Sense-Making in a Changing World Farm as Community: Growing Belonging with Abel Pearson and Morag Gamble
In this episode of Sense-Making in a Changing World, I sit down with Abel Pearson – permaculture educator, community food grower and co founder of Glasbren, an award winning community-supported agriculture project in rural Wales.
Glasbren began as a three acre permaculture designed market garden and has now moved to Lord’s Park Farm, a 134 acre National Trust property on the cliffs where the Taf and Tywi rivers meet the sea in Carmarthenshire.
Abel and his family are the first permaculture based tenants on a National Trust farm, creating a flagship project for nature friendly, community facing farming.
In our conversation we explore:
- Abel’s journey from woofing and natural building to discovering permaculture as “the origin” of everything he now does
- How Glasbren grew from a three acre CSA into a whole farm vision at Lord’s Park
- Designing a landscape and an organisation with permaculture ethics: earth care, people care, fair share
- Indigenous and historic food systems as deeply “permacultural” ways of living in reciprocity with land
- Beingof a place when you may not be from there – and how growing food together becomes daily practice in belonging
- Welsh language, culture and land
- Community supported agriculture, food security and the fragility of our current food system
- Wales’ shift toward agroecology, social value payments for farms, and support for small scale growers
- The practicalities of funding and holding a diversified social enterprise farm
- Volunteering at Glasbren as a pathway into community, wellbeing and climate action
- Family life in the middle of a farm that is also a community hub
Abel’s reflections weave beautifully with the core of permaculture education – that we are learning a way of seeing and relating, not just a collection of techniques. This episode is an invitation to slow down, listen to place, and see farms and gardens as sites of cultural and ecological repair.
Glasbren website: https://www.glasbren.org.uk
_________________________________
I'd love to hear from you. Text me here.
_____________________________
Subscribe to this podcast, share widely, leave a comment and a 5 star review to help these stories myceliate far.
This podcast is hosted by Morag Gamble, founder of the Permaculture Education Institute - the leading-edge international online school for integrated permaculture design, education, leadership and [pr]activism.
- Save 50% on Morag Gamble's Permaculture Educators Complete Collection (available only 7-31 Jan, 2026)
- Talk with Morag here about this program.
Find more of Morag's conversations at the International Permaculture Festival of Wild Ideas.
This podcast is broadcast from a solar powered studio in the midst of a permaculture ecovillage on Jinibara & Gubbi Gubbi country.