The Eco-Woodlanders

The most recent dwelling at Tinkers Bubble, still under construction inside

In a week when the EU set itself a target by the year 2030 of reducing carbon emissions to 60% of what they were in 1990, and producing 27% of its energy from renewable sources by the same date, I visited a community in Somerset who have already reduced their carbon emissions to 0%* and produce 100% of their energy from renewable sources. 

The thatched roundhouse used for communal meals and just chilling out

Twelve adults and three children are living in a forty acre wood some miles west of Yeovil. They make a living from producing organic apple juice from their orchards, growing and selling veg to the surrounding villages, and producing and selling timber from the larch and Douglas fir that forms their habitat.  There is a strict “no fossil fuel” policy on site, so no chainsaws, no diesel generators, no propane gas for cooking or heating, no heavy machinery for extracting felled trees.  All the buildings are made from their own timber. Water is supplied from a spring called Tinkers Bubble, after which the community have named themselves. The dwellings are wired for 12V electrics provided by a few solar panels and a small wind turbine. From wood comes the energy for heating and cooking (often from the same wood-burning stove). Two-handed saws and axes are used for felling trees, handsaws for cross-cutting them and mauls for splitting them. And how do they move the felled trees? Two beautiful black and white cart-horses, who are also being trained to pull ploughs.

Dolly the cart-horse showing off her 80's hair-do

I was visiting my friends Paula** and Nic who had moved in last summer and are expecting their first child in May. Their residence is a small canvas-covered structure on the edge of the woodland with a great view across the valley beyond.  Despite not looking much from the outside, stepping indoors I found a warm ambience with colourful wall hangings, books everywhere, a solid-looking double bed and a large south facing window. The wood-burning stove certainly helped too, which we stoked to fry some potatoes on for lunch.

Just one of their orchards. They juiced over twenty tonnes of apples last year

They spoke of the joys and challenges of living like this. Two hours a week washing clothes manually using three large buckets and a mangle initially felt like a massive chore but has since become just part of their domestic routine. Evenings meals are communal so they only have to cook once every twelve days. Especially during winter, collecting and chopping firewood has become second nature. I helped Nic move a hefty three-foot length of a mature Douglas fir, which the recent storms had blown down, to the doorway of their house where we dug a shallow hole and erected it as a chopping block to replace his old one which had fallen to bits from use. We then fetched three timber poles, six foot long and one foot wide, from the other side of the woodland, each one resting on our shoulders, and hewed and split them into the right sizes for their stove. Afterwards we were so warm we didn’t need to light it!

The steam-driven timber-processing machinery was jaw-dropping

The fact that other children live here gave them confidence that bringing up their own newborn amongst the trees will be possible. Washing reusable nappies by hand outdoors is doable. A neighbour gave Paula a bulging bag of baby clothes. A former resident who was visiting told her that two of her four had been born here and she couldn’t think of a better place for them to grow up, far from the normal trappings of modern life - the shopping centre, television, the internet, the adverts everywhere you look.

Short-legged Dexter cows can graze safely amongst the low-hanging apple trees

As the light faded I made my way down the hill to where my fossil-fuel-powered vehicle was parked. It seemed bizarrely high-tech as I slid into the driver’s seat, switched on the ignition without needing to light a match, and drove the seventeen miles back to Pilsdon in just over half an hour. There’s no denying that burning fossil fuels make life convenient, and dare I say it, interesting (without the car I probably wouldn’t have visited.) And yet it messes with the planet’s climate to a dangerous degree. If only our governments actually had the will to initiate massive switch-over programmes to 100% renewable energy sources (as described by the Zero Carbon Britain report).  We could all be driving electric cars by 2030, powered by a grid fed principally by hundreds of offshore wind farms, topped up by synthetic-gas stations. Well, it’s a dream.

*OK so they do burn wood which gives off carbon dioxide but it is only the carbon dioxide that the tree absorbed during its lifetime, so in effect this is carbon-neutral energy.

**Names changed as usual.