Bealtaine Cottage, An Inspiration For A Healthier World

Yesterday on Youtube I found a very inspiring woman that lives in Ireland. Sixteen years ago she purchased a large piece of property that was all grassy field. She purchased this property to prove to people what one woman can do to help the earth’s health.

She was not happy that Ireland was taking down forests. She wanted to support life – which means plants, animals, insects, soil, water. All of these elements everywhere need to be kept healthy if we want to survive. We need bees to pollinate our produce, healthy water for ourselves and the produce we grow, birds to keep pest population down, trees to clean our air, etc. If any of these elements are missing, our ecosystem is at risk. All of nature is what makes life be able to survive and the way we are living is killing nature.

So anyway, I was mesmerized with her videos on Youtube. She has single-handedly transformed acres of grassy field into an oasis. On one of the videos I watched, she recorded herself standing near a grassy field next to her property and there wasn’t much sound of life. She then walked over to her property and you could hear many birds singing and other signs of life. Every little nook and cranny on this property is tightly planted with trees, flowers, herbs, fruit and vegetables. There’s even a couple of ponds.

You’d think the maintenance to this place would be completely overwhelming, especially for just one person, but she says she mostly lets nature do it’s thing. When she sees one plant crowding out another, she prunes the larger plant. She uses some prunings in her wood stove to warm her cottage and some she puts some in piles on her property to give critters homes. She has compost piles in many areas of the property that she uses to dress her plantings. The way she plants, is called permaculture (this is the same thing as food forests that I referred to a few posts back). When an area is planted like this, nature does much of the maintenance and the plants are healthier than if we were to do a conventional garden.

She planted this entire property with cuttings and seedlings that she grew herself, so it was not like she went to a nursery and invested massive amounts of money into getting this planted. She just kept planting and growing. Her motto is “Plant like your life depends on it, for it does!”. I have seen the light and am adopting her motto.

Another reason she is an inspiration to me is that she is now in her 60’s. She started this at age 47, all by herself! I am an older woman (55), so this means a lot! She now has this large oasis that she created – to me it looks like wonderland!! To make a healthy meal for herself, all she has to do is take a walk on the property and harvest.

To my delight, I found she has a blog right here on wordpress. I noticed however, that she hasn’t posted in her blog since January this year so it appears that she is more active on Youtube. Last night I was watching videos of hers from the past week.

I hope she inspires you as much as she does me. The more people it inspires, the better health our earth will be in!

Please let me know what you think. I’m absolutely amazed and every day I’m going to work towards the goal of making the piece of property I live on healthy and productive. I should have no problem because I think it’s only about 1/3 acre. If she can do multiple acres, I can do a measly 1/3 acre. I ordered seeds yesterday and there’s a plum tree here I’ll be taking cuttings of. I planted peas and spinach outdoors and started cantaloupe, watermelon, mammoth sunflowers and cucumbers indoors. I already have some cosmos, African daisy, lavender and Calendula started from seed. So I’m on my way and I’m getting many more ideas all the time.

I truly feel this is such an important investment of time during these difficult times and it’s also being proactive to issues that could come up in the future.

~ Monica

Here are a few of the products available with my art printed on them (by clicking an item you like, it will take you to the page where it’s available). They’d make great gifts to yourself or someone you love and would help support my dream of becoming a full-time writer and artist. Any purchase would be SO appreciated, but if you don’t want to or can’t, that’s totally fine. Just stopping by and reading my blog is a huge support.