Abel Pearson

Abel is the founder and Operational Director of Glasbren. He’s a food grower and passionate permaculture designer and educator, listening for the stories we need to reconnect to land, food and seed. He’s also a natural builder and a facilitator of deep experiences in wild places. He believes in food growing & foraging as a rich, exciting and accessible pathway to a deeper relationship with the living world, as a livelihood that’s in service to the Earth and for building a thriving culture, healthy communities and ecosystems. 

He has worked on land projects all over the world, and lived and worked at the Ecodharma Centre in the Catalan Pyrenees, a centre for radical ecology and engaged dharma, offering work in nature connection, permaculture and social engagement. He is a nature-based facilitator with broad training, including the Work That Reconnects, the Natural Academy’s NatureWell approach to Green Care and Nature Connection, and his facilitation experience includes The Global Environment Network’s Summer Academy (GESA), Grow Feral permaculture design workshops and residential permaculture, nature connection and ecology courses at the Ecodharma Centre. He loves to write, tell the old stories around a fire, explore rivers and coastline in his canoe & run wild trails in the mountains. He is available for teaching & facilitation, landscape design services, writing, speaking and food and sustainability events.

Steffan Lemke-Elms

Steffan is a food grower, peasant chef, social entrepreneur, and co-director of Glasbren. He grew up working on organic veg farms, trained in horticulture and has devoted his life to sustainability and helping others. Over the past decade, he has auctioned celebrities’ shoes to raise money for children in Africa, worked for the Eden project, recycled discarded wellies left behind at Glastonbury through his charity ‘Reboot’ and established the Sustainable Restaurant Association’s ‘Best Local Restaurant’ in Wales 2019-20. 

He is also a Director of our local wellbeing centre and community hub, the Nurture Centre, where he has helped to establish a community cafe, food heritage events, a community fridge and other food insecurity projects - forging a vital link between the farm and the community we serve. With a special approach to people care, he coordinates our volunteer programme, solidarity veg box scheme and team wellbeing. His peasant dishes & fresh, intuitive cooking style has become famous among volunteers & event participants alike! 

Luisa Oakenshade

Luisa is a director of Glasbren, published writer, yoga & meditation teacher, experienced homesteader, forager and herbalist and a wholehearted mother. Over many years in India, Luisa not only immersed in meditation, but also learnt the pillars of intuitive cooking & trained in Ayurvedic pregnancy counselling, exploring how natural remedies, healing practices & meditation can nurture our health. 

She has run zero-waste workshops and vegetarian cooking classes for children and is unwavering in her devotion to living a zero-waste, organic and low impact life, rediscovering the old ways to live and eat seasonally, simply & within our limits and developing a felt, intuitive, whole relationship with our wild human selves. 

Rose Pearson

Rose is one of our growers and on harvest day, she’s our veg box packing shed manager, making sure that every box leaves the shed full of  fresh and seasonal veg and looking beautiful! She has been a devoted member of the team since the very beginning, helping to shape the garden beds and make the first steps on the garden vision through some hard, wet winter days! Rose is passionate about growing flowers & plants for pollinators and leads our cut flower enterprise, filling the land with radiant colour! She’s a fine goatherd and balances her time with us with helping to run our host farm, Bronhaul Farm! Oh, and she plays dodgeball for Wales, too!

Sophie Pope

After volunteering with us for three years, Sophie is now our trainee, immersing herself in all aspects of ecological food growing & running a community and land-based enterprise. She is a training as a herbalist & is excited by the therapeutic potential of healing green spaces like gardens for mental health and wellbeing and for sheltering vulnerable members of our community. Sophie is also an accomplished writer, capturing beautifully the journey to a deeper relationship with the land, and as well as her own blog, she contributes regularly to ours. Read her work here.