She built a home from straw, mud, and manure and has lived without power or water for 27 years

Ema Orbach, who holds a degree from Oxford, has embraced a life of "radical simplicity" for the past 27 years, living in a self-built hut in west Wales. She consciously chose to abandon a conventional career and city life, opting instead for a dwelling constructed from natural materials like straw, mud, and horse manure, supported by wooden poles.

Her remote home is devoid of modern amenities such as running water and electricity. Orbach daily fetches water from a nearby stream and relies on a composting toilet. Cooking and heating are managed through fire, and she sustains herself by growing vegetables and raising goats and chickens.

Orbach wakes at dawn to tend her garden, milk goats, meditate, and manage her household. She believes modern technology disconnects people from natural rhythms and silence, and she found herself unable to adapt to the contemporary world. Her chosen lifestyle, which she has maintained for over a quarter-century, is not presented as a universal model but rather as an illustration that happiness can be found in simplicity and a detachment from consumer culture.

While Orbach recognizes that her way of life is too demanding for most, she hopes her example might inspire others to reconsider their relationship with consumerism and technology. She initially purchased the remote property in 1994 with her then-husband, and over time, a community of like-minded individuals seeking a closer connection to nature formed around it. After her divorce, Orbach continued to live there alone, building her unique home in 1999.