Terra do Milho

Tag: homesteading

  • The Best Homestead Location, what you need to know.

    The Best Homestead Location, what you need to know.

    What is the best location for a homestead? What should we consider? How do we know if this place is good for our dreamed Homestead?

    Buying a piece of land to live from is not a light decision to make. After all it is quite an investment in time and money. That is how we felt when we were looking for a piece of land many years ago.

    I still remember roaming the area. We decided to buy something in the south of Portugal. Then we became more specific and wanted a piece of land in the Serra de Monchique.

    One of our considerations was that we wanted something in the middle of nature.

    Starting a Homestead in a Remote Area

    Friends of us had moved to the Serra de Monchique, a mountain range in the south of Portugal. They chose for a very remote place.

    I stayed at their place for almost a year. In the evenings it was absolutely silent. You could hear the train running into the Saboia station 30 km away, not a sound would interfere. During the days the Serra was filled with humming bees and other insects collecting honey, the sounds of all these beautiful creatures together was one big loud hum. It was incredible.

    The views were amazing and the air was clear and healthy. Everything was lush and green. I loved it and dreamed of living the same way.

    In the last month I was staying there I was looking for a piece of land for me and my parents. My parents had agreed to buy a piece of land in the Serra de Monchique to stay on after their pension. I wanted to live in nature, so we chose to go to look for something together.

    A remote area is a challenging place

    Living in a remote place can be a great adventure, but it also has it’s challenging sides. After many years, we bought in 1995, I am happy that we compromised on a site that has a remote feeling but is actually not that far from the small town of Monchique. I found it very tempting to buy something very remote, but now I am happy we did not.

    This might be different for you, or maybe you haven’t decided yet. Even if you are thinking of going to live very remote it will still be interesting to know what you have to take into account. It’s always good to be well prepared.

    Based on our and our homesteading friends experience I wrote a blog in which you can read about the challenges that come with living in a remote area. Like the distance you will have to travel to shops, doctors and schools. Or even to the marketplace where you want to sell your surplus.

    Click here to view the blog: “Starting a Homestead in a Remote Area”.

    Starting a Homestead In a Remote Area.

    Finding a Homestead Location with Good and Sufficient Fresh Water

    While we were looking for our land we made more friends that were very helpful to us. Without their tips we would not have been able to find Terra do Milho, our beautiful piece of land in the Serra de Monchique in the Algarve.

    One other tip that we got is that we have to look for a place with sufficient fresh water. Enough for our household and for irrigating the land. Although de Serra de Monchique is known for its water in general, some places can still be dry in summer. The summer can be long and dry and sufficient water for irrigating is very important for producing food, let alone for running a household. Since we wanted to produce our own food we would not be able to do so without enough water.

    It all starts with finding out how much water you will need and end with how to get that amount of water.

    In my blog about finding a Homestead Location with good and sufficient freshwater you will find all the tips that helped us so well when we were looking for our homesteading location. It will also give you some tips how to find out how much water you will need.

    Click here to go to this blog: “Finding a Homestead location with good and sufficient Freshwater”.

    Finding A Homestead Location with Good and Sufficient Fresh Water

    The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    Our neighbour friends down in the valley have an amazing piece of land. It is situated between two creeks that meet at the very end of their land. In the summer the place is nice and cool.

    But there is also a dawn side that our friend regret. It is facing north. I the hot summers from our mediterranean climate living at a north facing location is very pleasant. Especially when the sun takes a while before it rises above the mountains and hits the soil. In winter however it is cold and there is not much light to change a solar panel.

    Our pieces of land are only half a km apart, yet their fruit ripens two weeks later. In summer our friends can grow lettuce in their garden, something we can forget about, because we are facing south.

    So there are pro’s and con’s on both sides it is good to know in advance what you can expect. In this case both locations are beautiful to live on. Sometimes sites can be so deep in valley and shaded by mountains that living on them becomes a challenge because there is not enough sunlight in winter.

    When you choose a location it might be in the middle of the summer. How are you going to find out if there will be enough sunlight in the winter? For your solar panel or for your wintergarden?

    In my blog “The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun” I will give you the information you will need to find out. Click here to read the blog.

    The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    Things To Avoid When Picking Your Homestead Location

    Besides things to look for there are also things I would avoid to have on my homestead location.

    Little creeks can become destructive small rivers. A place with an amazing view in summer can be hidden in the clouds from the whole winter. Soil pollution can be best avoided and wildfires can be a reason not to move into an area.

    In my blog “6 Things To Avoid When Picking Your Homestead Location” I will discuss 6 things to avoid. Click here to go to the blog.

    6 Things to Avoid When Picking Your Homestead Location

    A good start.

    All together the 4 topics in this blogs will give quite a complete idea what to look for when you are choosing a location to start your own Homestead. It will help you to get on your way without buying something you would regret when you are getting started.

    No location will be perfect but at least you will be able to rule out things that are really in the way of living in your homestead with some comfort.

    I wish you all the luck of the world to find your dreamed homestead location.

    Find out more…

    Find out more about starting your own homestead on our Terra do Milho website. Click here and go to Homesteading For Beginners.

    Pinterest Pin for the best Homestead Location

  • 6 Things to Avoid When Picking Your Homestead Location

    6 Things to Avoid When Picking Your Homestead Location

    When you are looking for the right place for your Homestead there is a lot to think about. In this series of blogs we will cover the major things.

    Apart from things you want on your land like enough sunlight and good quality fresh water, there are also things to avoid when you are picking the right location for your future Homestead.

    In this blog we cover some of the things you’ll be wanting to avoid.

    It is not always possible to exclude all the risks that are described in the topics below, but it is good to realise that the risk is there so safety measures can be taken.

    Too Much Water

    At some time of the year, at some locations there is too much water. You might not see it right away.

    Creeks and rivers can overflow and do damage to a site. Water can run down the mountain into a house. Terraces can be swept away. Whole pieces of land can be taken by a big river. There are all sorts of “too much water” problems.

    Too much water is not necessarily going to be a huge problem as long as it is manageable. And the potential to manage the water has to be available on the Homestead land. Like at our Homestead.

    Our Homestead is on a steep mountain slope. Above the house there is a big rainwater drainage channel that deals with too much rain water. It prevents the rain from running down the mountain into our house. As long as we keep it unblocked the water will stay away from the house. It needs maintenance but is manageable.

    Drains, dikes, overflows are features that will help to manage too much water. Emergency systems for a whole area can warn you when there is a danger for floods.

    How to check if the location has a “too much water” problem?

    Small Creeks Become Rivers

    During or after heavy rains small rivers and creeks can rise rapidly in the mountains. High up in the mountains it might not be a big problem because the creeks are very steep and the water will wash down quickly. Further downstream the water from all the small streams will collect in bigger streams, that is the point where the trouble starts. Small streams and creeks can become violent rivers.

    This is what you can do: check creeks and rivers. At the sides of the creeks and rivers that overflow you will notice that there is straw and sometimes plastic and rubbish hanging in the lower parts of the shrubs and trees. Based on how high the rubbish is hanging in the trees you can see how high the water rises.

    Now you can check if the buildings on the site are above the high water line or whether there is enough higher ground to build your Homestead.

    High Water Marks on Buildings

    In areas where there have been frequent floods you can sometimes find marks on buildings. Finding these marks in close by towns could mean that you find yourself in an area with frequent flooding.

    Research About the Area

    Other ways to find out about flooding problems in an area is to google the area. You can google something like floods in (your place). Or floods in (local river).

    Historical maps can also reveal were rivers used to flow in the past. Some big rivers like the Mississippi, shifted a lot. Taking away whole farms and making new land in the old river beds.

    Easiest is probably going for a local meal or coffee and ask the people from the restaurant or bar. Pictures on the wall from such places can also tell you stories about the surroundings.

    Houses Below a Water Dam

    Something I am always a bit cautious about is the presence of a water dam. Small or big, to me they always seem a risk. Some big dams are obviously strong build but I would always check for warning systems and safety overflows.

    Some dams, like in our area, are small but still carry enough water to swap away a house. Since these dams are not tested in any way I would never build my house below one and always be sure that the water would run through a safety run off when it would break.

    When you are living in the US, the state you want to move to will have some information about safety issues and dams. It would be wise to check it out.

    My Friend The Wind

    Something to be aware of is the amount of wind exposure a location has. Wind can be a help if you want to generate energy. It can cool a site and make it liveable. But too much wind can also spoil your dreams and bring in wildfires.

    A good source to find out more about the wind direction on a location is the weather forecast. When you have a crush on a location it might be a good idea to follow the weather forecast for the area. When you follow the weather of an area a year or longer you will get a good impression of the prevailing winds.

    Another thing you can do is to look carefully at the trees. Trees that are standing in the wind that comes often from the same direction will grow in the direction of the wind. You do need to find some trees that are standing alone. The more wind from one direction, the more bent the trees are.

    Homestead wind trees

    In the mountains wind directions can sometimes be surprising. We live in a valley that is directed east west. So we get the easterly and westerly winds. But a heavy wind that is blowing from the south we might not notice at all.

    So when you plan to buy some land in the mountains: check the mountains around you. How sheltered are you from the heavy winds (check the weather forecast which winds these are). The higher you are above the surrounding mountains the more exposed you will be for the winds.

    Most of the time you will be able to create wind shelters but you have to keep in mind that it can take many years before a wind hedge will have grown to a proper height.

    Some friends of us nearby bought a very windy place without knowing it. For many years they could hardly sit outside in front of their house. Now they have a very sheltered place with high hedges and some walls and it is wonderful.

    Living In the Clouds

    Some areas on the mountain that we live on can get a lot of clouds. During wet winters some houses are in a cloud all winter long. Despite of the amazing views over the ocean in summer, there is no view at all in winter.

    Living in a cloud means living in a very damp place, everything gets wet and keeping the house dry is not at all easy.

    Homesteading

    Clouds are most likely to appear high in the mountains but some areas along the cost can carry the same burden. Where cold sea air and warm land meet, fog can occur for longer periods as well.

    How do you know if a location is at such a spot? Best is to ask around in the local bar or shop. People who live there will know. The previous owner might not tell you…

    Pollution

    Pesticides, herbicides and other cides

    A good friends of mine has an organic farm in Holland. Sometimes it is really complicated for them that their neighbours spray pesticides. This is not an unusual situation since the bigger part of the farming world uses pesticides. Sprayed by hand or, even worth, by plane.

    Even if you do not want to officially certify your produce, you might want to grow them x-cides free. So you might want to check out if there is any interference with the pesticides that neighbours use, or if they use any. Best is to politely ask if the neighbours are farming organic.

    Some guys around here even spray herbicides on river banks, although not allowed nobody checks it. I think this is very sad, but it is hard to convince them not to spray so close to the river. Big yellow patches along riversides and in fields can indicate the use of herbicides.

    Cattle and Pig Farms

    Nearby where we live, along the Monchique river there are many places where pigs are raised. Although not allowed, farmers that raise pigs sometimes dump the pig shit into the river. It has improved a bit the past decade. Before that the water in the river was always black, now it is occasionally black. Some of the smaller rivers have the same problem.

    When you chose a piece of land with a river on it you can check what is happening up stream. By walking or driving up the river. Another way to check it is by using google earth. You can see if you find anything suspicious and then go there and check it out.

    Hidden Pollution

    One day I read on the internet about a family that moved out into the countryside. They started a vegetable garden and happily lived for some years. Until they, with a shock, found out that they were living on an old dumpyard and that the soil was polluted with heavy metals. I do not remember exactly how they found out, but I remember that I was shocked too.

    Best is to try to find out something about the history of the area. Was it an old industrial area? In the past industrial waste was just dumped in the landscape, people did not know about the consequences or did not want to know because of the costs involved to properly dispose the waste.

    Some chemicals can stay in the soil for a long time, heavy metals surely do. Some areas where areas with facturies. The factories might have disappeared and it looks like nature has taken over again making pollution invisible. The soil can be polluted not by the dumped waste but just by the fact that the production process was leaky.

    Wildfires

    From the time that we bought our land we knew that wildfires are natural in this area. what we did not know is that policies would change and more blue gum eucalyptus trees would be planted on the mountains we live in. The combination of changes in the climate, the natural occurrence of wildfires and the blue gum planted densely together form an explosive combination bringing about very dangerous wildfires.

    Homesteading

    We managed to keep our farm in one piece and could save all our animals from the last wildfire in 2018. It is manageable to a certain extent. Still when you buy a piece of land in a wildfire risk area you will have to take into account that the wildfire might happen one day and you have to be prepared.

    For some of my friends it meant that they did not move into the mountains of Monchique, where we live. They chose not to take that risk. You might want to think about it whether you could deal with the risk of wildfires.

    No Place is Perfect

    It will be very hard to find a place that is perfect. Our friends that did not want to live where we live because of wildfires now live in an area that has a higher risk for desertification. On riverbanks and in valleys you will find the best soils for gardening, but then your garden might be flooded sometimes.

    Sure you would avoid pollution in the soil and a neighbour that sprays x-cides close to your organic garden. But sometimes we also have to compromise. As long as you know what the risks are you will be able to prepare yourself for the worst. So avoiding might not always be realistic, being prepared is.

    Find out more about what it takes to start a Homestead.

    Check this blogpost by clicking on the links:

    5 Phases in Building a Homestead

    Preparing for Your Homestead.

    5 Reasons Why We Started Our Homestead

    The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    Starting A Homestead In A Remote Area

    Finding A Homestead Location With Good And Sufficient Fresh Water

  • Finding A Homestead Location with Good and Sufficient Fresh Water

    Finding A Homestead Location with Good and Sufficient Fresh Water

    Having good quality fresh water is essential for your Homestead. Water is essential to life. You will not be able to survive on a location without water. Water is needed for cleaning and drinking, for us humans and for our animals and plants.

    From our experience we know how essential it is to find a location with sufficient water. In this blog you will find the information you need to find a Homestead Location with good and sufficient fresh water.

     

    Resources of water you can find on a location

     

    On a Homestead there can be a view resources of water:

    • Rainwater that is collected: rainwater can be collected on a roof or any other clean flat surface. This rainwater can be stored in a big tank for use.
    • Surface water: spring, creeks, rivers, lakes: water from these resources can be stored in a tank for use.
    • Water that is pumped up from deeper level through a borehole: in some areas there will not be enough water on the surface or not be sufficient rain. There can be underground sources like an aquifer. You can tap into these aquifers by making a borehole and using a pump to pump the water up.
    • The grid: some places will be simply connected to the grid of a town or village.

    You will need one of these resources on your homestead as a basic minimum. It will be securer to have more resources available at the same time.

     

    What do you need the water for?

     

    On the Homestead you will need two types of freshwater

    1. Treated fresh water of a good quality for your household and for animal husbandry.
    2. Untreated fresh water for irrigation. This water does not need to be potable but still needs a good quality for not poisoning your crop. When your water resource provides a good fresh water quality you can also use the water for animals.

     

    How much water do you need to run a Homestead?

     

    How do I know how much water I need?

    From your water bill you can easily read how much water you are consuming. The amount can be rather shocking.

    Are you going to use the same amount of water on your homestead? You might. When you think that you can bring down your water consumption try it while you are still where you are. This way you can practice and see where you will end up when you do your best to save water. Doing so you will know what the minimum amount of water needed for your household will be. It will also be useful to figure out what uses most water.

    Now, your household will be one thing. Running a homestead with trees and a vegetable garden will be another thing. You might even want to keep animals that will need water too. A Homestead household will most likely use more water than an apartment. The irrigation of a vegetable garden and trees takes much more water than a household.

    That does not mean that the ecological impact of living on a Homestead is bigger than of living in an apartment in a town. A lot of the water consumption of living in a town is hidden and not direct. The vegetables that are consumed in an apartment were watered too. It just does not appear on your water bill.

    Any way, the thing that is important to know is that you might use more water for your Homestead then what you would expect.

     

    The influence of climate zones on water consumption

     

    The amount of water that you will need in your orchard or garden will depend heavily on the climate that you will be living in with your Homestead.

    In Holland, which has a temperate climate we would never water the fruit trees. In Portugal, where we live now, in summer we have to water the fruit trees twice a week. Portugal has a mediterranean climate.

    The amount of water that you need depends on the annual rainfall and evaporation.

    In Holland it rains all year round. There are some exceptional year in which you might have to water your orchard. But it never used to be the standard.

    In Portugal it rains during the winter and the summers are dry. The evaporation in summer will be much higher than in Holland because the temperatures in summer are much higher in Portugal. That is why we need to water the trees in summer in Portugal.

    For the vegetable garden it is a bit different. We did water our vegetable garden in Holland sometimes. In Portugal we water it a lot.

     

    Water Consumption and soil

     

    The climate you will be living in will be the main influence on the amount of water that you will need for your Homestead. However the soil will be of an influence too. Sandy soils will consume a lot more water than clay-loam soils.

    To find out more about soil click on the link:

    How to Analysing the soil from your vegetable garden.

     

     

    To get an idea about the numbers in water use

     

    The Orchard

    Here in Portugal each tree, each time, gets something like 20 l (two buckets). When you have 100 trees it means you will need 4000 l a week. The summer without rain lasts up to 5 month. Well, that is about 80.000l of water in a summer.

    If you would use rainwater catchment in Portugal, you would need a tank of 80 m³ to collect enough water for the whole summer, to provide that amount of water. Since we have a small creek that flows the whole summer we can use a much smaller tank for daily use. Our irrigation tank for the vegetable garden and orchard is 6 m³, we empty and refill the tank twice a day.

    The size of the tank that you will need depends a lot on the inflow and use of water.

    The vegetable garden

    I do not have measured figures of what our vegetable garden needs but this is my estimate: 6 m³ per week for about 400 m². That is another 120 m³ added for the whole summer. I am sure you can bring this number down by watering more efficient, which we will do in the future.

    The total use of water for irrigating

    Still if you could bring the number down to halve, being 60 m³ you will still need 140 m³ of water for the orchard and vegetable garden together in a summer for 100 fruit trees and 400 m² of vegetable garden.

    This is just to indicate that you will need a lot of water when you are growing things in a Mediterranean climate, which usually has wet winters. You will need a serious water recourse to run your homestead. Especially in areas where there is a high evaporation in summer.

     

    How do you know whether the location you want to explore has enough water?

    Surface water resources

    It is important that rivers and creeks run all year around, especially in the summer month when you need most water. A small creek like we have can be enough.

    Water from some lakes can be used as fresh water. You might be lucky to have excess to such a lake. Lakes however have to be big. I am not talking about something the size of a big pond, but a real huge lake. The water quality of big ponds can be very questionable for fresh water use. However some big ponds size lakes can function as a rainwater collecting tank. This water can, in some circumstances be used as fresh water when treated.

    Rainwater

    Rainwater collection can get you a long way, but you need to be sure that there is enough rain in the climate zone you want to start your homestead in. Since the weather is never predictable years ahead I would never solely depend on this water recourse, but combine it with other resources.

    Important is also that you have enough surface to collect the water and a tank that is big enough to store it. Our neighbors are very happy with the rainwater collected from their roof during winter. They store it in a big tank below the house. The collected rainwater is enough for the household in most years, but never enough for irrigating their orchard and vegetable garden.

    For the location you want to buy, you will have to check the annual rainfall to know whether you will have enough rain for your household. Don’t forget these are averages over many years. So there will be years with more or less rainfall.

    Although very coarse, this map gives an indication (also check the evaporation map):

    http://www.waterandclimatechange.eu/rainfall/average-monthly-1985-1999

    Boreholes

    Concerning boreholes you have to measure if they deliver enough. Boreholes can also run dry depending on the source they tap in. Especially when they are not deep enough.

    Borehole pumps can break and they are costly to replace.

    When you have to make a borehole check what the costs are, it can be very expensive. I personally would avoid having a borehole. But maybe you do not have a choice.

    The grid

    A grid would most likely provide you with enough water. But it is better to check it out.

    Water from the grid can be cheaper then having your own water. This will not be true for all areas in the world. But it is for us.

    The water quality of our creek is very high. However we do need even higher standards for drinking water because we have a rental place on our land. We rent out a holiday house during the summer month. This requires a licence on the water quality, meaning that we need some expensive filters to make top quality drinking water. Although it sound romantic to have your own fresh water resource, making your own water filter system work can be quite an effort and costly.

    Water from the grid might not sound “homesteady”, but is definitely worth checking out. If we would have excess to the grid I would use it. This would have made our renting out a lot easier.

     

    Water quality: salinity, minerals, pollution

    Salinity

    Water in coastal areas can be saline even when it comes out of a borehole. With an increasing water usage in a coastal area, fresh water levels can drop. This can result in more salt water from the sea pressing itself into the underground.

    Even some inland areas can have problems with salt water in deeper levels.

    I areas where hardly anything wants to grow, salt water can be a problem.

    Minerals in the water

    Another mineral that can decrease the water quality is iron. You can recognize this when a creek has loose rust colored flakes at the sides. This means that the springs can contain water with a high iron level. This problem can be solved, but it would be better to have a none ironed source as well.

    On our land we have a spring that contains iron, we will only use it in case of emergency. It needs to be heavily filtered. The filters need a lot of maintenance. Normally we use water from a clear spring or from our creek.

    Chemical pollution

    Water pollution can also be a worry when choosing a site. You will actually have to take a look at the creeks and lakes near the site you are checking to know.

    Water from resources can be best tested when in doubt. There are some do it yourself kits on the market to make a quick test on chemical pollution.

     

    Water, water, water

     

    We have talked about the main resources of water that you can find for your homestead. From there we looked into the amount of water that is needed to run a homestead and also how you can recognize whether a site has enough water for your needs. We briefly looked into some water quality issues.

    Seen from our experience, these are the main things around the topic of fresh water to consider when you are looking for a Homestead.

    When you still have some questions about this topic please leave a comment below in the comment section. We will try our best to help you out.

    Find out more about what it takes to start a Homestead.

    Check this blogpost by clicking on the links:

    5 Phases in Building a Homestead

    Preparing for Your Homestead.

    5 Reasons Why We Started Our Homestead

    The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    Starting A Homestead In A Remote Area

    Homestead and Freshwater

  • The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    The sun is important for a lot of things. Your vegetable garden will not thrive without enough direct sunlight. The use of solar panels is only worth the effort when you have enough direct sunlight at the right angle. Light in your house during the day is desirable.

    Knowing the position of the sun on your location is key to whether you will have enough sunlight on your Homestead.

    At the other hand shade can also be important in places where it gets very hot in summer. Having to much hot burning sunshine in your vegetable garden will not be good for your lettuce and radishes. These crops, that need a lot of moisture will not grow in the burning hot sun.

    Your house might heat up to much, instead you would want some coolness in the house in hot summers.

    The latitude and the position of the sun

    Why is it important to consider the latitude where you are? Apart from that the latitude partly defines the climate zone you are in, it also defines the height of the sun and the number of sun hours per day.

    The higher the latitude the lower the maximum height of the sun. At a higher altitude the days will be longer in summer and shorter in winter.

    The lower the altitude the less this difference in length of day and night get. In the tropics the days and nights are always almost equally long.

    What you need to know about the sun’s position on your location

    How to use this knowledge when you are looking for your ideal Homestead location?

    There are two ways to use this knowledge for finding your Homestead location.

    The first research behind your desktop

    You can either look it up on a map and figure out what the position of the sun is on a location. You will have to look up the position of the sun in different seasons to get a complete picture. This way of figuring out the positions sun on a location might be useful in the first coarse surges for a location. Like when you are still working out a location behind your desktop. You will find out more about this at the end of the blog.

    Checking out the sun´s position at the location

    Once you have fount an area and you are going to investigate pieces of land the other way of inquiring the suns position comes in.

    While you are standing at the location you want to check out, imagine that you are the center of the universe and picture the following things:

    Picture the sun´s arch

    1. Where exactly on the location does the sun rise and where does it set? Midsummer and midwinter, since this can be very different.
    2. How high does the sun rise? Midsummer and midwinter. This is something you will have to look up and estimate or ask for specifically (scroll a bit down to “Looking Deeper into the Position of the Sun”). Knowing the altitude where you are can help you to find out.
    3. You will have to picture the arch that the sun makes midsummer and midwinter. This way you will get an idea how much sunlight you will have in both seasons. In summer you will have the maximum amount of sunlight and in winter the minimum amount.

    Where is the sun and where is the shade

    Once you know the sun´s arch in summer and winter, you can go a step further. The next thing will be: what time does the sun appear and disappear in midsummer and midwinter at the location? It seems to be something you can look up in a calendar.

    Yes, you can. And it will work on flat terrain, but it will be different when you are looking somewhere in the mountains for a location. Mountains will be blocking the sun and will make a big difference in the amount of sun hours that you will get on a specific location.

    Apart from mountains you could be checking out a location for other obstacles that can block the sun, like buildings or large trees. Where do these objects shade the location in summer and winter.

    The location that you are checking out might be a larger area. Walk around on the location and see what differences there are on the location at any specific point.

    How does your homestead fit in?

    • How would that work out for your garden or for your solar panels?
    • What would it mean for the heating of your house?
    • Will the winter sun still heat up your house? Will the house be warming up to much in summer?
    • At what time in spring would the sun hit your house or vegetable garden for the first time?
    • You will have to position all the objects you will want to have on your Homestead and figure out what sunlight and shade means to these objects. It can be anything like: house, chicken house, barn, vegetable garden, orchard, guesthouse, etc.

    Looking Deeper into the Position of the Sun

    The position of the sun per season

    This video made by the University of Nottingham gives a deeper inside about the position of the sun in different times of the year and in different altitudes.

    The exact position of the sun on your location

    For those who want to dive in even deeper this a tool that shows the exact position of the sun on any place on earth. It does not take the obstacles into account though. Based on the graphs you can picture it in real time. Although there is a tool that calculates the length of a shadow.

    Click on the link below for the tool that shows the exact position of the sun:

    SunEarthTools.com

    Being sure that your location is right for you

    I hope that this blog will help you to find the right location for your Homestead. Finding out the position of the sun can be of great help. Both methods of finding out about the amount of sunshine on your location, behind your desktop or on site will be useful in combination.

    The video and site that I found will help you a little further when you are interested in making a technical effort on the subject.

    If there is anything you would like to know more about the topic of the blog, do not hesitate to leave a question or comment below in the comment area.

    Find out more about what it takes to start a Homestead.

    Check this blogpost by clicking on the links:

    5 Phases in Building a Homestead

    Preparing for Your Homestead.

    5 Reasons Why We Started Our Homestead

    Finding A Homestead Location With Good And Sufficient Fresh Water

    Starting A Homestead In A Remote Area

    Best Homestead Location

  • Starting a Homestead In a Remote Area.

    Starting a Homestead In a Remote Area.

    Once you have decided to start your own Homestead one of the questions will be: where are we going to start our Homestead?

    Are you thinking of starting a Homestead in a remote area, please read on.

    Sure, I would not want to stop you from doing so. We did move out into the countryside, far from the city buzz and pollution. And we enjoy it very much.

    There are some things you really should consider though. Making the wrong choice here could make your dream more challenging than you thought. If you do choose for remoteness you better be prepared for the challenge.

    So when you have this itching tendency to get away as far as possible from where you are now, this is why you should not follow that feeling blindly.

    By the way: our place is about 6 km (15 min) from a small town and 20 km (45 min) from a bigger town with more facilities and shops. The roads are of a good quality. The area is very low populated. We are just far enough to have the remote feeling and close enough to have excess to what we need.

    The Long Way to the Shop

    Ones you are out in your Homestead you will be self-sufficient, that is why you do not need a shop any more. Wouldn’t that be ideal? Yes, I agree. But how realistic is it. Just look around in your house and you will know.

    Screwdrivers, screws, plates, jars, batteries, solar panels, building bricks, hinsches, saws, they do not grow in trees. And even if you are a handywoman like me, you will not be able to make everything yourself.

    Especially at the beginning. You will be lucky when your vegetable garden is a success in year one. Your just planted fruit trees will only carry enough fruit after about 6 years. How are you going to get your trees for planting? What are you going to eat those first years?

    The remoter you are the harder it becomes to get your Homestead going. Being in the mountains or living on the water can make it even harder.

    Even if your ultimate goal is to be totally self sufficient you will still need a shop every now and then when that time comes.

    It is an illusion to think you will never attend a shop anymore when you move out. The contrary might be the case. In the first years we travelled many kilometers to find all our building material.

    We have a big vegetable garden, but some years we simply do not manage to maintain it well enough because of all the activities on the farm. Like improving the goat shelter, making fences and taking care of our fruit trees. So some times of the year we use the vegetable shop to keep us fed.

    Although we have a lot ourselves, we still buy things from the supermarket. Every month we spend some 200€ in the supermarket. It might not be a lot, but we still have to go there.

    The same counts for the animal feeds, it is very hard to get all the feed from our farm, so we buy extra. It all pays back at the end. Which brings me to another consideration.

    Market stall

    Selling Products From Your Homestead

    Whether it is milk, cheese and eggs or handicraft. You will have to travel to the people to sell your products. Even if it is only to the local post office to ship your goods to your clients.

    If you want to live from your farm and sell some products you will need some clientele that lives not to far away from you.

    Being on a remote Homestead might mean you have to travel long distances to sell your things, which might not make it worth doing. In that case making a living becomes a real challenge.

    II am very happy our farm is just a 15 minutes drive from the small town of Monchique. This makes running a market stall every Friday to sell our produce very possible. We combine it with a Friday social lunch in one of the towns lovely restaurants and it makes it into a pleasure.

    Neighbours and Job Opportunities

    Many Homesteaders in the area where we live do small jobs for others. Like land maintenance, rental management, garden work or dog sitting or other things. Maybe you had something similar in mind.

    If so, consider living not too far from the people you want to work for. Here in the mountains the windy roads consume a lot of traveling time. A friend, whose land I can see from the top of our land lives 45 min driving (walking takes even longer) away.

    When you live in a big city, driving to your work in 45 minutes is not an exception. But be prepared to find the same kind of driving times to your work in the countryside. Going too remote will make these kind of jobs very hard to persevere.

    I gave up my rental management activities because the driving from one property to the other simply costed to much (unpaid) time. Now I am running my blog partly from home and partly from an office in the small town. My internet is too costly to run it all from home. There is always hurdles to take when you live remote, but I am happy as it works now.

    Internet & mobile phone

    A thing that might have crossed your mind is selling stuff through the internet. Which is very possible if you are doing some sort of affiliate sales or if you provide a service.
    You do need to make sure that there is internet reception in your place. There are some pretty good satellite facilities. But they will most likely be more expensive than the internet provider that you are used to.

    Ones you have internet you could also run your mobile phone on it. But do not expect any phone reception in remote areas.

    Cat

    Doctor and Vet

    When you want to live remote it is all going to be far away.

    A doctor and a vet (in case you want animals) can be needed in an emergency. It is a good thing to check whether they are around.

    The very friend that lives 45 min drive away, one time was unblocking her water pipe with an iron rod. It got stuck in the pipe and she tried to pull it out of the pipe. It suddenly came loose and drove right through her knee sticking out the other side of her knee. She managed to get it out herself and drive herself to the hospital. She was incredibly lucky. With a bit less luck she would have died in her remote place. Which is in the end only 10 km from the small town. Imagine being really remote.

    I realise this is a shocking story, but it is a reality to take into account. Working with a chainsaw or even an hand ax is not without danger. I will never use my chainsaw when there is nobody else on the land.

    I also realise that the distance to the small town which has an ambulance increases my chance of surviving an accident. The example with my friend shows that you do not need a chainsaw to have a bad accident.

    I was also very happy that I could drive one of my goats to the vet quickly after she had eaten very poisonous rhododendron.

    Very remote means you will have to deal with these life threatening things all by yourself. I would find that very stressful.

    Kids at School

    When you have children, a daily drive to school can be an effort when the school is far away. It is just another time consuming thing. Time that you would rather like to spend on your farm.

    Homeschooling is an alternative, but do not underestimate the time that it takes either. Sure it are your kids and you want the best for their future. Homeschooling however can be quite intense when it is combined with running a self-sustainable place. When you are very remote it might also be hard for the kids to meet other kids. Something the kids might also appreciate at a certain age. Some parents around here got really fed up driving their kids around for miles to other kids.

    Cabin fever

    Ever heard of cabin fever? Sometimes you just have to get out. Go to town, see and speak to other people. You get so restless that you just have to go. This is called cabin fever. It is well known amongst remote living Homesteaders.

    I always notice when people have cabin fever. They come by and drink a cup of tea at ours. And chat, and chat, and chat, endlessly. Then they say goodby and go into town just to be among more people. I do not know anybody around here who does not have it every now and then. You might have it too.

    Some people also like to be involved in social things in town to avoid the cabin fever. They are a member of a church or an association and do some good work in town.

    So again, being remote means being far away from social activities you might not like now, but also might miss ones you are remote.

    Wanting to move out

    Coming from a town’s life in a very busy country I do know the feeling of wanting to move out. I had that feeling. And I did move out.

    I had the feeling that I moved into the middle of nowhere, that feeling changed as things improved around us. It was very funny.

    When I came to live on our Homestead I had the feeling I was living very remote. My husband was a lot in Holland still to work and I was a lot on my own.

    Now my feeling is completely different. The road got improved, neighbours moved in, we have a much more suitable car for this area, we have a proper internet connection, many things have improved. Knowing what it is like to live remote as was the case at the beginning, I am so happy with these changes that brought me closer to the community.

    It gives me the opportunity to run a business. To be able to sell our produce and run my blog makes our chance to keep on living where we are now, so much higher. I enjoy the place where we are a lot. I can see the sea on the horizon, hear the birds singing and breath clean air. It’s golden.

    Summarised & find out more

    If you want to move out into a remote place take the distance have to drive to all that still bind you to a community. Like the distance to the shop for tools or for groceries, the job that you make money with at your neighbours, the vet, the school from your kids and the social events you might want to join. We are more connected to the world we live in then we think.

    Moving out far is worth considering very careful. Being in the world we are in now moving as far away as we can might seem very attractive, but as it has good sides it has challenging sides as well. It is important te be prepared for this move.

    Find out more about what it takes to start a Homestead.

    Check this blogpost by clicking on the links:

    5 Phases in Building a Homestead

    Preparing for Your Homestead.

    5 Reasons Why We Started Our Homestead

    The Best Homestead Location and the Position of the Sun

    Finding A Homestead Location With Good And Sufficient Fresh Water

     

    Starting a Homestead

  • Float Gardening in British Columbia

    Float Gardening in British Columbia

    A guest post written by Margy Lutz. Margy describes her life on a float Cabin Home on Powell Lake in Coastal British Colombia. She has a very special float garden. Her husband writes interesting books about their off-grid life.

    I want to thank Monique for inviting me to write a guest post. She’s an amazing homesteader with lots of experience and knowledge to share with her readers and visitors.

    A Float Cabin Home on Powell Lake

    First, I’d like to share about where I live. My husband and I have an all-season off-the-grid water-access float cabin on Powell Lake in Coastal British Columbia. We’ve lived here full time since our retirement and Canadian residency approval in 2008. British Columbia has a long history of using float cabins and workshops for forestry and fishing along our remote and steep coastline. Historically on Powell lake, float cabins were inexpensive retreats for paper mill workers.

    Our cabin is just above sea level. We get a dusting of snow in winter, but the weather is relatively mild for our location. Fortunately, the lake is unusually deep and doesn’t freeze. And long summer days are perfect for gardening.

    Float Cabin BC

    A Raised Bed Floating Garden

    I’ve always liked gardening. Maybe I got it from my grandparents who were farmers.  I wanted to grow some food of my own. Our good friend John, who built our cabin, came up with the solution, a special float that holds four 4X10-foot raised beds.

    The float garden is separate from our cabin. A rope pulley brings it in for me to garden, then it goes back out to the front log boom where it’s protected from nibbling critters.

    Nutrients are leached from the shallow soil by rain and frequent watering. In spring I augment it with compost and mushroom manure. Several times throughout the growing season I add plant food. Even here I get traditional garden pests, but I don’t use insecticide. We don’t want poisons in the lake water we drink.

    My garden has spring daffodils, then summer marigolds and alyssum for color and pest control. My crops include herbs, garlic, onions, radishes, beets, carrots, kale, broccoli, bush peas, spinach and a variety of lettuce. Over the years I’ve grown strawberries, asparagus, Brussels sprouts and potatoes in my beds. Crop rotation helps to reduce pests and provides variety.

    For watering I use a solar powered boat bilge pump with a hose.  It’s much easier than a watering can and gentler on the plants. When I had a small plot on shore I used a tarp and rain barrel system. That was a good solution for a spot without a water source.

    Container Gardening on the Cabin’s Decks

    In addition to my float garden I have numerous pots and large containers on the cabin’s many decks for additional plants, especially ones that take up a lot of space. Here you will find potatoes, tomatoes, beans, peas, cucumbers, peppers, squash, rhubarb, blueberries, red currants, more flowers and herbs for easy access.

    Gardening takes a lot of time from May through September, but the rewards make it worth it. The garden isn’t large enough to be self-sustaining, but each dinner has something I’ve grown myself. I’ve also learned how to preserve excess produce for use during the off season.

    Deck garden

    Winter Gardening

    Fall is the time I put most of my garden to bed. With a little effort, the growing season can be extended for some plants. I leave my kale, beets, carrots and broccoli in the ground with extra mulch around them. Clear plastic bags protect plants in containers. They ward off heavy rain, focus warmth from the waning sun and reduce damage from freezing.

    Composting

    Composting is an important part of my gardening. I do it all onboard. During the growing season I use the chop and drop method. Garden and kitchen vegetable waste is chopped into small bits and used as mulch. In fall I use my empty potato growing barrels to compost the large amount of plant cuttings. Monique has an excellent post about chop and drop. It’s how I discovered her website and blog.

    More Gardening Information

    You can read more about my gardening exploits and other aspects of float cabin living in my husband’s books Up the Lake and Off the Grid: Getting Started available in print and Kindle formats from Amazon. Also, here is a quick link to the Gardening Category on my blog.

    My story shows you can garden just about anywhere: containers on an apartment balcony, sprouts in your kitchen, a plot in the back yard or edibles interspersed with ornamentals. The options are endless. Start small and learn as you go. If it can work for me, I know it will for you. Thanks for reading my post. If you have any questions leave a comment, visit my blog or email me through the link in my blog profile.

    Happy gardening! Margy Lutz

  • 5 reasons why we started our homestead

    5 reasons why we started our homestead

    These are our 5 reasons why we started our homestead. There we go:

    The first reason: Space around us

    In Holland we had a two store house in a row of houses. The typical Dutch way of living. An 80 m² house with a 30 m² backyard. The front yard not being more than a few square meters. Big windows at the front and at the back. All the same houses in a row and streets full of the same houses.

    Holland is packed with people, cars, lights and livestock. In our densely populated country every square inch is used well. Everything is neatly organised. It is a bit gray and boring.

    Although the well organised landscape and life in Holland do have their advantages, I think we prefer something more irregular. More wild, more natural. Not so much man made.

    The 3.4 ha that we are living on now, in Portugal, gives us space to breath fresh air. The sounds at night are coming from the frogs and the crickets. And from our barking dog that tries to chase the wild bore away. If we want we can fill the silence with our own sounds, bothering nobody.

    When we look up into the sky we can see the milky way. When we walk into our valley, we can hear the clear creek at the bottom. Water that is so clean that you can drink it.

    It is such a contrast to living in Holland. In Holland, having a piece of land we have now would be impossible. A piece of land of 3.4 ha would not be affordable in the first place. A place with the qualities of being in a natural environment like we have here in Portugal, would not exist.

    We just love to have the space around us here down south in Portugal.

    The second reason: Home -grown and -produced

    Before we left for Portugal to start our homestead we were already gardeners. We enjoyed having our vegetable garden. We also enjoy cooking with our own grown ingredients. The quality of fresh, just picked vegetables is so much better than of those that have been travelling for some time.

    Holland is known for its good quality vegetables so it was not so bad. But we could still taste the difference, spoiled as we are.

    Here in Portugal we still have our own vegetable garden. It is much bigger than the one in Holland so we have food for the winter too. The growing season is also much longer, so you can have fresh vegetables nearly the year round.

    What counts for vegetables also counts for fruit. We love fresh fruit. Growing our own oranges is so incredible. The taste of the oranges in Holland does not even come close to the ones we have here.

    Apart from having our own vegetables and fruit, I also enjoy making our own cheese. And we love fresh milk too. Like we have it here you can not have it any fresher.

    Third reason: The fun of making your own things

    Building your own house, landscaping your terrain is a very creative process. I think it is very exciting to create your own world this way. There is personal growth involved as well, which makes it interesting. There is so much to learn, in a practical way but also in a mental way.

    How to deal with the workload; the time frame you have to work in; the many challenges you face. It is never ever boring. It’s a life full of surprises. Some moments you can hate it and other moments you can get passionate about it. So interesting!

    The forth reason: Resilience

    Having the space around us, being able to produce our own food and build our house and surroundings also gives us the space to be resilient. We will survive an economic world crisis, we did already. It is still not easy, but it is secure. We will never have lack of food.

    Surviving natural disasters is a bit of a different story. We just survived one. So far we are good. But we can clearly see that others were less lucky and those others could have been us too.

    If we would have lost everything, like many have in our area, it would have been hard to start again. I do not know what we would have done in that case. That would have taken the resilience to the edge for sure. But  we are still here and are lucky.

    The fifth reason: Being connected with the elements

    Sometimes raw and harsh, like in the case of the wildfires, heat and storms. But so fascinating at the same time. The elements are so close to us in this environment.

    To see all the nature around us is fabulous. The trees, the water, the cold, the sun, the silence, the moon and stars. It connects you back to something that is gone in an urban area. Something primordial. Like a basic connection to life itself.

    It is overwhelming and magnificent at the same time. The roaring fires are very scary. Then after the fires the green starts growing back almost with the same power. The heat of the summer encloses one almost like a loud sound that suddenly drops silent when the cool winds of the autumn kick in.

    Being so much part of natures play is something you have to experience. It is hard to catch in words.

    So this is what brought us here and what keeps us here on our homestead. When you like this blog, please feel free to share it. When you want to follow our activities on a daily basis check out our Terra do Milho Facebook and like or follow us.

    We hope to see you again on our blog,

    Monique and Tom

    From: Terra do Milho

    Make a difference with you own successful homestead.

  • 5 Phases in building a Homestead

    5 Phases in building a Homestead

    As we were building a Homestead here, down south in Portugal, I discovered that this process runs in phases.

    Since we are on a mountain ridge where many people are starting their own place for sustainable living, we could talk to a  lot of people about building up their site. It seems that nearly everybody went through the same phases. These are phases after you have bought the land. You could say buying the land is a whole story on itself, which I am not going into here.

    Now letting your dream come true is not always easy. I find the dreaming stage much easier than the reality part. Yet, I would not have wanted to miss that reality part for a minute.

    We are still somewhere on the scale of phases ourselves, I think more or less between Phase 4 and 5.

    I think it is good to know for us Homesteaders to realise that we more or less go through the same stages. Especially when you get stuck somewhere. Really there is a way out, someone has figured it out before you. Sit down and take some time to find out, what others have done in a similar situation.

    Let’s get to the Phases first…

    Building a Homestead: Phase one, Basics & a shelter

     

    The first phase is the starting phase. First of all you have to make yourself a shelter. For some people this used to be a tipi, were they moved in with the whole family. For some people it was a partly built house with a view undefined rooms. Or a caravan, which was maybe a more luxury version compared to the other options, depending how many people you have to squeeze into the caravan…Depending on one’s carefully saved budget things can be more or less convenient. And some people do not mind to start very basic.

    In our case it looked like this: we had two building on the land. One of the to buildings, the biggest. We turned into a living house. It was very basic. It had walls, doors and a fireplace in one of the rooms. There was a room that was on it’s way to become a kitchen. The kitchen even had cold running water, no potable water though it was clean enough to do the dishes. We had electricity from the grid. It was enough as a shelter. We build this shelter before I moved to our land, Terra do Milho.

    Then there are the basic needs that need to be looked after: water for drinking, washing and cooking. Firewood to keep one warm and dry.

    Challenges:

    Wow, it all takes a lot more time than thought to run a household in the wild.

    Tips:

    Take some time to make yourself a good functioning base. It might take longer to make it right, but you will gain so much more time later on on the path to homesteading. Organising your home with enough storage room, a proper bathroom and kitchen is really worth investing time and money in.

    Organize your energy resources like woodshed, wood, electricity well.

    Take some time to see what you want to do off grid or on grid. Really, you do not need to go completely off grid when you have 6 children to care for. Carefully think what it will mean labour and money wise.

     

    home

     

    Building a Homestead: Phase two, lets become self-sustainable

     

    A vegetable garden is started for the first basic food needs. Some fruit trees are planted. A small part of the land is cleared and cultivated to start growing things.

    Slowly the rest of the land gets cleared and explored. Slowly discovering how the land works and what the potential is.

    At Terra do Milho, I was on my own most of the time. Tom still had his work in Holland and we were financially depending on his income. Some terraces under our house were already cleared so I started a small vegetable garden with some basic needs. But hey, what a difference of what I was accustomed to! The soil and the climate were so different that my 30 years of gardening experience were useful, but did not help me to grow something simple as lettuce….

    I did enjoy the land clearing a lot. There were so many mystery places on the land I had never been to. It was an exciting experience to explore our own land.

     

    Challenges:

    Climate and soil can be very different from what you are used to.

    Brambles grow like mad.

    Fruit trees grow soooo slow.

    You will have to keep your household going. We did not have drinking water in the house, so I had to get it from a spring miles away.

    Getting compost for the garden to make it grow well, I found quite a challenge.

     

    Tips:

    Getting carried away with land exploring is definitely a danger. Be aware that everything will grow back soon. If you open to much land, you might not be able to maintain it all.

    Make sure your garden is not too big. It needs to be big enough to feed you though, but keep in mind that you do not need acres of land for feeding two people, or even 4. Check our blogs about gardening to find out more….

    Vegetable gardening for beginners

    Building a Homestead: Phase three, integrating systems.

     

    A Permaculture Design or some other type of organizational design is getting implemented. Systems are getting integrated. You might be considering taking some farm animals in. Chickens for eggs and maintaining the fruit trees. Goats for manure and keeping the brambles down.

     

    Challenges:

    What I found challenging her was to translate my theoretical Permaculture knowledge into specific on ground action. I had to redefine Permaculture a lot of time. I read books and blogs and watched tons of videos to be able to put it into practice. Permaculture does not work like a recipe book. You really need to dig in quite deep to get the basic idea.

    In our situation we got chickens and goats. I have no problem of eating our own chicken, but totally met myself with trying to eat our own goats. I could not kill, or let them kill for that reason. They have to much of a personality and it feels like eating my own friends. That was an emotion I did not expect. It complicated things quite a bit.

    What I also read in blogs and facebook posts, and what I have explained myself too is how concerned you can get about sick animals or animals in labour. I sometimes couldn’t sleep from it.

     

    Tips:

    Don’t take to many animals in at once. Consider that they need a lot of care. They will need a house, a fence and food.

    Think carefully about what you want to do with the young animals that you are not going to need.

    Animals can also do damage to your garden and to the terrain, be prepared for that.

    Consider this mechanism: when you give your kitchen scraps to the chicken there will be none left for the piglet.

     

    Building a Homestead: Phase four, the end of the budget

     

    You might have had a carefully thought through plan including a financial plan. We did have one. But unfortunate the moment we started our homestead the credit crisis landed hard in Holland. We had only 30% from our income left.

    We had a good plan, but it was in pieces when we wanted to build up our homestead. This lead from one financial struggle to the other. Preventing us from finishing the building of our house. It is still unfinished. Because later on when the work on the farm accumulates you lack the time. That is why it is important in the beginning.

    But anyway, we had to go to plan B. We made tourist accommodations. After some years that approved to be a good thing to do. Although it is seasonal and does not provide an income for the whole year, it is more than welcome.

    Money matters

    Even when you have carefully put money aside to stick it out a few years, sooner or later you will need a source of income. Because there is so much to do at the beginning, much more than you can think of, the number of years that you can stick out with your savings are over before you know it. You might find out that you did not take time to upgrade your house, as we did. So you will need some income to invest.

    Every project that you finish on your homestead seems to generate work. Make a chicken coop and you and up taking care of chickens. The same for goats. Clear a forest so you get axess to wood and you end up clearing it forever and cutting piles of firewood. When you finish something three things are born that need labour.

    Getting in machines to make it all doable with a small number of people becomes a wish and a necessity. Although worth the investment these machines are often not cheap. Borrowing things from neighbours might be an option if you need something only ones or twice, but when things are used very often it is not practical. It proves to be better to buy more expensive tools of a better quality, that will last longer. Good tools are also good time savers, and time is what you need.

    In this stage things that were installed temporarily often need to be replaced with permanent things so you do not need to do as much maintenance.

     

    Challenges:

    The challenge here I found out is: How can the money making get more priority? What to make money with? What is the best choice? There is not much room to experiment.

     

    Tips:

    When you have taken up to many projects on in the previous stages, it is time to let some projects go. It can be very hard to make a choice of what is best. But maybe there is no best. If you want to make something into a success it needs dedication and time, no matter what you do.

    Emma goat

    Building a Homestead: Phase five, it settles down.

     

    What I feel that is happening to our homestead project now is that is slowly settling down. We have our income from out tourism which helps us through 6 month. Some other income comes from my husbands work that he does in Holland still every now and then. There is still lots to do, but we have agreed that we do not want to extent the project any more. We will just do all the unfinished jobs one by one in a humanly pace.

    I started this blog that will hopefully help a lot of people, but also bring some more income to get other people in to do jobs on the homestead. And if I am right some income from the homestead should develop.

    Working yourself through all the things that are not sustainable and changing them into a sustainable situation. Not taking any new projects on, but finishing everything that is unfinished. Finally some project starts taking off money wise, so it can be slowly done. By this time you have probably lost the: everything has to be done now mentality that is so connected to today’s regular life.

     

    Challenges:

    I think the main challenge her is to stay patient and be content with what you have.

     

    Tips:

    Start meditating again, if you ever did and stopped doing it because of your workload.

    See the homestead as something that will never be finished. One of my friends put it this way: ‘’At first, when we started, I thought I was going to work really hard, like mad, for five years and then have a quiet life with no stress. After many more years of working hard I realised this quiet life will not happen if I keep on working like mad. I have to slow down now to have a more relaxed life. It makes no sense to keep on working like mad, because the work will never finish no matter how hard you work.’

  • X ways to make money off your homestead… How much can you really do?

    X ways to make money off your homestead… How much can you really do?

    Yes, I do agree that there are many ways to make money off your homestead. From selling eggs to beautiful handicraft. It all depends on your skills and dreams. But to be very honest, it is not so simple.

     

    I mean, yes, when you have a nice part time homestead on the outskirts of a city it is a completely different story. I envy you. Don’t get me wrong, this is not about the ‘real thing’.

    This blog is about trying to make a living in one of those places that have been given up by industrial agriculture. Where people used to have their homestead land practically given by the government. Those places where nobody wanted to go. Where some of us see a challenge to build up something.

     

    Time….

     

    There is only 24 hour in a day. From that 24 hours you need to sleep between 6-8 hours. You will need some time to cook and eat. There are also birthdays and events to celebrate and maybe even a holiday.

    The time that you can spend on your homestead is limited. Most homesteads want to be self sufficient at least food wise. This also takes a fair amount of time.

     

    And Money.

     

    And then on top of this you need to make money. Earn an income to be able to pay bills or to invest in your homestead, probably both. How are you going to do this?

    That is a question that keeps us, and also our neighbours, busy. We are living in the south of Portugal surrounded by like minded people who all want to live from their land. We want to eat our own grown food and be able to make money as well. It is not easy at all. As far as I can see it is the hardest part of it all. Aren’t we homesteader not all struggling with it? More or less?

     

    At the beginning there was the dream

     

    The list when we started our project in Portugal was long. I was going to set up meditation classes and my husband was going to keep his job in Holland until we were sorted. In the meantime we were going to grow fruit trees and make jams. And somehow, we didn’t really think how, sell the jam.

    Then we were going to have our vegetable garden so we did not need to buy food. Make our own baskets to carry the vegetables around. Then we got goats and were going to make cheese. Soon the chickens followed and we were selling eggs. It did not bring in enough so we started a tourist facility. Then we are tired. Can you imagine? It is totally insane.

    At first we thought to follow the ‘a bit of this and a bit of that’ strategy. Doing so we thought we could just make a living. Well yes, maybe just, very just. Sometimes hardly or maybe not. We struggled with it. There is simply not enough time to divide your attention and investments in so many things. And time management does not help here. Believe me time management is a solution for a different situation.

     

    The reality

     

    Calculating we were looking what would be the best options. Chickens were not. To make a living from chickens means that you need a lot of chickens. Too many for the land we have. Or go very specialised in breeds. It would take all our attention and a serious plan. That it needs serious calculating and planning is what counts for all the things we were doing if we want to make a living from it.

    Making a living from producing organic jam meant we had to sell at least 10.000 jars of jam a year. Not in a million year we were going to produce so much fruit. And guess what, there were no organic fruit producers in the whole area. So buying organic fruit to make this production, was not an option either.

    Okay, you do not need to earn a living only on making jam. Let’s say just for a third. That is still 3000 jars of jam. And about 1000 kg of fruit.

    And if the jam making would just be a third of the pei it means the other two third have to come from something else. Meaning that you have to invest in two or three projects. Not easy either. Where are you going to get the investment money from? It is already hard enough to get the investments for one project together.

     

    What was best for us.

     

    In the end we figured out that keeping goats and making cheese and tourism were the best options. Not without any success. Our tourist place is doing well during the high tourist season. And it provides us enough money to live from for about halve a year. The cheese I sell to friends and members of an association I am a member from. I can still not sell it openly to everybody. Hopefully I will manage to make my own cheese kitchen.

    It was good to narrow down our economic activities to these two…so far. And to narrow down our activities on the whole as well. We are still extremely busy though. But I guess that is how we are.

    We still have a few chickens for our own eggs and produce our own veggies. And there is still the land that needs maintenance.

     

    We’re still not there. Where? 🙂

     

    But, but, but. Both areas, cheese making and tourism, are heavily regulated in Portugal. Even worse every so many years the regulations change making is also into a risk to just invest on these two areas. Sometimes the rules are so complicated that they are not entirely applied, but those areas where rules are applied or not are shifting all the time. It kind of drives me crazy. Although I must say that some people in our local government have their heart at the right spot, they try to support us where they can.

    We used to build everything ourselves. At a certain moment we were so occupied by running our daily jobs that it was not possible to continue doing everything ourselves. For many years we had volunteers that helped us out. But even that became quite a big time investment. We had people living here, that in the end couldn’t or wouldn’t work that hard.

    There we are. Building up a business that is under constant state attack on one side and with too little hands to make a leap to the next level. And the main problem, no investment money.

    Getting investment money and gaining time is going to be our next challenge. The next step for me is to try to make money through the internet. It is the very reason I started blogging on our website. The idea is to make enough money to hire in services so things can get done and build.

    It is a step that many homesteaders make, as I have found out. And some are really successful. I hope I will be too.

     

    A homestead is a business.

     

    In the end I think running a homestead is pretty much like running any business. Lot’s of business and organisational principles and practicalities are applicable on a homestead. It sounds all a lot less romantic than selling small handy crafts and eggs, but I think it is the reality.

    I worked for years as a project manager in an NGO. Also together with my father I ran an import business in organic goods in Holland. Lot’s what I have learned in those years comes in very handy now while we try to build up our homestead.

    I guess the idea that you can escape from all the things that you have been involved in is not true. It just sticks to you.

    And sure selling beautiful homestead handicraft or selling eggs could be an excellent business for a homestead.

    Do you want to know what we are doing on the farm? Follow our facebook.

     

  • Preparing for your homestead.

    Preparing for your homestead.

    Looking at all these beautiful blogs about homesteading you might think is the most beautiful way to spend your life. We do enjoy our live here on our homestead, but it is not what it seems to be. There is hardships and sad stories to tell as well.

     

    If you really want to start a homestead yourself, please check these other stories as well. It will give you a far better picture of what it is about. This way you will be much better prepared when you start.

    There are a view brave homesteaders that wrote confessions about their homesteading. I enjoyed reading them very much. It is all very recognisable. These stories give a glimpse of what homesteading and having a homestead truly means. So you really know what it is about and you can make the right choices for yourself.

     

    Nice confessions.

    Here are some I really liked that you can look into later.

    10 Confessions from a modern Homesteader
    Confessions of an Ordinary Everyday Mom…Who Happens to be a Prepper
    Solemn Confession of a Rookie Off-Grid Homesteader

    In this blog Alyssa describes very well how they thought it was much different than they thought. Don’t worry they are still building up their homestead as you can see on their blog.

    http:///purelivingforlife.com

    You don’t need to go radical

    There are many ways you can improve your lifestyle and live more sustainable. One is not necessarily better than the other. The shift to sustainable living does not need to be super radical. You can sometimes even do more than you think where you are. Or by just moving to another neighbourhood in the same area or town. Going out in the wild does not always mean that you can live more sustainable.

    It is not as black and white as it seems. Here on the homestead we use things that you would use in a town too. Like plastic bags(although I do not like them), a diesel car, electricity, T-shirts…We don’t have the money to always buy organic products or to buy solar panels. Being out here in nature does not mean you can do everything perfect.

    Yes, you can do what we did and move to another country, with another climate. Out into the ‘wild’. To start your own small or big farm. However It is far better to be prepared for the real thing  than to follow a romantic idea.

    Here are some things to consider.

     

    Romantic Mother Nature and her whims

    Mother Nature is often depicted as a Gaia that provides everything that you need. Living in a city like we were, not really confronted with her whims, you might be deceived by this picture of Gaia as we were.

    Turns out that Mother nature is not the big protecting mama that is going to feed you whenever you open your mouth to tell her that you are hungry. No, in real she is going to smack your bum really hard when you are lazy. She is going to teach you the hard way that you have to work hard to get your food. You have to follow her principles, she will make you miserable if you don’t.

    Mother nature will dictate your agenda. Yes, pretty much like a dictator. Here down south in Portugal the climate is very friendly to us humans. You can grow things the whole year around. When you work hard, the work will be rewarded. There will be plenty. But more up north it can be quite different. When you miss a crop, you have missed it and it can not be replaced with another. You will miss the food.

    Mother nature has more whims. There are storms that blow your greenhouse away that you had so carefully made out of plastic bottles. The wildfires that she brings (maybe supported by human action) destroy your food forest. It took you years to build up the small ecosystem or guilt. You feel you need to protect yourself against these energies, which puts even more pressure on your agenda and budget.

    There are a lot of romantic stories about Mother Nature. She is beautiful indeed, but not easy going. As most permaculture people will know, there is a lot to learn from her to our advantage. But cruelty and destruction are also part of the play. Be prepared.

    (psssst: using a proper Permaculture design can save a lot of sorrow.)

     

    Grow your own food: Gardening skills and deceiving pictures.

    You can gain by making sure your garden skills are okay before you start your homestead. Get yourself an allotment and practice, or make a corner in your garden. Start easy by buying plants and some organic manure of some sort. Take it from there and slowly use more advanced methods. It is not as easy as it looks.

    Pretty much like learning how to swim. You see those people swimming in the pool and think: Wow, that looks easy. You jump in, like I did as a kid, and guess what, I sank…I am a good swimmer now though.

    Don’t forget that most of the pictures you see with the fancy ways and walls to grow plants in and on, are set up. For the picture big lettuces are put into the bottles to make it look nice. You can see this when you look carefully, they all have exactly the same size. Now, that is suspicious. Don’t be deceived. You can grow plants that way, but you do need to know what comes with it. Also we bloggers have the tendency to clear our garden before taking a picture. Or, like I do, we will take the picture so you do not see the messy parts.

     

    Principles: Selling surplus?

    Using permaculture principles on the farm we produce for our own consumption first. This reduces our ecological footprint a lot, since the food does not need fuel to be transported to us. It is already there. We also know what we are eating. So to us that makes sense. After we have filled our stomages and our canning jars, we can sell our surplus. Can we?

    Since we are living in a rural area where everybody grows pretty much the same stuff it’s not so easy. So selling surplus at the local market sometimes does not work. When you have fava beans everybody has them. People will not buy our fava beans because the neighbours share them for free. That is a good principle too. But it does not bring in an income for us.

    We are happy that we can sell our organic fruit to a colleague who sells it in the nearest big town. When this town would not be there we would not be able to sell our fruit. So selling surplus sounds fair in theory but is not as easy as the principle suggests.

    What I want to say here is that some principles sound really easy when read from a piece of paper. Put into practice is quite a different story.

     

    How much money does it really cost?

    The budget is another think to carefully think about. Building a new house costs money. You can use what you have on your land to a certain extent. But what about the tools you need? The nails, the screws, the light switches, the solar panels, the filling materials? In the end you will save some money on the wood you did not have to buy. But when the wood you can buy is cheap than you might not save at all. Because you will need extra material to turn your logs into proper planks. You will need material to make a space where your planks can dry etc. So building a house however way you do it, costs money.

    Unless you want to go very radical and live in a log hut. But that is rough. You need to be able to shoot your own rabbits…I mean there are a lot of skills needed for that lifestyle.

    I think It is good to think the costs through completely.

    We did not. We had two good incomes before we went to Portugal and build the place up with the money we had spare. That worked fine until we went back to one income and Lehman brothers filed for bankruptcy, which led to a world wide crisis 2 years later. This was the moment that we started.

    Coming from a comfortable situation we just didn’t imagine things were going to be so tough. Our budget shrank to one fifth of what we used to have and we had a massive project ahead. We survived, managed to build up our homestead, still not having a bathroom in our house, but who cares. There are two bathrooms in the tourist accommodations that we use in winter. In the summer we use the garden hose behind the house. We have a compost toilet in the house so we do not need to sit in the rain. Many tears and a lot of sweat later we made it to the other side. I could think of wiser ways to get there.

     

    Using raw material is time consuming.

    Also using material that you have on the land is mostly very time consuming. It can be very hard work too. Sometimes much more work than earning money and buying material.

    When you buy prepared material a lot of effort is already put into the material to make it ready for use. Because this is done in large numbers it can be done cheaper than you can do it yourself. It is all a matter of calculation.

    Our site is very steep. Some hardliners who have joined our building projects had critics on the fact that we use cement.

    Building projects need a lot of preparation. The preparations are time consuming, boring and sometimes costly. So preparations are very often not presented in courses where you can learn about using cob, straw bales or logs.

    Dragging stuff down on our land without a donkey is hard work. And with a donkey it would take ages. So you go for the lighter materials, in this case part of it being cement. Again don’t be deceived by the romantic picture.

     

    Making money from the homestead.

    Making money with a homestead and building it up in one go is also not so easy. There are many ways to make money with a homestead but there are only 24 hours in a day. From those 24 hours you need to sleep and eat. If you do not want to burn out you will need to rest as well. And remember you were still building a house. This needs to be thought through very carefully.

    For example: Here in Portugal a good tasty egg brings in 20 cents. A good chicken lays one egg a day. To have an income from eggs, say 800€ a month, how many chickens do you need? One chicken lay 30 eggs a month worth 6€ a month. Calculating losses, non laying chicken (because they are not laying yet) etc. in you will need 200 chickens. That is a lot for a small income. In Europe with 200 chickens you already need to meet a lot of regulations, which means you will have to invest. Will selling some eggs help? Yes, it does, if only to get your eggs for free. But it will not help you get all the investments you need for building up your place together.

     

    The other strategy is to do more than one thing. You do need to pick these things carefully though, because they will consume time. It is not possible to handle too many things. So what you pick needs to bring in a substantial amount, without having to do to big an investment. After all you will need the investment for your home. And just remember whatever you pick everything takes effort and time to get it started.

    In the coming blogs I will pay more detailed attention to the different topics described here. Connect with us or follow our Facebook and you will get notified by email or Facebook.

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    Preparing a homestead