Original subtitles

I've seen some pretty remarkable projects in my time,

but have you heard the one about the chef,

the Pilates teacher and the cow shed?

In 2015,

Ed Versluys and Vicky Anderson began to convert a derelict cow shed into a

modern home to house her Pilates studio and his cookery business.

Ed, a novice builder, was entirely reliant on the internet for his skills.

I'm learning. I'm learning as I go along.

But it wasn't long before his lack of experience showed.

It wasn't flat, basically because I'm an absolute amateur.

The cracks started to appear,

while Ed spent his and Vicky's life savings on off-grid technology.

I'd suddenly completely freak out and I'd be like,

"Are we just making the biggest mistake?"

Despite their amazing energy and effort, the house remained unfinished.

Their businesses, their futures,

their low-impact life were all yet to begin.

Ed and Vicky invested everything they had in this house,

in their off-grid future.

It's been a year since I was last here and I'm curious to see if they

finished the house and whether their businesses ever really took off.

But first, here's their story.

Two summers ago,

private chef Ed Versluys and Pilates instructor Vicky Anderson met on a dating website.

Now they're engaged and they've left London to start a life

together in the country,

having found an old cow shed to turn into a home in Somerset.

It was completely overgrown, full of nettles and ivy and all sorts,

but we saw the view and it kind of sold itself, really.

You can see how it will make a lovely family home.

SHE LAUGHS

As it stands, there's nothing to redeem this place.

It is ugly and it is a world away from habitable.

Neither of us have done anything like this before.

I'm handy, kind of DIY, and I enjoy DIY and sort of carpentry and...

I mean, I don't want to put it down, but the carpentry has been, like,

a couple of tables and a rose arch and...

Yeah, but it's all the same skills.

What was your metalwork, your barbecue?

Ah, the innocence of youth.

Oh. Hello. Hello.

How are you? Hi. Pleased to meet you. Hello, nice to meet you. Vicky.

Nice place.

Nice place. Not too bad, is it?

No, it's not. I mean, there's beautiful countryside.

Yeah, it's gorgeous.

And a really ugly building.

CHUCKLING

Well... We quite like it. I'm sure you do.

SHE LAUGHS

What was it? A...shed?

Cow shed. Cow shed. Cow shed, yeah.

1940s cow shed.

So, can we have a look around? Yeah.

Can indeed, yeah.

Your, er, estate.

SHE LAUGHS

Not really estate. Come on in. Concrete blocks.

This place is barely standing up.

It looks like it's been in the path of a tornado.

Oh. Ooh, big, isn't it?

Inside is no better.

A long and cavernous concrete bunker.

In its current state, it's grim and barely worth retaining.

But on the other side of the building, there is potential.

Oh, and down into... Oh, very bright.

Rather bright, light space.

This is a view that was wasted on cows.

Wow, this is something else.

This is... This is significant.

The mist is clearing now and you've got a very long view here.

What's this going to be, then, this large area?

What happens?

This is our main living space.

Yeah? So, you're standing now in the kitchen.

From kitchen here, we have open-plan into dining room.

Yeah. And then again open-plan into sitting room space at the back.

At over 280 square metres,

this cow shed is very nearly three times the size of the average family

home, designed with the help of a local architect, Wiebke Rietz.

The roof has been removed,

so repairs can soon begin on the original concrete and brick work worth saving.

This includes five pillars which will help support a new laminated

timber roof, covered on the north side with eco-slates,

appropriately made from recycled plastic milk bottle tops.

This will be an off-grid home,

generating electricity from ten photovoltaic panels

on the south-facing roof and storing it in batteries.

There'll be a small wind turbine to boot, and there will be a reed bed

for sewage and a borehole for water.

The existing walls will be insulated on the outside to exploit their

thermal mass and clad with agricultural timber.

The north side of the building will house Ed and Vicky's new businesses.

To the west, there will be a workshop and coal store,

where Ed will butcher and cure meat.

On the other side, there'll be a boot room,

shower and a Pilates studio for Vicky.

Down a set of steps,

those expansive views will be captured by two long set of bifold glazed doors.

Ed wants to retain a spirit of cow shed here.

So internal partition walls will be built of timber and straw bales,

rendered in clay plaster, with a posh oak floor.

Ed's chef's kitchen takes centre stage, of course,

with a king-size working table, more bench than island unit.

Running down the west side will be two guest rooms and a bathroom.

To the east will sit the master bedroom and bathroom, overlooking

the Somerset Hills.

That engagement with the landscape continues with a terrace,

green roof and their smallholding, with pigs, chickens and vegetables.

And who builds this now? Me.

And I have a builder called James.

There's two of us. So Ed seems confident.

I hope James, whoever he is,

is blessed with superhuman strength and stamina.

Because this site is apocalyptic.

The remnants of its former life as a working cow shed are all over the place.

What happens to all this stuff, then, this concrete, these beams there?

They will be absorbed into the landscape in one way or another.

Dig a hole and bury it?

No. No! VICKY LAUGHS

They'll be used...

Yeah, we haven't quite decided yet. But we'll find a use for them.

So are you finding a use for everything?

Yes. We could have knocked the build down and it may have been simpler,

but then there would have been a lot of waste to it and the whole point of this is...

OK, so those old cattle feeding troughs over there in concrete, they'll stay?

Oh, yeah. They are the base of the wood store for my pizza oven and barbecue.

These former city dwellers seem to me to be off grid pioneers here,

in search of a more sustainable, lower-cost, simpler way of life.

What are you going to do with those five acres? We're going to farm animals.

We'd like to end up as self-sufficient as possible.

What have you got, then, over in your pens?

We have the beginning of our homestead. CHICKENS CLUCK

We have four lovely piglets.

Oh, do you? And we have...

And some chickens. Six. Well, we have five chickens and one cockerel.

As a chef, you know, there's nothing better than being able to produce

your own animals. We want...

And you're going to butcher and make your own sausages and...?

I'm going to butcher them. I'm not allowed to slaughter them myself.

But I'm allowed to butcher them. So I will do all the butchery.

And that's partly why... So are you going to take the blood?

Are you going to make black pudding and...

Yeah. That lovely Portuguese delicacy which is pig's ears in vinegar?

No. We'll invite you back for that.

SHE LAUGHS

Thanks. Thanks. Just for that.

Are you happy about being down here?

Yeah, I wouldn't have done it otherwise.

Yeah? Yeah, I'm not that much of a pushover!

SHE LAUGHS

The land and cow shed cost them £225,000.

Vicky has sold her flat in London to pay for it and that's left them with

just over 200,000 to spend.

How long is it going to take you to do?

Do you reckon? I reckon...

..I'm going for about end of August.

So six or seven months.

He'd initially wanted to be in by the fourth of July but...

I wanted to be in by our wedding, but, um...

You're getting married? Fourth of July, yeah.

Fourth of July this year.

Yeah. Yes. I knew there'd be a hitch.

SHE LAUGHS

I mean, in all senses of that word!

Well, here we disagree.

Here we fundamentally disagree.

Because I think this is a 12 to 18 month project.

Hmm, that's a bit depressing. SHE LAUGHS

If you do well, maybe ten.

And now I don't know what to say,

cos I know you've a lot of experience in this! SHE LAUGHS

I'm not going to prevent it happening.

Yeah, yeah. I'm delighted, always, to be proven wrong. Good.

And I'm delighted to be in the presence of great energy and ambition.

I'm often struck how buildings aren't just containers for human beings.

They're also, um...

They're also vehicles that human beings use to fully flesh out their dreams.

That's what's happening here, so this isn't, you know,

this isn't a barn conversion.

This is the re-imagination of Ed and Vicky's life.

Rearing animals and running their businesses from this place.

That's what makes it powerful, you know, that's what makes it exciting to be here.

Now, whether or not of course this place becomes somewhere beautiful to

look at is sort of irrelevant.

However, Ed does have ambitions for a beautiful, super low-energy home

which he intends to build,

learning every skill and trade from the internet.

So, laying concrete,

I will Google laying concrete and watch video after video until I'm sure...

..or until I think I know how to lay concrete.

Most of us have turned to the internet for a few tips,

but I would not have the nerve to rely on it to build a half million pound house.

SAW BUZZES

By mid-March, Ed and James the builder are strengthening and making

structural modifications to the concrete walls of the old cow shed.

We're cutting the window openings into the existing bark.

There's a whole new set of power tools to master.

When I first picked it up, I didn't know what I was doing.

I'm learning, I'm learning as I go along.

TRUCK RATTLES

A month later comes Ed's first real construction test -

a delivery of concrete to lay the subfloor in Vicky's Pilates studio.

So I've got to get six cubic metres of concrete out the truck

in half an hour.

I only have half an hour with the truck, otherwise they start charging me.

This is one man, his wheelbarrow and 14 tonnes to shift.

To make matters worse, there's an April heat wave.

This concrete may set before he manages to spread it.

It's really heavy. Yeah, very!

Yeah, but he loves races,

so he's got his own race and the race against the clock.

He loves it, it's fine. Here we go!

He's so happy!

Today's concrete delivery proves to be a success.

Is there much left?

About a metre?

It's been a test of Ed's newly acquired procurement skills and his

physical ability. And he's passed.

All done.

HAMMERING

Taking on a project of this scale with so little experience is brave.

I mean, look, they've got no project manager, or a site supervisor.

They're learning everything they need to from the internet.

And they're trying to deliver this in...

28 weeks?

It's going to make their life hell, isn't it?

STONE CLATTERS AND BANGS

Or maybe not.

It's quite a nice bedroom view, isn't it?

Very well done.

CROWING

Two months of what is meant to be a seven-month project

have already elapsed.

But Ed is defiant and energised -

buoyed up, perhaps, by Vicky's faith in him.

Before we sold up, I'd say to Ed, I'd suddenly be like,

"How do you know that we're going to be able to do this?",

and I'd suddenly completely freak out and I'd be like,

"Are we just making the biggest mistake?

"Are you definitely going to be able to do this?"

And he'd just be like, "Yeah, I can, I promise you.

"I wouldn't do it if I didn't think I could."

He wouldn't do something stupid

and risk such a huge amount on something he wasn't sure about.

I guess that's why I have faith in him.

Both Ed and Vicky have left urban life behind.

They're adapting to extreme rural life together.

I'm not daunted by what, sort of, the country life

is going to bring to us.

I quite like a challenge,

and this is sort of the next challenge, really.

Vicky's faith in Ed is touching

but his inexperience has been exposed.

He's had a visit from Building Control and they don't like

what he's done with his double skin blockwork.

We have tied the two walls together every three blocks

instead of every two, which building regs picked up on earlier this week.

The cost of this mistake is minimal but the time lost is precious.

They have to drill holes in the new walls

and install new ties, as per regs.

Ed can do without these cock-ups

if he's to keep this project on schedule.

You've been busy. You've consolidated the stacks here,

built these up and... We've got everything ready for the roof now.

That's what we've been working on. It looks like it's ready.

Ready for the team to come in and put the roof on. Yeah?

When's that happening? Next Monday, and they should be here

for four weeks, doing all the roofing.

'Our internet whiz kid has wisely decided

'to leave the roof to the experts.

'There's more than enough for him to be getting on with.

'Vicky, however, has her mind on other things.'

What are you doing in that time? Are you...? We are doing...

I'm going to be preparing for the wedding!

SHE CHUCKLES

You're going to have the wedding reception here? No.

No. It would be ideal. Get a roof on it, save on a tent then.

We're not having a tent. We're having it in a barn.

OK. Because we can't get enough of barns.

Good, good. As I said, it's minimal decoration,

minimal expense on the wedding...

More money straight into the project. Yeah, sort of.

Yeah. Don't, don't! You're touching on a sore subject, OK?

I'm needling here. Six weeks away! Needling!

I do not envy Vicky or Ed for the stress they're piling on themselves.

Despite the apparent simplicity of this project, it is very large.

Just over a week later, Ed is taking delivery

of his second, considerably bigger concrete pour.

It's to cover a vast 200 square metres of floor space,

forming the new subfloor.

This is where I would perhaps bring in the professionals.

But, once again, Ed's gambling that he's learned enough about concrete

to pull it off.

There's also a new gadget to master.

It's called a magic screeder.

It's the first time I've ever used one,

and it's requiring a bit of practice.

This concrete will help stabilise the old structure

and provide a firm base for an insulated floor

and the new internal walls.

Hey, good morning. I've been getting a whole load of concrete.

I was wondering if it's possible to send

an additional four on top of that.

All right. Actually, wait. Can we make that five instead of four?

Just in case.

Ed's starting to sound like a pro.

I've been trying to figure out why Ed is so good at building.

He's sort of slipped almost effortlessly into this role

of master builder, and I think I have the answer.

It's because he's very adept in handling materials.

He's tactile, he's physical, he's used to standing on his feet

and working hard all day.

He can mix materials and understand how they're put together,

and he's got an eye, he's got a sense of aesthetics, as well.

In other words, he's a chef!

GUESTS CHATTER

It's now early June and Ed's determined to have the roof on

by the time of the wedding, just over three weeks away.

Bang on schedule, the roofing crew gets going.

The roof is a ?41,000 wedding present to themselves -

a whopping one fifth of their whole budget.

The giant glulam beams supporting the roof must rest

on Ed's rebuilt brick stacks.

But there's been a slight lack of precision here

and the stacks are all different heights.

These two are level. That one's low.

The two end ones are high. So, it's sort of...

This requires ingenuity and some last-minute on-site adjustments

by the roofing company.

But it's not long before the multi-angled, super insulated

waterproof skinned roof is up.

Vicky has to leave the cow shed behind for a day

to complete a vital part of her other project.

Oh, don't cry!

WOMEN GIGGLE

Major taking in on Friday.

Back onsite, the pressures of the project are catching up on Ed.

I spend all my time thinking about the build.

Every night, I almost go to sleep repeating the next month

or the next three months of stages of where I need to be at

and what needs to happen where.

And every day I repeat that to myself time and time again.

The wedding is just days away and now Ed has a problem

with his vast concrete floor.

Because we decided to concrete the house ourselves,

we didn't get a perfectly level surface,

so where there are little dips and bumps

we're pouring a self-levelling compound

to make it all nice and flat.

It wasn't flat, basically cos I'm an absolute amateur.

But I salute Ed's amateur status.

He'll roll his sleeves up and have a go!

He's off to the local sheep shed to try to transform it

into their wedding barn, taking his enthusiasm with him,

leaving James behind.

Still quite a way off being done and he just thinks it's going to be,

like, a couple of weeks and they'll be able to move in. Uh-huh.

So it's just so much work. All those ceilings,

they're, like, three-and-a-half metre ceilings.

What you're discovering now is that the scale of every job

is so much bigger because of the surface area.

Yeah. Everything's just massive,

absolutely massive in the whole house.

I won't keep you any longer. Jump on your digger. Go.

HE LAUGHS

Plenty of work to be doing.

He is, of course, right.

I mean, nobody, not even Ed and Vicky, really believed

that they would've moved in before their wedding,

but the deadline they've given themselves is hilarious

given the amount of work there is yet to do.

Christmas?

Do we think? Christmas?

You look gorgeous. Ready?

The big day has arrived in Somerset.

So long as you both shall live?

I will.

The wedding was amazing. It was really, really great.

Everyone really clubbed together and everyone had a great time,

we were dancing until five and

it was...yeah, it was amazing, wasn't it?

Yeah. A leading question!

Yeah!

Yes. Yes.

Yes, yes, it was. Yes, it was!

Well worth taking time away from the build for.

Oh, good! I'm pleased.

Three weeks of their seven month schedule have been eaten up with

their wedding and honeymoon.

You can't blame them.

It's just nice to be back.

Fully concentrating, pushing, see the finish line almost.

Their roof is now weather-tight and ready for the solar power system.

Ah, bloody...

The first step towards off-grid power is surprisingly simple.

The solar panels sit in plastic trays weighed down with rubble

recycled from the site, all sitting on a reassuringly strong roof.

I've always liked the idea of being off-grid.

Quite a fan of zombie films and that kind of motivates me to be off-grid.

I like the post-apocalyptic thing and films and books to do with it

and I like the idea that if there was some huge calamity

that I could be all right.

Now, look, I'm not expecting zombies to arrive in Somerset,

but I share Ed's love of the off-grid life, albeit the solutions here,

including panels, batteries, turbine, control system

and back-up generator, come to a costly ?26,000.

I've persuaded Vicky.

I've sort of convinced everyone that being off-grid's the right way,

the right path to follow.

So, if it's not, it's my head on the block!

Yes!

It works.

It's awesome.

The advantages of this technology are, of course, free,

super-low carbon electricity and water, and no utility bills.

But it isn't good enough to simply source the off-grid energy,

Ed has to safeguard it.

Water is one of those magical materials on the planet.

As well as being heavy, having high mass, it also has high thermal mass.

That means it takes a long while to heat up and cool down.

It can store large quantities of heat, which is precisely why we put

water, when it's heated, into one of these to keep us warm

and cosy in those winter nights.

Of course, if you do this with really hot water from the kettle,

you know, you'll make a hot water bottle,

which is really too hot to touch.

But you'll know equally, of course, from doing that,

that if you then put your hot water bottle inside its own little cosy,

it keeps the heat inside, it acts as an insulator, and as a result,

it doesn't feel quite so hot to touch.

Which is exactly what Ed is doing, look, to the side of his house.

He's got this concrete structure, that's his thermal mass,

which is keeping him warm in winter and cool in summer.

It's storing a lot of energy in it and in order to stop

that energy from escaping to the outside world,

he's covering the building with, look,

a good eight inches of this thick insulation,

in front of which will be the cladding here.

If you like, he's providing the building with its very own cosy,

its very own little, um...

comfort blanket.

It's now the beginning of August and the pigs are coming along a treat.

However, Ed and Vicky, in their race to the finish,

have suffered a series of blows.

There's been a hitch with the drilling of the borehole, so there's no water.

The windows are meant to be delivered today but they haven't turned up yet.

And the landlady wants the flat back where they're living.

All things which are out of their control.

There's no architects I can blame, there's no...no anyone,

there's no building contractor,

there's no-one I can kind of turn to to be like, "Oh, you've done this."

It's my fault if it goes wrong.

Ed takes everything as a challenge and he loves a challenge,

it's what he thrives on, so this, to him,

has been sort of one long endurance race, basically.

So it's, yes, the pressure is on a little bit.

One reclaimed cooker hood will not a kitchen make,

but it's a small step towards that finish line that Vicky dreams of.

Does that look in the middle? I know it's bent, it's slightly skewwhiff.

Well, shall we measure it and see?

I have measured it. But measure it again now it's up? OK.

Vicky's faith in Ed is being stretched by one thing -

his insistence on straw bales for the majority of the internal walls.

Straw's a lovely thing.

And it's a great material.

It's local, it comes from two fields away.

It's easy to put together.

I'm not a professional builder and you don't need to be a professional builder to build with straw.

Straw and bamboo stakes and clay and that's pretty much

all you need to build a wall, which I really, really like.

The bales are spiked,

stitched and rammed into place in a lightweight timber frame,

but Ed isn't exploiting them for their insulation.

I would argue that we could do without the straw bales because then

we'd have an extra sort of metre in each room.

The pile's disappearing.

If I had my way, probably we would just have stud walls,

but he really wants them.

It's still a very high doorway, like...

Yeah, but I think that's quite cool.

I just think it's too high, darling.

Vicky is right.

The external insulation of this place is made from petroleum chemicals.

The straw bales are just for show.

But this method does allow for a family fun day out, or rather, week.

Everyone is drafted in to apply a plaster of pure clay.

The internet-sourced technique is to work thin layers into the straw to

reinforce the drying clay and keep it from cracking.

What he's got here is, he's got his wife, his mother, his mother-in-law,

his honorary godmother, all on one project.

Somebody's using my marigolds so I can't do any!

Despite the cheeriness of the workers,

this is slow technology,

which slams the brakes on a supposedly fast project.

Well, I think you probably want to put a top coat on all of it.

So do the bottom coat as this?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then a slightly smoother topcoat and then you'll get the lovely undulation.

Yeah. Without all the kind of uh-uh-uh.

SHE SNIGGERS You know what I'm saying, don't you?

Little more uh-uh-uh-uh.

At this rate, this'll take months.

Ed is now honing more newly-acquired skills - plaster boarding,

plumbing and running cables.

But one thing he can't perfect is the delivery of the windows.

It's hugely frustrating. We were promised the windows

a month and a half ago, at the beginning of August,

and if they'd been in at the right time, we could have

had the floors down by now, we could have, yeah, been almost finished.

And... But we can't do those things until the windows are in.

Massive downer. Everything else has been relatively smooth and this is

the one thing that's thrown a massive spanner in the works.

And while Ed waits, his building grows and sprouts.

His straw walls have cracked and are turning into a living structure.

At the moment, it looks a bit like the, um...

..salt lake, doesn't it?

Skin of a rhino.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you're not too fazed by that?

You're OK? I'm...

..seesawing.

I mean, I know that your wife's not here today.

No, she's not. So, what's her, what's...? Does she like this?

She is not the biggest fan of straw bales and clay.

Because she wasn't the biggest fan in the first place, was she?

No. She doesn't like the cracks.

She would like a seamless...

And also, I suspect what'll happen is the building dries out

and over six months it cracks again a bit because the humidity level

will drop again and it'll open up a bit.

That's the deal with clay.

It doesn't have to be smooth, it can be bumpy.

But she just doesn't want the cracks? No.

Ed has constantly surprised me with this project,

achieving terrific results with just his wits, his effort,

his talent and his reliance on the internet for research.

On the other hand, he has only two weeks to go

before his self-imposed deadline for finishing the project.

Now, he has the slimmest chance of achieving that.

Then again, pigs might fly.

When Ed and Vicky started to rebuild their remote concrete cow shed in

Somerset, no-one really knew how well it would turn out.

So, on my last visit, a year ago, I had little idea of what to expect.

Well, outstanding!

I mean, this is the pioneer's homestead.

Not so much Little House On The Prairie, more, um...

big house on the hill.

Outside, the house was a timber-clad reward

for Ed and Vicky's hard graft and vision.

Inside, it was a different story.

Oh, you've done a few things.

It's not fully furnished yet. We're getting there!

And there was a long snagging list.

I told you to pull it down!

This, guvnor, came off in me hand!

The house suggested it was tantalisingly close to completion,

but it was nowhere near.

They had missed their ludicrously ambitious seven-month deadline to be

open for business, but you could see the potential of the place.

It is gonna be great, isn't it?

It will be lovely.

It's just we've got to kind of focus on the other bits first and then

we'll turn this into my dream studio. Yeah.

Looking forward to sort of seeing your businesses flourish here and

I'm imagining that, you know, a couple of years from now,

you'll be teaching Pilates out here on the deck. Yeah.

How amazing would that be? And then in the evening you'd be cooking for a bunch of people.

Yeah, that's the plan.

I wanted to see the connection between this place,

these people and this building completed.

I wanted their off-grid adventure to flourish.

I wanted to see the smallholding,

Ed's cookery business and Vicky's Pilates practice all take off.

I had to come back.

This project was always 50% naivety, 50% raw, pure energy,

and what a quixotic combination.

It's been a year since I was last here and I'm very curious to see how

Ed and Vicky's great off-grid adventure is going.

'On my last visit a year ago,

'Ed and Vicky's house was barely more than a shell

'and the newlyweds hadn't moved in.

'But, a year on, this seems a home with no trace of decrepit cow shed.

'It is now...

'..full of promise.

'The Douglas fir cladding really does suggest that idea

'of pioneering, hilltop homestead.

'The recycled milk bottle-top roof, however,

'suggests something sharper and more organised.

'The house is finished and they're now in,

'but is this home also ready for business?'

Hello? Hello!

Oh, hello. Hello, Kevin. Hello.

Good to see you, Ed. Good to see you. And you.

How long have you been here? Nine months.

So, yeah, getting into ten. So, what, round about Christmas time?

Yeah, we moved in on the 23rd.

Of December? Yeah. What a nice Christmas present.

It was great. And was it, you got it all, kind of, sorted?

Yeah. By Christmas, it was sorted.

Ish. Pretty good.

I can see floors laid, I can see, it's sort of enticing.

You'll have to come on in. No, it looks... Come and have a look.

It looks suspiciously established.

HE CHUCKLES

'I am on tenterhooks to see this place...'

Well, now, this is very nice.

'..and it doesn't disappoint.'

Floors down. Yeah.

Decorated. It's full of homely goods and lovely furniture.

The kitchen's properly finished.

Nothing comes off in my hand, I hope.

No. No.

It's all good.

'This is not cool, slick architecture,

'but it is cow-lick architecture.

'The creative re-use of a building

'that celebrates all the old cow shed had to offer,

'with a deck and views that cows surely never fully appreciated.'

'Guest rooms await those lucky enough to be invited.'

'And remember, with just a smidge of professional input

'from their architect, this is all Vicky's and Ed's own work,

'built with their own hands, often from whatever was available.

'Nothing went to waste here.'

It's good to see the old cow shed

still sort of, you know, poking its nose, its wet nose through!

Yeah. Here and there.

The walls and piers, which is lovely and proper.

Are you happy living here?

Yeah, very happy.

That's good. Yeah.

Oh, yeah.

'This is, of course, no longer cow shed, but a super-insulated home,

'devised for two resilient, progressive people.

'Ed and Vicky are completely off-grid,

'relying solely on the wind, the sun

'and a backup generator when necessary.'

How much do you miss the grid?

That was very directed at me, wasn't it? Yeah, it was, actually.

I miss it when there are times that, for whatever reason,

the generator might be playing up, and I'll sort of kick Ed out of bed

at one o'clock in the morning, because I know that the generator's

doing something wrong, and there are times when I -

and I've said to you, haven't I - that I don't trust the house.

Ooh! That's sometimes what was quite hard. Yeah.

When it works well, it's amazing.

There's a huge amount of satisfaction

when you've gone through an entire day

and you've managed to have the oven on,

do a couple of washes, had the dishwasher on,

and you've done it all through the power of the sun,

which is really very satisfying.

Wow. Yeah.

I like this house very much, because it's a sort of meeting of rural

cow shed with rural modern living.

Weird, crazy, Moominland walls.

And that, that's the bit that you never got.

That was the step too far for you, wasn't it?

The bit we did in your bedroom, can we have a look at that? Yeah.

'The clay walls may be contentious, but I was always a fan,

'especially in their natural, rhino-skin state,

'which can still be seen around the building.

'In the master bedroom, the walls are at least painted,

'if still a little lumpy.'

Oh, your bedroom's all done. Very established. It's lovely.

The bedroom is finished, yeah.

What's it's like, then, erm, sleeping with this thing

towering over you at night?

It's a bit like being in a cave, really.

Yes. Albeit a cave with a view.

Yeah. A very lovely cave.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, a nice cave. It's a good thing.

This I like, the texture is amazing.

Good to hear you say those words.

"This I like."

I didn't think it was that amazing when we first moved in

and there were rodents living in the straw bale walls.

Which rodents?

Probably the larger kind.

You could hear them sort of pulling at the straw at night.

Does this carry on into the bathroom? Yeah. Is this the same...

Oh, can we see?

How's that?

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.

Hey, hey!

Wall of cave.

And this is pretty...

theatrical.

It was sort of the only way we could have a mirror.

What, cos you can't fix to that wall? Yeah.

Got to hang it off the roof.

So, all these fixtures and fittings are very lovely, but...

where's your water come from?

It comes from the sky. You collect rain water.

Really? In significant quantities?

Yes. So far, it's worked, yeah.

'After three failed attempts at drilling boreholes,

'rainwater was the only choice left.

'Stored in two underground, 10,000-litre tanks,

'the water is pumped back into the house

'for all of Ed and Vicky's household needs.'

Do you sit there with apps, checking weather, and, you know?

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Really? We get excited when it rains.

Yeah. How charming is that?

Actually, that's great, isn't it?

You see a dark cloud coming and you get excited.

And what do you do for flushing the toilets?

Pull the chain.

And also, we have a very, sort of...

relaxed policy on flushing the toilet.

If it's yellow, let it mellow.

Yeah, basically. Very much so.

If it's brown, flush it down.

Most of the time, yeah.

Most?

'Ed and Vicky's off-grid life will save them money.

'The businesses should, of course, earn money.

'I'm especially interested in becoming a customer of one of them.'

What is this? This is a reformer.

Phew, wow!

I thought that when I was coming for a bit of Pilates,

that it would be involving a mat.

Yeah, we thought we'd get you on the reformer and see what you think.

And some, you know, standing in strange poses.

As you can tell, I know nothing about Pilates.

I do know a little bit about buildings and, I have to say,

this is a beautiful room.

You know, look, bits of the old concrete cow shed here. Yeah.

These rafters,

supporting the roof, still visible.

Still in place, yeah. Aren't they wonderful?

OK. So, Vicky, do your worst.

All right, ready? Yeah.

OK. What do we do?

OK, so take a breath in.

Then breathe out.

Now hold the weight of the springs in this strap.

Just keep your knees bent for now.

Open to the side.

Lower the legs.

Good, drawing in through the abdominals.

Every now and then, you look pained.

It's just a function of age.

See, if I came here and did a session with you,

got in my car and drove home,

I think I'd crash into a tree on the way back.

Well, no, you're relaxed at the moment,

but I would make you work a bit harder in a full session.

LAUGHING: OK!

I'm just kidding.

'Pilates is just one component of the business plan.

'In the lower half of the house, Ed runs his domain.

'Once a month, supper club brings paying diners to the veranda

'for a three-course meal prepared by Ed in his outdoor oven,

'using ingredients sourced locally or from the land.'

I think Ed and Vicky have done just a fabulous job here

in terms of turning it into just a beautiful home

and taking advantage of the site and the location.

It's all got so much flavour

and when you can actually see where it's coming from,

it just gives a whole other dimension to your plate of food

and the whole experience.

Ed's cooking is kind of a nouveau rustic Somerset chic.

LAUGHTER

'This house, like all really good houses,

'is an exemplar of ways of doing things

'Frugality, lifestyle and the things that matter.'

In the end, you built it in how many months?

From the day that we got the land to moving in, in ten months.

Fantastic. And for how much?

Do you know?

It's a grey figure, but about...

..just under ?250,000.

250, which is very respectable.

You two strike me as very normal, ordinary, professional people.

You do not strike me as two evangelical eco-warriors,

who are out there championing sustainability

and an off-grid lifestyle.

I know that there are some people who haven't been here

who kind of think that we live sort of on a commune and kind of grubby.

There's someone who always likes to ask me if I've showered today.

Oh, yeah? I say, of course I have. You know, I'm not...

You're very clean. He's... I'm very clean. Yeah. He's slightly grubby.

Questionable. I'll live with that.

But, people are sort of surprised to know that, no, we do wash every day

and we have a dishwasher and washing machine and tumble dryer.

You know, I think that we're not trying to get everyone

to live in this way. I think it's just a nice way of showing

that it is possible and it's not actually that difficult.

How long does this last?

Forever. We're not going anywhere.

I've got acorns turning into oak trees in pots out there

that I plan on planting in five years' time,

that I can draw in 50 years' time.

I'm not leaving this house.

No, no. No. No, it's forever.

What about each other? What have you learnt about him through this?

Oh, that he's got the most incredible patience.

He's very patient with me and - well, not just with me,

but with the build.

What have you learnt about Vicky?

I've said really nice things. You have to say nice things.

Yeah, you have. I'll have to think about it.

She says I'm patient with her.

She's also patient with me.

I had to put her...I put her through quite a lot,

building the house.

Yeah. I think she must love me.

I know it's a bit cheesy, but, like,

I learned that.

'Ed and Vicky have a lifetime ahead of them to enjoy and love this place

'and work this land.

'Should we be jealous of them?

'Yes, I think we should.'

Winston Churchill said that we shape our buildings

and they then shape us.

Which suggests, well, not just a contract,

but a relationship between us and what we build,

and I've never seen that idea evinced more beautifully than here,

because Ed and Vicky nurtured this building into being,

and they continue to provide for it.

They continue to make sure it has all the resources it needs,

rather like looking after a family member, you know?

And it, in return, well, it then provides for them.

It nurtures and nourishes them.

It's a symbiotic relationship that puts them in touch with the land,

this place, the environment,

and it defines, in its most complete sense, the word home.