TSU Question of the fortnight response- Practical steps to fulfill my deepest desires….

ATM I desire to live a simpler life which is a lot less dependent on my earning fiat income, and a life that involves my doing more physical work to meet my basic needs, and all of this in conjunction with other people.

To this end I’ve taken some practical steps recently arranged to visit two places I might potentially move to later this year, both of which I found on Diggers and Dreamers.

The first is this a relatively young Permaculture project in the south of France near Bordeaux which put an advert saying they’re looking for long term residents to build businesses on their 100 acre organic farm.

I dropped them a line, mentioning blockchain, which they knew very little about but seemed very interested in, and I’m heading out there in mid April to work for 10 days.

I have a really good vibe about this place, as this was all very relaxed to arrange: it only took a few Whatsapp messages to organise and I get the feeling I’m on a very similar wave-length to these people.

I’m flying out, which feels a bit odd, but the connections are super easy from Gatwick, and this wasn’t really an issue with them, they’re obviously pragmatists, which I like.

The second place is Tipi Valley in Wales – these don’t advertise but their very minimal outline on Diggers and Dreamers said they’re open to new members, so I dropped them a line about potentially living there.

They took a while to respond (more than a week), so I’d given up on this but the other day I had a friendly enough message drop into my mail box inviting me to stay and giving me the ‘rule’s, although they try and live without rules as far as possible.

TBH I’m more reticent about going to Tipi Valley, not so much because of the damp, it will be damp!
More because you have to stay in the ‘grand tipi’ and it all sounds a bit open and not very private – residents build their own ‘low impact dwellings’, but it sounds to me like there’s this drawn out norm where you have to ‘live’ very openly first of all, kind of like a right of passage.

It’s quite off-putting. Then again, maybe I’m over-thinking it, then again maybe the 'not quite right' vibe I'm getting is because this place is not quite right for me!

I think the thing to do is to go the South of France, and if it all clicks, head over there for a long-term visit, if not, go check out the Tipi Village.

I can’t imagine a visit to a valley in Wales in March would be that much fun anyway, May is most definitely more like the time.

And the dreaded moving-on timetable

Giving that I plan to be out of here, possibly as early as August, I also need to sell and give away what I can and get my house rented out which means fixing up a few things and painting it, so I’ve knocked up another dreaded timetable of things to do at the weekends…..

Max fun!

Disclaimer - all of this might be entirely hypothetical, there's every change I'll still be here in Hereford this time next year!