Portugal Off Grid

We have had some sad news from a friend this week. They found out that the property they purchased in Portugal was agricultural land and the building ruin AND wooden cabin on the land were illegal. The local camara (government) is permitting them to stay in the wooden cabin for now, probably because it still has wheels or it isn't considered a permanent structure. How did this happen? Non-Portuguese folks sadly often purchase cheap land with a ruin, believing they can put in sweat equity and have a lovely future home. They don't realize the odd history of these cheap land lots. They believe anything the real estate agents tell them. In the past, all land was "urban" or "rural". You could only live/reside on urban land. To avoid paying lots of taxes, farms would only make the smallest footprint of the house "urban". Illegal structures would be built, or the main building would be built on to illegally. Now we have Google Maps Satellite images, and t...

 Instead of buying a whole greenhouse kit, I have purchased replacement foil and looks like this: Link to purchase in Dutch My plan is to build the frame part ourselves, using this example from Pinterest: And instead of using white PVC tubing, I am going to use black irrigation hose. We have miscellaneous pieces all over the land, many with holes or damage and no longer useful for irrigation. The local lumber. yard has lots of great rough cut lumber at decent prices, so building our winter greenhouse should be reasonable. The cost of mulch and organic matter for the ground will be another story, as I have yet to find a farmer who I can pay to dump a pile cheaply. The plan is to use the greenhouse for a year and then move it over and use it in that spot for a year, then repeat. Every year, the soil under the greenhouse will be enriched and the gardening area will slowly grow. I got this idea from Jim Kovaleski, a market gardener who moves back and forth from North to South every yea...

Jim Kovaleski's greenhouse theories are excellent. He moves it every year. A This is a tour of the greenhouse itself

Master U-Power Inverter Hybrid UM 3000W 24V MPPT This inverter-charger has a lot of drawbacks, but since I got mine on deep discount because it was a returned item, I'm satisfied with performance. 225.00 euros including shipping. It is very noisy and runs the fan all day long, but I'm outdoors most of the day in nice weather, so we tolerate it. 10 panels of 145 watt. I bought a total of 14 on Marktplaats used for 400 euros. Currently only using 8 of them. Made by TSMC model TS-145c1 Sticker from back is shown in image below. There are two 12v 180AH semi-traction batteries. 199 euros each, set up for 24v Cables and misc. from Amazon.nl  6mm2 Solar Charge Controller to Solar Module MC4 Solar Cable (10m) TRAMILY 4Y Branch Solar Panel Cable  PV Wire Adapter and a power strip was used for the 220v plug ins. Totals: 225,00 for the Green box     400,00 for the panels     42,00 for the cables     14,00 for the additional connectors     13,00 for...

The only highlight of the drive home was taking my yeast dough and making bread on the gas stove in the van. I have a clam-shell pan and it kicked out this English muffin like thing that was pretty tasty. Near Paris the gas shortages caused me to drive off the highway to find gas. There were huge lines everywhere and I luckily found a place with only 10 vehicles ahead of me. Since the bed was taken out to bring all the solar panels and sofa down, a brand new mattress from IKEA in Lisbon was laid in the van to sleep on. When I got home, it was installed on our master bedroom bed (which needed a new mattress as the old one was 10 years old). It was okay like this for one person and two little dogs. Didn't seem to hurt the mattress. Now we get to rebuild the van bed and reposition it because we got a new composting toilet!! woot woot.  

Just as I packed up to leave, we had gotten rain and now the lime tree was blooming. I also found a fruit on the neighbor's strawberry tree. It was delicious. I will definitely make clones of this tree in the future. It sits at our fence line and I would like one or two of my own. The blue tiles were added to the fireplace. I will cut the final ones on the next trip, but already it's such a difference.  

Once my husband was dropped off at the Lisbon airport to go back to work, I started on the kitchen. It is easier to deal with a kitchen when it's just one person. If it was the two of us, there would be more cooking, more coffee making, more tea and more snacks.  The sink, which was earlier framed with raw lumber, got a few large tiles glued to it to make a more sanitary countertop surface. Next trip I will need to do something about the gap at the back, but this is a big improvement over raw lumber. The limewash was applied over the sink area. I managed to cut my thumb down to the bone while making fresh bread with melted sheep cheese. Husband bought a new serrated bread knife. Super sharp, Damn thing went down to the bone and I spent several hours keeping pressure on it until it dried enough not to break open. This is my toilet paper and tape bandage. Seamus enjoying the sofa cushions on a clean scrubbed floor. Since I couldn't do much with my thumb all cut up, I spent a day ...

We brought with us two pepper plants in 5 liter pots. Both were Black Naga Chilis that had lots of green fruit that were just not enjoying the Dutch climate. They were refusing to turn dark before we left, so we just threw them in the van. The LOVED the Portuguese sun and my husband was so happy. We know they will probably be dead when we get back here around Christmas, but we decided to make them a nice home anyway.  Since the neighbors keep the land clean for me by letting the sheep in, we needed to fence off an area against the sheep because hot peppers are poisonous to them. We made our first raised bed with roofing tin. There is a big stack in the barn that used to be the building's original roof. We used wood beam to make corner pieces and screwed it together. The bed was filled with trimmings from one of the cork oak trees at the bottom, 10 bags of 50 liter organic soil mix and 5 bags of organic horse manure mulch mix. I was worried it would be too hot for the peppers and ki...

Once we had power again, it was time to work on the main room, finishing up the limewash. A folding drying rack was hung over the fireplace so during colder weather we can dry dish towels and the like. I threw my sweater here. The inside of the fireplace looks much nicer now that there is a cast iron back plate put in. Got this broken one for 10 euros. It's missing a corner, but if you are standing up and walking around, you never notice it. The one I really wanted was more than a hundred euros and I just couldn't bring myself to pay that much. The wall with the dining table is starting to look like a real wall. The table is still covered in tools, but the chipped and flaking plaster has been covered over in lime and looks so much better. This is a picture of the wall before the area under the window was repaired. This plaster is a very breathable mix of mostly sand, maybe some lime and maybe some cement. It is very simple and covers the bricks underneath. It isn't structur...

Our first big job was emptying out the van and setting up the (new to us) secondhand solar panels. We got these off marktplaats for 400 euros. We brought 10 panels to Portugal and left 4 panels at home to put over our small garage. These are 145 watts, huge and heavy. Today it is easy to get a 455 watt panel the same size as one of these, but for our penny-pinching Portugal project, these are great. For speed, we set them up against the concrete wall and use bricks and a wood beam that was in the garage. The cost of setting them up against the concrete wall was less than five dollars of concrete mix as all the rest was recycled from the barn.  We got to limewashing and cleaning up the corner where the solar set up was going back to (it has been moved a few times) In the morning the sun hits the 4 panels on the right of the picture. Mid-day the sun hits all of them and in the evening it hits the four on the left of the picture. There is a cork oak planted in the corner that will som...

Our latest trip from the Netherlands required that we take out the bed so we could fill the van with a sofa, solar panels and the Agria walk behind tractor. On top of all that, I put lighter weight things like an empty water barrel, some plastic lawn chairs and a mini-fridge we aren't using at home.  After three days of driving, we arrived in the dark and it was a wonderful sight to see. We spent two nights on the road sleeping in a tent at a campsite. That was okay, but I did miss my warm van bed.