Spotlight: Ellen McPetrie shares their experience working off-grid! Part 2

Ellen McPetrie, FE Sustainability Rep (SU Executive)

20/3/25

“14/2/25 CREATIVE DAY. Today is the day in my monthly menstrual cycle where I have creative, buzzing, doing energy flowing through me…It is a powerful day. Today I sat in the kitchen from 3pm until it must have been about 9pm - volunteers (P and myself) were meant to be working with G in the afternoon but as it was valentines day G said we could do as we wanted because he was spending the afternoon with Re. So after lunch P and myself chopped firewood, for a short while, before P said he was going for a nap. I grabbed my sketching stuff and set myself up in the kitchen because there’s a clock in there and my phone was down at the bottom of the hill charging so with the clock in the kitchen I could time my drawings, then drew for about two hours, chatted to Rd who was on Domestic, has supper (which was pizza in the pizza oven - what?!) then chatted to Rd a bit more in the evening about intentional left wing communities as we cleared up. Worked with S in the morning slashing brambles again. And I’ve met N. C is back, haven’t seen a lot of K but have been looking through his sketchbooks. Z is here. A has left to go to his parents for a break, back on Sunday. B was away visiting family today. O was excited and upset about pizza as hers was gluten free and very hastily made.”

Fire was the source of heat throughout the site - and though there were solar panels on the top of the hill where the living area was, there wasn’t enough power generated from them to allow you to charge anything. There was a rechargeable battery at the bottom of the hill in the workshop, where everyone charged their phones or computers if they had them. This rechargeable battery was hooked up to a solar panel system (as there were no mains), which kept it going.

“15/2/25 Made peanut butter today! Walked to Y which took from about half eleven until 3ish. Cold shower, and a local violinist with some volunteers were up in the evening. My hands are cold and feel slow to move. The fire is going, it’s late, and it rained today.

16/2/25 Hung out in the kitchen with C mostly today. Headachey and tired, I had a cold shower yesterday! I like cold showers - just my body is afraid of the cold which is very understandable. And I’m still having a tablespoon of cider vinegar in hot water every now and then - had one today. Cold morning.”

Mostly, the weather was dry and cold, with two spells of rain and a few of sun over the few weeks I was there. Once the spiced beans I’d made had gone, I thought about where I could next get my protein in from, as the chickens weren’t laying, there was no communal cheese, and quite frankly beans had been a faff to boil up. The community sells some things from Essentials back to the residents and volunteers - such as peanuts, butter, and flaxseeds. These few things are definite treats - it was the alternative to walking into the nearest village and buying from a shop, so it felt rather special. The majority of residents did buy from external places in villages and towns - typically cheese, eggs and biscuits were the most commonly bought things. I bought some shelled peanuts from the community, weighed out a kilo, roasted them, shook off most of the nuts’ skin, and ground them using a hand-grinder which I could adjust with bolts to various degrees of coarseness/fineness.

Music in the community was few and far between as we know it today. Throughout my stay there I heard EDM not once, and occasionally you’d hear someone play a song on their phone or old IPod, but not really. Mostly, music was the strumming of a guitar in the Roundhouse after dinner, occasionally accompanied by a banjo or bongo drum, with brief intervals of humming or singing.

“17/2/25 I have a cold. Domestic with P earlier, had a break drawing in the kitchen for half an hour or so then went down to the terraces/gardens to mulch a bed with horse poo + thatch with N. Z was on Domestic in the afternoon. I made leek + potato bread with nigella seeds, cumin seeds, and coriander seeds. It is good! Made up recipe, and took almost two hours to cook. Made of malthouse flour. Leftover dhal for veggie lunch, P made meat stew. Sneezy day. Sat in front of the fire leaning against the bed in the guest house now, playing cards and sniiiiiffling - chapped lips still!”

I stayed in the guest house with the other short term volunteer, P. We’d light the fire every night, it was a small little place with two floors, four beds, one sink, a fire, and a steep set of stairs, a table, and a chair. It could sleep up to six, with two double beds and two singles. The upstairs was built into the eaves of the house, whilst the downstairs was divided by a thick curtain separating the bed, table, chair and fire from sink, stairs, and boot hole.

“18/2/28 I still have a cold, though I feel yesterday was the worst of it. Worked with Z today! And Rd a bit in the afternoon. It was super cool, we were uprooting blackthorn suckers and planting them in a hedgerow bordering the far garden field backing the forest. Afternoon was trench digging for a pipe to supply high pressure water to the workshop so the logs can be washed when they come in after the horses drag them down the hill and through the mud…Crocheted with C, M and Z after dinner. Had I’s tea! Which tasted vastly different to anything here at all, it’s flavourful and scented. Z says he’ll give me some sourdough starter to start my own with, which’ll be lovely.

My gran had tried to teach me crocheting once before, and I didn’t get on with it very well. Trying again under a dimming solar-powered lamp in the cold Roundhouse was equally hard, but I got on with it for a bit and managed a chain which I doubled up once on. I’m just as uncoordinated with knitting - anyhow the chain of knots is now tied around my ankle as an anklet, and keeps part of the woodsmoke and mud moving through modernity with me. Just before leaving AUP for the term, a friend gave me a bag of strawberry and cucumber (with green tea and aloe vera) flavoured tea to have whilst I was away. It took almost until the end of my stay for me to open it and make a mug, and when I did the shock of flavours and smells was pretty intense. After having lived off leek, celeriac, potatoes and beetroot (the veg in season and growing or stored at the time) for two weeks, having a waft of flavourings hit me was a bit of an experience. It really highlighted the sort of food that I had been eating, the quality of the veg, the way it had been cooked, the relative simplicity of my diet. What was lovely about having a constant rotation of people on Domestic was that after a while you could tell who had cooked without even seeing who was in the kitchen, just from the food that was served you could take a solid guess. The people I met were definitely half the experience of being there, their characters and traits shaped the way I experienced living in the community.

“19/2/25 Today has been a full day. I am leaving tomorrow. Today I met a wonderful person called M, she is amazing. I hugged K, I volunteered with C, said goodbye to B as he’s leaving early tomorrow. I cried and lay in the woods, met BN M’s friend and ate chocolate!”

Chocolate had by now joined the list of precious commodities, ranking close alongside cheese and yogurt.

“20/2/25 I have left. I sit, in the first bath I’ve had in perhaps 6 or 7 months, wallowing mindfully in hair and grit and grease and love. Leaving was okay, it was hard but not Hard. For now I will cling to the sudless water and beating kitchen bassline and smell of dirty muddy unwashed clothes. I will let myself grieve. Being feels simple.”

17 days of living in the woods without mains connections or fossil fuels has shaped me, and it continues to. I hope to go back, whether I will or not is an uncertainty for the future to deal with. It was pretty incredible. I started a journey of getting over my fear of cold showers, I made peanut butter from pretty much scratch, I learnt how to use an axe and how to make a fire without paper. I learnt what it can be like to live in community. I learnt a bit about what self sufficiency looks like in the modern UK. I learnt about wood as a medium just from working with it every day, which is what I wanted right from the start. There was in fact a person-powered lathe there which I did ask about using, however there wasn’t enough time for the resident who was largely responsible for it to show me how to set it up et cetera, so it, mildly shamefully, never happened. I learnt about how very possible it is to live without fossil fuels in the current world!! And I learnt how to make bread without a recipe, which was pretty cool.

I got a bit more experience in cooking for large batches of people. I got a lot more experience with how to approach the cold. I feel I learnt a lot about discipline and preserving one's own boundaries too. I am glad to have spent a few weeks without a smartphone or clean hot running water or heaters or a hob, because it was such a mindful, thought-provoking experience. It was an acute insight into how living sustainably looks to some people. I think to others it’s litter picking, catching the bus or an organic veg box. To some it’s turning off the lights when they leave the room and to some it’s lecturing or public activism, and what's wonderful is it is all pretty brilliant to their own degrees. I had a lovely time. It was occasionally hard, and often cold - but I went in February so I cannot be surprised. It was tiring, and it was sometimes socially tricky. It was also warm and full and busy and quiet and grounding and new all at once.

“21/2/25 This morning felt like the first properly empty morning in a while.”