I’ve not posted for a while. Too many ideas, difficult to see a way forward. Wouldn’t make for great reading.
What stopped me in my tracks was doing the numbers. In particular, the projections for the co-working element. It’s obvious in retrospect: it only works if we’re packing in the desks. But that’s in conflict with the accommodation vibe, which needs to run at a much lower capacity. Two shepherd’s huts in a field = glamping; twenty shepherd’s huts = the world’s worst caravan site.
However, it’s the co-working that interests me the most. And I’ve not given up. There’s an idea forming.
I’ve been thinking I’ll do the first iteration of this idea in collaboration with an existing landowner / farmer, so I went to visit one of the places I’d shortlisted. It’s a goat cheese farm in Wookey, near Wells, run by a very lovely couple, Sarah and Ian.
They were open to hearing my ideas, so I met Sarah at the farm for a tour and a chat. They already run a low-impact eco campsite in two of their fields. It works well from spring onwards, and is very popular with families, particularly at the weekends. There’s electricity in one of the fields, but no showers. Take a dip in the River Axe is the advice.
I got the impression from Sarah they wanted to keep things nice and simple and there could be a culture clash with some of our ideas. Maybe it wouldn’t work here.
But then she showed me the farm shop and café. It’s a beautiful space, built by hand by Ian, in which they sell their award-winning cheeses, meat and other produce. The only problem is that, as the farm is well off the beaten track, there’s no passing trade and so it’s not viable to open the shop, apart from when the campsite is really busy. Which is summer weekends only by the sounds of it.
So we discussed the idea of making the shop into a co-working space. Several birds, one stone. An inspiring place to work and the beginnings of a community. A shop that can be manned by trusted co-workers (me, for example) and open all hours. Regular café trade. Midweek and off-season campers.
The only problem with this plan is that Sarah and Ian are building a new house. You can already tell the house will be amazing, but it’s going to take a couple of years, apparently. Which means that, at the moment, that part of the farm, right in front of the shop, looks like a building site. Because, well, it is.
I went away wondering what is the best way to semi-permanently screen off a building site.
The answer is, of course, a vintage airstream caravan, and willow or hazel fences.
In a business model admittedly inspired by Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer, the co-workers could even make the willow hurdles, as part of our hands-on rural skills programme, a welcome daily break from digital drudgery.
Once again, I pumped the whole lot in to AI to see how it would look. It’s not quite what I meant, but it gives an idea.
