Living a vision

[tammyerle]

Greenhouse!

Winter was moving slowly. All of us spend it in parts outside of our project. Now that the sun is back and spring approaches we got some things on the land done!

I proudly present our DIY greenhouse for around 150 Euro!

For the upcoming garden year we plan to turn as much of our land into a flourishing garden as possible. To raise the plants and give them an ahead start before putting them in the garden beds, we wanted a greenhouse.

First we leveled the ground and removed the good topsoil that was there. Later we used it to fill the raised beds in the greenhouse.

For the basic structure we bought steel profiles to put in the ground. On them we placed plastic water pipes.

At first it was a really wanky structure.

We kept adding wood for the pipes to keep the distances we planned.

Digged in poles, that would also be the sides of our raised beds gave it further stability.

In the 60cm high raised beds came greenroof foil to keep the soil in.

The hardest job was to fill the raised bed. So much material fits in there! We filled it half with branches and organic material. Then came compost mixed with other soil we had on top. We want to buy some potting soil for the top layer.

For entrance and ventilation Benny build door and window frame. In the middle he placed a table for the sowing trays.

And at the very end came the greenhouse plastic. É voilá:

Now the garden season can come!

We also digged already quite some garden beds and are almost finished with another building project. So its gonna be interesting!

See you soon ^-^

Tammy

[tammyerle]

Little Wintergarden

As winter approaches comes the time of planting a wintergarden. Luckily we are blessed with Coco, our garden fairy, who raised loads of rucola, cauliflower brokkoli and more for us and her own garden.

We had three test gardens, that got planted in the beginning of the year. One of them is right under a spring. This gardenbed survived the hot summer and even draught with bearly being watered. We call it the No-water-garden. The perfect spot for summer garden.

But for winter the no-water-garden doesn't have enough sun, so I wanted to start a wintergarden.

This is what I created. Like everywhere around here, it is first a wrestle with blackberry roots. I also added a bit of compost. Even though we could probably do really good without.

The soil here used to be agricultural land before it got abandoned. Still after that animals grazed on the land. So everything in this ground grows well and abundent. Especially blackberrys. It coveres a lot of places with up to two meter high walls.

But this is a story for another time.

See you then!

Tammy

[tammyerle]

Wood and Sun

Having your own land never gets boring. There is always something to do. But not every task can show an impressive picture afterwards. Still I want to show you some of the things we have been up to the last weeks.

What you see here is the place where our tool tent used to be. Now it is the perfect spot to build a dry place for our firewood. This is a task, that doesn't require the time of a carpenter, so it is upon me with support of Yoyo to build something stable and dry.

First we evened out the space where it would stand and digged the ditch, that would channel winter water away, deeper.

Then we made a similar construction as for the chicken coop. We gathered big branches, digged them into the ground and connected the whole framework.

We had two broken solarpanels so we decided to use them as a roof. Upcycling you know ;)

And i also found some leftover, ugly, green plastic net that serves as rain protection from the side.

Beautiful. Even though some people would say it looks like its almost falling over. What do you think?

So building a firewood place is one thing, making firewood the other. We know that we are incredibly late to make our firewood, because the rain already started. But is that making us sad? No, just creative.

Here some of our wood drying technics:

You wouldn't believe it, but the solar cooker actually made the wood start smoking!

What are we going to do next? Many things! So see you soon and have a lovely day!

Tammy

[tammyerle]

Our first proper furniture

In this picture you see our beautiful cabin with the installed Fuago. The walls are not completly finished yet, they still miss a final coat with linseedoil and colour. But that didn't keep our carpenter from starting to make it cozy already.

Though the workspace is still a bit underequipped, lacking a tablesaw, big clamps and shelter for example, he turned the pinewood from our big pile into beautiful tabletops.

We were excited when he installed the first table. And now please guess what had the highest priority .....

Exactly, the DJ table.

And the day after followed already the kitchen. Even though our cabin is still a mess, this furniture helps already massivly to organise ourselfes and have a dry and warm cooking place.

We feel very blessed to have such a skilled Person in our team, turning our living space into a piece of art.

I hope your as excited as me, to see what will happen next. So see you soon,

Tammy

[tammyerle]

About stomping and Grape Juice

As you saw in the last posts we had a lot of amazing people coming over and helping us with our cabin. So in return we also help our friends.

The grapes were ready to harvest, so we went to our clay teacher Daniele two days after our last clay action to harvest the grapes and turn them into juice.

While harvesting all the grapes, we also lit a fire under a bathtube. We boiled precleaned bottles to make them sterile before filling them with juice.

And then the fun started.

In moments like this and the days before when we were stomping the clay we knew why we trained this skill so again and again on the dancefloor. Its just so usefull!

After the stomping we filtered the juice through a net and squeezed the last bit out of the grape mash.

We filtered the juice several times until we put it into big pots for pastorisation. The juice has to boil for 10 minutes on 75 degrees. Then it has to go quick and the hot juice gets bottled into the still hot bottles.

Sterilised Kork in and the bottles were ready.

We worked until the evening. We actually didn't have more bottles to put juice in. Otherwise we probably could have done another juice day. Lesson for me personally learned: collect glass bottles for occasions like this.

In the end we bottled more than 200 litres of grape juice. As thanks we took some home. But already the sauna under the star sky after the work was already worth the visit.

All in all it is just amazing how this kind of help exchange can work out. You get to learn so much on the way, gain more experience on things and make your friends happy.

So I will enjoy some fresh grape juice now. See you next time!

Tammy

[tammyerle]

Cabin Insulation #3

After not really having a break, because we had the chickens arriving, the second big clay day arrived.

We prepared the walls with chicken wire. The clay mix was different this time. 1 bucket of clay to 3 buckets of sand. This made an amazing smooth mix, that sticked well to the walls.

Even though we used way less mix, it took us longer to finish the walls, make a nice surface and even some art.

We are very happy with the result. Our cabin feels like a real house now. For the next step we need to wait a few weeks until the walls are dry enough. Then we will make a coloured coating.

During the waiting time we indend to build some interior like a little kitchen. I am excited what our cabin will look like once we are finished.

I hope you like our little project as I share it. See you next time!

Tammy

[tammyerle]

The Chickens arrival

The day of our deadline was there. Even though we worked hard, the coop and the house were not completly finished. We missed hinges so we actually fit the doors in, when we had the chickens in the car already.

Now they arrived, are healthy, happy and lay eggs. We named two already: Ginette and Black Pearl. On the others we still work.

Even though the chickens arrived we will keep on working their lives more pleasant. By making a bigger day time enclosure, planting plants around the enclosure or installing some fun stuff for the chickens in the cage.

Also we got offered two pigeons, so maybe we will have some more friends soon.

In the next post I will show you our progress in the clay insulation of our cabin.

So see you soon!

Tammy

[tammyerle]

Chicken Coop

So while we were waiting for the first clay layer to dry, there was something else to urgently take care of. Our friend is going to leave her place and we agreed to take on her chickens. The day was set to friday. So we had a goal and a deadline.

We found the right spot and started cleaning it from ferns and brumbles.

We made a plan and digged out a 2,5m to 5m square. We wanted to put chicken wire down in the bottom, that no animals like fox or rats can dig into the cage.

Because we are going the low budget way, we collected natural wood pieces from our forest.

We built an underconstruction to hold the chicken wire.

Then we put chicken wire at the bottom and put all the soil back on top. Meanwhile we also started the construction of the actual chicken house and the door, which would take up one side of the coop.

Hinges for the doors are still missing as we leave to pick up the chickens.

Soon I will report about the chickens arrival and making the second layer of clay in our cabin.

See you soon,

Tammy

[tammyerle]

Cabin insulation #2

After preparing for a few days, the big day came. Friday we picked up our clay teacher Daniele and we invited many our friends to help us out this day.

After an early breakfast we started to make the first mixture. 2 buckets of clay, 7 buckets of sand and as much straw as you feel. The first part ist stomping it on the tarp. Its fun but its also quite tiring.

The mixture we filled in buckets and brought it in the cabin where always around four people or more plastered the walls. Meaning to make a mud pancake in your hand, smashing it on the wall and patting it on. And all of this all day long.

We feel so blessed, that so many people showed up. So it was possible to rotate all the jobs and even finish the first layer of insulation.

Of course we feed our helpers with Tajin but even our helpers brought energyballs and more to make the day even more amazing!

Im left after this day with a lot of gratefullness to all the people and motivation for the coming projects.

The insulation is not finished yet, but it needs to dry for a week before we can start the next layer. Until then we have to fill gaps as they open and fire the woodstove in the cabin.

To see the final look and how it went with the final plaster, come by in a week.

See you soon,

Tammy

[tammyerle]

Cabin Insulation #1

A big project is ahead of us and we are doing some preparations. Let me tell you more about this.

In January this year we built a little wood cabin. It was a great living space in summer, but with colder nights we needed to think about insulation for winter.

For that we made some space, emptied the cabin into the bell tent and moved the tool tent to a more convinient winterspot. We organised clay, sand and straw for a light straw wall insulation. Because the acces to our land is a bit tricky, the trucks couldn't bring the sand and clay onto our land. They left it a few hundred meters up the hill, from where we had to get it with wheelbarrels. My back still hurts from that.

A beautiful thing also happened during this preparation. Two magical helpers appeared out of nowhere. They already had experience in clay work (which none of us had) and ended up working the whole project with us. Thank you Charly amd Marc!

When we had all that ready, we broke down the clay as small as possible and started soaking it. Meanwhile we put plastic on the cabin floor, screwed on a subframe, that would help the clay stay in, and did some test clay mixture to see how our material is.

And in the end we had everything ready for the big day, when our clay teacher would come and friends for some extra hands.

In the next post I will tell you how our muddy adventure went.

See you soon,

Tammy

[tammyerle]

Welcome to our land!

Hello Friend and welcome to our little place in this world. Our place is a magical valley in the northern mountains of Portugal, not too far from Porto.

We are a group of friends who share one vision: creating a home for us and our friends. A place where dreams can become reality, a place of abundance. And I think the right people came together to make that happen.

I invite you to join us on our journey. There are already many projects going on and many more will follow. Here you can watch us facing new challenges and developing our dream.

Much love and see you around!

Tammy