Tir Y Gafel (Lammas), Wales – Sun 19th June – Fri 1st July

We had an amazing fortnight at this amazing eco village in Pembrokeshire. Quite the most inspiring project we have visited so far…despite being the most hard core in terms of living conditions – think tents, no showers, wet welsh rain and a slug on the face at 6am being Rosie’s favourite moment!

Tir Y Gafel (pronounced Tier A Gavel) is the name of this pioneering community/eco village, made up of 9 households (total of 17 adults, 18 kids) who got together to buy a large chunk of land, about 80 acres, on which to build homes, grow food/fuel and rear animals. They have allocated some land for shared woodland and some for a shared community hub building, the rest has been divided up into plots of between 5-7 acres.

This is the hub building, which is getting close to being finished.

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

Each household will build their own low impact home, or eco-house on their plots and have veg gardens, polytunnels, chickens, other animals etc. They started work in late 2009, therefore are 18 months into the process and so far the majority of plots boast a barn or workshop. Doing a barn or workshop first is great as it acts as a practice building, one they can make mistakes on, before they build their actual home!

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

Our first week was spent with a lovely family, Nigel, Cassie + their three kids. They’ve got a pink, strawbale/cob (a mix of clay/sand/earth/straw) roundhouse with a turf roof – a building that is really cool in summer and cosy in winter - a big pit dug ready to be a natural swimming pool, a wonderful veg plot and lots of willow all round the site. It’s a really lovely feeling plot.

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

The main things we did work-wise were:

• We helped start the dry stone wall for the first side of their walled garden

Here's Adam levelling out the foundation gravel, caber styley...

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

• We built a section of their chimney using reclaimed bricks and stone

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

• We did some ever necessary weeding and put cardboard and muck mulch round the pumpkins
• Rosie did a little bit of scything – a lovely, rhythmic way to cut grass

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

We’re going to go back in August and help them to build their first ‘proper’ house, which will be a straw bale build for their teenage son. Can’t wait!

Our second week was spent with a really inspiring couple called Jane and Andy who are veg growers extraordinaire and who are approaching the project with incredible integrity in so many ways, particularly in their commitment to sourcing everything they use, eat or build with as locally as possible. They have worked really hard to put in loads of raised beds on their plot which amazingly provided them with 18% of their total food in year one, when just starting off. They are one of four plot holders who are going to be building terraced houses, as an alternative model to the detached house Cassie and Nigel will be building.

We were mainly there to help with their barn which is built with a timber frame, hay bales and lime render.

The jobs we helped with were:
• replacing a rotten bale under a window

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

• rendering parts of the outside and the inside with lime render

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

• dry stone walling some beautiful sun segment type flower beds to-be. Adam having learnt this at Laurieston created lovely looking walls, while Rosie’s attempts were still resembling bad teeth even by the end of the week!
• putting a frame in for a raised veg bed

Adam was able to put his carpentry skills to the test by making a window sill – this was to replace one that had let water in and caused the rotten bale.

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

Replacing the bale involves lots of steps, including

1 - whacking it in with comedy mallet

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

2 - giving it a good hair cut

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

3 - Starting to layer up the render (this is our host Jane hard at work)

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

For the render we had great fun mixing up the lime and sand in the lime pit, jumping around in limey wellies to get it all combined. The undercoats have a bit of hay mixed in with them, and the top coat had yak’s hair which makes it a smoother finish for the final look.

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

It’s amazing coz you apply it with your hands so it’s a really one-to-one-contact-with-the-building kind of plastering – you push it on and up with the heel of your hand to get all the air out, and then you ‘float’ the final coat with your hands too to smooth it off. The final look is great.

Jane and Andy chose hay bales, rather than straw bales, as they were available very locally and they are trying to get everything from within 5 miles. Having experimented with hay they have decided that they will be using straw for their actual house! The main reason seems to be that the render doesn’t stick to hay as well as it does to straw which leads to the water tightness of the bales being compromised and to it needing to be re-rendered too often.

Over our fortnight we also did lots of lovely fun non worky things like…

• Sitting round a camp fire a couple of nights, chatting to other plot holders about their plans and supping welsh ale
• Eating lots of wonderful meals – Jane’s bahjis and bara brith were things of true beauty!
• Taking a bath in a cob bath, a tub which is heated by a fire chamber underneath – lighting it 2 hours ahead of bathtime is essential!

Here's Rosie using a tent pipe to get the fire going...

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

• Hearing hilarious stories about MI6 sending undercover investigators to ‘volunteer’, trying to suss out if this eco village is a plan to overthrow the government!
• Going for one deeply wonderful hot shower at the local swimming baths on Thursday – it costs £2.20 to get yourself clean these days.
• Having heaps of daft fun with kids and adults alike – dens, frisby, games, bikes and the rest!
• Enjoying a wide variety of compost loos - Jane and Andy's loo had this totally amazing view!

From Tir Y Gafel (Lammas)

As an overall community they are doing brilliantly, to have got planning permission for this village, to be 100% on site and all in the process of building, really is a feat. This isn’t to say there aren’t still issues like the hub building’s construction running over schedule, sharing out of the site’s water supply, the public interest and tours being intrusive on their lives sometimes and building regulation officers giving them a hard time as they build these unconventional building.

Our overall impression is that this is an incredible bunch of people, from all walks of life – engineers, teachers, craftspeople, builders – who have all made the decision that they want to live more simply, back on the land, with less impact on the planet and with more support for each other. We came away from this fortnight full of ideas and enthusiasm for community living that has the right balance between personal space and neighbourly support when you need it.

Isle of Eigg - Scotland (Thurs 9 June to Mon 13 June)

Stop the press!! We have fixed the blog so that you can comment on any of our wonderful, hilarious or downright daft exploits. Just click in the comment box at the bottom of any post and let us know what you think!

Oh dear, we are starting to get a little bit behind now – too much time spent up to our elbows in lime plaster at the eco village we were at for the last fortnight – that post will follow swiftly on the heels of this one to catch us up!

Anyway…

Q when is an Egg not an Egg?
A when it’s a west coast of Scotland island, entirely owned by its residents, called Eigg!

From Island of Eigg

So, casting our minds back three weeks or so we spent a long weekend wwoofing on a typical Eigg croft, owned and farmed by Neil and Sue.

Eigg is a little island just off the west coast of Scotland, one of the inner Hebrides. It is maybe 4 miles across and we’re not sure how long – we walked from one side to the other in just over an hour. The croft we were working on was made up of land stretching in a strip from the sea, around the house and travelling on up to the dramatic cliffs behind.

From Island of Eigg

Our work mainly involved helping out in the garden – working on the potatoes, the poly tunnel and veg beds.

Here's Rosie getting to grips with a willful rotavator...

From Island of Eigg

In the foreground/right of this photo you can see the peas were climbing up old spring bedsteads - a genius idea!

From Island of Eigg

From Island of Eigg

This croft was undoubtedly one of the most beautiful settings we have been to so far – we were on the west side of the island, looking towards the dramatic profile of Rum and getting fabulous sunsets over it most evenings. We were also blessed with the kind of sunshine that Visit Scotland puts in its adverts, turning the sea aquamarine and the land vivid green.

From Island of Eigg

From Island of Eigg

If you want to go visit then we can totally recommend camping at Neil and Sue’s place – or staying in their lovely little yurt or bothy – they’ve got it all set up for the most stunning camping, cycling, walking base – you can see more here.

We wanted to visit Eigg as it’s a very rare community set up – an island that is owned by everyone who lives on it – it became theirs 14 years ago when all the residents at the time decided to buy it after having suffered at the hands of absent, uninterested or insolvent landlords for too many years. There were about 60 people at the time, and now there are 85 – 90 people living there. Lots of Scotland’s small islands have times when they teeter on the edge of population collapse but Eigg is now thriving and growing.

The most overt community endeavour that the residents of Eigg have initiated is a renewable energy electricity grid, to replace the diesel generators that scattered the island, pre buy-out. The electricity is generated by hydro, photo voltaic and wind turbines and is transmitted round the island. Each household cannot use any more than 5kW at any one time (kettle = 2kW, few lights = 0.5kW, tv = 0.2kW etc so it’s a reasonable amount) and if the supply is running low an email goes round to everyone to try and reduce use. Each household has a monitor in it so they can all keep an eye on usage.

Our caravan was entirely off grid...but reliant on the good old bottles of gas!!

From Island of Eigg

Other aspects of life that arise from it being a conscious community include residents meetings, a couple of work cooperatives to do things like timber and construction, bulk orders on food and annual celebrations of their autonomy. We were actually lucky enough to be there on the weekend of the 14th anniversary party – so lots of people had come on the boat for the celidh on the Saturday night!

From Island of Eigg

From our very brief stay it seems that living as part of the Eigg community isn’t so very different from agricultural life on any other Scottish island, in terms of day to day life. When it’s time to take your animals to market you have to get them on a boat, and if a new bull is needed for breeding he is brought over on a boat too. Each family has their own house, the kids all go to the island school for primary and mainland for secondary, there’s a shop, there’s the boat and there are get togethers and there are times when you just get on with your own thing.

There is the sense that they would survive better than most if oil price rises reduced the frequent arrival of the boat – most people on the island were involved in growing or rearing a proportion of their own food. For us the most significant aspect of community life was the energy set up and the sense of shared responsibility for the future development of island life.