2 Years Off Grid - Everything We Built on our Homestead | TIMELAPSE

welcome back to Frankie off grid if you're new here we're Carissa and Yuan I'm back in 2020 we moved from North Wales and bought a small plot of land with an old Granite Stone ruin in central Portugal with a small budget of 10 000 Euros and in the midst of the covered pandemic we packed up our cute and cramped rented Cottage in North Wales and with our sausage dog Frankie and Tow drove to Central Portugal where the land was cheap and the sun shined for 300 days of the year we found a perfect little plot for us a small Granite Stone building sitting nestled in 2 000 meters squared of olive trees and grapevines our original and naive plan had just been to build a simple wooden cabin and mostly live outside we thought we'd have an infrastructure set up in no time and soon be living a Carefree life as homesteaders making our own wine growing our own food and continuing to work on our online businesses however the story so far has gone a little differently firstly tackling the stone building was a much bigger undertaking than the little cabin with dreams of building the three 300 days of sunshine I'd read about in both three months of a Relentless summer with scorching temperatures wildfires and months without a drop of rain that sent the land into a dry Dust Bowl not the easiest for growing my long dreamed of veggie garden and those 60 days of rain we did get usually meant torrential downpours I think if I have known what I know now I would have felt too unprepared to have tackled the adventure of moving to a foreign country to try to build our own home and start a new life from scratch on a tiny budget with no experience thank goodness naivety allowed us to make the blind leap we've had to learn so much in the last three years and still have much to learn and do but I'm so glad we were carefree and took the risk I'll start at the beginning now though back in January of 2021 when we first decided to start filming to document our project for friends and family this is our bond building that will eventually become the home there is so much we had taken for granted living in a regular house one of the first things we had to learn about was compost toilets and there's a book called humanure which is actually kind of fascinating and made solving our first problem a fairly simple solution secondly as we had spent time living and traveling in our van before we had gotten pretty Adept at making simple meals on our gas camping stove Water Wise luckily there is plenty of Springs in Portugal you can collect drinking water from we do have three Wells on the land filled with frogs pondweed and algae so we certainly weren't going to chance drinking from any of them the winter nights dropped below zero which is pretty cold when you're living in a badly insulated van we brought down sleeping bags these have been Lifesavers and being Welsh were pretty good at being cold you just need the right clothing and sufficient layers we made fires outside in the evenings and huddled around them the difficult days and nights were when it rained then we just sat in the leaking barn with the wooden doors closed mostly in the dark with layers and layers of clothes and down jackets on wondering what on Earth had we gotten ourselves into keeping clean was a pretty horrible experience a cold bucket of Coldwell water while stood naked inside a Cold Stone bomb a kettle boiled on the camping stove took a slight edge of the cold water but I think we were pretty smelly most of that winter as we had originally planned to build a wooden cabin that is something we have done a lot of research on so we set about building a little cabin to sleep in the tricky part was that Portugal was back in a lockdown and sourcing materials was a bit of a challenge also the only other thing would ever build was a shed in our allotment back in Wales and that shed one day blew away but I am happy to say our cabin is still standing today secondly we needed to sort out the building which is divided into there's the big main Granite building and then on the side of that is the half granite and half breezebuck building that is now our kitchen we started working on that and sealed the roof with foam to stop the Wind and Rain blowing through and to also try to deter the snakes toads and mice that were living in there with us [Music] we reconstructed the doors with huge Plexiglas windows so we wouldn't be sitting in the dark on the rainy days we'd not yet realized what a Portuguese summer was like and at the time light was what we longed for we rigged together some counters for the kitchen so that we could have a sink to wash up in saving our backs as we've been washing up crouched over a bucket we also bought a small gassy to try and keep warm inside I started on my veggie garden the part of living here that I was most excited about Ami adopted I'll be the cat to help with the mice she's one of the weirdest cats I've ever met makes us Google so much and loves the first she wasn't so great at catching mice crickets were her full day and once I did catch her with a small snake in her mouth spring came along and was such a relief after winter our questioning of what on Earth were we doing turned into joy as the land blossomed the warmth of the sun felt Heavenly and we started to think maybe this had been a great idea after all at this point our biggest struggle was electricity though we didn't need it for much the biggest stressor that we needed to keep our laptops and fur in charge so that we could continue to work the larger battery in the van didn't charge very much as we weren't driving very far and we didn't have any solar panels we bought a very noisy petrol generator as we needed it for pumping water out of the well for the garden and washing up I had contacted a local solar power company who quoted a 6 000 Euros for their most basic system something we just didn't have to budget for we found a USB powered pump shower built a small outdoor bathroom space and moved out of the van and into the cabin April is Infamous for its rain and then May comes in scorching and gave us a hint of what was to come I think because of the heat we've kind of started a few projects and they've just taken a long time or being half abandoned at the moment because we're only having a few hours that are really comfortable to work in I'd say that one of the other big struggles we faced that first six months was not having a community another thing we hadn't realized we've taken for granted in life was the people you can lean on whether that's your family or friends Ken from OK Portugal had reached out to me to design his logo and we met him and Gina and all became good friends through them we met Nick and Andrea and as you'll see through the years they have been absolute rocks for us as the weather heated up Nick offered to come and help us fix our leaking water tank he knew the heat we still hadn't realized we were about to suffer [Music] the garden did pretty well that year especially the tomatoes which we sun dried we were given a bucket of plums from our neighbor which we turned into wine when me and you are met we were both working with Wayne and one of your own dreams was to make his own so finding ourselves with so many Vines was pretty exciting the monster we also experimented with any other fruit we could get our hands on another thing that we didn't share but that was happening in the background is that there was an issue with the house ownership yeah we've had some stressful stuff going on and that I will not talk about yet because I don't think it's good to talk about stuff until you on the other side of it the London houses here are sometimes divided quite unexpectedly with small pockets of land lost amid sensor and borders and it turned out that our neighbor actually owned half of our home something that I've seen happen a few times around here unless there are a few ways the London designation is registered our lawyer had somehow missed that fact when we signed the Deeds laws have now changed on the way land is divided so we couldn't just buy him out of the other half of the house we had to buy his entire deed which included his land as similar size to ours I won't go too much into the ins and outs but we're grateful that he was willing to sell her something that he wasn't planning to sell his kinter had belonged to his father and we couldn't live on the land without the habitation license that came with the house so we settled on the price of fifteen thousand Euros and with the help of all our family members and alone we managed to Cobble it together we have a few big core Cooks on our land which are harvested every nine years and coincidentally our first summer two of them were ready for Harvest our neighbor put us in touch with the discordisador a cork harvesting expert who made a sport of yours for our two trees worth at Cook and it was really cool to see these professionals working with the trees the rest of that summer was pretty brutal with temperatures reaching 46 degrees Celsius the concrete roof on the buildings baked making the rooms hotter than outside and providing us with no Escape other than to cower under trees and a shade umbrella we bought mostly we hid from the Sun with the occasional Lake swimming thank you weigh a lot of figs and emptied the hay from the barn since we were now in the process of making it officially ours oh and our YouTube channel got monetized which we couldn't quite believe thanks so much to you guys who started watching us and suffered through our terrible filming editing and sound issues we still have a lot to learn with that September came along and that means Great Harvest Time Ewan had done a lot of research and with our background in mind and a grape Harvest we did in Germany in 2018 we sort of knew what we were doing we only had the basics a big bucket and our feet for stomping but wine making can be super simple with natural use already present in the grapes and a few demi-jones to store it in our first vintage turned out all right Iran's memchan came to visit and bought with her some incredible tea and coffee as well as some Welsh ring we were Overjoyed with nearly three months without a drop but I think she was a little disappointed having come from Wales to escape the wet our roof leaked a lot and after some good chats and advice from Nick who is now an honorary Uncle we started working on the stone walls inside the kitchen we also finally saved the panaf and bought a power bank and some solar panels from buetti draw the black kitten for more than bar neighbors Kint has decided to move in with us aside from March October is my other favorite month here the weather is perfect and the garden thrives and so did our wall restoring skills Nick came and helped us replace a horrible roof with insulated sandwich panels and unpointed the outside wall to try and reduce the leaks we get when it rains spoiler alert we still have a few leaks replacing the roof proved was quite har wonky our building was as the roof fit at the back but left the Gap at the front as the wall was seemingly built after a few too many superbooks Nick's never-ending creativity had us knocking a hole in and adding some clear roof tiles to make a little window that offers a great little spot of sunshine in the kitchen October is also where we finally received our Portuguese residency brexit had happened on December 31 2020 and I'd had many stress-filled conversations with Seth over the year border control in Portugal about whether we were now allowed to stay in Portugal as the three-month schengling Zone rules had begun with a combination of covid issues with stuff itself and the new experience of brexit it had taken 11 months first to officially become legal residents thank you um was missing one of his favorite pastimes which is climbing so when we accidentally threw a frisbee in the well he took it upon himself to practice his rope access and have sailed into the well a skill that has come in handy a few times we paused from working on the kitchen walls to pick our olives in November we now had about 100 trees with the new neighboring land and with the help of our Dutch friends Janine and Thomas we were able to pick nearly 500 kilos of Olives which after paying the laga or Olive press in olive oil for the breasting service we had about 44 liters of our own oil which has lasted us two years in November we finally signed the Deeds for next door our home was officially ours both pieces of lung need a lot of love the trees need pruning and it was originally used to grow hay for animals so the Grass Grows at an alarming rate I'm not sure how many hours Yuan has spent trimming grass we had come full circle and survived one year on the land and were really starting to feel at home but we were about to face a very difficult December we decided as we were now allowed to that would travel back to Wells for Christmas to see friends and family Gina had kindly offered to feed Albion draw whilst we were away and we were a little anxious to leave our home and spend the three days driving the 1500 miles covid was still very present at this time and the stress of working out all the tests and vaccine passports and whether there would be another lockdown was very overwhelming good morning so good morning for quite the story for you when we finally arrived at Calais as we checked Frankie and we were told that our cover tests were too old by a few hours there were many mixed messages online as to whether it's 48 hours since the test before travel there was a pharmacy nearby that we could rush to and be put on the next train but when they checked Frankie's passport they told us she couldn't travel when we had taken her to the vets for her worming tablet a requirement to enter the UK with a dog they had noted that her rabies jump had expired they gave her a new one and hinted that we might have trouble crossing the border as you need to eat 21 days since the jab we foolishly hunt realized how seriously this is taken by the border crossing and I think all the covered chaos had also clouded our brains I'll not dwell here too much but we took a detour to the Netherlands as we drove home there was no way we were going to leave Frankie in a random kennels and there our van broke down I'll never forget the kindness we were shown by the community we had built here on YouTube as we were inundated with offers of help donations to help with the cost of the engine repair and offers of places to stay as you'll see throughout the second year we've been put in the path of some incredibly generous people and my heart has been filled with the goodness of people something we're not often shown in the news these days we made it back to our home in Portugal in time for Christmas tried to make some mince pies in our uni Pizza Oven then January came around and we got stuck back into our project [Music] before we move into the second year I'd just like to thank the sponsor of this video which is Squarespace who have sponsored us throughout 2023 so it felt like it made sense to include them in this recap apart from having excellent choice in content creators Squarespace also make beautiful websites if you're a creative a solo entrepreneur or a business owner with a large team then Squarespace can Empower you to create a powerful online presence engage with your audience and sell anything whether it's a product your content or your time all in one place but my favorite feature is their award-winning templates which are beautiful and help you to very quickly achieve a sleep and professional looking side even if this is your first time creating one and one of the final features that I really love about Squarespace is their editing interface which is called fluid engine and it makes it really really easy to move around all the elements of your site from the text to the imagery or whatever you're putting on there really simple and easy to use and if you are ever struggling they do have fantastic 24 7 customer support to help you with your website building so you can always check in with someone if you are struggling a bit if you're building something a little bit more intricate head to squarespace.com for a free trial and when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.com forward slash Frankie off grid to save 10 of your first purchase of a website or a domain all links will be in our description below and thank you so much to Squarespace for sponsoring today's video and supporting our project foreign [Music] thank you [Music] stuff around in here you can see how bad the floor is here foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] is once again empty I've just cut off all the excess plastic just gonna Hoover in here now and then we're gonna put the PVA Solution on and I'm realizing because we had to dig out the floor more when we were playing it we've got so much of this that's just all crumbly that I'm going to try and Hoover as much off as possible and then in the next couple of weeks we'll come in and Point all along the bottom [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] that I believe is an old wasps nest that's how big the holes are in this wall crazy so I'm going to use a pointing key to try and get it out [Music] thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] two eggs two eggs who laid it [Music] thank you [Music] so we said when we would meet at 10 000 subscribers we would film a q a so here it is awesome they collect 10 024. foreign [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] Christmas but we never made it home for Christmas so uh Sally Sean we're drinking it [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] it's going to be a bit weird because your Wall's not flat so you can have to choose right down which sticks right here obviously if you put a line it's nothing it's going to miss lots and then just keep repeating the process so go for it cool I'll have to pick it up though yeah lovely homemade hook with an olive handle uh so what you need to do is try and split it onto your trolley okay but so I need to be holding that thing yeah and then on and up yeah there you go easy if you push more into the push it into the warm water yeah yeah it will stick back to the wall it sounds like crazy but it will yeah like so let that go so just keep going and I'll start listening [Music] [Music] you have to find out where the curbs best where the currents flow [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] thank you thank you [Music] thank you [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] thank you foreign [Music] thank you [Music] oh my gosh I'll be Schoolboy era [Music] at least that was a couple I just finished sponging let's leave that one okay that's the lb print I'll try and sponge that back in I'm ready to close the window oh [Music] it's too deep okay [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] thank you say bye Frankie come on [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] come on come on foreign [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] this off and then kind of curve it up somehow [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] [Laughter] yes okay [Music] I could not plan on this taking so long and so much sweat there we go so I've been pottering this is what it is looking like in here so far how beautiful [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] French doors in there eventually but it's been amazing to let light in because the old barn door did not but we have kept the wood of the old barn door so I wanted to incorporate it somehow so I'm planning today to work on making sort of a spice rack shell thing with the old wood it just needs a bit of TLC some sanding and some oiling [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] foreign [Music] all right Happy Beans [Applause]

Channel: Frankie Off Grid

Views: 1,276,051

Keywords: Frankie Off Grid, Off Grid Experience, Tiny Home, Central Portugal, House Build, Zone 9, Off Grid Homestead, Gardening In Portugal, Off Grid Portugal, Off Grid Lifestyle, Central Portugal Living, Diy Build, Sustainable Living, Barn Conversion, Homesteading Portugal, Sustainable Off Grid, Off Grid Vlogger, Off Grid Living, Off Grid Vlog, Organic Gardening, Barn Renovation

Id: pjO-aVn8UBc

Length: 66min 56sec (4016 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 31 2023