What we are.  KAT is the product of many minds and even more pairs of hands.  It has been 6 years in the making and changes with each passing day.  You are seeing it in its first year of opening to the public and we hope that you will bear with the untidy/unfinished/unavailable aspects.  We would be pleased to hear any comments that you may have.

What we have.  The farm is just under 40 acres.  There are about 20 acres that are being allowed/encouraged to reforest.  Another 10 acres are meadows (you are either just about to walk through them or are in the process of walking through them).   There are a little over 5 acres of fenced areas for the goats. Just under 3 acres are used for vegetable growing, the rest is water, roads and buildings. As of writing this there are two operational wind turbines, a 400w AirX, a 75w Rutland with another AirX and a home built machine in the pipeline.  We have a 600w solar panel array (Siemens SMH55's), a 1912 “Girrard” water turbine (150w on a good day), a 1550Ah battery set and two inverters.

Click the image for a bigger picture

Who we are.  We are home to 10 permanent and up to 6 temporary residents.  The farm is owned by Bob and Cath Donoghue-Barnes and their two children.  Others include Paul and Flick, Tom and Cara and their daughter.  We also normally have an international selection of volunteers from all parts of the world.  

What we do.  We live here, we are living exhibits of something different, something alternative.  Some of us have jobs externally to KAT, others work here full-time and believe me it is a full time job!  We have tried to develop ways of living, eating and consuming that can co-exist with the 21st century.  We have cars but will in time be running them on bio-diesel.  We buy food from shops but try to do so in a green and ethical manner.  We think about the effects our lives have on the planet.  Sometimes we even have holidays in the sun.

There is a 5 pond horizontal/vertical reed bed system that deals with the grey water waste from the main house (which we hope will become a training and exhibition centre when Bob finishes the new house).  Just past the reedbeds you will find our “turbine park” An area set aside for old and failed attempts.  If you are considering building your own machine then take a little time to consider what didn’t work for us.

There are a pair of Hydraulic ram pumps that pump 6000lit of water a day up a 20m hill to provide drinking and irrigation water.  If any of you know how they work we will be stunned and may well offer you a job or at the very least a free guided tour.  To find the rams you will have passed our 32m3 cold store that keeps wine and vegetables at a very constant 12C.  It is built of concrete and is buried in the hill behind the house.

There are two vegetable gardens.  For this year only the upper one is open to the public.  How interesting it is will depend very much on what time of year you are visiting and what the season has been like (last year was a disaster).  In future years we hope to be able to offer a limited number of organic vegetables for sale.

There are two 20m by 5m polytunnels.  The second of which is suffering from storm damage and will be re-built with concrete footings (like the first one) when the winds eventually demolish it for us

Next to the chicken run there are a group of compost bins.  These take all our vegetable and animal waste and turn it into the most beautiful compost.  Talking of compost, we have a pair of composting toilets next to the hot-tub room and beside what will become the solar shower and washing area.

We hope that you enjoy your visit and would like to mention a few of the things we are planning.  These include a bio-diesel production area.  A small café and farm shop. An internal exhibition and training centre.  Two more water turbines, a crossflow for power production and a pelton for demonstration purposes.  We have travelled far but still have a long way to go.

From the signs at our gate through the food that we eat to the power that runs our computers we try to do it ourselves.
It may be rough, it’s certainly ready, but it is ours!