Had a great week in the Woodhouse cabin last week. Completely off-grid, with composting toilets, power from wind and solar, solar hot water with a little wood-burning Rayburn to supplement – all lovingly put together and added to around a Finnish ‘flat-pack’ cabin. Great ingenuity and skill showed by owners Jeff and Carey who build it themselves. All seemed quite familiar and so wasn’t a surprise to hear that many of the ideas were inspired by technologies they’d seen in action travelling in Africa.
Having to be mindful of how much hot water you were using and how many appliances you had on at once (that’ll be one at a time then) perhaps ironically made it an even more relaxing holiday than on-grid versions. With an amazing permaculture designed garden with amazing fruit and veg, which you could help yourself to, plus a farm shop ten minutes walk over a field, there really was no need to leave the farm it is on. Felt like the ‘middle-of-no-where’, whilst there was a road just beyond a couple of fields, so it was more accessible than it felt (for the Welsh borders that is). Needless to say the children loved the grazing sheep, horses and tractor! Happy times!
