Who Are We and Why Are We Here?
In this newsletter we'll be sharing updates, lessons, and thoughts on (kinda) self-sufficiency and resilience from a 4 acre smallholding in Spain
Welcome to our Little Spanish Farmstead. I’m Harriet, and together with my husband Mauro we're reviving an abandoned smallholding in rural Spain, growing our own food, raising animals and restoring a little stone cottage. Follow for olives, almonds, chihuahuas, goats and hopefully a donkey.
A short history
We moved to Spain from the UK in September 2020. We came with the intention of finding some land where we could grow our own food and begin to develop a more resilient and partially self-sufficient way of life.
With family in the UK and Spain, we knew we wanted to be in one of these 2 countries. In a sense, the choice of Spain was out of our hands: land in the UK is very expensive and small plots are very hard to come by due to the historical consolidation of land into ever-larger parcels - something which hasn’t happened to such a great extent in Spain.
So to Spain we came, buying our 4 acre (1.6 hectare) smallholding in February 2020 after just a couple of months of searching. The biggest challenge in southern Europe is, of course, water. We were lucky enough to find a property with access to a year-round natural spring, and which has several large, flat, irrigated fields previously used for cultivating vegetables. This was important to us, as a lot of land around here is terraced drylands - suitable for growing trees like olives and almonds once they’re established but very challenging to cultivate unless you can somehow bring in 1000s of litres of water a day during summer.
Before we could fully move in to the smallholding, we had to fix up the house to the extent that it was liveable, install solar panels to provide us with an energy source, and find a way to bring water 300m from the spring down to the house.
Six months later, in September 2021, I moved to the smallholding full-time whilst Mauro remained in the city, where he was working. At this point we had no furniture, no shower or running water, no toilet and just a simple gas ring to cook on. I was also still working full-time (remotely) and trying to fix up the biggest priorities on the smallholding during my evenings and weekends, with the help of Mauro who of course came as often as he could.
Around that time I started this newsletter, documenting our progress as we worked on the house and the land, making our way through that first tough winter, learning so much as we went.
So that’s how we got here.
If you want to read more about the why… I recommend this post.