Will Richardson's family has lived off-grid in a Welsh cow field since 1950, starting with a caravan and building a log cabin. They use a reed-bed toilet, rainwater harvesting, and solar-thermal showers. Richardson says the engineering was simple; getting everyone to agree on it was the hard part.
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Welcome to episode 2 of The Cow Field and the Log Cabin. As a reminder, the log cabin stroke caravan, as it was initially, has been off-grid since 1950 and in a cow field. So, we've had no running water and no electricity in the same Welsh field since 1950. And the hardest part of fixing that was never the engineering. This is Sustainability Solved by Will Richardson. And this is part 2 of 7 on why I am changing Sustainability Solved's main podcast. Last week, my grandmother was in court in Abu Dhabi. This is the same place and the same conviction applied to A caravan in a field. We have summered in Aberdovey, on the west coast of Wales, since long before I was born. And we still do. It was a caravan that had been put in a cow field in the middle of nowhere, completely off the grid. No running water, no electricity, nothing. Nada. We've had to Dig big holes to go to do certain types of toileting. I don't know how you say that politely. We've had to bring water in from the car park in Aberdovey, from the tap there. Over time, it changed. The caravan that my granddad put there in 1950 was falling down, and my dad was sick and tired of fixing it Every single time we went away. So, they bought a static caravan and got it brought in. That was not what my parents wanted, and because we were friends with the few houses that were around, the neighbours were not overly happy with that caravan either. And so, between everyone— locals, my parents— they decided they would buy a log cabin. This is the bit I want you to hold on to. Between everyone, local and my parents, nobody won an argument. They got the people they had to live with, the outcome, into the same room, and the answer that came out was better than one any single household would have picked. Interestingly, my dad bought the log cabin from Canada because he thought that was the best place. In hindsight, we've now realised that we should have bought a log cabin from the UK, or more specifically from the west coast of the British Isles— England, Wales, or Scotland— because of the temperate and wet climate that we have on that side of the UK. 25 years in sustainability, and I can tell you that this is the most common mistake In the field. A genuinely good decision made by one well-meaning person without the local knowledge in the room. It is exactly the same mistake as a group-wide decarbonisation target set in a head office for sites nobody from head office has ever visited. Here is what we built once everybody had agreed. My dad and myself designed a reed bed to put it outside where it decomposes anything from our toilets with sawdust. It is completely natural, it never smells, and come summer or winter, it is completely hygienic. We harvest all the rainwater off the roof and we use it to wash the pots and pans and do the washing up. Clean the cabin, and we use it for the shower. We put in a solar thermal shower to heat the water, which is amazing. Come winter or summer, and we have hot water literally on tap. The only thing we do not have is running water to drink. We still bring that in from the car park, but it is fresh water and it is really easy to do, and So, we just go out and bring it up. We do not use huge amounts of energy, but it is nice to have a running fridge now, and it is nice to be able to have some lights on in the winter months or in the summer months in the evening. All of that probably made me the person I am today. Now, notice what none of it required. No regulation, No enforcement officer, no court date. It took a shared understanding of the problem and a group of people who would hear each other. And when the engineering was the easy bit— rainwater harvesting, a reed bed, and a solar thermal panel was not hard— getting everyone to want them is the hard part. And that is a communications job. Not a technical one. So what our organization can do today is pick the site, team, or supplier where your climate plan is going slowest. Do not send them more information. Go and ask them what they would do and put whatever comes back into the plan visibly with their name on it. That is the difference between a static caravan nobody wanted and a log cabin everybody agreed to. Next time, I'm 19 and I'm about to be interviewed for a job in a chicken suit. The written version of this, of this is on Substack. Link in the show notes. I'm Will Richardson and this is Sustainability Solved by Will Richardson.
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