16/06/2026
Hey folks!
Social media is the thing we are really bad at but in the real world we’ve been extremely busy! Seriously we most probably need to pay someone in mead to take on our public side! 🤣
We are fully into our events season now but we chose to have a couple weekends off to do things back at the farm. Our Meadery is running at full capacity right now to make enough mead and our bees are busy producing lots of sweet, sweet honey.
We had an idea and now Clan Afon (the river clan) is born at Afon Mêl.
There is an idea that is firming up of becoming a Bronze Age reenactment/living history group. Though we would really like to also jump forward a bit to include post Roman Briton, say to the time of the legend that is King Arthur!
The good folks who came to our first meet up back in February once again joined together at the farm.
This was a working group to clear the overgrown woodland and break ground on building an area for our own personal use which will include a long hall and sacred space.
We need to move much deeper into the woodland, clear any dead trees and create the space for the hall. The sacred space is going to encompass a stand of trees that includes an ancient blackthorn and a solitary Yew tree that is currently starved of space and light, which we are going to fix.
The poor ash that has died is going to be reduced in size and become a totem/god pole to carve over time.
We need to build a wooden bridge over the stream for access for events. The stream flows through a break in an old stone wall. Here we have the beginnings of one of a number of sacred pools we are planning to make.
There is a lot to do but yesterday we broke ground and made a great start.
Moving forward as a farm we’ve acquired a herd of 15 heritage Gloucester cows. The Welsh clans were renowned for their herds of cattle and for their feasting on said beasts. This is the beginning of our breeding programme to increase the herd and have a ready supply of home grown beef so we can run full feast nights at the farm.
So, we have made a start on our Clan home. We are attached to a fully working honey farm and meadery. 30 new cider apple trees last autumn to make cider in the coming years.
There is a plan to acquire heritage sheep and pigs as time goes on to supplement the beef in feasts. There is a flock of free range chickens for eggs. For those that don’t eat meat there a wide variety of crops being grown too.
All in all this has been a wholly positive start. Next weekend, for the solstice, we are once again meeting to build a bridge but also kick back and celebrate the summer solstice with good mead, good food and great company.
The ultimate goal is to build our clan home, create a fully working events site that we can use and hire out and run regular events at the farm where we feast and drink on the farm from our own produce.
Wassail!
