Me: An introduction

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(Edited)

Hello Hive,

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My name is Alice and I live in the depths of the East Anglian countryside in the UK. I grew up here amongst a brilliant community of alternative, like minded people that were a huge part in developing my love and respect for nature, the outdoors and a sustainable, off-grid lifestyle. However, at the age of 19 I was desperate to seek adventure with bigger, bolder, more exciting thrills. I spent a couple of years backpacking in Australia and Europe where I basked in beautiful landscapes and ecosystems, worked hard, partied hard and met wonderfully inspiring people and communities along the way.

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Grampian Mountains, SA, Australia

I always wished that I could be on the road for the long haul but I suffered a terrible homesickness. I was missing the comforts of friends and family. I also wanted to further my education, so I returned to England to study Zoology in London where I could continue to live out my wild youthfulness in closer proximity to my community network.

My years as a student were as good as they said they'd be. I thrived academically, deepening my understanding and love of all things living and became totally enamored with insects in all their weird and wonderful diversity.

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Scorpion fly, Maoa Shan, China

While committing temporarily to life in the UK, I did everything I could to ensure my itchy feet were also being satisfied. After my second year, I traveled to northeast China, Heilongjiang province, at the behest of one of my tutors to spend two months collecting samples of ground beetles for his research.

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Butterfly and Lily, Maoa Shan, China

I then spent my third year studying in Vancouver where I was able to properly get stuck into practical ecology, conservation and entomology (insects!).

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University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Unfortunately, my homesickness got to me again and I had to turn down an amazing opportunity to work as a research assistant studying a species of gregarious spider in the rainforest in Ecuador. It was a hard decision but London was calling me home! My Masters year was mostly spent holed up in a lab where I was researching the complex chemical relationships between pollinators and plants. More precisely, I was exploring how plants manipulate insects by spiking them with seriously addictive psychoactive drugs to keep them coming back for more - a fascinating insight into the world of chemoecology.

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Bumble bee love

Subsequently, I had my first (and only) co-authored paper published which ended up being the height of my academic achievement. I quickly recognised that I wasn't prepared to do what it takes to be an academic researcher. Although I love the process of knowledge acquisition, I didn't want to spend my life trawling through scientific papers and boggling over statistics nor did I much fancy the pressures of securing funding. The bits that made me tick were when I was outside getting my hands and knees dirty or where I could just stop and marvel at whichever little critter had stolen my attention. So I gave up thinking about PhD's and looked to new horizons…

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Ladybird and pupal case, Vancouver, Canada

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Ladybird pupa, Vancouver, Canada

Not long after, I moved to Bath where I started a full time volunteership as a countryside ranger with the National Trust, the biggest conservation charity in the UK. Somehow, I had managed to join the best team I could have asked for - they were all super supportive, progressive in their ideas about conservation and public engagement and wonderfully silly. I was eventually offered a job and had three super fun years being humoured in all my quirky, creative ideas. My days were spent learning about practical conservation, building rural paths and rustic steps in the countryside, fencing and cattle herding, installing benches and signposts, creating woodland play areas and taking kids on bug hunting adventures. It was a dream!

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My guilty pleasure

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A fungus that I never identified

And then the pandemic happened. It was pretty life changing for me in the sense that it catalysed a major shift in my priorities. I was put on furlough for most of the year and, like many folks, took to my garden (and baking) with fervor. It was a rented house and the garden was a total bomb sight when my friends and I had moved in. I spent the first few days just litter picking (bags of the stuff!). I reduced trees to let light in, cut hedges, dug beds and built more raised beds to grow veg in. I created a herb garden rockery out of all the rubble and breeze blocks I found around the place and even built a table and bench out of pallets so that we could comfortably lounge in front of the blazing chiminea in the evenings.

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My crappy breeze block rockery

It wasn't my first growing project but it was the most productive and I relished every mouthful of fresh produce that I ate. The gratification earned from eating the courgettes I had grown, particularly after the great efforts spent transforming the garden, felt insurpassable. Growing food felt great and a new passion was arising in me.

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Homegrown lunch

During this time, I decided to invest into studying permaculture. It felt like the natural direction for my interest to take. The coming together of all my life's experience, skills and interests - the balance of sustainability, environmental care and regeneration, food growing and community building. I enrolled on an introductory permaculture design course with Shift Bristol which was tutored by some of the UK's most inspiring permaculture visionaries and we toured virtually (due to covid restrictions) around some really cool projects - forest gardens, heritage seed saving, community recycling and upcycling projects etc. It was great to see so many people working hard on innovative projects that directly impact their local communities and ecosystems in ways that really strengthen and build resilience.

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Amazing organic and heritage seeds from Vital Seeds, UK

Despite my dedication to the garden and learning about permaculture - my mental health deteriorated significantly during that time for all sorts of other reasons. My homesickness hit me hard, even though I was only on the other side of the country this time. So, when I was finally made redundant at the end of 2020, I packed up my life and hightailed it back to the family ranch in Norfolk where my nearest and dearest are all in arms reach.

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My lovely partner, @Notears, and I at our raised bed in the Grapes Hill Community Garden, Norwich

And here I am. Re-imagining life back in the homelands with my dreams of permaculture, food growing and community building. I am slowly reconnecting with the wonderful grounded community of land loving nutters that I left all those years ago, which, to my delight, feels very welcoming and comfortable. I am endlessly grateful for being able to be with my family in this beautiful home that my mother has created. Her life's labour of love.

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Rainbows over the yard at the family homestead, Norfolk

From here, I am hoping to help provide as much sustainable self-sufficiency for my family and community as possible. My first mission has been to reinstate the rather overgrown and underused vegetable garden. Despite all her best intentions, Mum has never had the time to really invest into it, so I have claimed it as my own. I have already had a great growing season this year, feeding all the family with fresh greens but it really needs a full restoration to maximise the use of the space.

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Veg patch at the family homestead

Water collection and composting facilities will also need improving and expanding and I have been getting my head around preserving and storing foods. On the sidelines, I am also gently planning a bigger permaculture project that will help to facilitate outdoors education and eco-therapy for my local community - whether that will ever get off the ground or not is anyone’s guess but it’s nice to dream and I am making small steps towards realisation.

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Our little rustic campsite - just calling out to be permacultured!

My wonderful brother, @basilmarples, introduced me to the blockchain many moons ago when steemit was the place to be. The blogging scene didn’t really take off for me then, life was too hectic to engage in a fulfilling sort of way. But I feel like I’ve finally landed and that I’m actually doing some cool stuff that I want to share. I have already been feeling super excited about the wealth of knowledge, motivation, inspiration, and support that there is here in the Hive community and I’m really looking forward to connecting with ya’ll.

Sorry about the long old life story! I wasn’t expecting to write so much but I just let it flow and I guess it all felt relevant to where I am now. Thanks for reading though - please do leave a comment if you feel compelled to do so, it would be lovely to hear from you.

Big love

Alice



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36 comments
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good to have you on hive Albo! soon we'll be funding your veg growing and feeding the world! :o)

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Hello @thealbytross! This is @proteancreator from @ocd (Original Content Decentralized) team, and I just want to say that that's some fine introduction post you got! 🐝

The little critters you featured are really something, and I think you should really make a go for the Amazing Nature or even the Ladies on Hive community or you know, subscribe to other Communities you like, so you could share your blogs there to have a wider range of audience 😄. Check out the Communities Incubation Program for more info.

If you are looking for tips and information as a Hive newbie, click here: Newbie guide. If you have questions, you can hop into Discord server and we'll gladly answer your questions ✨.

Also, letting you know, since content on the Hive platform is monetized, using other people’s ideas or images could be considered as an offense and which is also viewed in a serious light on the blockchain. Here is a useful collection of resources about how plagiarism and abuse is viewed and handled on Hive.

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Hello! Thanks for the curation! Really appreciate it. big love x

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Hello sweetheart!
This is a good read, it was a pretty good length I think (not as long as you made it sound).
I love you!

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hi Alice, how absolutely wonderful to meet you 🙏 I can't tell you how much I enjoyed reading your post and back story. You certainly have lived a fascinating eco-journey to date. I've been on Hive for 6 months myself, mostly writing creative pieces with the odd discursive one thrown in for good measure, and am usually to be found in the comments where I love to take time out to chat with authors and other curators. I can vouch for what a fantastic place it is to let your creativity spark and to make so many lovely connections with other writers. I'm just down the drag in Berkshire myself hee hee. I love your relaxed conversational style of writing and look forward to reading many more posts of yours in the future and following you in your journey to transforming your Mum's homestead. Welcome to the family💖

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(Edited)

Hi Sam, really lovely to meet you too! thanks for reading and commenting, I really appreciate it and glad you enjoyed it! I was a bit worried I had gone on a bit 😂 Sweet that we're practically neighbours too 😁 I've never spent much time in Berkshire but you must have the Chilterns right on your doorstep - lucky you! It's lovely to hear such positivity about your experience here - in fact everywhere I look it's just positivity and support - it's pretty amazing. Thanks for being so complimentary about my writing. I've never been much of a writer - except for when i was studying - but I hoping that being part of the community will be a wonderful incentive for me to actually document and share my adventures and thoughts a bit. We'll see how I go! Super excited about getting stuck in though. I hope you're having a lovely day. Big love 🙏❤️

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It's great to have you here. And it was a super read...really wonderful! Your passion for sustainability, ecology, education, insects (lol), and family really shine through. When people share who they are on a page, authentically, it makes others want to read what they have to say🙏💗 Keep doing you. I look forward to staying in touch...I'm following you now so hopefully, I'll pick up on more of your pieces 🤗

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Thanks for all you super lovely compliments! It definitely helps to get that kind of feedback for the old motivation 😋 I genuinely just enjoyed writing it so its a win win. definitely lets keep in touch, its lovely to make a friend! thanks for the follow, it will be nice to have some folks with me for the journey! Hope you have a great weekend. Big love 🙏❤️

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Your story is very beautiful and all these photos are beautiful, except the scorpion fly hahaha
Few insects scare me, and this is one of them. Have you heard of the Cavalo-do-cão ?

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Thank you so much for your lovely words. I love photography and capturing insects in particular - but I've never actually invested in a good camera - I plan to soon! Yeah Scorpion flies are definitely pretty scary evil looking - although I just think they're badass🤘 and totally harmless! I hadn't ever heard of Cavalo-do-cão but I just looked it up - that is an absolute beast of a wasp! do you have them where you live? Are you in Brasil? And they parasitise spiders 😱 So cool. Parasitoid wasps are probably my favourite group of insects - they are stunningly elegant in their physiology! And super important for their ecology. Thanks for showing me this, it's made my day!

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Oh thanks so much for the reply :)
Well, thank the gods I haven't seen those wasps around here. But on a little trip I took years ago, I ended up seeing one up close. Believe me, I was really scared and ran away xD

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I would be way more scared of the spider its laying its eggs in! Those extra two legs send them way off the top of the creepiness scale 🕷️😳

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(Edited)

Hey @thealbytross a very warm welcome to the community, what a beautifully crafted introduction love it.

You have had a few exciting student experiences I can see, I love the family homestead, what a great lifestyle living the sustainable dream ha ha, I look forward to reading more exciting stories of your journey.

Take care an have a lovely day. !LOLZ

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How often should you tell chemistry jokes?
Periodically.

@thealbytross, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of @jaxsonmurph
Use the !LOL or !LOLZ command to share a joke and an $LOLZ. (1/2)

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Thanks so much for reading and responding - it really means a lot. I'm not sure I'll be able to keep up that level of quality - it took me a fair amount of time to write it! ha. I definitely made the most out of my time as a student - I took (almost) all the opportunities I was given and it was a wild ride. It is a lovely spot here where I am now. I never thought I'd be back but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else! There's lots of work to be done before the sustainability dream comes to fruition but the journey is all part of the fun. Super happy to have your support along the way. Hope your having an excellent Friday 🙏❤️

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That's some intro Alice! Love the lifestyle choices you have made! I met my ol' Hyumi (@barge) when he came to stay in the rural Portuguese community where I was born and I know he yearns for something similar now that we are back in urban Scotland.
Welcome and good luck 👍
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Thanks for the warm words welcome @flamistan. Living and working the land and building community is really the only thing that seems to have meaning to me in all the madness of life. I hope that you find the community you are dreaming of 🙏❤️

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Welcome @thealbytross, I’m sure you’ll find what you love here. Hopefully @basilmarples has given you the lo-down on Hive already :)

Great intro post - loving your travels! (Wish I did that!)
Take care and happy posting

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im trying! hehe. but its no easy introduction! its up to every individual to see if it suits them at the moment....I hope that some day it becomes even more accessible : )

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Cheers @ashtv! I couldn't ask for a better mentor 🙏 I'm already finding loads of juicy stuff to get my teeth in to.

Ah man dem travels were the good old days! I had been planning to be in India last year until the world came crashing down. One day I hope to make it to the Himalayas 😍 if I can just do that then I think ill be satisfied and can settle into a more local life!

Big love ✌️❤️

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Amazing pictures, looks like you enjoy a pretty complete life, thanks for sharing the positive vibes

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