wow, FINALLY i made it.. This has been an epic journey of endurance, passion, desperation, hope, tears and joy! After 4 months of graft, mostly on my own in the beating hot Portugal summer sun I have completed the yurt very successfully. It has been an eye opening journey in many ways. SO many facets of my vision and learning have come together during this time, from discovering the incredibly supportive community that we have here in and around Penamacor.. to the nitty gritty of learning new skills and experimenting with my own ideas. I am incredibly thankful to everyone who has supported me in so many ways.. without their help this would have never been possible.

I would like to start by talking about the community here. I don’t really like Facebook in general or what it stands for, however the local Facebook group has been invaluable to me during this process. I have reached out in so many ways to everyone on this group and have ALWAYS been greeted with such incredible responses. Morgana, a lovely French lady who has lived here for a year now in her Yurt came several times for hours on end to make sure i did things right. That is despite her suffering quite badly with harsh back pain right now. Then there's Hal, who has loaned me nearly ALL his power tools for weeks on end, come at least5 times for hours on end to make sure things were looking OK.. and this past week spent many hours helping despite him being on a two week total food fast. He was not well at all and yet he still came and gave everything he had. Two more angels Oli and Alexandria from Romania came three times of the last week, doing whatever they could to help get this finished properly. They also were REALLY struggling as they are desperately looking for land so they can finally settle here and get secure.

Here are some photos!

So, this is a landmark moment for me and for the ecoVillage project. I am just one small step away from being able to sleep and wake up on our land. There is still a LOT of work to do, starting with making a compost toilet and getting a borehole drilled for water. I will be busy creating a camping area for volunteers and friends, which will be very important as we start the planning and preparations for our first Earthship build i HOPE this year! I will be submitting my design plans very soon to a local architect and will try to get planning permission for this prototype earthship. If we get planning permission then there will be nothing stopping me from launching our first workshop and build at light speed. Let's just say that im so passionate about this first build that I would even do it on my own, tyre by tyre! but i have a feeling its not going to come to that!

If you havent seen the design plan i have for this first earthship you can see a nice 3D animation below:

So in many ways i am very pleased right now, and relieved that i also now have a home and a base, some real security with very minimal cost and no rent or utility bills.

Power is the main issue right now, and today I hope to complete my DIY 700 Watt Lithium Ion power brick which i will able to use for my laptop, lights and fan. If it works well we will have a way to store a lot of power at very low cost. A normal power-wall from Tesla costs around $8,000 Euros for about 3KW . The one I am making costs me about $350 for 700 watts, which means i could make a 3KW version for around $2,000.. that is a HUGE saving! If this works it will become a very important part of our self sufficiency. When we have a bore-well and enough power to run the pumps we will be free to build, grow food, and irrigate everything year round very easily More on that soon!

You can watch me make this power brick below:

Oh and finally.. just as was finishing the final tweaks to the Yurt i heard some noise from behind the yurt. I went out and cautiously looked around to see what it was, and then these 3 dogs rocked up.. at first a little nervously. I LOVE all animals and dogs especially! What a beautiful greeting they gave me once they established I was friendly. All three of them exploded into a 10 minute frenzy of joy, jumping, licking, and welcoming me.

I have a feeling ill be seeing more of them, wherever they came from!

Thank you for stopping by. I look forward to posting again once i have started making some furniture and moved it to the yurt. I haven’t made furniture before, and plan to use all the bits of extra wood and scrap materials i can find to do it. With a bit of creativity and love I think i can make some pretty functional, and maybe even pretty furnishing.. starting with a bed frame!

Much love to you all..

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