Steve

About me:

Well meet Baron Von Hunchenfest, otherwise known as the Rev Chicken Jones, of maybe just 'Oi you!'... but whatever? I am interested in permaculture and sustainable design and all those greenie, environmental things. I consider myself a bit of a philosopher and am thinking about taking up bee-keeping as a hobby/ enterprise.

I am scared witless by the looming reality of Global climate Change but sadly remain one of those optimists who passionately believes we can still save the planet and that we can all make a difference. (Sad but true)

Since 1995 I have lived in a housing co-op in Mid Wales called Chickenshack it is a small hill farm, and home to six of us. We run occasional courses and parties and other such things and have been developing a sustainable land and buildings management plan here for as long. I am working with others here developing a forest garden here and am interested in edible landscape design. I kind of do that for a job/ business designing and building edible eco-gardens for schools, but I have all sorts of other interests as well, some which help contribute to my fairly modest living. I also am involved in the Roof Garden project in Reading, where we are growing 180 species of edible and medicinal plants in a mixed orchard and forest garden on an urban roof top.

I love music, old buildings especially castles and churches, I like the dew on the grass and early morning walks. As another distraction I have recently starting cultivating a new persona as Lemon Phenomenal Strangeways with my house-mate Mike as a music myspace. As a player I have only ever dabbled in music, where as Mike is an old pro, .. as it were. Anyway its been great fun recording some tracks with him, hope to do some more soon. As I mentioned earlier I am deeply alarmed by the general complacent attitudes we still have about the environment and climate change and what for me seems obvious that we need to be really thinking about how we are going to pull things around in the very near future. Despite of saying this I am actually optimistic about what we could achieve out of all this. I dream of a slightly better world, where people, nature, respect and vision come before greed and fear and paranoia!

Part of my little story and life adventure has included quite a lot of travelling, at 16 I went off to Quebec Canada for a year and had the opportunity to explore both Canada and the States a bit. Where I have returned a few times. I have also had a life long fascination with Africa however, and at 27 I sold all my stuff, packed up my flat and everything and bought a one way ticket to Nairobi, with my then girlfriend, partner and fellow explorer Sue. Over the next year or so we hitch hiked across about 14 different countries, mainly in central and Southern Africa, it was a truly remarkable experience. All this took about 18 months and we wound up in the South of Namibia, just as it was becoming an independent nation from South Africa. We even got to attend the celebration festival in Windhoek, attended by a newly freed Nelson Mandela, amongst other global dignitaries. From there we managed to hitch-hike a small plane across the Kalahari desert and arrived in Zimbabwe at Vic Falls. mm What a place. I have been in love with Zimbabwe since, its not a happy place right now and I am very sorry for the strife that is going on there currently. (please contact me if you know me from back then, Chimanamani, Cheese farm and Heaven Lodge)

Whilst in Zimbabwe I was initiated into permaculture, I became manager of a small hill farm in the mountains of Chimanimani where I learned to make cheese and jam. We ended up staying there for two years or more, helped open the ever popular 'Heaven' travellers lodge and generally had a lot of fun.

On returning to the UK, in 1992 I was inspired to start a permaculture inspired housing co-op/ farm, based on the learning from Zimbabwe, and dedicated to working towards a more sustainable and just world. It took two years of serious hard graft, running the 'shoestring cafe' (named after Lonely Planet's Africa on a shoestring) in the Rising Sun arts centre in Reading, to get together 10 grand as the deposit for the co-op. Unsure where to look for the right place, we followed our instincts which took us to Mid Wales.....So was born Chickenshack for that is the chosen name for the co-op.

Since then I have been working for the Centre for Alternative Technology the permaculture association and the risc roof garden. I am currently working as a free lance sustainable garden designer, web master and permaculture teacher as part of a partnership called Sector39