A mother-of-two has abandoned her traditional family home to embrace a nomadic lifestyle, now residing in a handcrafted tent in the British countryside with solar power, homegrown food, and living expenses amounting to just £300 per month. Jessica Rost, a 55-year-old artist, made the switch to full-time nomadic living in 2019, initially moving into a converted Ford Transit van. She kept her two-bed family home in Milton Keynes for her children, aged 25 and 27, who lived there intermittently while attending university and starting work.
In 2021, Jessica began constructing bender tents – shelters created from woven branches or metal formed into a dome shape – as part of her artistic endeavours. This eventually led her to build one for herself to inhabit. Her current abode, a seven-metre by five-metre tent in the Cheshire countryside, boasts several amenities such as five windows, a gas cooker, carpets, a flower pot fridge, wireless internet, and even a mobile bath. Jessica sustains her modest monthly budget by growing her own food and sharing her living space with occasional wildlife visitors like spiders, shrews, slugs, and toads, which she embraces as part of the experience.
Although Jessica plans to temporarily reside in a house in Lancaster later this year with her partner and his son, she envisions a future living in a treehouse or van and doubts a return to a traditional lifestyle. Her tent, costing approximately £1,500 to construct, offers a unique living experience – adorned with hazel poles, windows, a gas cooker, carpeting, insulation, and more. Jessica’s sustainable lifestyle involves minimal monthly expenses covering essentials like WiFi, groceries, and rental costs, with her off-grid setup powered by a solar panel. She forages and grows her own produce, avoids refrigeration for most foods, and utilises a gas oven or wood-fire for cooking.
While her unconventional living arrangement accommodates some unexpected guests like spiders, Jessica maintains order by sealing food, keeping cleanliness, and entrusting her cat with pest control duties. Looking ahead, she plans to extend opportunities for others to experience bender tent living, emphasizing the minimalistic and sustainable benefits it offers. Jessica’s advocacy for off-grid living underscores its potential as a solution to various societal challenges, albeit constrained by legal limitations and societal bias against nomadic lifestyles.