David and his partner – collectively Mr and Mrs Boots – left the UK in 2004 to pursue their dream of self-sufficiency. Now living on a farm in northern Spain with their cats, dogs and chickens, they live off the land, harvest all of their water and generate their power from the sun and the wind. It sounds idyllic, but is it really? Blagger got in touch to find out.
How did you end up living off-grid in Spain?
We were looking to buy a country property in the UK, but even after renovating a few places we still couldn’t afford anything with a decent amount of land that wasn’t either too isolated or in the depths of northern Scotland. We looked around at various countries and the climate here in northern Spain seemed to suit us perfectly.
We get warm but not excruciating summers and mostly, very mild winters. It is an ideal climate for us.
Could you briefly describe your set-up?
We have four 80 Watt solar panels that are connected to an inverter and a bank of deep cycle batteries that store the energy created when the sun shines. We also have a wind turbine that creates energy. As a back-up we have a generator that can be used to supply the house and will simultaneously top up the batteries if they are low.
This has made us very aware of how much electricity we used to waste, and it inspired me to write a post about how to save on electricity on our own blog. It is very easy to overlook how much money you can save simply by following a few basic guidelines.
For water we have a few methods. There is a large, original, cistern that we knocked down to ground level in part of our house. It holds about 5,000 litres of water and is situated under our new living room floor. Whenever it rains the guttering all around the house will fill it quite quickly. We also have two 3,000 litre tanks at the top of our land. We either pump up the water from the cistern using a small DC pump and a car battery or if there has been no rain for a while – in the summer, for example – we have a tractor that comes and delivers 6,000 litres at a time.
For drinking water we are fortunate. There is a fresh spring that comes directly out of the mountain not far from us. Every week or two we simply go and fill up all our empty bottles. It tastes fantastic!
As for fruit and veg. Our orchard is still only a few years old and has only just started producing, but in a few years we will have more oranges, apples, plums, apricots, peaches, pears, walnuts and so on than we’ll know what to do with! I can’t wait.
Our vegetable plot was the first thing we started on when we moved here. We made sure to use the double digging technique as advocated by John Seymour. I was interested to read your review of his great Self Sufficiency Bible. He really is ‘The Man’.
We eat very seasonally. We hardly ever buy any veg. Maybe potatoes and a few odds and ends. Apart from that we eat what is either growing at the time or what has been preserved. There are lots of tips on our blog about preserving all kinds of food. Amazingly, even now, we still have tomatoes hanging up that taste fresh and fantastic.
As far as animals go, we have three dogs, a cat that found us when it was very young and the four chickens. The chickens are such a valuable resource. As you know there is no comparison to your own free range eggs. In the past we have had two batches of chickens raised for eating. The gorier aspects of this were not really to my liking, but I have never tasted such good meat.
I am sure we will raise chickens again but this time I think I will have to get someone else to dispatch them for me! We are seriously contemplating raising a few pigs though. It is finding the time to get everything in order that is holding us back.
Do you also earn a living by selling your produce, or have other jobs on the side?
We are very slowly starting to look more in to selling certain things from here. We have had a bit of success with the olives, but we need to get serious about it and start looking into selling our own oil and home cured olives.
We go through phases of doing different jobs. Basically whatever we have to do to not have to go back to town living. The open spaces here and quality of the pure, fresh air is just too good to give up.
Few of us could contemplate living without mains electric, gas and water. What sort of adjustments have you had to make to what most people would consider a regular ‘connected’ lifestyle?
It’s strange but in reality you can, if you wish, have as many home comforts as you want. The electricity is a minor hassle in so far as having to walk to the generator shed if the power is low.
Gas here in Spain is mostly not piped anywhere. The standard is to use a large bottle that you get replaced in the nearest town or village, so we have the same situation as everyone else. Our only issue with gas is the fact we have to have a gas fridge. It runs out way too quickly for my liking.
I think all the adjustments we have made are things I wish I had done when we had a more ‘regular’ lifestyle. We conserve water. All our grey water is recycled. We compost kitchen water and scraps always. We collect rainwater whenever we can and are obsessive about how much electricity we use.
It’s crazy but in the UK I thought nothing of always flushing the toilet after a pee. Why? Habit I guess. But in reality you are flushing litres of drinking quality water away and being charged for it. If I moved back to the UK now I would bury a big tank in the back garden, collect rainwater and never pay water rates again. If we can supply ourselves with water for half a year in Spain for free then in the UK you would have a year round abundance.
Is it easier to do this kind of thing in a country like Spain where you have the benefit of more hours of good sunshine per year to generate electricity, than it would be in the UK?
From a cost point of view, yes. We get more sunshine so need less solar panels to generate our electricity. That being said there are new grants in the UK, I believe, that go some way to help paying for green energy Installations.
If you want to be a lot more self sufficient, then in many ways it can be easier in the UK. If you have land you have the high rainfall which makes great grazing for raising all kinds of animals. You can also grow a much wider variety of crops. We are limited in the summer times because of temperatures, so we have a much shorter growing season for many things.
What are your next plans?
To keep going. We expand our veg growing every year so we are becoming almost totally self sufficient as far as that is concerned. Hopefully we will raise some animals for food soon as well. We will also start looking in to ways to make more money from the olive trees that we have in abundance.
Apart from that we just want to continue living in open spaces, with good air, and a nice, quiet, country life.
Catch up with David and his partner on their Spanish smallholding through their blog A Self Sufficient Life
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Absolutely inspiring. I am getting more and more interested in this way of living and as I am moving my young family to our place in Murcia Southern Spain soon I think I will give it a good go. Can’t wait.
Keep up the good work.
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