'We live in a tiny shack in the woods and it's the best decision we ever made'

The Beck family are living in their dream family home - but must be monitored for five years to keep it. Lois McCarthy reports

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NESTLED deep in Pembrokeshire woodland, Abi and Marcus Beck have built their dream home - a handcrafted eco-cabin which looks like it's grown from the earth itself.

However, under Wales’ pioneering One Planet Development (OPD) policy, the couple must follow a strict set of rules to keep it.

Every year, the Becks monitor how they live - from how they grow their food to how they power their home and even how far they travel - and if they fail to meet the scheme’s tough sustainability targets, they risk losing the woodland home they have worked so hard to build.

The idea for this life began years earlier, during a yearlong trip around Europe with their children.

"We did a year’s trip around Europe in a campervan with the children when they were five and that was really fascinating to see how people lived in other countries, but also to see firsthand the impacts of climate change," Abi recalls.

"Living in a campervan was also a lesson in how to live simply, conserving your resources and adapting to the local environment."

That journey planted the seed for what would become their off-grid home - a place designed not just to exist in nature, but to work in harmony with it.

"In essence, the benefits are an affordable and sustainable way for people to live and work off the land," says Abi.

"The One Planet Development policy is a forward-thinking scheme that allows people to build in places like woodland or open countryside, where it's normally not permitted, if they can prove they’re living in a genuinely low-impact way that gives back to the ecosystems we depend upon."

To make sure this balance works in practice, there are a few important rules that anyone applying has to follow, including using sustainable building materials, growing their own food and generating their renewable energy, as well as processing waste onsite and managing a land-based business.