In 2014 we decided to give up full time work in Spain and go off grid. We (Soraya and Graham) bought a piece of land (we live in a small valley) and arrived in Spain with no idea what we had let ourselves in for
We didn't have electricity or running water (still don't) and our first year 2015 was a heatwave! We made a fridge with two clay pots but it got so hot even then we still had cheese soup where it melted! We had driven down with the poles for a large tipi on top of the van from Norfolk in the UK to a small Andalusian village.!
FB_IMG_1500645988739.jpg
It was hot and we had a short summer that year because we had a four month trip to New Zealand coming up but we grew some veg and tried beans and squashes. We learnt a lot, we learnt how not to do things and what would not grow through an Almerian summer.
We have lots of wildlife through the valley, we've glimpsed a wild boar that luckily didn't show an interest in the much more successful veg garden of 2016, foxes, snakes and many spiders and bugs.
We felt where we should put up the tipi then ruled it out with our heads! Three days later in huge winds the tipi was down...and moved to the spot we had originally planned where it stayed quite happily.
The tipi is a great space, we had brought the poles from the UK but the canvas was sent from Portugal and we picked it up from Santa Fe near Granada.
Occasionally we got an univited guest!
Spiders got in quite regularly and loved sitting on the rain shute but we got a spray bottle and watered down tea tree oil and sprayed night and morning and we had the tipi back to ourselves!
At the end of a long hot day we would sit outside the tipi watching the stars, the satellites roaming through the skies and we looked forward to the full moons, we also saw a few odd things in the night sky!
We got up in the early hours to photograph a blood moon eclipse and after a bit more tuition on my camera we took some really nice full moon photos.
We had lots of advice from Spanish people about growing veg, not all of it we understood, but with hand signals and drawing diagrams in the dirt we improved and in the second year had more control of the water and put in water lines. Every bug wants to eat the fruit and veggies so we used water containers to protect the young plants and we got quite a harvest!
We had a small cinder block building for cooking which now has a bedroom and bathroom which the geckoes inhabited, they have a sort of chuckle sound which is quite sweet and occasionally we would come across a tiny baby one.
The earth we have to work with is a difficult medium, it's like dust on top but like concrete an inch or two down and when it rains you cannot move any vehicle, even a tractor on it as it goes like clay and just sticks, to walk in it is character building and you gain inches in height in seconds. We get to spend time with nature and its so quiet!
Whilst in Spain we also got into house sitting nearby which enabled us to keep an eye on the land but also have showers and a bit of luxury! We visited a few places in Spain but the long 2016 summer was busy with veggie growing and house sitting.
Through the house sitting we had a week near Granada and got to visit Rute and the lifesize chocolate models and we also spent xmas in Marbella with two amazing Hungarian Vizlas. After all the dryness we like to visit lake Negratin which is lovely to relax in!
Next month we are off to Australia to do two house sits over three months and will go from there to Vietnam before heading back to start again in Spain, we hope to get solar but when it comes to having electricity or travel, we book flights! Theres a lot of world to see!
