This week's message comes to you from the wild west of Wales, the dark heart of Pembrokeshire, from a tent on the side of a hill perfectly situated to welcome all the howling winds and raging gales that turn up from the Irish Sea wondering where to start the party. I am spending a fortnight here at the family home of Nigel, Cassie and their three kids, volunteering my time to do whatever needs doing in return for food and a warm welcome. Cassie is away this week so like any normal family the children are playing up, trying to wear down dad's defences and get themselves treats. The only unusual thing really about this family is that they live in a recently established eco-village called Lammas and so are trying to live off the land, off-grid, along with eight other residences.
The Lishmans have five acres of what was simply a big heavily-grazed field with a small conifer wood at the top. Over the three years they have been here it has been transformed into an attractive smallholding with a timber and straw bale roundhouse for hanging out in, an A-frame roundwood barn, a greenhouse made of lime-clad cob, a large vegetable garden and fledging fruit orchard, hundreds of coppiced willow stumps for their basketry rods business, a huge pit which apparently will become a swimming pool one day, a tiered grey-water system, a compost toilet under a canvas pyramid, several ponds, and various chickens, rabbits and ducks, the latter which waddle free all day getting under your feet in an endearing manner, although they get almost aggressively attached to you when you're out throwing feed to the chickens. Nigel and Cassie have clearly been very busy, so busy in fact that they haven't got round to building their actual house yet - they still sleep in a yurt.
Having volunteers stay with them must help a bit to keep things moving forward; certainly I've had no shortage of work thrown in my direction. The main focus of operations at the moment is the barn extension which will provide a solar-heated shower and a cubby-hole for visitors to kip in. The wooden frame for the extension is already in place but it lacks walls and a roof. Until Wednesday it also lacked a stable footing on the southern edge where the ground slopes away but this now has a dry stone wall made of slate below it helping to keep the foundations firm. Luckily it wasn't just me building this wall or I would never have a good night's sleep again wondering when I'd hear about the great eco-barn disaster; I was accompanied by two others, both of whom knew a thing or two about putting one stone on another in a stable manner. By the end of the day I was beginning to feel like I was actually helping rather than hindering. Probably a horribly flawed misconception I know.
Yesterday Nigel and I began selecting the three cross-beams for the roof from a large pile of timber he happened to have lying around, and cutting them down to size; soon enough we'll be whipping them up the scaffolding and slotting them into the roof frame. And whenever it rains, which it does fairly often it has to be said, I go inside the barn and carry on painting their yurt's many wooden struts, and myself to a large degree, with a red waterproofing tincture.
Nigel is an ever-flowing fount of knowledge about many things, environmental, structural, social. I've learned a great deal from him in just these few days. Our first conversation upon my arrival was about the best design of a compost toilet. He's been very willing to answer all my questions about what it's like to live here and how it all works despite having to fend off constant demands and emotional outbursts from his offspring. I've discovered that all nine dwellings at Lammas are now provided with a decent amount of 240V electrical power from their own hydro-electric turbine; the Lishmans also have a small solar panel feeding batteries for their 12V LED lighting. Their water comes from a communally-owned spring, fresh enough to drink although they normally put it through a gravity-filter just in case. A wood-stove can heat the roundhouse but it doesn't take much heating, being incredibly well insulated. They are not self-sufficient in food but grow a fair amount during the summer months.
Tonight I'll be heading to the "Hub Social", a weekly gathering at Lammas' communal roundhouse, and tomorrow I get a tour of the whole site by Paul Wimbush whose brainchild it all is, so stay tuned for the next installment of Eco-Village News.
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