- The Self-Sufficiency Garden
- Irrigation
- Drylands Restoration
- Stone House Restoration
- Visitor Accommodation
- The Market Garden
- Animal Integration
- Fibre Crafts
- Wood-fired Cooking & Water Heating
- Earthbag Building
- Strawbale Building
The Self-Sufficiency Garden
A 500㎡ (ish) vegetable & fruit tree garden, currently watered by hand, where we are learning to grow a wide range of vegetables, fruits, salad crops and flowers for self-consumption throughout the year. We are growing mainly in no dig beds (although in some beds we did an initial till to decompact and prepare the soil for direct seeding) and use heavy mulching with compost and straw for water retention and weed control.
We are experimenting with simple cold-frame designs and hope to soon add a polytunnel and/or greenhouse to extend our growing season and the range of crops we can grow.
In 2022 we began the challenge of eating something from our garden every day of the year!
Irrigation
Our irrigation water is provided by the overflow from a nearby spring. Water is channeled to our land via 9cm PVC piping and traditional stone acequias (canals). We have 60,000l of water storage, provided by a series of open basins which fill continually from Ts in the pipe which comes from the spring.
Traditional irrigation is by the flood method. After some experimenting with this method, and realising how much restoration and upkeep the stone canals require, plus other disadvantages, we have decided to have a go at installing drip irrigation and see first-hand which works best for us. This is a project we'd very much like to get done before summer 2022, as we're still currently watering with a mix of flood and by hosepipe, which is a lot of work!
Drylands Restoration
More than 3/4 of our terraced land is close enough to a water deposit to be irrigated, which is great, but we do have about 2,000㎡ of land on the other side of a barranco (seasonal stream) which is secano (dry). However, even without irrigation, this land does provide a rich bounty of olives, plums, apples and figs.
After years of annual ploughing by previous owners, we are working to establish permanent ground cover in these dry fields, using a mix of annual and perennial cover crops to try and protect the soil from erosion and water loss, and over time improve the quality of the soil. This is an area of experimentation, experimenting with different cover crops, green manures and incorporation methods to see what works.
In the future these fields could be good sites for experiments with silvopasture - potentially keeping poultry beneath the trees.
Stone House Restoration
We were lucky enough to have started out with a sealed, livable stone cottage, although it needed a fair bit of tidying, replastering and painting before we were ready to call it home. Our ongoing improvements to this building include: flooring, internal wiring, replacing doors and windows, insulation and furniture building.
The stone house doesn't have any plumbing - we use a compost toilet situated in an outbuilding just off the side of the house, and an outdoor shower. However, we do have an adjoining outdoor kitchen where we intend to bring in running water, primarily for the sink. The kitchen also requires re-plastering, flooring, repainting, and generally fitting out with useful surfaces and storage.
Visitor Accommodation
We have recently erected a 6m bell tent which is furnished with a double bed, with an additional air mattress if required. We are working on improving the interior, making it generally more useful and attractive, and building some outdoor decking and a little garden area just outside.
In the long run we would like to replace the bell tent with a more resistant pallet-and-cob structure, and make the accomodation fully independent. This means constructing another compost toilet in that area, a shower, a basic cooking area, and getting a water storage solution set up over there. The bell tent currently has power provided by a portable energy station which can be charged via solar panels on sunny days and can power the tent through several nights on a single charge.
The Market Garden
One of our main goals on this site is to develop a market garden. We believe we have enough space and water to make this a possibility, but our main limitation at the moment is time and knowledge. Whilst we are currently learning as much as we can about growing food for our own needs, we are constantly thinking about how we can apply this on a bigger scale, without using fossil-fuel powered machinery.
We would like to get to the point where we are producing more than we can consume from our self-sufficiency garden before really branching out into a bigger scale enterprise. Our first goal is to have some surplus which we could potentially sell via a micro-veg box scheme, perhaps just selling a couple of boxes a week during peak seasons to neighbours.
Animal Integration
We have a lot on our plates at the moment but we are looking to integrate a small number of animals (including rescue animals) into our farm in the near future, in way that equally benefits both us, the land and the animals. Having been vegan for many years, we are unlikely to be integrating animals for meat, but we would like to produce our own eggs and honey. We are interested in heritage chicken breeds, which have not been bred for maximum egg production, as well as possibly ducks and quails.
We would also like to have a couple of alpacas (!), for the manure and the fibre production. We also think it could be a fun enterprise to offer guided alpaca walks along some of the local trails - this is definitely a "thing" in the UK, although I haven't heard of it much here, but I reckon we could be pioneers!
Fibre Crafts
I (Harriet) am really interested in fibre crafts - crochet, knitting, spinning, natural dyeing - and would love to be able to explore and share these interests more, using fibre from our own animals. Hence the alpacas (above).
I would love to offer short courses/experiences in spinning/natural dyeing with our own fibre one day.
Wood-fired Cooking & Water Heating
We currently use bottled gas for water heating and cooking, but a long-term goal is to move away from this. We would like to develop a system that allows us to cook and heat water simultaneously, and potentially also build some sort of wood-fired heating system into a propagation space such as a greenhouse.
Our initial thoughts are that we would replace our gas oven in the kitchen with a rocket mass stove, which also has some kind of water heating element integrated. How would we manage showers on-demand? We're not sure. In the summer we can rely on sun-heated water, but in the winter we usually can't. The solution probably involves a mix between clever design and behaviour change, which we haven't figured out yet.
Earthbag Building
In 2022 we would like to experiment more with earthbag building, after Mauro learned the technique at The Freedom Farm in October 2021. We would probably start with something small, like a tool shed.
Straw Bale Building
We also have a large ruin on the site which one day we'll be knocking down and rebuilding. Our favourite idea, currently, is a straw bale home. Straw bale homes go up quickly, are naturally well-insulated, and are a natural and sustainable building material since straw is byproduct of grain cultivation.
This project is probably several years in ahead in the future. We don't even know what size house we'd like to build, or even if we should build a house, or instead some other kind of functional space. But when we do get round to this challenge, it's going to be amazing!
