Dear family, friends and all of you Nostrians who have been with us this year, we wish you all a blissful and merry Christmas and an amazing new year. May the new year bring new prospects and new opportunities for us all. May love be abundant and support be productive. May we all get to live a fuller life, a life in the embrace of people we love and cherish ❤️ #christmas #festivities #offgridliving

GM nostr. We harvested the last of the squashes today. We cleared some of the garden space to prepare it for the next season. We have had loads of squash curry the last month and they taste so good that we want to save these for Christmas to make some more. Right now we have about 80 garlic cloves in the ground, planted at intervals to get a prolonged harvest. We have some cauliflowers growing and some long turnips. Our land is generous and we are forever grateful!! #homesteading #growyourownfood #offgrid #foodstr

What a few days of rain has done to our small waterfall. #rain #autumn #offgrid

This has been a bittersweet development for us. On one hand, having insulation and the dry walls done on the roof means that we have taken a huge step forward but the quality of the work leaves us bit dissatisfied. After consulting three different companies we chose to work with someone who seemed to fit the best with our needs. But maybe it's the lack of command of Portuguese on our end or the difference in work culture or both, the difference between what we wanted, and what has been delivered is a bit too big for our liking. The dry walls are not symmetrical in any angles in the corner of the house. The wall in the kitchen side is also not a straight line, rather a curve. We are in no position, neither financially nor with time to redo the ceiling so we have to accept this asymmetry. #buildstr #offgrid #hiccups

Is anyone else having trouble posting pics on @primal? I have checked the app permissions and have looked at zapstore for the latest version but somehow I cannot load any media using Primal, that's why I resort to #asknostr.

And the bathroom is ready!!!! #buildstr #construction #offgrid #homesteading #happy

The ceilings for the downstairs are finally done. Upstairs is going to be a long time still but at least we can now start on the floating floor for the downstairs. The shed where we are living since 6 months has been rendered almost inhabitable because of the rain. So we have decided that we will start living in the house as soon as one room downstairs is complete. But one step at a time, for now it's one more step closer to having us a home! #home #homesteading #buildstr #construction #offgrid

It has been raining a lot lately, so I am not sure how well our fall garden will do. We have some garlic, some cauliflowers and some radishes going at the moment, trying to #growyourownfood. We have left some flowers for the pollinators, hopefully these help them in this chilly weather. Husband has been working hard all day trying to fill the deck area with the rubbles. Our daughter took her first steps yesterday and since then she just wants to walk all the time. And our spring water tap is back to it's full strength now. All in all, it has been a great day. GN!! #offgrid #homestead #fall #garden

As promised, the progress pictures from the bathroom. The plumber is coming somewhere end of this week to fix the water outlets and everything else. Let's see if this time things will work out as per the planning. #buildstr #offgrid #homestead #construction

Sometimes when it feels like things are not moving along, it is good to look back at the pictures from before and compare them to how far we have come now. It has been tough to get this project going. We have been living in a small 10 de meter space for the last half year with our baby daughter. We have no running water, no facilities and every chore has to be done by hand. So survival in itself takes up half a day each day. But slow and steady, we are moving forward. Hopefully we get to move into at least the ground floor before Christmas this year. #offgrid #homesteading #buildstr #building

We found this cool so sharing with all of you, our house under the blanket of autumn mist! #homesteading #offgrid #nature #autumn

Ladies and gentlemen, we finally have doors and windows in our house. What a difference these make!! We specially love the glass door which overlooks the valley from our house. I can already see myself sipping my tea, sitting there by that door. Super happy 😊 #buildstr #homesteading #happy #progress

GN! Enjoy this cool video from my garden today. Thank you dear husband for your great sound effects 😜 #garden #homesteading #offgrid #nature

Our biggest challenge so far living in this old property has been the lack of toilet and bathroom. We have had to resort to various creative solutions but as the fall has arrived and with it, rain, we are really glad that the work in our bathroom has finally started. Here are some photos of the progress so far. #buildstr #homesteading #offgrid

Fall is finally here. The colours of autumn are just so magical. Back home growing up autumn meant our festivities, school holidays and just loads of playing time. Maybe that's why autumn always makes me feel homesick and nostalgic. #autumn #homesteading #nature

Construction comes with a lot of mess and we are trying to use this mess to fill up our deck. The idea is to have a deck go from downstairs all the way up to the second floor making some kind of a staircase on the side of the house. Pictures will follow later, if it works, then it will be clear what I mean, haha. Anyways, we had a long day of hard work and we did manage to get rid of a lot of debris from the old structure. #construction #offgridlife #homestead #buildstr

We managed to sprout two mangoes and two date plants this summer. Now that the days are getting shorter and colder winds are upon us, we wanted to build a small shelter for our new saplings. #growyourownfood #homestead #grownostr #offgrid

The old, almost falling apart building that we bought seems more and more like a house with each passing week of hard work. The last weeks have been fun to see how each layer of cement and sand changes the complete feel of a structure. Here are some pics of the before and after from the last couple of weeks. It is going to be a real treat to compare the initial pictures of the house to the finished one, if we manage to ever finish the house at all 😅 #buildstr #construction #building #offgridlife

We seem to have solved the puzzle of making our water reservoir. The vertical wall where the tube is coming from is a natural source of water. There is a rock bed within the wall and water drips from multiple places there. So making a tank was somewhat a puzzle. What we did now was make an "extension" if you will using bricks and cement in the side and along the rock bed to guide all the water to one single point. There we made a kind of a basin with a tube that guides the water away from the structure. We wanted to see if the ground would then stay dry. Laters we plan to cut the tube so that the water fills up the tank. Will keep you posted on the updates. #buildstr #construction #water #offgridlife

GM people! Our little bundle of joy is one today. Although we have no oven, I absolutely had to make her a cake 😁 So grateful to the universe that we got to experience parenthood. Its funny how it seems impossible to imagine life without her despite having had a wonderfully full life before her. P.S. I used dates as a sweetner for the chocolate cake and the icing is butter, yoghurt and coconut sugar. #grateful #blessed