Grow a Resilient Future with Bryn Cynefin

Aim

Help us build a barn - the heart of our regenerative permaculture farm growing food, skills and community resilience for future generations

Bryn Cynefin is a grassroots, people-led response to the ecological and climate emergency.

This is a project that has been growing since 2011, when Pete and Lily began researching and creating their award-winning ecological documentary, wetheuncivilised, A Life Story.

Today that vision is taking root as a regenerative, off-grid permaculture farm, designed within Wales' pioneering One Planet Development framework and the 2015 Future Generations Act (Wales).

This isn't about preparing for some distant future. It's about creating practical solutions TODAY.

We've already laid the foundations. Now we need your help to build the heart of the project.

We're raising £25,000 to build a central agricultural barn and processing space — an essential hub that will allow us to grow, process and store food, create land-based produce, share skills and resources and support a resilient local economy as part of our CIC, Cynefin Kitchen.

This project is building more than a barn, it’s about building resilience, building possibilities, building something to support our community now, and for the generations to come.

Where will your money go?

We've got this far; now we need your help to move into the next stage.

The main focus of this crowdfunder is an off-grid processing and storage barn.

This off-grid barn will become the heart of Bryn Cynefin.

• a place where produce is processed and stored
• products are made
• skills are developed
• resources are shared
• possibilities are created and explored

Alongside the barn, we're developing the renewable energy and water systems needed to run the farm off-grid. 

Solar power will provide energy for refrigeration, processing equipment, irrigation and lighting, while rainwater harvesting, storage, swales and gravity-fed irrigation will help us manage both drought and increasingly intense rainfall.

The barn will turn what we're already growing and doing here into something that benefits not only us, but the wider community.

Our long-term vision is for Bryn Cynefin to be both a working regenerative farm and a place where people can experience these ideas in practice.

Already, we're growing perennial, drought-resilient crops. We've planted more than 3,000 trees and hedgerows to restore biodiversity, protect soils and create habitats. We're developing closed-loop systems to manage the land, providing local food production, helping our community become less dependent on fragile global supply chains, by building community connections and community resilience .

One Planet Framework

The whole project — the land management, the business and our proposal to live onsite — has been designed within the Welsh One Planet Development framework. 

This year, 2026, we hope to be joining a growing movement of low-impact pioneers across Wales, working with the land to create a sustainable future .

The principle is straightforward (although the practice, of course, is more complex!): meet more of our needs directly from the land, operate off-grid, generate renewable energy onsite and reduce our ecological footprint towards globally sustainable levels.

Bryn Cynefin is completely off-grid, using renewable energy for power and heat. We also harvest and store all the water used onsite.

All of this is part of an extensive 5-year business plan and Land Management Plan which has been submitted to our County Council as part of our OPD planning application.

The foundations

Bryn Cynefin is a practical response to the converging crises of our time, built on our six pillars for a thriving culture:

Healthy Body — Good food and nourishment from the land.

Healthy Community — Sharing skills, resources, food and time.

Healthy Economy — Creating livelihoods that support people, place and the local economy.

Healthy Home — Living lightly, using renewable energy, using less and meeting more of our needs from the land around us.

Healthy Land — Restoring soil, biodiversity and the ecosystems that support us.

Healthy Mind — Connection to land, nature, each other and ourselves.

The bigger picture

“The actions we take in the next ten years, to stop ecosystem collapse, to recover and regenerate nature and to restore people’s health and wellbeing are now critical.” — Food, Farming and Countryside Commission

At this time of ecological and economic instability, we believe farms can be places of possibility — places to inspire, inform and initiate practical responses to the climate emergency.

Bryn Cynefin is our attempt to put that belief into practice.

We're bringing food production, ecological regeneration, land-based livelihoods and community resilience together in one place. (The barn can be seen below in grey, where the trackways converge - view the map enlarged).

The aim is simple: to build resilience by rebuilding our relationship with the land, with each other and with the living world.

A place to belong

The Welsh word Cynefin — often translated as “habitat” — speaks to something deeper: a sense of belonging.

It describes the relationship between people and place; how our surroundings shape identity, wellbeing and culture.

For us, Cynefin is about recognising that life exists through relationship — between soil, water, the living world, people and place.

This guiding principle sits at the heart of everything we're growing here.

What we're growing

Under the umbrella of Cynefin Kitchen CIC, we are using a Community Interest Company structure to bring together four interconnected enterprise strands. The barn will give us a dry space with solar power and water to process and store what we produce:

Forage — herbal teas, tonics, balms, condiments and wild foods.

Field — fermented foods, winter salads, eggs, cultivated herbs, edible flowers and perennial food systems.

Forest — shiitake mushrooms, timber products, biochar and woodland crafts.

Hearth — workshops, community events, skill-sharing, wellbeing and ecological education.

Rather than relying on one crop or income source, these different strands work together across the seasons — creating a diverse and resilient small farm economy.

The nitty gritty

We bought Bryn Cynefin in December 2022.

Since then, we've been slowly turning what was predominantly grazing land into a productive, regenerative landscape.

So far we have:

• secured the land outright
• built the main access track and hardstanding
• planted more than 3,000 trees and hedgerow plants, creating wildlife corridors and restoring habitat
• secured full planning permission for agricultural infrastructure - barn, workshop, trackways
• moved onto the land in a small off-grid cabin so that we can carry out the work of establishing the farm
• begun transforming grazing land into a diverse regenerative landscape
• established a heritage fruit and nut orchard
• inoculated more than 200 shiitake mushroom logs
• developed a comprehensive five-year One Planet Development Management Plan
• built a new workshop and begun improving our existing agricultural infrastructure
• secured £20,216.26 of Welsh Government funding
• groundworks for our commercial polytunnel are well under way.

We've put everything we have into getting Bryn Cynefin this far.

Now we need your help to build the the infrastructure that will enable the project to move into the next phase.

Why this matters

We believe that the wellbeing of the future is tended by our actions today.

Our food and economic systems are increasingly fragile. Rather than feeling powerless in the face of that, we want to grow a practical solution: A small farm that produces food, restores soil and biodiversity, runs on renewable energy and creates opportunities to share skills and build resilience together as a community.

Change doesn't happen through one big idea; change emerges through thousands of small, practical, committed acts of care and creativity

Bryn Cynefin is one small piece of the picture. 

We can't find a way through the ecological crisis alone.

Life is relationship.

With the land.
With each other.
With everything that keeps us alive.

And resilience grows through the relationships we build.

If you'd like to be part of what we're growing here, we'd really appreciate your support. 

Let's grow a thriving local ecosystem that can continue to feed bellies, heads and hearts for future generations.

Donate if you can.

Share the campaign if you can't.

Either way, thank you for coming this far with us.

For a resilient future,

Lily and Pete  xx

With special thanks to

Filming:
Jonathan Tait @taitphotos
Adam Prosser

Music
Carrie Tree @carrietreemusic
Sophia Efthimiou @singing_ourselves_home
Cosmo Sheldrake @cosmosheldrake

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made by 10th November 2026 at 3:49pm