About us in Portugal

How two people, in their 50´s (nowadays 60's), left every luxury, friends and family behind, to start a new selfsufficient life in the Portuguese inlands (Beira Baixa).

Well, nothing fancy actually, just two elder people who moved to central Portugal to live in and with nature. That always was our biggest dream and now it's our life.

We thought it would be tough; we never did this before, but we found out that it isn't thát hard, it's a lot of work yes, but if you manage to make it through the first day then you'll see that the second, the third etc. will become easier and easier.

No we don't work, we have a small pension, very small actually, but we try to live as selfsufficiently as possible; grow vegetables, fruits and herbs, we have a few solar panels and batteries and we pump clean sprinkling water from our well.

We try not to buy everything (like we used to do before we started here), for example: we make our own toothpaste, oils, we have steviaplants so we don't need to buy sugar and we warm our house with a woodstove.

No we don't, the coast is not what we want.
All that busy-ness, lots of people, higher prices etc. We're happy with the birds, our garden and ourselves. In 6 years we haven't even been to the coast once and we don´t feel the need to go over there either.

We live in a valley in the mountains, surrounded by forests, every morning we wake up with the sound of birds and the sun coming up behind the horizon. And when the weather is fine (which it mostly is), we drink a cup of coffee on the porch, read the news and do our facebook-things.

And after an hour or so we start working: cutting the grass, chopping wood, making plantbeds ready for seeding, work in the greenhouse, water the garden (there's so much to do; selfsufficiency doesn´t come by itself, it's hard work but we love every minute of the day and we have never ever had any regrets).