5 Months Off-Grid - All I Built on Abandoned Land

welcome to my off-grid project in central Portugal where I've been living for the past five months without electricity and running water on an overgrown land with a beautiful River a tiny house and some Stone houses on it and today I'm going to show you the project that I did and how this land from being completely overgrown and abandoned step by step transformed into quite a beautiful paradise join me on this summer Journey [Music] I found this land in May it consists of five connected Stone houses which have a good concrete roof but inside they need to be renovated completely beautiful wood cabin that is accessed by a steep ladder and the land borders a strong and very clean River also some seemingly fertile Garden Terraces with some Oaks and two olive trees otherwise no fruit trees behind the wood cabin there is a creek joining the river and all of this just made me fall in love with this piece of land First Step was to stream the whole land let's go [Music] I'm just going to start over here to clean up these Terraces I'm a bit scared about this huge land but we'll just start and then we'll see how it goes it was a lot of fun getting to know the streamer seeing the progress each day it was nice to understand and see the land more clearly and to feel The Terraces they were so much bigger now also it was very hot and it was just an endless wall of ferns [Music] thank you I discovered that the wall next to the wood cabin was broken and it was actually quite tricky to get down there also when I cleaned the wood cabin Terrace an ugly wall appeared here we go again the last Terraces [Music] it was the end of my time for the cherries and the medieval festivals in Portugal [Music] [Applause] after streaming the whole Riverland there was more to come because there's a forest part with a little ruin and the creek and the water pool so I started with another Strummer to take on this bush it was really overgrown very exciting to discover everything that was there [Music] thank you this is how we found a way to the water pool we cleared our way through to this water pool and then discovered that there was a second Pond behind it what a nice water pool this is with a few hours help of a land cleaner family we managed to finally clear this Pond and see the Magnificent wall behind then I was curious about the little Stone ruin in the forest and started clearing out a little bit around it the clearing out had to wait until the hot summer was over let's go time to move into the wood cabin I was packing up my stuff and just started living there taking the water from the creek behind the cabin and enjoying the beautiful nature [Music] the wood cabin was nice and empty so I just needed to clean it and was ready to move in because the land has many Terraces I started to discover the beautiful stone walls that were behind them it was a very dusty work oh being a complete newcomer to building I just built temporary structures that would help me climb The Terraces [Music] this morning is a special morning because I am getting engaged [Music] the local blacksmith made this beautiful gate for me and there were some rusty bits on it so I started to sand them off the moisture from the river comes every night and every morning I have to sand off the new Rusty bits I just didn't want to do that anymore [Music] [Music] paint makes me so happy [Music] so this is how it looked before in the gate was a real game changer for this land it just felt yeah like like a kingdom of its own and before it was just a piece of wilderness then it was time to take a first look on the stone houses and to start cleaning things up so I'm cleaning these stairs up they are connecting the two houses and they are so untidy [Music] [Music] yay so much better now they are actually stairs and not a garden funny because it's actual soil here on this Terrace [Music] next I cleaned the water basin in front of the stonehouses foreign [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] what a tank nice to see you so beautiful and white I was very happy with the result and I figured out that this is a good way for me to appropriate this land so I started to look for other things that were ugly concrete and I could paint White [Music] this is gonna be so nice it started getting hot so I built a little deck on the river I've been looking at this wall for many weeks finally it's time to transform her to make it something nice to look at let's get this started [Music] thank you [Music] I'm done with this wall I can't believe it this is such a big step for me honestly let's create a garden bed with flowers and herbs here so that the view from the cabin will be beautiful [Music] [Music] I finished painting this wall bought all the plants and wood chips and did all this in one day because I had a party coming up so everything needed to be ready [Music] then we had a little summer party which was the first time this place was full of people and it turns out to be a great place to get together [Music] let's go looking out the cabin window you could hardly see the river because there were so many branches and also Ivy was strangling the other trees so I decided to cut the river free [Music] foreign oh my God this is a lot to clean up back there there's more so this is how it looks now all the elder trees can enjoy their freedom yay [Music] okay second tree [Music] foreign [Music] [Music] started off with a little breakdown or burnout because I felt there were too many things to do the thoughts were spinning over in my head quite exhausting somehow I just felt really down and I just feel that it's too much for me I was struggling with the basic things like the access to the cabin it was still unsolved luckily I was not alone so my friends and family came to help me tackle this major challenge and together we started to tackle the rubble that was a broken wall that we would transform into stairs are you ready okay should I bring this one up [Music] and this is how suddenly we were in the middle of the first actual building project on the land and the first material delivery oh my God how cool is that and then it was all about carrying it down and mixing some concrete all by hand [Music] we try to use local materials and I actually found so many beautiful stones in the river and they would be the top of the stairs while the foundation would be some concrete blocks hi Beauty are you ready for your new test yay so beautiful [Music] this one can be a very short step Paul was really helping me a lot since I didn't have any idea how to build this and he already had a lot of experience in building all kinds of things it's like four and a half steps to go and the platform on top and yeah that's the plan [Music] thank you first time using these stairs [Music] [Music] [Music] thank you then of course I needed to paint it I first primed it in white so let's do the paint mixing I'm using red oxide oxide and yellow oxide and I'm mixing it with the white cement [Music] thank you this was amazing the feeling to go down actual stairs made by our own hands it was an incredible feeling and I'm so grateful how this happened because it gave me a lot of strength and power to continue now it is a safe place for everybody also for visitors to come after the first rain it was time for land clearing the first land was pretty unaccessible because of a species of acacias and Eucalyptus which are both trees that are very invasive like Fast spreading and they have a high fire risk his wife and his son were helping me it was very important to clean up the forest because it's close to the houses and the fire risk is just very high in this area [Music] it's a big chaos [Music] thank you this was really really hard work and I'm so glad these guys helped me now I have firewood from my land what a great feeling [Music] day by day we see The Terraces the Lambs the pathways better and it was amazing how big this part actually is it's a nice wall this is the secret swimming pool area it was also very painful to see all those trees go but the fire risk is the most dangerous one we left all the oak trees and some acacias for shade this was definitely not my favorite task wow oh my God it's raining and it's raining so hard the fall chores are starting September was just all about wood I was a bit late but I managed to still secure the firewood into the roofed Grill area oh the plants are so happy I mean for us humans it's a bit ugly today is a big day oh my God they are coming the first machine is coming wow big machine is coming to finish cleaning the forest land it's very exciting because it's a huge machine this was very crazy this machine is so fast and efficient he would put all the trees on piles and cut them so then a truck can come to pick them up foreign thing the driver managed to remove the oak tree route inside the ruin without destroying any walls I was very thankful because by hand an oak tree route is very hard but it's also very heavy so it was making quite a mess but that's just what happens a view for the first time we did our best and now the oak trees and Pines have more light and space to grow [Music] wow this is crazy [Music] yes survived the first real rain it was amazing how much water came down everywhere the tiny house was safe it was dry perfect it was so nice when the sun came out again I started the next project planting some fruit trees foreign [Music] lemon tree an orange tree and two apple trees I might not have told you but I'm starting one of Plantation [Music] this was the last project of the season because I definitely was not winter proof yet so I left my Paradise for the winter I'm very excited to return soon if you're curious how this project continues tune in I'll be going back to Portugal soon see you there for season two on this Portuguese Paradise thank you so much for watching I hope you enjoyed this video

Channel: Maya Feliz

Views: 1,444,147

Keywords: offgrid, off-grid, Portugal, vanwives, be brave, timelapse, progress, challenge, diy, life goals, coach, relationship advice, adventure, outdoor, yoga, vanlife, wood cabin, how to, tiny house, auswandern

Id: yoDag7Cn2wA

Length: 25min 30sec (1530 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 19 2023