On Grandad’s land

Kartoon Kate…by Kate.

Amid all the talk of affordable housing and eco-towns in the UK, here’s a reality check. There is not much of either to be had, however hard you look. Meet two people who would love to live affordably, but who are living on their friend’s or relatives’ land because anything else would be out of the question.

Kartoon Kate Evans works from a lorry parked in her granny’s field in South-East England, and lives in an adjoining caravan with her husband and their child. Note the voltage regulator to her left.

Jeweller Adam “Two Skies” McIntosh lives in a tree house on his family friends’ land in Kinghorn Loch, Scotland. He’s been there ten years and has set up a jewelry workshop in his eyrie and finds time to hold fortnightly sweat lodges in the tree house for anyone whop wants to show up (by appointment) .

Kartoon Kate spends her time writing books for a small publisher in Brighton called Myriad Editions. She self published her first book about tree protesting in 1988. Her latest book is “Funny Weather” – “100 pages on everything you didn’t know about climate change” – see more at
www.funnyweather.org. George Monbiot called it accessible, funny and moving. “For day to day paying the rent I am trying to work on getting more regular commissions from the national press,” says Kate.

She has “180 watts of solar power and a Rutland wind generator which is currently in pieces because we had two scaff poles clamped together which wasn’t ideal, it had started to wobble so we took it down…..I can see fields out my window. It was oil seed rape last year which was very nice.”

“I am currently working on something about Iraq with the charity Voices in the Wilderness – its not a very cheerful cartoon but I am trying to make it as beautiful and interesting as possible. Elecsol batteries have made a big difference to our system – they really hold the charge. I have a £35 car inverter which is still working after 5 years.

For communicatons Kate has T Mobile Web and Walk at £29 per month; “you get 3 Gig of traffic. It doesn’t support file sharing but that’s ok. It enables me to do all my web sites and emailing graphics to people wherever I am.”

Via the inverter she runs an IBM ThinkPad, Z6 slightly widescreen, fine for energy consumption. “As an illustrator it would be lovely to have a big flashy screen. I might even get a monitor one day. We’ve got a little car stereo and 12v digital radio. You can use the laptop to play the music, or just put it into the amp. Its all relatively low energy.”

Adam McIntosh had just got back from Glastonbury when I spoke to him, selling his jewelry on a stall. He will spend the rest of the summer planting and harvesting, making more jewelry and going to festivals to sell it. . If you want to visit and join in a sweat lodge you can email him via this web site. He’s also looking for two people to come and stay in the tree-house in return for some work in the organic vegetable garden.