YEAR ONE. Everything we built on our abandoned land

one year ago we arrived on a piece of land we just bought in portugal we came with one van on a big piece of land with a lot of rain falling like a lot it rains more here than in london near the netherlands it was raining all day i wasn't really prepared for that i mean portugal should be sunny so it meant daily wet socks and trying to dry stuff in a very humid van there wasn't much here we got water from a local tap and this was the toilet that's a poo pool and the goal for this year was to set up a base camp set up some basic infrastructure so we can be here with more people so here we have our first campfire get it campfire yeah good joke anyway there was a lot of work to do and this video has all the progress we made in one year [Music] so the land is big it's 10 hectares and at this point we haven't really seen the entire land only with a drone because it's really hard to access everything fully overgrown with thorns so we started making pathways so we need to go through the bushes somewhere here [Music] [Music] [Music] so we made a pot all around the land and we could walk around much better wait let me actually give you a better perspective of the land to keep an overview so we go here the land is here and this is the pot we just made let's keep a list of all the things we did make pathways check and as a reference here's the highest point on the land it has a big rock this is what the view looks like from here now with pathways we can explore much more and doing so we started seeing some things like over here we saw a puddle of water we got curious to how big it was so we cleared up the space around it we removed a lot of spiky bushes and chopped down a bunch of dead trees and while doing all of this we also found a few random things in there wow cowboy what's happening in this part looks like burnt plastic also find some more stuff like this metal from a motorbike [Applause] so now it's ready okay it still looks a bit rough but this little swamp could potentially be a place to swim in the future and just for your reference this little swamp is located right here on the map but from some neighbors we actually hear there should be a bigger water source on the land right there but looking from above it should be somewhere hidden between these bushes it's hard to imagine but when we walked down we noticed it does look like something is there underneath these dead trees so we started to drag them out and clear it up matia took a little dip first swim of the year 22nd of february to be nice and lovely [Applause] and it turned out to be quite a big reservoir of water before after and all of this work is quite fun discovering these new things on the land but it's also intense because at this point we have very basic tools we really needed to start setting up our base camp so a few months ago before we came to the land we got two old shipping containers we needed them to move our stuff to the land but we figured if we move a container anyway let's also turn them into something useful not just a box to ship things so we converted one container in a fully equipped workspace with all our tools and the other one we call the town center and it has all the basic utilities like a kitchen fridge washing machine things like that so once we build them we pack them up and send them off [Music] and they came to portugal with some very sketchy unloading kind of scary moment it felt like they could fall at any point i mean it's a fully packed shipping container on two individual forklifts and a muddy road but at this moment they're not on the land yet just in a storage place close by because before they could come we still have to make some space so we currently have the base camp installed on this grass patch where we have the two shipping containers coming so i want to clear up a little bit the bushes and thorns here until the trees so the containers can go there and we have a bit more space which means yeah taking down a few more spiky bushes and leveling the floor to make sure the containers are parked flat so finally they got dropped off on the land luckily everything went okay they arrived in one piece and first they dropped the workspace and then the kitchen and this was a big upgrade we suddenly have a lot of tools and a place to be dry we call this base camp this is the main place where you'll camp out in the coming years as we work on the land so we figured let's make it nice around here we started cleaning up the area around it remove some spiky bushes level the soil and plant a herbal garden with some flowers [Music] shhh [Music] and at this point the place looks nice and we have this fully equipped kitchen and workspace however there's no electricity yet so we can't use anything so we made a big metal frame to mount on top of the container we installed the solar panels on the roof installed all the components for our solar system and connected all the cables okay moment of truth everything is wired up solar panels coming in here the only thing breaking the circuit is the fuse box so if we put this one on everything should work so let's see that seems to work to be honest this was quite a magical moment suddenly we could use everything like the blender but besides electricity we needed another crucial thing water because up until this point all the water we use still comes from our jerrycans we refill them in a village nearby and bring them to the land but actually the upside of all the rain is that there's plenty of water around us so we found an old abandoned well on a spring on the land of the neighbors and the spring is right here and they turn it into a well but it's abandoned and not used for many years so we asked the neighbor if we could use his well and clean it up and he said yes so we cleaned up the area around it and opened it up it looks impressive but first a little swim you know quality control yeah maybe not the best for drinking so we asked some guys to help out cleaning it frida asked them to mount a gopro on their head so they got in there and emptied the well we got some funny footage from that and once it was done we started digging the pipes in the ground we connected all the tubes above the ground and we assembled all the parts for the water system which is using a pressure tank and we installed everything so rita can you show the water yes the water look at this water [Music] water water it's cold and finally also shower well sort of a few weeks later we upgrade to a decent shower so we now have hot showers yeah this is good so now we have local water powered on solar energy but one thing missing after six months an upgrade to the poop hole it got kind of essential at this point so ian came and he built a nice little compost toilet with a seed from recycled plastic works with sawdust and you add a scoop after you poop so at this moment we have water electricity a dry space and a shower it's quite a proper base camp with good utilities and it's set up right there so now it's time to work a bit more on the land now it's getting pretty hot in summer but we have a little stream on the land but it's covered again with bushes so our moms came to help out and clean it up take away dead trees and thorns so we can access the fresh flowing water now we have a nice place to swim and refresh we also build a little dam from some rocks and the water rises so we can take a dip and this stream we cleared is located right there at the edge of the land but what we actually really wanted to clear up was a little ruin located here on the land it's a small building built on a granite foundation and apparently was a kitchen in the old days also fully overgrown and hard to access we chopped down the overgrowing thorns so we could go around it cleared the inside which was for some reason full of soil and we took down the almost collapsing roof it was really nice to finally be able to access this building and it has quite a beautiful location with a view on the field now we have one more room to clean and this one scared us actually a bit because it's way way bigger and way more overgrown it's hidden here between the bushes so we invited some friends to help us clear it [Music] [Applause] [Music] and after a few days we managed to take out all the spiky bushes and trees that are grown into it now we can take measurements and make a plan on what to do with it you will see more of that in season two and here you can see how they are positioned on the land big rune small ruin base camp so as you might have guessed it's right there on the map and by now we actually became quite good friends with the neighbors they're always driving with their tractors seeing what's going on most of them are above 60 and they grow up around this land they know it inside out i don't think they really understand what we're doing i mean we're not even really sure but they like it and they might be older but they're still very active and happy to help out using their tractors to connect a wood chipper and ship some trees or help us to move big stuff and they also often bring us food which they grow on their own land potatoes fernanda the neighbor the neighbors look at this it's really nice and in exchange we help them a bit harvesting things like potatoes or grapes for their wine and besides making friends with neighbors we also observed a lot of friends around little birds that eat our leftover bread caterpillars that are walking around to our pathways or slowly eating our plants bit by bit frogs from the swamp goats and sheep from the neighbors that eat our grass and probably this is the friendliest friend we have a guest for dinner tonight yeah they always drop by to see what's going on we have very welcoming friends so towards the end of the year winter is approaching it's getting colder and the days are shorter we noticed something missing up until now everything was very practical like getting water electricity toilet we needed a fun social activity in our routine so we made a pizza oven from clay and another essential thing needed for it was a roof to keep it dry because yeah remember more rains here than the netherlands or i guess italy so we gathered some materials and we used some roof dials from the big ruin we just cleaned up and we built a wooden structure with it [Music] a roof to protect from the rain in the winter so now we can just work outside when it rains without getting wet which is a big upgrade but more importantly we can bake pizza all year round so it's now raining we eat pizza dried now this is our saturday routine big delicious pizzas and the pizza oven is set up right here in the middle of base camp so we can eat as much as possible breakfast lunch dinner midnight snack and finally a last build of the year a roof in front of the town center because every time it rains it gets all muddy inside when the sun shines it gets very hot so we made a wooden structure with an experimental roof made from recycled plastic sheets it's a bit of a living prototype we're not sure how it's gonna go but let's see all right so that was uh season one compressed into a short video it was quite an intense year i would say a lot of things to do uh it was very raw when we first came on the land and all the rain and just the van um but there's something very satisfying about really starting basic and see small upgrades like the first time we had a cutter for the bushes or having electricity or water really makes you appreciate these basic things which is really nice to be part of that and the goal of this year was to set up a base camp to have a place where we can be with more people and set up some basic infrastructure so it was mainly me and rita here on the land and some friends and family came to help here and there and throughout time towards the end of the year adrian and julie came to help out for longer periods of time but the goal is really to not do too much on the land itself and because we first wanted to see where we even are what does the land need what is the plan we're going to do before we start chopping down and intervening too much so the goal was to set up a base camp so we can invite more people to come and help out and meanwhile think of a good plan and we've been doing that we have a base camp now we thought of a good plan and that's what we're going to do in season two so in the next video we're going to show you the plan of all the things you want to do this year that's a lot but it's also exciting and we're going to be with more people so more hands more work to be done if you already want to see that video you can support us on patreon so you see the video one week ahead and you just support the project as well that was it for this video thanks for watching exciting to start season two hope you guys are as well and see you coming monday every monday three o'clock

Channel: Project Kamp

Views: 2,069,551

Keywords: project, kamp, sustianble, living, community, off-grid, portugal, santa comba dao, sustainable, gree, ecology, forrest, recap, year, overview, summary, whole, shipping container, container house, couple, offgrid, solar

Id: anqfVCLRQHE

Length: 17min 23sec (1043 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 14 2022

Reddit Comments

[u/scaptal]

Wow, that's super cool. Thanks for sharing ❤️

[u/EnthogenWizard]

Did he say he bought that for 2$ at the beginning?

[u/gosudcx]

what is abandoned land? I can't imagine any government allowing land to be seized. I'd be worried everything will be destroyed. How can you invite more people without inviting government knowledge of your location?