and I've been making plans for baking in the first week of April! Our roadside honesty box will be the first place you can find hot cross buns and vegan versions of those little shredded wheat nest cakes... The first weekend of the month. Vegan mini egg variant or candied almonds is the question remaining. "Sounds like you need to run some tests" says Nik!
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