Green Women: ‘I have not had a day where I haven't wanted to go to work'

Carving out a living from the land is something many of us dream of, but few have the courage, grit, and follow through to achieve.

Aimi Pinder may never have imagined such a future awaited her when applying to college, but life has a funny way of surprising us all.

Chatting to Aimi, it is evident that she has always been a deep thinker, with a curiosity that led to her attending the University in Brighton to study Social Anthropology. While she describes this course as interesting, she felt it was not going to provide her with a viable career path.

“After time away travelling in India, and doing some volunteering there as well, I came back to England, and I got a job working on an organic farm 20 miles down the road from where I grew up in the Cotswolds in Gloucestershire.”

This work experience was the starting point of a new direction for Aimi. This was not just a job; it was a calling to work the land, and one that Aimi finds incredibly rewarding.

“Ever since I started working on the farm in England in the Cotswolds, I have not had a day where I haven’t wanted to get up and go to work.”

She is a strong advocate for working in and with nature and the benefits that come with it.

“It’s what we’re meant to do. We’re meant to be outside and in connection with the natural environment, in connection with the seasons, and particularly if you’re then working with the seasons, you know you’re planting at certain times, you’re resting at times.

“I think that’s part of the human spirit and the human experience up until very recently.”

Farming is work that comes with benefits for both body and mind.

“There’s something very, very rewarding about the type of tiredness that’s physically in your bones. It makes you sleep well. It makes you feel good,” says Aimi.

After two years of work on the challenging Cotswold stony landscape, learning how to grow organic crops, she decided to make a move to grow her expertise.

“I really felt like I wanted (to learn) something more on sustainability, kind of the full palette, shall we say, so I came to Kinsale to do the permaculture course.”

Choosing to attend this renowned course provided an important inflexion point for Aimi, as she connected with others on the same trajectory and, in the second year, began to develop her entrepreneurial skills with a community-ed agriculture scheme.

“It was scary, and it was hard; I was 25 years old and didn’t want to fail, so blood, sweat and tears are what that was, but it also was incredibly positive in of knowing that you were feeding young families, that they were growing up on your food, that we could manage to sell all of the produce that we were making within Kinsale. We didn’t have to go anywhere else.

“You know, we won’t go all up the country wherever it was, like as local as local could be and as fresh as fresh could be. So, you know the toil was worth it, but there were hard times.”

Climate change is a concern for us all, but for farmers like Aimi who are at the frontiers, weather extremes can be devastating.

“2012 was particularly difficult. The weather was really difficult, you know, just rain, rain, rain, rain.

“And of course, that’s what we’re seeing more of those years where in any particular year, it’s more and more extreme weather or more difficult prolonged weather that the farmers are having to deal with.”

After five years of farming in Kinsale, she met the one; Lucy, a zookeeper from London.

Together, they went on a year-long adventure, the start of a love story with a happy ending.

“We went to South America for a year, and we had some amazing wildlife experiences, like going into the Amazon jungle and climbing mountains. It was a really fun year.

“It was really good, kind of knowing that if it worked out, then we would want to settle down then on the other side.”

Settle they did, finding seven acres of land and a little house nestled down in the valley in beautiful Ballydehob. The site outlines gave rise to its name.

“If you look on the map, it’s in the shape of a crooked boot, the seven acres that we have here, so that’s why we decided to call it Crooked Boot Farm. “

The farm is not an easy terrain, but Aimi had the expertise and experience to envision what it could become, describing it as “a very mixed land from open rock to some depth of soil. But it’s very sloppy where there’s any soil. So we’ve had to terrace. And you’re working away at gradually putting some kind of permaculture design in, which is about the journey, not the destination.”

With time being of the essence, Aimi put her focus into developing a business that could yield more immediate results.

“We started the nursery because we needed something that we could get on and do straight away because there was no way we were going to make money growing vegetables on this land. It just wasn’t gonna happen, especially not straight away.”

Aimi and Lucy considered “what can we grow that’s positive?” And they landed on plants for pollinators. It was an obvious choice, given the challenges these creatures are currently facing.

“That’s a positive thing, you know. That’s being the change that you want to see. Being the solution rather than the problem.”

With Aimi’s credentials, sustainability is at the heart of her business ethos.

“We made sure that we were as sustainable as we could be. We use peat-free potting compost, and we managed to source some pots made from rice hulls. So we have biodegradable pots as well.”

While they are not certified organic yet, they grow everything using organic principles.

Aimi’s expertise has also been put to good use recently as a facilitator for Education for Sustainability, a social enterprise with the aim of developing climate literacy in schools across Ireland.

“There are some incredibly serious issues which are hitting our planet right now,” says Aimi.

“People may be getting snippets, they may not be getting the full story, or they may be getting something so disastrous that they just turn it off.

“So, through Education for Sustainability, we can go into schools directly to a sitting audience, children. It’s not their fault - everything that’s happened - but they’re definitely going to be part of the solution.

“Education for Sustainability gives them a really good of all the different elements that go into it and gives them a consciousness.”

Her work in this area has resulted in a shift in how she sees herself, and encouraged further activism.

“From being involved in Education for Sustainability, I’m now seeing myself very much firmly in the role of educator; to be ing that information on.

“So, I’m definitely going to be engaging people with those conversations more and more.”

In addition to the informal conversations she has at her stall, selling Crooked Boot Farm produce, including herbs and ornamental plants, she is developing her own educational resources to share with larger audiences.

Aimi is no stranger to hard work, but having two young children, Maeve, four and Síofra, one, has helped create more balance.

“Your priorities change. So, whereas before, I literally just worked, worked until I fell down. And I would have a season where I worked incredibly hard, and then I rested in winter.

“But I didn’t have any dependents, and for a long part of that, I didn’t have a partner either, so I didn’t have to really consider anybody else at all. And now, with kids, the balance is different. And you do have to take your own time where you can, but to be honest, there’s such a variety of different things which are happening within the day, you know, either they’re at childcare, and you’re getting on with work, or they’re here, and you’re playing. We probably take more time making use of the wonderful natural facilities of West Cork, going to a beach, taking the dog for a walk up a hill.”

I ask her how she deals with the negative environmental news and the eco-anxiety that comes with it. She concludes our interview with words of wisdom borrowed from RuPaul, “You can watch these terrible things happening and take them in. They’re important. But try not to stare because you’ll get obsessed with it. Your job is to be the light and the positivity.”

Find Crooked Boot Nursery and Farm produce at local markets during the spring/summer season, including Kinsale, Mahon Point, Bantry, Skibbereen and Schull.

Aimi at [email protected] to book a Gardening for Biodiversity talk.

Learn more about Education for Sustainability here: https://educationforsustainability.ie/