- Some people who come to this house,
it looks like something out of a romantic magical fairytale.
But this romantic magical fairytale, really is our home.
- I'm Jasmine.
- I'm Simon.
- And we live out in the Preseli Hills in West Wales.
We're part of a wide community
that spreads over the whole region in the local area
of people learning to fence off here.
When we first settled down, made permanent home,
it seemed fairly clear to us, we much preferred
to be in the countryside and I did like
the sort of magical element of you know,
the idea of fairies and myths and stuff like that.
- We built a small, simple, modest house
out of the things that were around us,
out of the things that we could easily get
from waste and from the natural world
rather than going and buying things.
This is where we store our firewood to
keep us warm through the winter.
It took us about two months, so we've used stones,
mud, clay, wood, we brought in some straw bales,
used quite a lot of those, and it cost us around
about two or three thousand pounds.
- And the big house, Simon was finishing it
to a very high standard, so it'll have
a lot of longevity, it'll last a long time, generations.
And we only use recycled materials, natural materials
or things that we've grown available
from this piece of land.
This is my greenhouse.
You put the food in relationship to the house
and to the water and to the landscape,
and instantly, in comes the fellows,
the birds and the insects.
- Our dirty water can feed the plants,
our need for shelter, can give nice shelter
for other animals to come and live
and we really can live in a way which is,
sympathetic to the rest of what's going on in nature.
This is my workshop.
My commute to work goes a bit like this,
out of the front door, dodging between the flowers
and maybe picking a few berries off the bush
on the way past for a little snack
until I get to my workshop.
At the end of every day, I can sit back
and see the things that we've made
and know where the piece of wood had come from.
The first night in the house that you've made
with your own hands in exactly the way
that you want it to be, is an absolutely magical one.
(gentle music)