I grew up in Surrey, surrounded by Oak trees and National Trust woodland. From an early age I was out playing in the woods, building camps and shelters, exploring streams and climbing trees. Whilst studying English Literature at university in Cardiff I became involved in student campaign groups about majority world debt, the arms trade, road building, Burma and other causes. I spent more and more of my free time at protest camps, enjoying the closeness to nature, the shared passion and community of the struggle and the simple lifestyle.

In 1998 I attended the first Natty Gathering at Brickhurst Farm in Kent, inspired by their idea of positive impact living. I completed my Permaculture Design Course at the gathering, and was inspired by this more long term and less confrontational pattern of living in community and close to the non-human living world.

I became involved with a group of people also from campaigning backgrounds who were putting together a sustainable living project in order to 'put their own backyards in order' rather than just keep on trying to right the problems of the world by campaigning and protesting. This group eventually bought Steward Wood on winter solstice 1999, and the community moved in in April 2000.

I have now lived, worked and designed at Steward Wood for 7 years. I have recorded an album of accoustic eco-folk songs, planted a forest garden, built many timber framed 'benders' for myself and the community, helped manage the woodland using mostly hand tools and the occasional chainsaw, and I still manage to enjoy the weekly community business meetings. I also work one day a week at 'Proper Job' - a community run recycling and resource centre in nearby Chagford.

I finally registered for my Permaculture Diploma in December 2003, and have been designing, writing up and occasionally having tutorials with Aranya since then. One of my designs involved me assisting in the coordination of the Permaculture Association of Great Britain's 2004 NeTogether. I have been training as a Permaculture teacher and facilitator since 2005.

My areas of expertise are music, low impact construction, composting, permaculture woodland management, and intra-personal and inter-personal development tools.

I've been playing guitars for about a decade, and I'm also learning / struggling / experimenting with an accordion, penny whistles and a djembe. I occasionally also find myself playing crisp packets round the campfire in jam sessions too.

I write songs less and less infrequently. In 2004 I found I had quite a few, and I recorded a lot of them with Aranya at Paddox Farm while I was 'laying down' 'Grassroots Sustainable Futures' for the Earth Stars Permaculture benefit CD. These songs became the 'Stickered Guitar album', which also contains the popular 'Living in a Bender' song; the acoustic anarchist update of a disco classic 'We Will Survive'; the 'Lyminge Forest Victory Song' and a few other whimsical tracks about forest dreams, hitch hiking to Romania and pricing fence posts. This CD is available online here! Alternatively you could arrange to come and visit Steward Community Woodland and persuade me to play them 'round an evening fire.

I have continued writing songs since then - about falling in and out of love, about compost loos, living in circles, not using toiletries, travelling, our community business meetings.... I still play the occasional crisp packet round the fire too, and one day I may well get round to producing another album, perhaps to be called Belief and Energy...