Lammas Eco Village People - Paul and Hoppi Wimbush

The Gipson family

Plot 4

gipson family

We are the Gipsons, Marianne, 35, Ayres, 34, Mirelle, 4, Ellion, 2, and newly-hatched Luella.

Marianne is a native of Bath, and Ayres is formerly of the California Central Coast; we met nearly five years ago. Ayres was a farmer and Marianne a gardener in the commercial Farm and Garden Department at Esalen Institute, in Big Sur, California. Living within the residential community that supports the rugged and isolated landscape of Esalen Institute was our first experience of living in ‘intentional community’, as well as our first experience of commercial-scale agriculture. Food grown on the five-acre farm and in the half-acre garden was a significant part of the 600 to 900 meals served daily by the Institute’s kitchen. For us, this was also the first, delicious experience of eating truly whole foods – organic produce still pulsing with life at lunchtime following the morning’s harvest. Mirelle’s very first foods, basil and broccoli, were proudly grown by her father on the Esalen farm.

Ayres eventually became the Farm and Garden Manager, until we decided to settle in the UK in December of 2004. In March 2005, Marianne began working for the Recycling Consortium and the Real Nappy Project. She spent the next year speaking publicly and doing home visits working towards reducing the volume of landfill in the area of Bath and Northeast Somerset. Ayres has been self-employed as a massage therapist and teacher since arriving in the UK. He now has a thriving bodywork practice in Bath and London, teaches workshops in Bath and Bristol, and facilitates ongoing development groups for qualified practitioners.

The Gipsons are committed to living in a way that minimises our impact on the planet and the people with whom we share it. We’ve structured our lives to allow us to walk, bike, and take public transport, wherever we need to go. We carefully consider each purchase we make, generally preferring second-hand or ‘freecycle’ and weighing factors such as transport miles, the social and environmental policies of companies, the nature and source of construction materials, how easily the item can eventually become soil, and perhaps most importantly, do we really need it? The vast majority of our waste is compostable and duly composted, and we can smugly (and regularly) say that, as a family of four in a small, urban, first floor flat with zero outdoor space, we consistently produce less than one carrier bag of rubbish per week.

plot 4 model

Plot 4 illustrative model

We are now eager to move on to a new role in our relationship to the land and our global community, to transition from low-impact dwellers to land-stewards. The former, while a necessary stage of environmental awareness, simply forestalls or mitigates destruction, sees humans as separate from and perhaps even bad for the planet, and stands in opposition to consumption. The latter brings forth life, food, and sustenance, sees humans as an integral, beneficial and benevolent function of the ‘ecosystem’ and affirms the abundance that comes from direct relationship to the planet that is both home and provider for us all.

"We belong to no cult. We are not Nature Lovers.

We don't love nature any more than we love breathing.

Nature is simply something indispensable, like air and

light and water, that we accept as necessary to living,

and the nearer we can get to it the happier we are."

~ Louise Dickenson Rich

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