Since deciding to leave our current home we’ve been under some pressure to find somewhere to live that is affordable, has land, possibly space for our neighbours (so we can share the load and not feel so isolated) and ideally a woodland nearby.

We’ve looked at a lot of properties, 100s online and then a fair bit of driving around Wales to physically view some which given our current location of Cornwall has meant some major miles. We’ve even got as far as nearly buying somewhere, spending money on surveys and lawyers but pulling out of the bidding – formal tender – process at the last minute.

Recently through a set of rather ’small world’ interlinked happenings we found out about a community near Lanidloes, one of our target towns, called Old Chapel Farm. Initially we were dismissive as we didn’t want to live in another community but after speaking with someone who had been there it sounded right up our street as they were simply looking to rent out a holding around a mile away from the main site with 6 acres space for two families.

I went up to see it this week and was really taken with it all. Infrastructure-wise the main site is well established but in terms of a community it is early days. They have lots of plans and it’s clear the energy is there to implement them. Currently there are only a couple of full-time residents other than the family that owns the farm but they also have a constant stream of WWOOFers; they had 100 last year apparently.

The place we’ll be living is a mile or so  away over mainly flat ground and is actually the house they first lived in before buying the bigger place. We’ll be left to our own devices with no pressure, other than self-inflicted, to get the land yielding. We will also be welcome to help out wherever we want such as the infrastructure jobs like helping to manage their brand new 20 acre woodland recently purchased off a neighbouring farmer.

The smallholding itself has the following features:

• Very rustic oak beamed house that is apparently the oldest house in the local area. it has a super-modern wood pellet boiler, a Rabyurn for cooking and a wood burner in the lounge.
• Large converted barn, currently open-plan
• Standard barn
• Workshop with two benches
• Large duck pond
• Half size polytunnel
• Loads of established growing beds
• A willow coppice
• Lots of small fields, one a hay meadow, another fox proofed and containing chicken houses

We’ve agreed in principle to move in March/April so now have the task of once again getting school places, packing and moving (both home and business).

We’re very excited especially as we feel we’ll be getting the best of both worlds with some aspects of community life still available to us but also having some distance and being left to our devices.

We had a huge disappointment over the weekend.

32 acres of woodland came up in Pembrokeshire on Thursday afternoon. Friday 8:30am straight after the kids were on the school bus we drove up there (after calling the agent to check it was still on) by 2:30pm I was stomping around it thinking where I could put a green woodworking shelter (like this one on the cover of Mike’s excellent book), was noting where drainage and access needed improving and thinking where we could put some ponds. It was all very exciting.

Like a fool I decided to sleep on it which was a mistake because the next morning when I called to put an offer in I found it had been taken at 4pm the previous day!

We drove home crestfallen with a feeling that we’d never get the wood of our dreams. However after a night’s sleep we felt better and decided that we simply needed to get more agressive in our search.

Enter stage left woodlandwanted.co.uk. We figure that the majority of woods swap hands via specialist (offline) agents or by word of mouth so we’re launching this in the hope that we can get locals to keep an eye out and let us know when something comes up.

Hopefully Google will index it nice and quickly. If you have a blog and feel so inclined then a link to Woodland Wanted would be appreciated to help us get some of that Google love.

In March we’re also going to put adverts in some local papers like we did last year in Herefordshire.

KBO, etc.

Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.

Hello and Happy New Year.

Firstly an apology is due. We have been rather quiet of late mostly because we’ve been doing rather than thinking which has made a refreshing change but as I sit here with the kids gaffer taped up in the corner after a 4th day off school because of the light snow dusting (there’s a whole post on the UK’s lack of resilience going begging there, but I don’t have the motivation) and with nothing else better to do, I felt it high time to put together an update.

I’ll come straight out with it: we’ve decided to leave this little intentional community.

Why?

Well, there’s a long answer to that question and we’re not sure it’s appropriate to be airing everything publicly as it would be other people lives that we’d be commenting on. However saying nothing is probably worse.

The biggest reason is that when we moved here we were wanting to live in a tight-knit community but not a community, the differences are subtle but have stared to add up. We like the economies of scale with shared resources, neighbours that look out for each other (as they do here) and a coming together for community work days and the odd communal meal is really (really) nice. However for a community such as this to thrive the communal side of things is designed for a reason to be more integrated and now that we’ve had experience of it we’ve realised that it’s totally not right for us.

The – mostly self-inflicted – pressure to get involved with the community means that we’re damned either way: on the one hand there can be a feeling of ‘having’ to do something where at that moment it might not feel appropriate and on the other hand guilt for not getting involved and spending ’selfish’ time doing our own thing. Sure,as with most things there’s a balance to be had but whilst we can see that deeper community sharing is essential to long term survival of a community such as this, we feel sure that we’re not right to be a part of it.

Reading that back we sound like intensely private billy-no-mates lazy fecktards which is definitely not the case, but I can’t see how else to put it so it stays.

Another reason is our reliance on car travel. We’re 9 miles from the nearest town and whilst there’s an excellent shop 1/4 a mile away we still do need to head out relatively regularly. Ok there’s a (infrequent) bus and people do share car trips into town and yes there’s a library bus but even so we’re using the car far more than we expected and I really want to live somewhere that I can walk and cycle around.

That’s all I feel comfortable saying. There is nothing ‘wrong’ with this place, it’s just that we don’t feel we’re right for it. There are no large headline reasons, it is lots of small ones.

So, what next?

We’re falling back to plan B which is to get our own smallholding (here we go again). We had previously spent months (years!) looking at them so that market knowledge coupled with what we’ve learned during our extended stay here means that we’ve got a pretty good idea of what we want/need.

Our dream property would include:

• a 3 bed, 2 reception, well insulated house with wood fuelled cooking/heating that doesn’t need a jot of work doing to it
• 1-2 acres of good south facing agricultural land that is well fenced and drained
• an orchard
• 4+ acres of broad leaf woodland
• a natural water supply, ideally with a decent height differential for possible micro-hydro
• a workshop
• a poly-tunnel
• a barn
• being within a (relatively flat) 2 mile radius of a small market town that has a train station and an active Transition group
• being cheap enough that we can afford it without a mortgage

Ok, so back in the real world where we’re not millionaires we’re going to have to compromise. In our favour is that we are lucky enough that we can probably just about afford a tiny stone cottage in Wales without the land and occasionaly one can even get the land and buildings if you’re willing to roll your sleeves up, which we are.

I really want that woodland both for fuel resilience and it’s a place I could possibly work in the longer-term. One idea that might allow us to get one without a mortgage is to transfer our meagre pension funds  into – and things start getting hazy now – a self invested pension (SIPP) that owns the wood as an investment and then rents it back to us. The benefit of this approach is that – apparently – the pension can even borrow against itself up to 50% of its original captial. As I say whilst we know it’s technically possible, there are likely to be lots of caveats and a lot of hassle putting something like this together and that’s before we even find the perfect – with whatever compromises based on our budget – house with the perfect wood nearby.

Anyway, it is heartening to know that our aspirations are not totally off the radar.

In terms of location we’ve been looking at Llandeilo and Machynlleth (up where CAT is based) as they tick most of our boxes, most importantly they both have good rail links though places like Lampeter seem to be the best value for money (no rail, though).

It is sure to be an interesting year. We both really hope we can make this our last move as we’re desperate to settle now after approaching 4 years of roving around. If nothing else we have to think of the kids.

I just got back from the first of my Renewable Energy MSc modules at The Centre for Alternative Technology and I’m feeling pretty blown away but utterly inspired in equal measure.

7 days straight studying, eating, sleeping and drinking with 79 really smart people that have a wide range of backgrounds covering a broad age spread. One thing is common, though. They all totally get the issues and challenges that we face surrounding fossil fuel usage and climate change and are there to find out more about the main (energy replacement) options open to us.

The facilities at CAT were excellent as was the quality of the lecturing with most of the topics being introductions to the various renewable energy technologies and their respective social and political contexts.

It was a pretty tough regime and this was just the intro module! I now have 2000 word essay and presentation to prepare before my next visit in 4 weeks. I think I’ve got a good essay subject it just needs some research to see if it’s got legs.

Thanks to Casey Cole for recommending me to the course, attending this week has certainly felt like a life changing event.

Info on the REBE MSc

I got one of my Raleigh Grifter’s ‘Supergrips’ made into a belt. Isn’t it great?

On our recent Permaculture course I could see that Ruth was wearing a belt made from an old bike tyre and I thought that was pretty cool. So when I got back I googled and found TyreBelt.

I had an emailed conversation with Duncan the guy that runs it to see if the tyre from my old 1983 Grifter was going to be suitable. There were some concerns about the rubber being cracked as it was so old but he was happy for me to send it up to him on the basis that he’d give me a refund and send me my rare old tyre back should it turn out to be not suitable.

Evidently there was nothing to be worried about as it’s turned out brilliant.

Kudos to Duncan for his excellent service. What a great way to turn an old tyre into something useful.

http://tyrebelt.co.uk

Mike Ellis wrote a blog post yesterday entitled Too Cheap which relates to western society’s mass consumption orgy that is largely driven by goods being produced at a cost that is much lower than their real cost, in terms both of exploitation of the human resources as well as earth’s diminishing resources.

It’s a view that we plainly agree with here so I felt compelled to comment upon the post.

Part of my comment has grown upon me so I decided to reproduce it, slightly edited for grammar, here:

The Elephant in the room is there. Look it in the eye. It’s going nowhere and the longer it’s left there alone the pile of shit it’s leaving is getting bigger.

Wake up people.

This week Ed Milliband launched the UK government’s Low Carbon Transition Plan and on balance I think it could have been a lot worse.

At 228 pages it’s a weighty tome but thankfully you don’t have to trawl though it all as Transition’s own Rob Hopkins has done that for you in his excellent summary of the plan.

(more…)

Ever since I started my beginner’s cabinet making course I’ve been intrgiued by the differences between modern woodworking techniques and the the more traditional methods such as Green Woodworking (like chair bodging).

Why use green wood?

Well Mike Abbott who is, as you’ll read, the guy that ended up teaching me explains in his article of the Summer 2009 edition of Permaculture Magazine that:

Green wood is wood that has not dried or seasoned. Green woodworkers usually start with a fresh log rather than a dry plank for a host of very good reasons. They can be categorised as follows:

• Enhanced strength and quality.
• Better workability.
• Simpler and faster seasoning.
• Much lower cost.
• Numerous advanteges to society.
• Many environmental advantages.

(more…)

I found out today that I’ve been accepted onto the Renewable Energy and the Built Environment MSc course at the Centre for Alternative Technology Starting in Sept. I’m really chuffed as I don’t have a degree so I had to rely on my commercial experience to be accepted onto it and it’ll also allow me to right the wrong of dropping out of my Computer Science BSc course many moons ago.

I’m doing it over 2 years part-time so I can juggle it with community work, family life, some fee earning external work too.

If all goes well then this qualification coupled with what I learn as we try to take Trelay off-grid should give me enough experience to set-up as a renewable energy consultant in the coming years. I suspect it’s the sort of role that will become more and more in demand as time goes on…

I spent the weekend with the twins at Trelay for a ‘new wave’ weekend where all stage 1 members like us got together to discuss many things relating to our possible lives together there.

It was really exciting to see that all of the new members share similar aims in terms of sustainability and resilience and also comforting to find them all to be nice, warm & really interesting and skilled people in their respective fields.We had a judge, some professional gardeners, a woodsman, a nurse and a (sustainable) heating engineer plus of course someone with really useful skills like web development, erm, no…. wait.

5 couples were fully or partially represented (Ackers was in Weymouth doing the unpleasant job of sorting out her recently deceased gran’s house) so should they all move on site full-time as we intend to then Trelay’s population is going to almost double.

We discussed a range of topics on our own and with existing members including conflict resolution, managing community work, where we’d all live and plans for the eco hostel amongst many other things.

We all agreed that it was really luxurious being able to discuss these important but relatively simple topics knowing that the foundations for the community were already in place and working.

I came away exhausted – it was like a 3 day job interview whilst being responsible for two six year olds -  but also positive and hopeful in equal measure that it’ll all work out and we’ll all be moving in this year.