Matt Swan Slightly Less Off Grid

A hill as if drawn by a child

If you are a strict pedant then you may find reading my blog from now on rather uncomfortable. Because although it is titled Matt Swan Off Grid, only the first half is still 100% accurate. My living conditions have, in the last week, altered somewhat, becoming slightly more On Grid. I now lay my head in a slate-roofed two-room building, once a cowshed, then an office, then a storeroom, and now my home. It has (gasp!) mains electrics. There are BT sockets in the walls. And if I perch my laptop on a metal cabinet at the far corner of one room, I can pick up a weak WiFi signal emanating from the main house 15 metres away.

This house is owned by a couple with two kids who took pity on me when they heard that I was being rendered homeless by Snowdonia National Park Authority and offered their outhouse for me to reside in, in exchange for occasional work. For they own a goodly number of acres of fields and woods surrounding the house upon which they graze a small herd of tiny but hardy Scottish sheep (Soay breed) and thus having someone around to fix a broken fence or feed the sheep (and chickens, pigs, dog and snake) when they're away comes in handy.

The dumper truck had been towed out of my bog and up my track, and was back in action

What the outhouse lacks in cooking facilities or plumbing it makes up for in roominess. Unlike my caravan, which may be internally traversed longways in two strides, here I have space for a large sofa and comfy armchair, and coffee table, and a dining table and chairs, and a fridge and lots of cupboards, and that's just one of the two rooms. I sleep on a futon in the other. 

This is the wood that I and my friend had to bring onto my land using my trailer (at least ten loads) because the dump truck couldn't negotiate the steep track.

The rest of it is stored temporarily on friendly neighbours' properties

There are plans to install a sink, with cold water provided from an existing outdoor tap and a drain out to join the main house's drain, and a cooker powered by Liquid Petroleum Gas. There's also an idea to put in a wood burning stove since the existing electric storage heaters cost a fortune to run. (And if you read last week's blog, you'll know that firewood is now something I'm not short of). All of this will no doubt involve drilling holes through the walls which mostly seem to be one-foot-thick slate, so until then I will have to continue to make all my meals in the caravan. Likewise due to lack of a toilet in the outhouse, I'll be timing my bowel movements for when I'm down near my compost toilet.  I will still be spending every day, pretty much, down on the land. It's just a mile or so down a narrow steep lane to my land from my new abode.
  

An old chapel or schoolhouse now used as a haybarn

So these are my living arrangements for this year at least. I'd say I'm still more off the grid than most. But what's important is that I am able to carry on growing quality vegetables on my plot, selling them to those who live around here. The first tiny green shoots of peas, lettuce, cabbage and kale have made a welcome appearance in my compost-filled plastic cell trays. Out in the beds I've sown straight into the soil the seeds of turnip, mange tout and chard, plus seed potatoes and onion sets (basically baby potatoes and onions). Give 'em all a few months of sunshine and showers and they'll be bursting into maturity, becoming plants that offer delicious food for the picking. I can't wait.