Plans for the Future: Restoration of Our Abandoned Farm in Spain

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If you are coming here for the first time, welcome! In this article, you will learn about the plans for future we have for our abandoned farm in Spain.

Our farm features a 300-year-old stone house that we aim to transform into our off-grid home. We are documenting the entire restoration process as two newbies learning along the way.

If you wish to follow our journey during the restoration of our Spanish farm and the historic 300-year-old stone house, then subscribe to our Youtube channel.

Plans for the Future

As I write this plans for the future article, it is March 2023.

As we do not yet have a drone to do aerial filming, we’ll be using satellite images from the Spanish government’s SIGPAC to illustrate things.

I do believe this image will help you understand what we intend to do on Spanish farm in the coming years.

The above image shows what we had on the farm when we purchased it in 2022. The structures shown are: The stone house, the well and the rainwater cistern.

The IBC Totes

Water is essential for life, and without water there is no prosperity.

Since there is no running water on our abandoned farm in Spain, the first project we are going to do on this restoration will be building the water system.

For the water system we’ll use food grade second-hand IBC totes. They are cheap, and available practically everywhere in Spain.

To use these second-hand IBC totes to store water and later collect rainwater, there are some work involved.

Firstly, they need to be cleaned and wrapped.

Secondly, a platform need to be build.

Once the platform is ready, we will have a water storage tank with a capacity of 2,000 liters.

We’ll build one platform first. It will give us the capacity to store 2000L of water.

Later on, we’ll be upgrading the water system and then build two more other platforms.

This upgrade will give us 6000L of water storage capacity. It’s 2000L for each platform.

These platforms will be placed in strategic locations on the Finca, so the water management will be easier.

[Edit: In August 2024, there was an upgrade the water system. We now have three IBC tote platforms, placed in strategic locations. Each has its own roof and gutters to collect rainwater].

The Caravan

This restoration project will take time. So, we need a temporary place to live during the works.

We thought about building a wodden cabin, like the one Dave Whipple built in Bushradical.

Unfortunately, we cannot build a wooden cabin, because there are restrictions on this type of construction in Spain.

The solution is to buy a cheap second-hand caravan in the UK and bring it to our Spanish farm.

Cheap caravans often need repairs, and the caravan we bought needed a few roof repairs, indeed.

Once these repairs are done, it can be used on our Spanish farm as our temporary accommodation.

We brought the caravan to the Finca and placed it next to the 300-year-old stone house. It will serve us very well during the restoration works.

Vegetables, Chickens, & Bees

This is kind of a distant future.

Once the camp base one (temporary accommodation) is ready, then there will be preparations for the vegetable garden, so we can grow our own food.

If the vegetable garden is successful, then the chickens and bees will be introduced to the Finca.

We’re intend to place the vegetable garden, the chickens and the bee houses in strategic locations on the Finca.

This way we can create a self-sustainable system, following the permaculture principles.

If this plan works out, we will create something I call food factory.

Having our own organic food souce is something special.

[Edit: In March 2025 there will be preparations for fencing, composting, green house and vegetable beds. This will be the prototype for our food factory].

The Solar System

Working on a restoration like the one we are doing, where there is no power connected to the grid, is a challenge that requires intelligent solutions.

Initially, we are going to use a portable solar power system as our temporary power source.

As the project progresses and more power is needed, then we’ll build a more robust, solar power system using bigger solar panels with stationary batteries.

The Workshop

It is going to be during the solar power system upgrade that we plan to build a workshop using a shipping container.

This will serve as a space to house the solar power system, to store the tools and also to be used as a workshop where I can build or fix things.

Everything I plan to build has self-sustainability in mind. A roof on the shipping container can provide shade from the sun and also collect rainwater.

Both the solar panels and the shipping container will be placed in strategic locations on the Finca.

The Rainwater System

Before starting the restoration work on our Spanish farm, there were a lot of research on rainwater collection.

The idea of collectiong rainwater makes sense, but it needs to be tested and validated.

Taking advantage of the farm’s geography and existing structures we built three IBC tote platforms with roofs to collect rainwater in three strategic locations.

All these three platforms are designed to work together.

Each platform has a 5m² roof, giving 15m² of total rain collection surface area.

After the design is validated we will install a self-feeding rain collection system to all of the three platforms.

Flexi Cistern

The water system for our Spanish farm will be built in stages.

When the stone house is restored, we will have a rainwater collection roof area of ​​98 m².

In this stage there will be a need a larger water storage tank.

There are several options on the market: australian water tanks, vertical fibber water tanks and rubber bag water tanks.

The rubber bag water tanks, known as flexi cisterns, are relatively cheap, super easy to install, and have a long lifespan.

They come in various sizes, including 20,000 liters.

We will probably opt for one of these flexi cisterns.

Restoration of Our Abandoned Farm in Spain

I know there are many plans for the future. They won’t all be executed at once.

There is a video below where I explain how we will execute each stage of the restoration on our abandoned farm.

Watch the video:

In the above video I explain in great detail each stage of this restoration projects.

You’re going to see how we will transform this farm into your off-grid home in the coming years.

Conclusion

In this article, I’ve talked about our plans for the future, where I presented what we intend to do on our spanish farm in the coming years.

This article was the part two of a two-part series.

You can check the part one project overview, and see what we had on the farm when we purchased it and where things were located.

That’s it for this article. Did you like it?

Leave your comment or suggestion below. I love responding to all comments and I always do it personally.

Talk to you soon 🙂

P.S. If you would like to help us build our dream home, you can do it here. Or if you would like to help us continue recording videos, you can do it here. Either way, your support is very much appreciated.