Terra do Milho

Tag: Our Homestead

  • 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.

     

  • Our vegetable garden in Monchique

    Our vegetable garden in Monchique

    Garden layout organic garden
    Garden layout

    We live about 6 km from the town of Monchique , which is a pittoresk town in the hinterlands of the Algarve. In the town there are many terraces where people keep their vegetable gardens, mostly from people who live in town.

    Our friends Anna and Carlos, who live in town decided to share  their terraces with people from the Monchique Transition group.  As one of the founders of this group we joint in.

    We use one of the plots that was available, this plot is about 400 m² wide. Our layout is very simple and straight forward since we use a drip irrigation system that only works when laid out straight. There are 8 beds of 21 m  long and 1.20 m wide. Two beds with asparagus, which is a perennial (for 12 years), and 6 beds for crop rotation.  The planting schedule is carefully planed.

    composter
    Composter with compost in its way.

    Compost making is key in an organic garden

    In the garden the vegetables are grown organically. Hence compost making is a key activity in our garden. To make compost we build a composter ourselves. In the composter we build up a compost heap from green manure, weeds without seeds and manure from our goats. We mix the goat manure with straw. Some times we use composted humanure as well. Every week we turn the compost into the other compartment of the compost maker. After five weeks the compost is ready to use in the garden. To read more about making compost check our blog: ‘Two ways of making compost’.

    In the picture below you can see the broad beans growing on the compost, they are doing very well.

    Green manure
    Oats grass as green menure

    Always cover the earth.

    To make sure that the soil is never naked we use oats and lupins as a green manure. Green manure improves the quality of the soil. It covers the soil so it does not dry in the battering sun, as a result micro-organisms and small useful insects have a better chance to survive. The green manure that we removere can be used in the compost heap to make compost. Lupines are nitrogen rich, which will enrich the compost. When you dig in the green manure when it is still young it will ad fibers to the soil that will become humus. This prevents the soil from making a crust and it will keep nutrients in the soil. If you want to stay updated subscribe to our blog news or follow us on Facebook.

     

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    Gardening
    An introduction to our garden. Gardening for starters.
  • Clearing land with goats.

    Clearing land with goats.

    Every year in January and February we walk the goats over our terraced orchard. Yes! Right though our orchard. Clearing land with goats and having fruittrees at the same time is very possible.

    We have about 80 fruittrees on our terraced land. In summer the trees are irrigated and nothing much grows under the trees. But in during the winter month weeds start to grow and by January – February there is a lush layer of weeds growing. Clearing our land with goats saves us quite a bit of work. The secret is that most fruit trees do not have leaves at this time of  the year. That is why the goats are not interested in the trees at all; however, they do love the weeds amongst and under the trees. You still need to watch them because you never know with goats. They can suddenly do crazy things.

    land clearing - goats
    Feeding the goats with cuttings

    Clearing the terraces is important because it helps the fruit trees to grow. It also reduces the risk of wildfires on our land. In this way the goats help us, and we help the goats have a great healthy meal. There is a wide variation of herbs growing under the trees, by eating these the goats will be able to balance their diet. See more about this topic in our blog ‘What do goats eat’.

    When the goats are back in their pasture we also give them the greens from our own clearing activities. They will eat the leaves from the branches, which makes it easier for us to put it in the mulching machine.

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    Clearing with goats
    Clearing your Orchard with goats…