Tinkers Bubble is a small off-grid hillside woodland community and the longest standing low impact eco-village in Somerset, England. The name Tinkers Bubble, comes from the spring that flows through the woodland and ends in a small waterfall by the road. In the past, gypsies brought their horses to this bubble— the gypsy name for waterfall— to water them.
Tinkers Bubble is low-cost eco-housing that uses local free natural materials. The buildings are temporary structures built with a very low environmental impact when compared to conventional housing. The woodland provides the fuel for all their cooking, space and water-heating. A wind-generator and solar panels provide enough electricity for lighting, music and laptops.
The residents, known as ‘Bubbleites’, manage the 40 acres of land without fossil fuels, and make a living mainly by selling organically grown produce at local farmers’ markets and selling sustainably produced timber, all of which is felled by hand, logged by horse and sawn by a wood-fired steam-engine driven sawmill. They heat their homes with wood, cut the hay with scythes and milk the cows, weed the fields and harvest the crops by hand.
This documentary is about these eclectic mix of individuals and families, money poor but happiness rich, living sustainably since 1994 – without fossil fuels, isolated from the ‘system’, and in harmony with nature.
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