The most surprising thing about living off-grid in Spain, is that we all experience it in a different way, and we each adopt a different lifestyle. I asked my friend, illustrator Sterre Verbokkem, to tell us a bit about her lifestyle…

Pictures by Eva Krebbers at Tumbleweeds & Fireflies Photography

On our mountain in Castellon the days are mostly sunny, the hills covered in pine trees and foxes, badgers and other wild animals live their lives while we live hours.

Our Journey: from the Netherlands over Traveling the World to Living Off-Grid in Castellon

It has been a bit over a year since we bought the old farm house here in the Castellon province.

Before we moved to Spain we spent a year working and traveling. We traveled through Europe and the United States and Canada and worked on the road. When we took the leap to sell our house in the Netherlands we had already build up our business, but the move to a more natural place and a more simple, pure life was totally in line with our business anyway.

Our Off-Grid Lifestyle

The old farm house we bought needed a big update. There was no electricity, no bedrooms, no real bathroom and a very old kitchen. We have 9 solar panels and our house actually functions like a ‘normal’ house. We had help when it came to the basics of building the kitchen, bathroom and bedrooms and doing the detailed work like painting and installing kitchen cabinets ourselves.

It is an ongoing project and every step of the way this place that already feels so much like home feels more ‘ours’.

We love living surrounded to nature, with nature even, but don’t aim to be self sufficient when it comes to producing our own food. We do live off our land in another way. Our wild mountain gives us the inspiration to do the work we do. It provides us with endless inspiration and the right vibe and mood to make our nature inspired mindfulness apps that help people worldwide to connect with nature.

Our nature inspired apps are designed to help people relax and to bring the wonderful outdoors to anyone, anywhere. Connecting with the natural world around you is a wonderful way to calm your mind. Spending time in nature makes you feel better, and with our experiences we can help people experience that too, even if they don’t have access to nature at that moment.

More and more of our work is directly inspired by our wild land. While I study the foxes living next to the olive terraces, they pop up in the illustration I do for magazines and environmental organisations. The sounds we hear when we enjoy the view over the mountains inspires us to make new landscapes for our apps and when I write guided meditations I do it with the birds singing in the back ground.

The Best Part of Living Off-Grid…

The almost 8 hectares of land we have are mostly wild and untamed and we love it that way. It is a sanctuary for wild animals and we are proud to say that they live here too.

Living off grid on our mountain has made us realise even more how much all we need is already around us, and how we can run our business in a way that feels even more authentic while living a life that is so close to our heart.