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Gardening & Growing

Raising Animals

Off-Grid & Self-Sufficient

Simple Lifestyle

Off-grid Spain

Stories

Hi, I'm Sandrine!

I live off-grid on an olive and almond farm in Spain, with alpacas and chickens and dogs and all the things. We’ve got solar panels and water from a borehole, we aim to grow our own food and be more self-sufficient, and we also try to make more time for what’s really important in life… Come and join the sunny simple living movement!

Gardening & Growing

Best 5 Vegetables to Grow For Self-Sufficiency

Best 5 Vegetables to Grow For Self-Sufficiency

What are the best 5 vegetables to grow for self-sufficiency? We listed them and added some recipes and growing tips for each!

How to Start a Garden from Scratch – in 7 Easy Steps

How to Start a Garden from Scratch – in 7 Easy Steps

Whether you’re new at gardening and have never done it before, or you’re ...

The Surprising Benefits of Hugelkultur, a Permaculture Soil-Building Technique

The Surprising Benefits of Hugelkultur, a Permaculture Soil-Building Technique

Hugelkultur is a technique often used in permaculture gardening to build ...

Square-Foot Gardening: Growing Food on a Small Scale

Square-Foot Gardening: Growing Food on a Small Scale

You don’t actually need much space to grow your own food. In fact, you can ...

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Raising Animals

7 Things to Consider When Building a Chicken Coop

7 Things to Consider When Building a Chicken Coop

Why Raise a Heritage Chicken Breed?

Why Raise a Heritage Chicken Breed?

What are the Best Animals for Self-Sufficiency?

What are the Best Animals for Self-Sufficiency?

Raising Chickens — from Hatching Eggs to Laying Hens

Raising Chickens — from Hatching Eggs to Laying Hens

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Off-grid & Self-sufficient

5 Basic Skills for Increased Self-Sufficiency (and Books to Get you Started!)

5 Basic Skills for Increased Self-Sufficiency (and Books to Get you Started!)

Learning basic skills like growing food, mending clothes and more allows us to become independent from external ...

How to Be Self-Sufficient and Live Off-Grid

How to Be Self-Sufficient and Live Off-Grid

There's more than one way to be more self-reliant! We explore how to be ...

7 Steps to Moving Off-Grid and Starting a Simple Life

7 Steps to Moving Off-Grid and Starting a Simple Life

Most of the people who try moving off the grid but don't succeed, skipped ...

7 Questions to Define the Best Place to Live Off the Grid

7 Questions to Define the Best Place to Live Off the Grid

When you make the decision to live off grid, no one can tell you which ...

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Simple Lifestyle & Homesteading

7 Natural Health & Beauty Experiments to Try This Fall

7 Natural Health & Beauty Experiments to Try This Fall

Gardening With Kids 101 – How To Keep Children Busy While Gardening

Gardening With Kids 101 – How To Keep Children Busy While Gardening

How to Craft your Own Perfume with Essential Oils

How to Craft your Own Perfume with Essential Oils

Face Mask Recipe for Every Season

Face Mask Recipe for Every Season

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Off-grid Spain

Storm Filomena, January 2021

Storm Filomena, January 2021

People associate Spain with sunny beaches, sangria and tapas. Which is what a holiday at the coast is probably ...

How Safe Is It To Live Off-Grid In Spain?

How Safe Is It To Live Off-Grid In Spain?

How safe is it to live off-grid in Spain? We’re not talking about safety ...

Keeping Animals in Spain: Getting Started

Keeping Animals in Spain: Getting Started

Thinking about moving off-grid and starting a farm (with animals) in ...

Off-Grid Stories: Sterre in Castellon

Off-Grid Stories: Sterre in Castellon

People who live off-grid all experience it in a different way; in this ...

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Our Stories

Storm Filomena, January 2021

Storm Filomena, January 2021

Tour Of Our Off-Grid House – Mas Del Encanto

Tour Of Our Off-Grid House – Mas Del Encanto

Our Story: How We Ended Up Living Off-Grid in Spain

Our Story: How We Ended Up Living Off-Grid in Spain

Harvesting Olives and Making Olive Oil – 2017 Edition

Harvesting Olives and Making Olive Oil – 2017 Edition

7 Steps to Move Off-grid

Grab your free guide to taking the leap

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Halfway through shearing Paco (we already did Rick

Halfway through shearing Paco (we already did Ricky, you can see him get impatient in the back). Collecting the fleece before we move on to the other side. And meanwhile Paco is… just lying there for dead, just like his mother used to do!

When your washing line breaks in two by the sheer

When your washing line breaks in two by the sheer force of the wind 🤦‍♀️

One day it’s nice and sunny, the next we’re “in the milk” as we like to call it. Try spotting Tom 🐈‍⬛ & Jabba 🐕 in the second pic, out exploring in the alpaca pasture!

It’s nice and sunny! We should be out there in t

It’s nice and sunny! We should be out there in the world! (That was yesterday)

Saturday, my favourite rooster (George Cookelooney

Saturday, my favourite rooster (George Cookelooney) was behaving erratically. He seemed unbalanced, kept falling over, used his wings to move forward (instead of walking properly), in short: he wasn’t looking great. And minutes later, I realised one of the hens was missing: I found her under a branch, pretty recently deceased.

Great timing of course, it being Saturday afternoon: vet unavailable, shops closed. Thankfully, Dr. Google helped me find all the possible causes - ranging from Vitamin B deficiency (= easy to fix) over Botulism (not sure) to Marek’s Disease (= pretty deadly).

I spent the rest of the afternoon scrubbing stuff (in case it was botulism) and collecting random foodstuffs (in case it was vitamin B)… and yesterday, George was not worse. That’s a win, right? However, Big Bertha (my big white Brahma chicken) seemed a bit unbalanced… but maybe it was the wind?

Today, Big Bertha can’t walk properly, and George seems completely fine again, walking around like he’s the king of the coop.

So I’m giving Bertha the treatment I gave George over the weekend (= extra food and water)… but while George is a sweetie and enjoyed the personal attention, Bertha’s just panicking every time I come close. Fingers crossed though.

We do our own version of “rotating pastures”.

We do our own version of “rotating pastures”.
When we first got our alpacas, we set up 3 bigger pastures for them, each composed of at least one field of almond and/or olive trees.

And in the middle, there’s a smaller enclosure where we keep the pacas when they need medical attention, for shearing, when there’s a hunt going on, etc. That enclosure also has a stable.

We really want the bigger pasture to grow some grass, so the alpacas have been in the middle (smaller) enclosure for the past week or so… and every day, we let them into the pasture in front of the house for a couple of hours. We can’t really do more as in the past 6 weeks, they’ve escaped from that pasture twice - and we can’t seem to find where… so we need to keep an eye on them while they’re out.

This is how happy Ricky & Paco get every day when I open the fence for them 🙂

It’s funny how fast you forget 2 miserable days

It’s funny how fast you forget 2 miserable days of rain, thunder and lightning (and just so much rain!) as soon as the sun shows its face again. 🌞

First 2 pictures: our neighbour’s property - he

First 2 pictures: our neighbour’s property - he ploughs and ploughs and when it rains, we get his top soil. 3rd pic: our aspiring and very much neglected food forest - soggy, but holding on. 4th: swales and raised beds also still holding for now. I like going for a walk after a big rain because it makes me feel less stupid for being stubborn and doing things our way (without ploughing!)

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