About
Blaeneinion is a conservation valley and beaver sanctuary in the hills above the Artists Valley, near Machynlleth in mid Wales. Sharon Girardi has grown, prepared and stored her own food here for forty years, and teaches Back to the Land on the land it came from.
Everything on the course was learned right here, the hard way, over forty years of doing it: looking at land and reading what it will give you, building soil, the garden and the polytunnel, sowing and saving seed, the harvest and the larder filled against each winter. It isn't theory off a shelf. It's what actually keeps a person fed through a wet Welsh year.
Sharon teaches it in person, in small groups, because some things only really land when you're stood in the garden with your hands in the soil. The valley is a beaver habitat too, so the whole place runs gently: a septic system to look after, non-toxic soaps only, and the land and water kept clean.
She teaches the way she does everything else: plainly, and honest about the parts nobody puts on the postcard. The aim isn't a perfect, magazine version of the good life. It's a real one you can actually keep going, year after year.
