Once upon a time he worked in London, eating at top restaurants and drinking champagne. Now Nick Weston calls a tree house home, sipping home-brewed elderflower champagne and dining on slow-cooked squirrel he’s killed himself.
This spring, Weston, 27, left his job and girlfriend behind and in June, moved from London’s neighborhood of Clapham to a tree house in the Sussex woods. His plan is to live there for six months and conduct his own experiment in self-sufficiency.
He spends his time hunting, foraging and doing “home” improvements. His tree house has no electricity or running water, but so far he’s built a homemade hot shower (“really nice — and very liberating,” he told London’s Evening Standard) and smokers to preserve meat and fish. His current project: a clay oven.
He also keeps a vegetable garden, where he grows peas, broad beans, runner beans, rocket (arugula, if you’re American), leeks, red onions, tomatoes, potatoes and spinach. He kills squirrels (a “nightmare” to skin, he told the Standard), rabbits and pigeons. He’s tried eels and snails, though slugs are a no-go.
“I’m missing seeing friends, visiting friends for dinner and my girlfriend,” Weston told the Standard. (The girlfriend, who works in fashion and has helped decorate the tree house, visits on weekends.) “In London everything’s so easy, it’s all on a plate, you do realize how lucky you are to have London when you’re out of it.”
He does venture into civilization for supplies — mostly ammunition and some staples like sugar, brewers’ yeast and muslin cloths, all of which sets him back £50 ($85) per month.
“I’m shocked by the amount of money I used to spend on nothing,” he told the Standard. “A Tube fare is half a week’s outgoing for me. We don’t need to spend as much.”
This month’s adventures, according to Weston’s blog, include friends bearing watermelon and a German TV crew bringing red wine, cake — and a camera to film him going to the toilet of all places. As Weston himself writes, “Hey, sh-t happens.”
Photo courtesy of nyki_m, via Flickr