Original subtitles

There is, among these hills, a quiet revolution going on.

Those of us who care about the environment, myself included,

worry about our carbon footprint and climate change and we know

we have to stop gobbling the world resources,

but few of us do much about it.

Not so one couple.

They are real role models here.

They are part of a pioneering group of self-builders who are

leading the way in low-impact living and I, for one,

am absolutely in awe of what they are doing.

The glorious Welsh hillsides have been seducing the brave and

the different since the 1970s.

Simon and Jasmine Dale and their two children, Elfie and Cosmo,

moved here to Pembrokeshire to pursue a new way of life.

I think I'm like a generation of people that are deciding to

come back to living on the land.

It's just that we want to have less impact on the environment

and we really feel like having a life base outside.

They are the latest in a long line of couples,

loaners and families, even organised groups, who are turning their backs

on consumerism and to try to forge new relationships with the land.

We're trying to follow our dreams and we're trying to live

a simple life so we're setting up a smallholding here,

we're building our own homes bringing in animals,

growing food and trying to care for this piece of land.

Simon left behind his work as a photographer,

while Jasmine used to work in environmental education.

They moved on to their seven-acre plot two years ago

and are about to start building their permanent home.

That's why I'm here.

Ah, hello. Hello. Hi. Kevin.

How are you? Simon.

Pleased to meet you. And you. Nice spot.

Is this is where you're going to build your house? That's right.

Just here. There's our view. It's sited to maximise that.

South is sort of that way?

Yes. Definitely got to be orientated south.

Yes, because you're going to build the house which benefits

from where you are. Ideally.

Capture as much of that thermal energy as possible,

for the heating, so we can reduce our heating costs and load.

Have you done this kind of thing before?

Are you taking a step out from conventional life now,

or have you already done that?

We've been moving into this sort of way of living for about a decade.

This will be actually the fourth home

that we've built for our family.

It's going to be the first one

that's of a size to last us for a lifetime.

Simon's already put up a modest, one-room house

for the family to live in, a temporary fix,

while he builds the new home which will be nearly four times the size.

But it does give you a good idea of their organic style and his

talent for craftsmanship.

So, you're stood probably on the outside wall of the building.

We've got an upstairs layer, basically,

which runs along the top of the hill.

So there is like a storey, then.

It's like a storey, if you like.

We're going to put one layer at the top of the hill

and then we're going to step down and make another layer below it.

The top one's going to be primarily bedrooms and a bathroom

and the bottom one's going to be our living area.

Now, look, how Hobbity is this house going to look?

It's going to look medium-Hobbity. Medium. I like that.

I like the honesty. Medium-Hobbity.

We want to be have fun, as well, at the same time.

Some straight lines, then, and some curves? Yes.

How are you going to stop it from looking too random,

too higgledy piggledy? Plaster it all in. Oh, really?

Plaster it all in an one continuous, smooth curve.

I presume you're not having to get a mortgage on this building.

We're not. No.

Yes, that's partly what we're trying to get away from by taking

a very simple approach to life. How much have you got to spend on this?

At the moment, we've not got very much.

But we're going to see how we go and we got

a few things to come in along the way. How much is not very much? 500?

5,000? 50? In the bank at the moment, more like 500-ish.

But, you know, I think with a will, we're going to get here.

Earn, borrow, beg, steal. That's right. Fine. Yes.

As far as I can tell, Simon and Jasmine are starting to build

their family home with just £500 in the bank.

That is adventurous.

As is the design and scope of what they want to do.

On the top of their south-facing plot,

Simon and Jasmine will be excavating 12 feet into the hillside.

Along the back, they will build a very large retaining wall

out of sandbags, filled with the earth they've dug out.

The floors will be of rammed earth,

polished and hardened with linseed oil.

The structure of the house will be made from round pole timber,

all grown, felled, prepared and sawn by Simon.

The roof will also be made of round pole timber,

covered by two big cash items -

a damp-proof membrane and a goodly measure of sheep's wool insulation.

The exterior timber-framed walls will be filled with straw bales.

The windows will be reclaimed, so the size and shape will depend

on what they can get locally.

Wrapping around the ground floor at the sunny front will be

a greenhouse to preheat air for the house as well as for

propagating and growing food.

The kitchen will unsurprisingly be reclaimed.

Units and appliances will all come from car-boot sales and eBay.

The staircase, handmade by Simon,

will lead to a mezzanine floor with a small study,

and at the top of the house, Simon and Jasmine's bedroom,

a family bathroom and the two children's bedrooms.

The straw bale walls will be protected by a line render to

unify the disparate arrangement of recycled and natural materials.

And there'll be a grass roof, of course,

to insulate and visually incorporate the building into the hillside.

This won't be a cramped hobbit house, but a spacious, solid,

three-bedroomed, low-impact family home.

One thing you should know is that Simon and Jasmine aren't

alone on this hillside.

There are eight other families living here too.

They're all part of Lammas - an experimental,

first-of-its-kind, Welsh Assembly-inspired eco-village.

'I figure once we finish these works,

'we won't have to touch this again in our lifetime.'

It's a planning condition that every household must meet its basic

needs from the land within five years.

Otherwise they have to leave.

Yeah, it is a complex mechanism to keep the land productive,

but in effect it means making firewood,

some amount of your food, providing your own shelter,

dealing with your own waste,

sourcing your own energy and having a small business of some type.

It is pioneering stuff.

Then, maybe, if you're finished with that...

You might think this is just a bunch of hippies having fun on the

side of a hill in Wales, but this is actually a research project

and an initiative which is enshrined in government policy now.

Every family that comes to live on this project

has to demonstrate within five years that, from their seven acres

that they've bought, at agricultural rates, they can be self-sufficient...

..to the tune of 75% of their everyday basic needs.

That is some ask.

The big task starts badly with a miserably wet winter.

Too wet to start digging into the hillside.

So, Simon can't even start to build the house for six months,

but he can plan and prepare the site, and I can help him.

So, we've got the staff, very familiar to the building site. Yes.

And we've got the budget sight level.

So, we look through here, two water levels, object in the far distance.

And I think, like, from this we can go across the field and be

within a couple of inches of level.

If you can take the staff over to the hedgerow,

we're going to try and get it as far out of the way as possible,

and I'll tell you whether to go up or down the hill. Good.

If you could come down the hill about a foot towards you.

1, 10, 20, 30...

Yeah, that's great, there.

Perfect.

What I like about this method is the total cost so far is zero.

Oh, no, two screws. Two screws. Two screws.

Since arriving, Simon and Jasmine have built their small home

and prepared the land.

Now Jasmine has just two years to

ramp up her smallholding and get self-sufficient.

Part of living here, we've all got to have a livelihood

that comes off the land,

and so mine is these edible perennial plants, so it's plants

that are useful for nature and as useful for humans, stuff I can propagate

to sell, because I do need to make an income from this land.

You think that this piece of land is large enough for you to do this?

When I see the field demarcated like this, I think,

"Oh, my God, I've got plenty of room for the veg.

"I've got more than enough room to propagate my plants.

"I've got the other field with my grazing and my sheep.'

Yeah, I do think it is.

And small areas are much more productive per metre squared

than big farms, because they've got that intensity of care and use.

ENGINE TURNS OVER

At last the weather improves and Simon is confident that the

earth is stable enough to begin digging.

Using some of their small cash pot, he's hired a digger.

It feels like a privilege to be with the whole family and to witness

this moment.

It's the beginning of a new and arduous chapter for Simon and Jasmine.

One however that is overshadowed by an onerous planning condition, the

commercial demands of growing their smallholding, an absurd lack of

money and all the perils of building a house with their bare hands.

That is indeed a big ask.

The summer heat has descended on the eco-village of Lammas.

Jasmine and Simon can profit from the weather

and dig their excavations.

And Simon has a secret weapon

for building a house with just ?500 in the bank. Volunteers.

This is like a giant sand castle.

It's like going back to your childhood.

People from all over the world who want to learn how to build this kind

of low-impact house live and work with the families at Lammas.

I think, for a lot of the people who are here,

money is not the foremost thing in mind.

People who are really following some dreams and ambitions

and following what brings them joy in life.

You know, for a lot of them, it's about travelling from place to place,

where they can call and just simply exchange a bit of labour

for a bit of keep and they can sustain a really rich and varied,

interesting life, without having to have a big income to fund it.

The task in hand is to construct

a retaining wall to hold the hill back.

And Simon has a plan on how to do it

which costs next to nothing and it doesn't use a scrap of concrete.

He's got hold of hundreds of yellow sacks off eBay

that cost just seven pence each.

And he's filling them with a mix of clay, sand and fine stone.

I'm not sure whether this is that much more labour-intensive than,

say, if we had set up shuttering and poured and cast concrete.

It is certainly a lot more fun.

Fun is something that Lammas does very well and it looks like

I've arrived at just about the right time to join in.

How long to fill a bag with three people?

Just a bit over a minute, I think.

Well, that's good going.

I'm very impressed with the technique.

Because it delivers a very uniform building material,

therefore it has a dimensional stability about the bag

when it's tamped, it's uniform,

it becomes a really usable building material at that point, doesn't it?

Yes. That has a structural capacity

of a lightweight concrete block. Yes.

You were born to this, Mika. I'm destined for greater things!

I'm sure you are.

Simon's inventiveness is exactly what's bringing

a steady stream of volunteers to Lammas.

You have to forgive me for my scepticism,

because I've never persuaded anybody to come and work for me

for free on a building site and I'm wondering how to do it.

I'm wondering how Simon does it.

You have to give a lot of fun, you have to give good food,

nice spot to camp on, all these facilities.

I've been doing it wrong, obviously.

And did you bring any skills with you? I mean, are you a carpenter?

I'm a cabinet-maker. Oh, right.

I've been on a journey like this for a few years.

The materials for the volunteers to work with have been supplied

by Simon and Jasmine, from their very own personal scrapheap.

There's lots of recycled stuff here. Yes.

A handrail, very useful. Very useful. Part of a cattle stall.

Very useful for something, don't quite know what yet. A handrail.

And a greenhouse.

Lots of greenhouses. Three all together here.

Barbed wire. Doors. Sinks. Lots of them. Pallet.

There is something, of course, in the scale of this project.

Architecturally, it's ambitious. Structurally, it's ambitious.

And there must be points where you think,

"Actually, we're tipping over an edge here.

"There are going to be some clashes between our environmental objectives

"and actually just our desire to make something really beautiful."

Sometimes, when I look at the plans for this building and the designs

we've got and the materials we've got here,

these shabby, old, rusty greenhouses which are going to go on the front,

and, yeah, I do have occasional moments where I think,

"This could look terrible.

"It could look really bad."

HE LAUGHS

By any objective standard. Yes!

If Simon's worried about what the house will look like, I'm not.

I have faith in his skill, craftsmanship and inventiveness.

But his speed isn't maybe so impressive.

Nothing happens in a hurry here

and it takes three months to complete the retaining wall.

Simon is nothing if not optimistic.

He wants his family in by next winter.

In ambitious Simon world, then, come next winter,

2014-15, then we'd have a space we could use to some extent.

I don't imagine it being totally finished at all,

but a space which we'd be using to take the pressure off

our current living space.

The second winter of their project is on the horizon

and most of the volunteers drift away.

But the building work has dominated the summer and left Jasmine

little time for her smallholding.

Those last October days of sun you've got a real sense

that you have to finish things off.

You're losing the light from four o'clock onwards.

November here is usually, can be 50, 60 miles per hour winds

and very rainy, so there's all sorts of stuff

that doesn't happen once November comes.

And, as they face this winter, they have just 15 months left

to prove that this land can provide them with 75% of their basic needs.

I am starting to feel it, a real reality that my small businesses

is only just a fledgling, really.

We didn't really try and grow any food this year.

We just did small things, easy things.

And next year, I'd be aiming to do all my own veg

and my plant-selling business has to go up a notch.

What's clear is that while Jasmine and Simon have been concentrating on

their house, their smallholding business has taken a back-seat.

Finding enough time for both

is a challenge for everyone here at Lammas.

I know what you're thinking.

That's going to be a really nice house, isn't it?

Except, it's not a house. It's a workshop.

And a store and it's part of this business, the polytunnel,

run by this family on this piece of land and that's where they live.

Look, there. I mean, where's the architecture, where's the home?

That's the problem here.

There are nine households and no-one yet

has finished the house that they're meant to be building.

You know, that land-based living thing, it's very exciting

and there's a chance of it really working here. That's one thing.

Self-build on a location like this, community self-build,

whatever you call it, that's another.

Trying to mix the two together in a five-year period

seems to me to be just crazy. They are being asked too much.

So what are Simon and Jasmine's chances?

I mean, I think they're going to kill themselves.

Simon and Jasmine aren't blind to this Everest of challenges.

They are forced to face facts and they make the significant

decision to put building the house on hold

so they can fully concentrate on the business.

And for the business to really take off, they need the greenhouses.

The planning targets are, yes, they are dictating to us,

they are controlling what we do in what order.

It can be a bit frustrating, and worrying, at times,

but essentially it reinforces the idea that we're going to put

this food production in the greenhouse before our comfort

and space of having the extra rooms to live in.

For seven months, Simon devotes himself to the greenhouses

and by spring, they're nearly complete.

But at the expense of the family home.

And Jasmine is beginning to feel

she's approaching the end of her tether.

I've started to get tired, now, yes.

I always used to stay up to 1am or 3am in the morning

and be doing projects all night

and now at 9pm in the evening, I just want... I'm over.

After dinner and washing up,

I just want to go to bed and my friends do say that it's because

we've been continually

in a project-building phase for ten years.

Predating Lammas, we've been doing very similar stuff

since we first married and since we had children.

I can see how easy it would be to give up and leave this

alternative life behind.

But Simon and Jasmine... are deep green to the core.

It's two years since I first met Simon and Jasmine.

I've seen them fight for the right to stay on their seven acres

and never more so than in these last months.

Jasmine has dug deep into her considerable reserves

and pulled herself through her dark period.

The Lammas community spirit returns.

I keep looking at the picture of the field five years ago,

with no structures, no plants, bare-grazed field,

there has been quite a lot of hard graft.

I still think it's more nourishing for me

than the other type of hard work I used to do,

before I had my own land

and I'm doing my best to have some sense of achievement.

And so she should.

All her efforts on the plot

have meant Simon can at last get back to the house.

The timber frame on the top floor is his priority.

This is where the children's bedrooms will be.

We've been back on this for nearly a month now,

after finishing with the greenhouses.

It's a really fun bit to do.

We have all these curvy bits and the arches.

It's area where we are using smaller bits of wood,

so they are quite easy to handle and move and lift and it's

really starting to take shape. Which is beautiful.

This kind of construction is painstaking and slow.

And by the end of the building season, when the volunteers

begin to drift away again, there are only the bare bones of a top floor.

And, despite Jasmine's efforts in food production,

I wonder if it is all too little, too late.

As another winter slips by,

the self-sufficiency deadline is just months away.

Simon and Jasmine's greenhouse gamble has paid off.

Mother Nature has returned the considerable efforts that Jasmine

has put in over the past year - with interest.

We are in such an early stage, the yields...

Like, I've grown all these tomatoes but I was just giving them away.

I sold some, we ate three kilos a day for four weeks or something.

It's just as well they've had such bumper crops

because they have to submit their final year's figures

to the council. If they reach 75% self-sufficiency

they will be able to stay on their land.

It is make or break, so they spend their evenings number crunching.

OK, so if you keep a tally. Yeah, yeah, 98 cucumbers in July.

'What we've been doing now is putting a value onto not only what'

we sold but what we ate ourselves and then we combine those

two figures and that's what we've produced.

The good weather means Simon can pull out the construction stops

to get the bedrooms on the top floor ready for Cosmo and Elfie.

You set a goal - "Let's get these kids' rooms together,

"get this really good." We are gonna try and make sure that this is

in a shape that they can get into it in the autumn.

And he might just do it. He's already achieved an extraordinary

amount. There are floors, a roof, insulation,

even a reclaimed roof light in place. At last, Elfie and Cosmo can

understand what their new bedrooms will be like.

So, this is your one here, isn't it?

I kind of imagine it, like, going out a bit and then it being

kind of rounded but then spacious and cuddled up

at the same time. What do you reckon of your space?

OK, it's gonna be covered here...

We have come to this point by following our hearts,

by following what is bringing joy into our lives

and that's been our navigation system to get here.

There's gonna be a little bench just here,

so this is where I'm gonna put my Lego and build my stuff.

What we need to do to, what we're doing is

what is right for us, what is right for our natures

and to whatever extent that is good for the bigger, out there, nature

is not surprising. Cos they are one and the same.

Are you excited about it? Yeah. Yeah?

OK, well hopefully it won't take for ever and

we'll get there before you leave home!

LAUGHTER

It's something of a delight to come back here on what's

become something of an annual pilgrimage to see...

..a house going up. That's progress, eh? We measure

the progress of construction, of buildings, like we do ourselves,

in years. But this project is so slow, it's so back-burner...

You could almost measure it in decades.

Ah-ha! Hi. How are you? I'm very well, how are you?

Yeah...

'But I'll never tire of watching Simon work with his home-grown timber.'

So this post goes where? This post is going down the far end,

the other end of our bedroom. OK...

These are for braces? These are for braces,

so the post's gonna go vertical and then we are going to have two

beams coming in, one through into a mortise here... Yes.

And one into another mortise... You enjoy doing this?

..Just here. It's lovely work, isn't it? I'm intrigued

cos with round pole timber, you can't work on the flat bench

cos it rolls around. So, sensibly two horses and...

Ratchet straps. Two ratchet straps make all the difference.

Ratchet straps for everything and string lines down the middle to...

Imagine a straight line through the centre and then, if you like,

you can pretend that there is a square in there. Yeah.

There's one, there's the same surface, level and in line

with each other. Yeah...

Over the last two and a half years, Simon and Jasmine have

earned some hard cash...

The relationships between each element could be just as important,

if not more, as the elements themselves.

Jasmine is running horticultural courses and selling produce.

And Simon does occasional consultancy work on

low-impact building.

They have added to the 500 quid they had in the bank when I first

met them and they've spent it on the house.

So how is the cash situation? Cash situation is all right.

We've already...um, spent...out on a few things, where we said,

"Right, this is gonna make it really good if we spend on this."

So we've put in this black sheet here, which is a damp-proof sheet.

It's a liner, rubber, really good quality...

Rubber, super-stretchy, can't puncture it easily, lasts forever.

Yeah. One sheet goes over the whole building...

About ?2,500. We've got a very good quality, breathable membrane

over the top, which has cost us about ?700.

And the other thing that it's about, apart from keeping water out -

the other reason why we're making a house is to keep warm.

So, sheep's wool insulation... How much has that cost you?

What we've put in so far has cost us something like ?2,000.

So, altogether... Approaching ?5,000. About ?5,000, 5,500...

That's modest.

But this has never been only about the cash -

it's about proving their ability to become self-sufficient.

And they have reached their deadline.

Have you submitted the information back to the Welsh Assembly?

To the local authority, to Pembrokeshire County Council.

But... Who adjudicate us.

According to what? One-planet-living principles?

There's never been any clear guidance.

I can't believe the local authority have got any expertise within it.

They've never...professed to have the expertise

to even judge the initial planning application.

Cos in a way there's a bit of a knife edge, isn't there?

Are we going to be able to keep our homes and our livelihoods?

Rather than lose all this. Yeah.

While the authorities plough through the mountains of calculations

the Lammas residents have put together, Simon can give his

undivided attention to the house.

And Jasmine can take me on a trip!

You forget when you are at Lammas that there is an outside world.

We are going to pick up some recycled polystyrene granules.

We're gonna use it for underfloor insulation.

And this is a guy who's got an appliances' business?

That's right. And all the packaging he's left with...

Round here it's landfilled. So, cos they pay per volume,

he invested in a machine that actually breaks it done back into

its granules. Seriously? Yeah...

So you buy granulated polystyrene ready to use?

Well, we don't even need to buy it, he gives it to us.

Astonishing. Yeah. That's good, that's the circular economy at work.

SAT NAV: In 300 yards you have reached your destination.

So you take all the packaging that these appliances come in -

this stuff...? Yeah.

And then granulate it into that?

And all this polystyrene...

You are going to use to insulate your floor?

That's right but it's not through stinginess,

it's actually genuinely through...

We would just only use something that's...

A non-natural item if it was otherwise going to landfill

or was a waste. So, when we came across the granulator,

the king of granulation, then it's a godsend.

Come on, let's fire it up. Yeah.

MACHINE CLANKS

Oh, man, this will do it! There you go. It sounds evil!

Oh, that looks really vicious in there.

Back on site, there's a flurry of activity.

The straw bale walls are going up,

promising a proper bedroom for Elfie. Snip.

She's now ten years old.

I'm trimming the wall.

So it's easier to put the lime on.

Grandma and Grandad took us to IKEA the other day

so we could see ideas for, like, the bedroom plans and stuff.

So I've kind of got, like, tonnes of ideas now.

Just as speed picks up on the house,

winter descends on Lammas,

bringing an unprecedented 85 consecutive days of rain.

Depressing and difficult anywhere,

but here on an exposed hillside it's surely hell.

So building stops for another four months.

By the spring, the family have reverted to survival mode.

I had, like, a micro tiredness, exhaustion,

sort of like a mini-breakdown.

And then I would say at the end of October it more hit Simon in

extreme tiredness, which showed up as illness.

When I make my annual pilgrimage, my fifth summer here,

I discover that Simon's been making up for lost time.

So now you've got this first floor glazed... Yeah.

You can plumb it now. Yeah.

There's water pipe here.

Yeah, without waste and water and all the services,

the house is a sort of husk, isn't it?

It's a shell. It doesn't function. Yeah.

'Remarkably, Simon is still

'undaunted by the volume of work left to do.

'He keeps chipping away,

'tackling next the services to the bathroom and loo.'

So this is what room?

This is going to be the bathroom.

This section... The family bathroom? This is for everyone, yeah?

Family bathroom. So we're doing a water flushing toilet here.

Conventional toilet on this end. Very sophisticated.

Going down into the greenhouse and down there we've got

a separator, which will separate the solids and the liquids.

The separator isn't installed yet, but it's a very simple technology.

Right, so...

Here... Oh, yeah, if you look here, look. You see these two pipes?

Coming out of the wall here.

That one is for brown waste - poo from the toilet.

That one is grey water waste from just the washing and the bath,

the grey water water.

That goes straight into the greenhouse just here and that

is feeding the plants directly.

The brown water comes into a big tank with

a centrifuge in it and that collects the solids.

The run off from that goes down,

bypasses here and goes into a reed bed down the hill and the poo

is then dried out, composted, and turned into...

Look at this.

Organic compost.

Now, you might have an aversion to handling your own composted poo,

but listen.

Compared to the bags of compost you can buy in the shops,

this stuff is better for you, more organic, and it is...

..sweeter smelling.

It's exactly this kind of low-impact tech and how it's used that

keeps the steady flow of volunteers coming

to work alongside Jasmine and Simon and learn.

So far, there have been an eye-watering 277 volunteers,

who clearly get a lot from being here.

For me, it's a very beautiful experience.

Jasmine's recycled polystyrene is being used in the rammed

earth floor of her bedroom.

It's been sandwiched between a waterproof membrane and

layers of cob and - this is a surprise - underfloor heating,

powered from their wood burner.

You know, here we've got a whole system.

It's using rubbish and material from here, with the exception of a 60

quid roll of pipe, to heat the room.

Everything else is completely free.

What more could I ask - could any of us ask -

than this house should be properly low impact?

But that it should also have ambition to be

properly 21st century in its comforts.

Now, that's an achievement.

And is there another on the horizon?

Did the Lammas families meet their self-sufficiency target

within five years?

Will they be allowed to stay?

This is one of those parts of the world

which is surprisingly, astonishingly beautiful when you get there.

It is worth making the pilgrimage here every time.

And now I can see that the Lammas community has been busy.

The bare pasture land is now filling up with some nearly built houses

and thriving smallholdings.

Oh, pigs!

There's productivity.

Simon and Jasmine chose this plum site at the top of the hill.

It does take some getting to!

Well, now.

I've been walking down this path for four years now, on and off.

Interesting to see what Simon has got waiting for me.

For the first time, the epic scale and wonderful organic shape

of Simon and Jasmine's new home can assert themselves.

And on the upper floor, there are rather exciting signs of completion.

Ah, proper path to your front door.

How remarkable!

How are you? Hello, Jasmine. Good, thank you. Hello.

Good to see you both,

and good to see a building which, do you know,

has a front door and has windows and is rendered.

Yes. At least this bit. Yeah, this bit. Yeah.

And the turf roof has been on for a while to establish itself. Yeah.

It looks fantastic.

You said... this was going to be medium hobbity.

Medium hobbity.

I think this is a bit more kind of medium to full strength. OK!

The window's quite full strength. Yeah, yeah.

Very pretty. It's very beautiful. Made from your timber?

Timber from the woodland, yeah. Harvested five years ago.

Planked, stacked, dried for two years.

I mean, how exciting

to be able to make everything you need so beautifully.

Can I come in through your front door? Of course.

This is...

This is remarkable. Part finished, but remarkable.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, but the last time I saw this, a few weeks ago,

it was a building site.

Look at it now. I don't remember the glazing.

In the long-term, it will be all sculpted in and everything,

like the front window, but at the moment, that's how it sits.

It's pretty cool at the moment.

This open hallway is noble and usable.

A long gallery, a shared space for Elfie and Cosmo,

whose bedrooms are tucked behind these chunky cob walls.

Shoes off for the bedrooms, yeah? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ohhh!

What a charming, charming room.

So, this is how that's all going to look

when it's all plastered, painted,

and all the rafters are then infilled?

Yeah. It's exquisite.

This is what I've been waiting for.

The true Simon experience,

a combination of the exposed round wood frame and lime plaster walls

covering the rough straw bales in a smooth sweep,

hand-crafted and cuddled up, just as Elfie wanted.

The floor is super-smooth.

Earth, linseed oil, beeswax.

Did you mix it with straw to bind it?

A little bit of sand, a little bit of straw.

Linseed oil over the top, four layers of that,

with a bit of citrus terpene to thin it.

So you've made your own linoleum. Same sort of effect.

You've got your own lino. Yeah.

And, do you know, it actually feels like lino.

Whaay! It's really beautifully smooth. Yeah.

Cosmo's directly next door, yeah? Yeah.

Tucked next door, in the centre of the house, is the second bedroom.

This is a bit more hi-tech.

This is the tech room. This is Cosmo's room here.

Mixture of, you know, screens, cameras, keyboards. Yeah.

This room is proof, if ever it when needed,

that low-impact doesn't have to mean low-tech.

And a massive collection of Lego. Yeah.

Wow! That's epic. Mm-hm.

This is an architect in the making, isn't it? Yeah.

Yeah, well, he's got some good making skills.

Just like his dad.

Did I ever think this house would or could look like this?

I'm not sure I ever lost faith,

but I wouldn't have blamed Simon and Jasmine if they had.

They are heroes of the true self-build community.

Ooh! The observatory!

Yeah, yeah. Wonderful, isn't it, open like this?

This end of the house will be Simon and Jasmine's bedroom,

with a sensational view.

I mean, it's presumably not going to be glazed in its entirety, is it?

Not in its entirety, but that bit there.

The bit that looks at the view is. Wow, wow, wow.

I mean, you've just got the wall to do here, haven't you? Yes, yes.

Straw bales round the back and glass round that section on the front.

So when, then, will all this then become a habitable room?

I think we're actually at a point now

that we have to ask ourselves questions

about what we want to do next.

Do we want to jump into our new room for the winter

or do we want to actually do some other things

and stay where we are for the winter?

Well, I know what I'd do. What would you do?

I would move in. You would find it energising... Ah!

..to wake up here in the morning, look out over that landscape,

have the kids next door, have that indoor bathroom in the winter.

The last thing I'd do is put pressure on,

but personally, I'd just be a bit tempted.

That sounds good.

If I'm right, Simon and Jasmine will get their own bedroom finished

before this winter's over,

and the living spaces and kitchen downstairs

will have to wait till next year.

Or the year after.

But it mustn't be forgotten

why Simon and Jasmine have only got a half-finished house.

Failure to meet the five-year target of self-sufficiency on their land

has always meant, for everyone at Lammas, the threat of eviction.

But now I have some very good news indeed.

Their homes are safe.

They have reached their five-year target, these guys.

They've achieved 75% sustainability,

and that's a fantastic landmark point to have arrived at.

So, to mark this heroic achievement, a party.

It's so tantalisingly fantastic,

and it's been tantalisingly fantastic for the past six years.

As a fan of the Lammas project, I'm lucky enough to join them

to celebrate this milestone in low-impact living.

This is about...

what my mind and the human mind, I think, and the human body can do.

There's relief and happiness in the air.

Of all the people who've come to Lammas

and all the peripheral projects around,

nobody's gone back to the mainstream lifestyle. Yeah.

And there's much to celebrate

about Simon and Jasmine's house as well.

It has so many qualities, not least its integrity.

All the timber sourced from this plot of land,

with almost exclusively recycled materials

and fully renewable power sources.

It hasn't and won't destroy the planet,

but it hasn't cost the earth.

You started out, you thought, with about 500 quid in the bank. Yeah.

Yeah, and a few more bits along the way.

Borrowed a teeny bit

and we've spent something like ?25,000, ?30,000 so far.

I think 27 at the moment. 27 over four years. Yeah.

Which is the cheapest house ever built in the western hemisphere. OK!

And of the 27... Yes?

..how much of it, as it were, is tangible in the building,

and how much of it has gone on stuff like food for all those workers,

all those volunteers?

Yeah, I think those are really more like the core building costs

and maybe... probably about five grand

has gone on food for all the people that have helped.

Cos we have to calculate the retail value of all the veg,

about ?5,000 to ?6,000 worth of vegetables

has gone to them over the years.

A great way to measure the budget of your house, though, isn't it?

?5,000 worth of vegetables have gone into this house. Yeah.

To have witnessed Simon and Jasmine

build this extraordinary house in such a novel way

makes me proud to know them.

How do you measure the success of this entire project?

I don't think I can quantify it and break it down,

but I can feel it in my heart every day

when I walk round at the end of the day

and I can see the bats flying round or hear the birds singing still,

you know, and just look at it.

Yeah. Yeah!

Yeah! It makes me go, "Yeah! This is good! This is really great."

How do you measure it?

He talked, actually, in very emotional terms, Simon, about it.

Well, I think for me, personally, yeah, this whole...

Yeah, as the trees grow up...

We've been on the roof a lot this week, and I'm just like,

"Yes, it is repaired," or whatever it is,

you know, those words you use about landscape.

It feels good? Yeah.

It's a great feeling. Yeah. That's a good thing.

Yeah, it's been hard work, and I wasn't asking for an easy life.

You know, I want challenge.

There's something nice about a hard day's graft,

you get to the end of the day and you're tired,

and that exhaustion is a nice feeling.

I think that's part of being human,

to have a little bit of challenge and a little bit of struggle

and come through it, especially when we come through it together.

It's a great privilege to share the journeys that self-builders go on,

and here more than most.

Over the years, I've watched the children grow into young adults,

seen the lowest of low-impact houses rise out of the hills

and seen the land give up its bounty,

helping this family become self-sufficient.

HE SIGHS

So it doesn't matter one jot, does it,

that this house isn't finished?

Because the wider scheme is such a resounding success.

Having started life as this abstract government initiative

and then having grown into something which was a social project

determined by statistics and percentages,

it only really took off thanks to the imagination, the energy,

of people like Simon and Jasmine.

So what is it to you and me?

Well, it's not just an example of how we could and should live.

This is a clarion call.

The beautiful compound curve of the ploughshare,

I mean, that is a shape you do not often see in architecture.

We came up with this idea of these two swooping roofs.

Building a house, changing your life, running the courses,

all that is huge.

Most ones we do are fairly square and symmetrical.

This is a little bit more tricky.

Standing here, it looks like some mud hut in Benin.

I'll tell you who's going to have to be the voice of scepticism.

That's me.