In August of 2018 Maarten, Lea and their baby daugher Puck set out on a great new adventure. They moved out of their city apartment into a 1987 Hymer camper-van. Taking only the essentials, they slowly made our way from the Netherlands down to Portugal. In May 2019 they bought a piece of land in central Portugal that had been abandoned for 30 years. Now they are slowly making it their home, and started with the basics like a yurt to live in for their off-grid lifestyle.
Videos
In this first video I tell you a little bit about who we are and why we decided to leave our jobs in the Netherlands and move to Portugal, without a set plan and a three month old baby.
In this tour I show you what we have done so far on our new property in Central Portugal and tell you a little bit about the history and our future plans.
In this weeks video we show you the long process of cleaning our big well. Since our property has not been in use for about 30 years, the well has not been cleaned for a very long time. Now that we are in the final stage of summer it was time to clean the well, in the hopes that it will refill properly this autumn.
This week we take a look at all of the projects that we have finished in between the yurt and the garden work. I show you some exciting new opportunities for water, preparing the land around the yurt for summer and what we do to help the trees stay alive this summer. I also give you a sneak peak into some of the seedlings we have started and explain how we are trying to help the soil in the olive field.
Today I finally commited myself to working on some of our oldest olive trees. They were covered in brambles and today was the day to get them out. After some hard work they look much better now.
Today I want to talk you through some of the things you need to consider before starting a homestead when it comes to money. I did not want to put any numbers down, because it is so different everywhere.
This last year has been a crazy one, with many ups and downs. Today I want to share the story of our first year here on the land.
Is it possible to be fully self-sufficient? – A walk and talk
This week we were finally able to upgrade our pump and with it our whole water system. A big thank you to all the patrons who help make this possible.
Finally we are able to share what we have been working on these last few months. Last week we finally signed for a small vineyard that we will also use to keep bees on. But before we fully get started on that we need to finish the garden remodel and use the digger again.
27.12.20 This week Maarten continued the digging and started on the first pond, one in the most bottom part of our land. This is just the first of many, all part of our longer term water management plan.
