Coffee planting...

These last couple of weeks have been fairly productive for us up at the plot of land mainly because we´ve had an extra coouple of hands on deck.  A couple of friends have been visiting and with a bit of bargaining, we managed to convince them to help us with some digging and planting.

Having been told about a place about half an hour from Popayan selling coffee plants at a very resonable 10p per seedling and having also been told that it´s perfect coffee planting season, we thought we´d start with that. Supposedly a healthy plant can provide 200g of coffee per year over two harvests so with 40 trees to start with, we think it´ll be enough to keep us going for the time being. With our glossy-leaved coffee loaded into the car, we bundled in our three helpers and spent the weekend preparing the terraces on the slope down to the forest using stacked guadua bamboo, a mallet and a lot of digging.

 The before

..the after

The weather was not on our side and we were rained out twice but finally this Saturday just past, we got all of the holes dug, all of the compost organised and the little plants are finally tucked into their spots on the hill. It looks a bit bald because the spacing is quite wide but in 8 months to a year, we should have healthy little coffee trees preparing beans for the following years harvest.

We also moved the hens this weekend into a new section of the garden so that we could plant corn in the old veggie patch. I´m not altogether sure why we are planting corn other than it´s the right time of year and supposed to be a quick and easy thing to grow. The hens love corn so worst case scenario and we cant figure out what to make with it all - at least the hens are happy. They also seem to be enjoying the company of a stray, white, miniature cockrel who has found his way into our garden and is living in a tree in the forest. We have named him Silvio after the news about Berlusconi stepping down this week and due to his evident love for all five of our feathered ladies.

 Silvio

The construction also seems to be moving forward somewhat this week and we now have the roof structure formed and I´m told the Onduline roofing sheets are going on today. We picked up the roofing sheets in Cali and they seem to be just the job: recommended for water harvesting, light weight and easy to install, 25 year guarantee. Hopefully they´ll get them on and that´ll be a big step forward in the construction.

 The house with the roof structure built

We´ve also been back in touch with the solar panel lot in Cali to finalise the costs and logistics for getting the panels and the system installed so the minute the roof is on, hopefully we´ll get that ball rolling too.

Back to work...

Today the builders are starting again up at the plot of land. Hopefully measuring up the roof so that we can order the materials for that and the water tanks.  We´re trying to stay optimistic about moving in by Christmas but with all the work at the new hostel, it´s not looking that hopeful.

Yesterday we ordered the windows and we´re going to try and go to Cali this weekend to order the Onduline roof sheets which we found for the rainwater recycling system. Hopefully then it´s just a matter of sticking it all together. We will still be missing the solar panels and the plumbing system but at least we´ll have somewhere to store things and to go on the weekends in the mean time.

As far as side projects go, we´ve been reading a bit about making walls out of recycled plasyic bottles. There´s an organisation called Eco-Tecnologia and they have done some cool projects in Cali making parks and recycling centres out of earth and rubbish filled plastic drinks bottles.  You basically use them like bricks, cement over them and can make pillars, walls, supports etc. It´s really cool and we´re thinking it might be a good plan for our front, garden wall.  I spent the whole day Sunday filling bottles with mud though and I have to say, there are few jobs more boring! We´re going to stick at it though because our hostel generates bizillions of plastic water bottles and it seems like a fun project.

 This is a photo from a project in Cali.


In the absence of plumbing at our soon-to-be house, I´ve been researching compost toilet ideas on the internet and have really come to think it´s a great idea. The humanure handbook website gives a great set of building instructions and it doesn´t look all that complex.  As we´re planning to plant coffee bushes this month too, it would tie in nicely with their fertilizing program as it takes several months to process the ´matter´.

This is a photo from the Humanure Handbook

The hens are loving their new enclosure (what used to be the veggie patch!) and have shredded every living thing from the soil. It´s going to make a great veggie patch in the future though as the hens are clearing and fertilizing all at once. You can actually see the difference in the colour of the soil already and that´s just after a month. We´ve started selling the eggs and cant keep up with the demand!  I cant remember the last time we ate our hens eggs, they are all sold straight from the nest.

Our multi-use Renault Clio got to play at being a steamroller yesterday. We have been taking the rubble from the new hostel up and burying it under what will one day be our lawn. Tony thought some flattening was in order. We almost lost a bumper, but on the whole, the lawn´s looking great!

Updates..

The walls are all built for the first half of the house. It`s starting to actually look like a house now and we`re beginning to imagine what it`ll be like to be able to live there sometime hopefully not too far off in the future. 

The hens are doing really well.  Jenny, Lucy and Kelsey have caught up in size with Lesley and Jane and all five are laying an egg every single day. We`re going to start selling eggs in the hostel because we`ve realised that we just cant eat that many eggs! They have figured out how to get out of their pen though and in one afternoon, ate all of the sprouts and shoots that I had carefully planted in the veggy patch. Some things, like the peppers, have been gobbled up entirely, right down to the seeds. Other things like the sunflowers are still standing but have had the leaves completely shredded. Between the hens and the drought at the moment, we decided to leave further planting until the rainy season and when we`re able to be more hands-on with watering and chicken proofing. Saying that, I`ve been collecting chilli seeds, pineapple heads and papaya seeds to plant so I might make an exception for those!

Because there are talks of neighbouring plot owners planning to start building in the nearby plots, we`ve decided that the time has come to fence off our land. It`s been marked by the topographer already so we know where the limits are but we never got round to a fence or hedge or anything. Also it`s getting a bit tiresome having all the neighbours dogs wandering in and leaving their evidence behind. So, we`re going to start with the part behind the house where the chicken house and veggy patch is, that way we can let the hens run free and not worry about them (or our plants) getting eaten. It`s not going to be a beautiful fence, just some bamboo poles with plastic netting stretched between, but hopefully we`ll get a few plants going and it wont be too noticeable after a while. The front part we hope to invest a bit more in eventually and get it looking nice, but there`s no point until the building is finished because it`ll just get wrecked.

We`ve had to focus our attentions and finances on the hostel over the past few weeks and probably into the next few months because we found a new location for the hostel and it`s going to need a fair bit of work and investment to get it up and running. Hopefully we can still aim to be out at our house by Christmas but it`s hard to say how the hostel will go in the new local so we`ll have to wait and see. Today we`re off to Cali to get some supplies and we`ll try to get our freezer (to be set up as a fridge) at the same time because we`ve sourced an efficient, small chest freezer that should do the job.

So that`s the plan for the weekend, shopping for the stuff for the new hostel and fencing in the land. We also have a bunch of `out of control plants` which we were given from a friend so we`ll try to find a spot for them too.

Another brick in the wall..

We finally have the beginnings of walls! The builders got started on Friday (just in time to take the weekend off) and this week they seem to be pushing on with walls and columns. They are easily distracted and decided to dedicate a fair bit of time to redesigning our chicken coop but at least there´s progress on the walls too.

We visited our friends who have a farm last weekend and they gave us heaps of things to plant like plantains, herbs, helaconias and some cactus type things. We planted them all in the garden without guidance and it turns out we´ve done it all wrong. I´m being stubborn about it though and am going to leave them how they are to see what happens.

We also bought two chickens off the workers at the farm, black laying hens that are six months old and already lay eggs. They are lovely and glossy with red dangly bits on the head and chin. We have named them Lesley and Jane after my aunts. Unfortunately, they haven´t taken after their namesakes in character. They are ferocious and are really mean to the red ones, they bite them and wont let them into the coop through the day.

As soon as the sun goes down though they all put aside their differences and hop in to sleep side by side, very fickle. We had to decorate the nests with plastic bottle caps to stop the hens roosting on the nests but it didnt work, they keep cramming on in and pooing all over the nests. We´ll figure something out.

This week we started our full on ´hostel goes green´ project. We are now using only vinegar, bicarb of soda, and citronella to clean the hostel, we have a whole bunch of recycling bins and we´re trying to encourage the guests to be energy and water aware. They seem to like it and it´s amazing to see how many things you normally just throw out - for example we collect a laundry basket full of plastic bottles every single day. Hopefully they will become a greenhouse for us to grow pineapples! Because of the self-catering kitchen and our veggie munching guests, we have LOADS of compost.

Unfortunately the insects love it. First it was too dry and got infected with ants and then I chucked a heap of water in and now it´s writhing with maggots. I´m not sure how to combat that. Maybe it´s time for some atomic chilli mix.

We´re now at the stage of designing our rainwater harvesting system. We are clashing heads a bit with the builder because he has some different ideas about how we should do things and doesn´t like our ideas. He thinks that chlorine is the best way to treat water whereas we want a biosand filter system with holding tanks so that we can limit the use of chemicals. We´ve been reading a LOT about it and we´re pretty convinced that´s what we want - Rodrigo says no. I dont know exactly how we´re going to get around that but further discussion is clearly needed.

Anyway, a much more productive week this week and hopefully by the next post we´ll pretty much have the structure of the house sorted!

Waiting..................

We still have no progress to report with the building! I´m starting to get a bit cross about it as there doesn´t even seem to be a reason for it, just the builders putting it off and putting it off. We´ve been back a month now  and all the materials for the next stage are bought and still nothing!

We´ve also had to make a couple of sad desicions because of hostel related business. We may have to relocate (the hostel) in the next six months or so and that could be a difficult thing to do if we´ve spent all our money on our lovely, ´green´ house. So, we´ve decided to build only the first half now and move in, hopefully by December (that is, if the builders actually do any work before then!) with the plan to chip away at the rest of the house as and when the finances let us. We were quite excited to have our house built and finished by this time next year but it seems business will have to come first this time. Anyway, we´ll still have our room, two bathrooms, a study and a laundry room (acting as a kitchen), so it´ll actually be similar in size to where we live now. The bulk of the expense will also be taken care of with the solar pannels, water harvesting system and filters and all the rest of it so hopefully it wont take too long to get things moving again, maybe 6 months or so after we move in.

On the positive side, the chickens are all healthy again. In fact we are the ones who are snotty and sniffly this week as summer has arrived and brought with it dust storms and hayfever. The veggies are also doing well and the tomatoes, onions, sunflowers and beetroots have started sprouting up, no sign of the peppers yet though. I´m making a second keyhole type garden to use up the rest of the seeds that I have left over as here it´s not easy to by less than a field´s worth of any one vegetable. We have also started getting our guests in the hostel to start helping with compost collection and so we should have plenty to fill up those keyholes. Watering is the issue with summer here. With no roof to collect rainwater off so far, we´re now carting tanks of water as well as the usual, buckets of compost, tyres for the forest stairs, old clothes, seeds, medicine for the chickens, building and gardening equipment, sunscreen and snacks. Lucky we dont have a nicer car. The poor thing is so full of junk that our mechanic sent it off to the car wash before he would check over a problem with the fuel pump! We tried to put bamboo poles on the roof at one point too but after a few nasty scratches, decided it was cheaper in the long run to pay for a truck to drop it off.

Our Ned Flanders neighbour let us play with his grass strimmer last weekend and now we can see what we´re dealing with! We missed a couple of bits and some other bits are completely bald but on the whole it´s a big improvement. I was toying with the idea of getting a grass cutting sheep but after reading about clipping and worming and suicidal tendencies, I was pretty much put off. Once we have grass, I suppose we´ll have to figure out how to cut it. Currently we just have weeds which we´re slowly but surely digging out.

Tony bought a mini wind turbine on ebay this week. I´m not sure quite how it´ll work here given that the staff at the hostel were complete puzzled as to how clothes can dry outside on a line in Scotland if it´s cold there. They have never experienced the common sight (especially where I grew up) of knickers wrestling themselves horizontally off of the line and finding their way into a neighbour´s garden 5 houses down the street. 100 mph winds are not that uncommon in the NE Scotland and in Popayan we experience around 8 mph winds once a year in July/August and dedicate a kite festival to it! Well, we´ll see how it goes, it´ll be a fun project anyway.

At the moment we´re looking for a chest freezer to turn into a fridge. The zeer was great and successfully cooled a cucumber for 2 weeks in the blazing sun, before it was eaten in a salad. It´s a few degrees warmer than you´d like your beer though and has a fairly limited capacity. Seemingly by bypassing and reprograming the thermostat on a super A* energy efficient freezer, you can create a pretty good fridge that consumes only a teensy amount of energy, not much more than the super expensive solar fridges and much bigger.

Other than that we´re just waiting (not very patiently) for the builders to get our house built!

Moving in...

We had a busy weekend last week up at the plot of land. We finally got the chicken coop finished and settled the chooks in on Saturday morning (after a night in our flat - big, smelly mistake!). They seemed very pleased with it and although we now realise that they can in fact jump out of the run whenever they like, so far they are choosing not to. They are three lovely ginger-coloured laying hens named after our sisters; Jenny, Lucy and Kelsey.

Unfortunately yesterday when we went to check on them, Kelsey and Jenny were looking a bit snotty around the beak and generally sad and mopey. Of course, I panicked a bit and got straight on the internet to check the symptoms and had fully convinced myself that they were all going to die (the usual ''headache + google = brain tumour'' situation). First thing this morning I went round to the farm supplies place where we bought them and the guy said that sometimes it just happens with a change in environment because they dont sleep or eat well and get a bit low on defenses, so we have to give them medicine for a couple of days. Hopefully they´ll be ok!

We also got started on the veggie plot and although the raised bed is less than beautiful, we´ve got some good, nutritious earth in there and have planted (in accordance with the moon phases) tomatoes and peppers straight away. From the 15th we can plant some beets and onions and then in a few weeks, at the new moon, all the leafy stuff like herbs, broccoli and lettuces. We´ve also tried to match up the veg with the right herbs and neighbours to encourage growth, deter pests etc. I dont know if it´ll work but we might as well give it a go.... although I´m starting to think that maybe less love and care gives better results. We went to such lengths with our hens; designing the house, painting it with non-toxic oils, choosing the perfect roosting branch, selecting the special hens who were imported from Cali etc etc etc. And they still end up sneezing snot all over the place! Our neighbours have happy healthy hens running about, eating scraps and living in the trees - no sneezing at all.

Tony and Eddie also built a retaining wall out of tyres which will hopefully give us a lawn-type area up by the house which can be a chicken and veg free zone, somewhere to sit out on the grass with a beer perhaps. We are just waiting for the builder to render the wall and then we can get the earth in to level it all up.

The builder still hasn´t got organized with the quote for the next stage (walls and electric and water piping) but he´s supposedly coming round in half and hour with the details so we´re hoping that we´ll be able to get started straight away!

One little green step at a time...

So we´re back here and into the swing of the usual routine again after our trip to the UK last month. Unfortunately our builder took another contract in the time we were away and it´s dragging on a bit so we haven´t managed to get back into the building with as much gusto as we would have liked. Nonetheless, it´s given us some time for planning and experimenting with a few things and generally sorting out what we should be doing to get started on the non-building type of things, both on our land and in our hostel.

The first thing we did was reassess our hostel to see if there are some ways that it too could become ´a wee bit greener´.

Popayan for the first time ever is introducing an official recycling system which is really great news and although it´s not up and running yet, we´re trying to figure out how we can coax our guests into separating their rubbish. We have also started collecting the coffee grinds from the free coffee we offer at the hostel and are chucking them into our composter. We´re also investigating building a green waste digester to dispose of scrap food, peelings etc from the hostel and use them to feed the soil up at our land.

The next step was to convince the staff that we can work with more natural cleaning products. Bleach has long since been a no no in the hostel (much to their grumbling) but having read about concoctions made from vinegar, bicarb of soda, citronella, lemon juice etc, I was keen to try as much as possible to move away from the toxic cleaning detergents that we have to use on a daily basis. Luckily they were very easily convinced as the products speak for themselves! They are even talking about using them in their own homes as it´s considerably cheaper and just as good as the shop bought options.

Up at the plot, we spent last weekend (with the help of some friends) building a hen-house so that we can get started with some chickens as soon as possible - hopefully we can pick up the three that we ordered tomorrow and get them settled in. The neighbours cant understand why we don't want to fill the coop up with 10-15 hens (the recommended occupancy for a coop this size here), but as long as our three are happy, healthy and productive, I reckon we´re onto a winner.

The sister of a friend of ours also has a bee hive that she´s not using and a contact who can teach us about bee-keeping (because we have no idea where to start!) so it´s looking promising for bees! Popayan has a honey co-op but I was worried that unless you are joining the co-op, they might be reluctant to share tips, sell equipment etc so this is the perfect solution, hopefully we can do it all independently. First though, we need to get planting some flowers so that they have something to eat.

We´ve also been reading a bit about Lunar planting and so want to get a veggie plot built this weekend to be in time for the next cycle. I´ve been looking at the ´keyhole garden´ designs that my mum introduced us to and it looks like an idea that we could use, given that our soil is fairly poor for planting. I think it´s an African model used to give good yield in small spaces with un-nutritious soil. Another idea we´ve been experimenting with from Africa is the ´zeer´ fridge. A clay pot with a smaller clay pot inside (or a plastic bucket in our case) with a layer of sand in between which you wet with water each day and then cover the whole thing with a wet towel. We´re still perfecting the model but it´s managed to keep two cucumbers nicely refrigerated for nearly a week now and we´re told that it can cool things to 6´C in optimum conditions, which is fine for most food products. The idea is that the water evaporates through the clay, pulling the heat outwards and in turn cooling the contents of the inner pot. It seems to be working and could be a big help given that the fridge is the main electrical problem with living off-grid.

It´s been a couple of weeks of small steps but on the whole we´re feeling that we have a bit more direction with things and although we´re frustrated that the building´s not making progress, it´s nice to know that we´re pushing forward on the projects that go alongside.

On the road research....

So, it's been a wee while since I've updated this... partly because there's not much to see at the moment as far as the building goes. It has been all foundations, supports and damp-proofing recently - not that interesting really, and most of it underground.

Also, we've been away for a month visiting family and friends in the UK. It was a lovely relaxing trip and in between cups of real tea and pints of real beer, we managed to use some of our time doing some research for the house as we went along.

Our first stop was Florida, a few days stop-over on the way home and a cultural experience we'll never forget! After a day or two with our hospitable friends in Miami, experiencing the sights (white beaches and glistening skyscrapers) and sounds (mainly salsa and Colombian accents), we joined the migration of RV dwelling 'snow-birds' with our rental car, tent and roll mats, and headed for the Florida Keys.

When researching our Florida trip, we were slightly offended by the term 'primitive camping' used to describe us humble tent users.  However, after one night in a $45 a night state park (blasted continuously with air-con exhausts from RVs either side of us) and one night in a forest clearing on an Indian reserve (with no facilities), we happily accepted our place among the 'primitive' campers.

Saying that, despite their air-con, satellite telly, dishwashers and other mod-cons, the RV club are effectively living off-grid and there are great 'green' systems in place at the state parks. We attracted some funny looks checking out their composting loos, solar water heaters, lights and recycling systems.

Once back in Scotland, we started buying books, reading articles and picking the brains of friends and family about off-grid living and generally anything 'a wee bit green'. We travelled south to Plymouth to visit the Eden Project and loved their ideas about permaculture and alternative architecture. Mainly though, it was just nice to see a collective group excited about things like compost and low impact living and so happy to share what they have learned.

We also visited the Findhorn Foundation which is an alternative community near where I grew up. They have some great building and community ideas such as a natural sewage processor, wind turbines powering the whole village, straw bale houses and generally great local produce like bread, veg, honey and lots of crafty type things which they sell in the community shop. The only frustrating thing is that  newbies like us, in search of ideas and inspiration, find it difficult to get info on implementing these systems or ideas ourselves without attending one of their (expensive) courses or workshops.

On the other hand, the local council is introducing some great recycling projects. My Mum introduced us to the 'Green Cone',  a kind of composter/digester which breaks down all you household food waste. It seems really straight forward, it's a basket underground with a plastic cone sticking out the top with a lid which you lift up and chuck in all the kitchen rubbish. Then you can plant veggies around it because as the sludge breaks down, it seeps out and feeds the earth around the cone. Simple!

We made the most of our time in the UK choosing and being gifted some great reading material too. A few that we found great are:
Barefoot Architect by Johan Van Lengen - sold over 40,000 copies in Mexico and is full of great and simple ideas that we're looking forward to trying.
Off-Grid by Nick Rosen - A really informative read which lets us know that it's not uncommon to live off-grid, not crazy and not as hard as everyone thinks!
The Self-Sufficiency Bible by Simon Dawson - Brilliant for all sorts of things, however far you want to take it, whether it's tomatoes in a window box or hunting, skinning and gutting your own rabbits.
Henkeeping & Beekeeping by the National Trust - very funny and passionate books for smallholders - everything simply put and to the point.

I also think the following websites are great for their no-nonsense, practical approach to what's often portrayed as a romantic lifestyle:
www.aselfsufficientlife.com
www.selfsufficientish.com

We were left with a lot of great ideas and were really keen to get back and get started. Now that we're here though, it's hard to know where to start!

Plant Scavenging!

Once we cleared the sloping garden at the back that drops down to the forest, we realised that leaving crumbly soil on a steep hill, open to the elements, could infact mean that after a few tropical down-pours, we might not have much soil left at all!  And sure enough, we´re starting to see nice slippery water channels carving themselves out into the sludgy slope.

So now we´re on the hunt for the sorts of plants that nobody wants in their garden.  The ones with strong, spreading roots.  The ones that crawl all over flowerbeds and take over entire gardens, lift up paving and require heavy machinery to uproot! You wouldn´t think those sorts of horticultural monsters would be so hard to get hold of but seemingly it´s not that easy. Garden centres dont really specialise in them!

So far we´ve managed to get some ornamental bamboo that a friend has grown into hedge in his garden. We didnt realise why he was so reluctant to give us some until we watched him split the handle on a heavy duty garden pick trying to hack out a few roots for us to take away and plant! He also gave us some enormous cuttings from a rubber plant which was camouflaging his entire barbeque area and wood pile. The plant had wound it´s vines in between the bricks and logs!

Our Ned Flanders neighbour also donated about 30 lemongrass roots that he wrestled out of his garden last weekend which we´ve planted under the terrace walkway in the hope that it´ll stop it from slipping down the hill. We´re now spreading the word amongst all our friends and neighbours, we´ll take all your unwanted, leafy garden pests!

We also went round to the builder´s house the other day because he wanted to show us a way to use slopes for growing veggies.  He has lettuces, mint, herbs for teas, onions, plantains, lemons, bananas and all sorts of things growing in beds that they´ve made out of bamboo and filled with earth and compost.  We left with lots of ideas and a goody-bag packed full of fresh fruit and veg!

An unfortunate development this week has been the discovery of a colony of leaf-cutter ants.  They´ve taken a liking to one of our trees and have carved out a nice little path through our plants and nicely organised earth to get to it.   I can remember my first time in the Ecuadorian jungle, sitting for ages watching and taking pictures of these little guys carrying huge slices of leaf and other bits and pieces.   Now I´m less impressed by their strength and organisation and more worried for our poor, gradually balding tree!  We´ve tried making a spray from garlic, hot chilli peppers and soap and it does seem to have slowed them down a bit but they are still marching and munching on.  We´re hoping that we dont have to take the drastic step that the locals recommend... Setting their nest on fire with gasoline!

Trying out tyres...

We´ve been discussing building techniques with Don Rodrigo, our builder, to see if we could try a few changes in the design and materials to make the house a bit greener. For example, I´ve been reading a lot about lime based cements which seem to be all round a lot better than convensional cements. It can be used for mortar and rendering and apart from its great building properties, its also aesthetically different, more rustic and smooth looking. Unfortunately Don Rodrigo´s not overly keen, he doesnt have much experience combining that kind of mortar with normal porous bricks and worries that it could affect the structure of the house if it goes wrong. He seems positive about the lime rendering though, so that seems like a reasonable compromise!

We are also looking in to using ´guadua´ bamboo for fences and other bits and pieces as it grows happily around these parts and is as sturdy as timber if treated properly, so that could be an interesting project for us in the meantime. At the moment we are also working on a trail down through the forest so that we can access the stream, the area that will eventually be our veggie plot and our composting area and just generally make the most of that part of our garden. We decided to do this with recycled tyres because it´s very steep and they make great stairs. So, we´ve been loading up on bald tyres at the roadside tyre-changing stations and lugging them up to the plot in the back of our car (an old Renault Clio, not especially designed for the purpose!), cutting open the tops and packing them solid with earth to make a stairway. It´s pretty labour intensive but it´s a great way to recycle the old tyres, build our stairs and best of all, it´s practically free! Eventually we might cover the surface of each step with gravel or cement to make it less slippery but for the meantime its a great alternative to scrambling up and down the slope!

We´ve also been getting advice on what sort of things to plant and it seems that the easiest crops to plant on the slope are corn, yucca, granadines and coffee.  We´d like to flatten off a section for greens and maybe plant a couple of plantain or banana trees down there too. We´ll have to get some compost going though because the red soil´s useless for planting anything. It´d be great to get some Californian red worms eventually to keep the plants well fed. In the meantime though we´re just digging out the stairway and then hopefully we´ll build a tire wall to fill with earth and flatten off a bit of the garden up the top.

Everybody needs good neighbours...

The area where we bought our plot of land used to be a posh countryside gated community but it went bust just as it got started in 1998. These days there are over 100 plots which are empty and waiting to be built on and as the whole project was left in huge debt, these were seized by the state and were sold off pretty cheaply - much to the disgust of the 30 wealthy families who live in the first phase of the development.

Originally the whole idea was to make the whole community an exlusive place to live, with rules about building designs, rules about access, a hefty monthly administration fee, 24 hour security, porters, street lighting, paved access etc etc. Although this wasn´t really the sort of place we´d ideally choose to live, the benefit of being able to leave the house for a month at a time when we travel, not worrying about security, was attractive and the land was a bargain.

It now appears that the original community want to try to cut off the other sections to try and keep their area exclusive and to not have to invest in the infrastructure needed to support a possible 100 houses more. Especially when these houses are likely to be bought by normal people (without house servants for example) who have paid half the price for their land that the original residents paid thirteen years ago.

I see their point.

We have written two letters to the president of the community explaning to them about our plans and offering to pay something towards the community costs but haven´t recieved an answer to either letter. The only time we have had any direct contact with the ´junta´was when we arrived with 4000 bricks on the back of a truck and were told that we didn´t have permission to build and therefore will not be allowed in! We did however have planning permission granted by this point (very few of the other houses in the ´conjunto´ have planning permission) and we clearly have access rights outlined on our deeds, so we insisted and were let in. The president however requested an audience as we were leaving and as politely as possible informed us that they wouldn´t be willing to assist us in any of our building needs (water or power connection) but would, for the meantime until some kind of arrangement was made, allow us access.

The next day we passed by town planning to pick up a copy of our building plans and the helpful chaps there let us know that the president of the ´junta´ has passed by that morning to demand the reason why we´d been granted planning permission given that we only have access rights by foot! We spoke to the head legal architect guy in charge of town planning and he assured us that this was not the case.

That was about a month ago and we haven´t heard anything since. We´ll wait and see. The last thing we want is problems with the neighbours and I think we´ve been pretty careful not to step on any toes since we arrived. Our immediate neighbours (who are also in the outer zone) are really nice, one is lending us water while we build and the other is lending us electricity. One is a bit of a Ned Flanders character and has seven barking dogs, but with time we´re getting used to that!

Hopefully moving to the countryside will still allow us the peace and quiet that we were hoping for, although I´m starting to think it might end up giving us a stomach ulcer instead!

The technical bit...

Last month we went through to Cali to meet an expert in alternative energy solutions. We found their website when we were researching how to get our hands on all the kit we´ll need for off the grid living as despite having the perfect conditions for self sufficiency here in Popayan (no need for heating/cooling, 12 hours of daylight year round, relatively high rainfall), there are very few places that can provide you with the equipment or the expertise needed to get things up and running. APROTEC seemed to know what they were talking about.

Here in Popayan we spotted a solar water heater for sale in an electrics shop for around a million pesos with a capacity of 120 litres. They had it out the front of the shop so that you could open the tap and feel the teperature of the water, it wasn´t that warm but aparently it normally produces between 40 and 90´C. It was one of those ones with glass tubes on the front and a water tank at the top and as the water heats up in the glass tubes, the hot water rises and the cold water sinks meaning that the water coming out of the tank should always be hot. The guy in the shop didnt seem able to answer many of our questions though and didnt have access to information about any other solar based products so we thought we´d be best heading into the city to ask the experts at Aprotec.

After punching our electricity consumption details into a spreadsheet, the green expert in Cali suggested that we´d need a solar panel system of about three panels and a couple of large batteries, convertors etc. But that we´d have to find a way of living without a fridge or washing machine. The washing machine´s not such a big deal because up until recently we were doing our washing at the hostel anyway. The fridge is tricky though. Having tried living without a fridge before, I´m not really interested in doing it again!

It seems that the fridge alone would consume more energy than the whole rest of the house, by a long way. The solution offered by Aprotec was a tiny chest fridge which costs a whopping 4,000,000 Pesos. Eight months minimum salary in Colombia, to put it in perspective. We´re still trying to figure out a solution to this issue as we´ve heard about gas fridges but we´re reluctant to rely to heavily on gas as we´ll already need canisters for cooking. In Miami, thanks to the RV travelling snowbirds, there seems to be a few different solar and off the grid solutions and as we´ll be there in May, we might check out the options. Saying that, with 20% import tax, it´s probably not worth it.

Meanwhile we´re trying to adjust out living habits to get ready for the day when we´ll really need to be careful of how much energy and water we use...but cold showers and living with out a fridge? We´ll have to figure something out!

The first bricks laid!

Thanks to Don Rodrigo´s keen eye, we were able to avoid serious long term issues and so we figured he´d earned the contract.  Besides he seems really nice and the labourers are the son, nephew and brother of Nata, who we´ve known pretty much since we arrived in Popayan. We know the family fairly well and it´s nice to support them too.

We discussed some ideas with Don Rodrigo right from the start, letting him know about our plans for rainwater harvesting, solar pannels and general low impact living, he seemed to be behind the idea 100%. He even suggested some ideas about reed filter systems for sewage and solar water pumps for getting water up to the veggie plot from the little stream in the forest. Great to meet someone with the know-how needed to put in place the ideas that we have but have no idea where to start!

The first thing was to build a hut to store the materials and to buy the bulk of the bricks, supports and cement to get the foundations started. As I mentioned before, nothing in Colombia is ever done with much urgency. We are now three weeks in to the building part (about 5 months in to the whole process) and apart from a lot of measuring, a few holes, a few supports in iron and cement and about a meter of bricks laid, we´re getting a little bit impatient to see progress!

Our fault...

Everybody in Popayan who is not a builder, warns you that all builders are dodgy. All builders in Popayan tell you that clients are very unreliable and often dont pay for work done.... The reality must lie somewhere in between.

We got a few recommendations for builders and contractors from friends and people we know, although everybody insisted that we must personally buy all the materials and be checking up on the workers at least once a day to make sure there´s no funny business. We took the first recommended builder out to look at the plot and quote us for the first stage, the leveling, retaining wall and foundations for the house. Within two days we had a quote back which looked reasonable, but here you never take the first quote so we invited the handyman from the hostel out to take a look. He´s the brother in law of Nata, who works here at the hostel and it turns out has been working in construction since he was 13 years old, he has a builders permit and has built many houses over the years. He took one look at the land and said that despite needing the contract pretty badly at the moment, he wouldn´t build the house on the plans no matter what you paid him because there´s a fault line running right across the width of the plot. About 2 metres from where the first wall was to be built. Seemingly water has been filtering through the earth and collecting in an underground chamber which has started to split open and according to Rodrigo, puts us at risk of slipping gradually into the forest should we try to put pressure on the land at that point.......back to square one!

Back to the architects to change the designs, back to speak to the engineers about the possibility of building on a fault that´s possibly 8 metres deep, back to town planning to see if they´d accept modifications without having to go through the whole application process again. To be honest, the whole thing was starting to look like a bit of a nightmare, we were wondering what sort of a can of worms we had bought!

Plans

Once we finally got through all the paperwork involved in buying our patch of grass and forest, we got started on the designs for our house. We already had the plans of another house in the community where we are going to build but it was a little bit Colombianised for our liking. All the windows looked out onto the road rather than out back to the view and there was a tiny kitchen with the maid´s room and bathroom coming off it, detached from the rest of the house so not to disturb the masters of the house with such mundane things as cooking! We´re not great chefs ourselves but a spacious kitchen is a must and servant quarters is a definate no!

Wanting to fit into the stlyle of the community of white walls and red tile rooves, we made the changes we wanted to the plans and took them along to a nearby architect office to be made up officially.

Disappointed that their first foreign clients didnt want something a bit more.... exotic, and altogether confused about why someone would choose water from the sky over water from the tap, after long discussions we eventually ended up with a design we were all happy with.

The construction is to made of standard materials (sorry earthship guys) because everything from bricks to timber can be sourced right here in Popayan and as we´re right smack bang in the middle of an earthquake zone, building regulations are surprisingly strict by Latin American standards.

With our planning permission approved and all the legalities taken care of, all we had to do next was find a builder!

The perfect spot

Nothing in Colombia is ever straight forward. Least of all buying land.

In general, Colombian people have many endearing qualities. There is always time to stop for a chat, there are very few things in life that require major urgency, there´s always mañana. Another great attribute is their acceptance and tolerance. This has made it a great country to live in, people are very accepting and patient and we will always be greatful for the way we were recieved here with such warmth. To us queue-loving, wrist-watch wearing Brits however, there are always cultural stumbles and misunderstandings as a result of our hesitation to take a more Latin approach to life. Sometimes it pays to keep your wits about you though!

Here in Colombia, it´s surprisingly straight forward to buy land as a foreigner. As we´ve been living here for the past four years and have seen many of our other expat friends buy properties, the paperwork side of things didnt seem too tricky... well, no more tricky than you´d expect. Finding a property that´s ´clean´ as the locals say, referring to it´s financial past, is the tricky bit! We came close to buying three different properties, each time saved just in the nick of time by our lawyer or surveyor or friends doing some digging and spotting some hidden debts attached. A minor detail the laidback sellers neglected to mention.

Eventually we found our perfect spot, a plot with half buildable land, half forest, a nice view (even with Purace volcano poking through the tree tops) and inside a gated community with someone keeping an eye on things should we want to take off travelling for a few weeks. It´s not a huge bit of land, 1030 metres2 but it´s perfect for what we want. Plenty of space for rainwater collection tanks, on a ridge without shade to mess with the solar panels and more than enough room for a veggie plot and some composting.

How did we end up living in Popayan?

We decided to start this blog to share with friends and family our experiences as we get started on our latest project of building an ´off-the-grid´ house, outside of Popayan in Southern Colombia. First things first though, we´d better answer that question that we answer about a hundred times every day, the one that we get everytime we meet a new person in the queue at the bank, or every time a new guest checks into our hostel, or whenever we´re introduced to the friend of a friend....
How did we end up living in Popayan?

Both of us have spent time travelling on and off pretty much since we left secondary school and we have met a lot of interesting people and seen and heard about many interesting projects along the way which I suppose has inspired us to try and live our lives in a way that we find interesting and fulfilling. We are by no stretch of the imagination the hard core, extreme green, hippy types and we enjoy a certain level of comfort in our lifestyle but we do our best to waste little, be respectful of our surroundings and we look forward to the challange of more sustainable living.

In 2006 we decided to launch our own online network for travellers in Latin America and left Scotland with a laptop, camera, some clothes and an idea to connect local hostels and tourism businesses together on the internet. Allowing the local businesses to benefit from online publicity, allowing the travellers access to new and up to date information and allowing us to explore places we might otherwise never have seen, it seemed like a perfect all round scenario!

After nine months on the road we found Popayan, a lovely Colonial town surrounded by mountains and decided to scrape together the money we had left and set up a backpacker hostel to allow us to stick around and watch the tourism develop in this forgotten part of the country. It´s been a great experience learning about a new culture, a language, making new friends and at the same time having a constant flow of interesting, and at times eccentric, personalities from all different nationalities and background passing through our doors. Although running a hostel is a great job, after four years of answering ´how did you end up living in Popayan?´ or ´how often do buses run to San Agustin?´ or ´where´s the nearest ATM?´ about a million times a day, we´re looking forward to breaking the routine a little, reclaiming a bit of our own lives outside of the ´territorio internacional´ of the hostel and throwing ourselves into the building of our first home in the Colombian countryside.