News from our farmstead #43

A yearly round-up in a few lists

Usually around this time of year we make a video reflecting on what we’ve achieved over the last 12 months and setting down some intentions for the year ahead. I have a feeling we won’t end up making that video this year because sit-down talky videos are quite challenging with Santi - in fact, just having a long enough conversation to prepare in advance for the video would be a miracle! And there’s a lot that happened that would be hard to sum up easily, or even get my thoughts straight about. So we’ll do it this way instead, with a few lists.

annual attempt at a nice family photo

This last year on the homestead has been focused on beauty, utility, ease and tying up loose ends. We may have created as many loose ends as we’ve tied up, but finally we are beginning to see the systems that serve us well take shape amongst the chaos. Here are some of the things we managed this year:

• Rendered and beautified the front of the house. We went all-in with pot plants and white paint for that classic Mediterranean Grandma’s House vibe. Just make sure not to peek round any corners at any of the other 3 sides of the house as they are definitely not as well-kept.

• I built 5 stone raised beds near the house and for most of the year only grew in these beds. With the drought meaning our water supply was even more precious than usual, this turned out to be a good idea and I love how they look. They are also all very shaded which was great in summer.

• Finished tiling the inside of the house just in time for Santi to be able to crawl all the way from living room to kitchen without encountering nasty bare concrete!

• Began keeping ducks, and also started work on a big chicken and duck food forest (which isn’t finished yet).

• We finished(ish) our kitchen renovation! With the remaining countertop installation, tiling, grouting, electrics, cabinet making and the installation of an oven, we finally ticked off all the big jobs which made this space really comfortable and usable.

• We totally re-built our water system. We decommissioned our main deposit with the aim of almost completely rebuilding it in the very near future, rehomed lots of fish and pond lilies, installed 12,000l of water storage up a hill which could be filled by a tanker (or pumped into, by us) and switched to gravity-fed taps and irrigation across the land.

• Later, we had our underground pipework ripped out and replaced to fix leaks and install proper inspection boxes.

• Bought an additional half hectare of land, cleared it, fenced it, and moved our rescue donkey there, along with two additional donkey friends.

• Started a new compost bay system (not finished yet) for processing the vast amounts of donkey manure which we are now accumulating.

• Survived one of the biggest rainfall events on record for our area - and were finally motivated to fix the remaining leak around the dodgy door to our terrace.

• Recently returned to growing in our main garden after about a year of neglect

• Built the beginnings of an undercover utilities area so we can finally get a washing machine!

• Began work on a complete rebuild of our bathroom and shower.

• Mauro started helping our friends at Toca la Tierra weekly on their natural building project where he is learning loads.

• We also made 2 trips to the UK and a short holiday to Rome

• I somehow managed to create 31 full length videos, 7 bonus videos and 12 issues of this newsletter

Rome, July 2024

And here are a few extra “unexpected ins” for 2024:

• Baking! We don’t buy store bought bread any more. Simple as that, thanks to Mauro.

• We finally bought a petrol chainsaw. I still love the mini battery powered chainsaw and use it daily but the big one was a game changer for us to be more self sufficient in firewood.

• Meal planning. Admittedly I never did this in the past, but this last year we’ve been much better at shopping weekly, sticking to a budget and making sure we have interesting, healthy meals that usually generate the next day’s lunch, too.

• Growing what we love. Much less waste from the garden this year because it was smaller, and we stuck to what we know we definitely want to eat.

• Buying plug plants. So cheap, so easy, saves me a whole load of time.

• Cold showers. Not always by choice, but I for one (and I am the only one) have learned to embrace them. I hope my metabolism is grateful.

• Sugar free baking. I started baking sugar free cakes for Santi, but actually we’re all loving it - definitely hope to expand my repertoire next year!

Citrus season again

What else are we hoping for next year beyond more sweet potato based cakes? Well, as always, we’d both like to read more books, work out more consistently, worm the cats on time, see friends more often, etc etc. I’m not really a fan of those kinds of goals any more because it always feels like piling more and more on your plate and it’s not realistic. You have to actively take something away to make room for more of something else, so maybe it’s easier to look for what you’re willing to drop. We’re not planning any new projects apart from stuff we’ve already started (that includes the deposit/natural pool rebuild) but we definitely are planning to pay for certain work wherever it makes sense and we can afford it, to free us up for the stuff we really enjoy and which we can do with Santi. And things will change so much anyway as we move into life with a toddler instead of life with a baby. It’s hard to predict, hard to imagine, so we’ll go with the flow and see how our days evolve.

Personally I’d like to propose just one homestead goal for 2025. If you’ve been with us since the beginning, can you believe we’re about to enter the fifth year of this project? You can look back at our very first newsletter issue here and maybe you’ll be as surprised as I just was to see how close we have managed to keep to our original goals. Some of our short term goals (such as waterproofing the house) were literally finished only the other week, whilst other long term goals (a “couple of donkeys”) we’ve already surpassed. As for “maybe some goats” and a “yurt/tipi” - we’ve been there, done that, as they say! But all in all, although the orders and timescales might have gone a bit out of whack, we’re not too far off where we thought we might be at this point.

It’s not time yet to set out more sweeping five-year plans but I do feel like it’s time for 2025 to begin to take a turn towards the next chapter. So, a big goal of mine for the upcoming year would be to get to a point where we’re ready to start doing something with the ruin. That means:

• getting the necessary permissions from the town hall

• actually deciding what we want to build, within our limitations

• contracting an architect and having the plans approved

• having some money set aside to be able to get started, even if we don’t make a start in 2025

• have the access prepared for large vehicles

• having our other main projects finished so we only have one area of focus

We have been talking about this for a long time and although we’ve been very excited to get started ever since we bought the land, we’ve had no reason to rush. We’ve always said we wanted to be ready to start within 5 years, and now we’re getting to that point. We’re also kind of done with our current house, or at least we will be once we rebuild the shower (which isn’t strictly necessary). We’re just making incremental little improvements to it, really, at this point. So yeah, not lofty goals, I wouldn’t say… we’ll see how it goes.

Donkeyland, probably our greatest achievement of the year was pushing this through

Anyway, I hope you are bringing in the new year in peace and comfort wherever you are and have lots to look forward to. And if you are glad to see the back of 2024 - well, you made it! And here’s to brighter things coming your way. ✨

Harriet, Mauro and Santi x