Inspired by the Nearings

September 7, 2012

This is the big week – we’ve moved onto our own little piece of the property. Until now we’ve availed ourselves of Victor’s hospitality and stayed at the main house on the farm, built in the same place and style as the house my ex and I built in 1974, and lived in until 1980. Zeke was just a year old when that house was built, and Sofia and Victor were born while we lived there. Now the grandchildren visit.

        My daughter, Sofia, and granddaughter, Camila.

Helen and Scott Nearing inspire us as we begin our life in the country, and we hope to emulate them by living simply and sustainably. Back in the 60’s, when as retired professionals Helen and Scott moved from the city to the countryside in Vermont, the cutting edge of enlightened living meant back-to-the-earth simplicity, organic gardening and building one’s own house and infrastructure. Today we continue to value voluntary simplicity and organic gardening but look to permaculture, ‘agro-floresta’ and bio-construction as the means to lower our carbon footprint, and live in a way that could be shared by most of the Earth’s population (99%). We intend to inhabit our space in a way that will preserve the soil, the water, and the air for our grandchildren and their grandchildren unto the seventh generation.

For many reasons – because the rainy season will arrive soon, because we’ve never built a house before, because Guy is still learning Portuguese, and we’re both educating ourselves about the appropriate techniques for building and farming in this part of the world – we’ve decided to contract our first living space to a local building team. They will use mostly the conventional methods and materials for this area: a squared-off building of bricks and concrete.

We have no electricity or running water for now. The building crew must fetch their own water from the small creek that runs by our place, about one hundred feet down a steep path. We too will fetch our water every day, but we’re looking at building a bicycle pump as soon as we can. The model for which we have printed plans can pump 10 gallons a minute on a level area – water in a pond to a site at the same level – or as little as 1 gallon a minute on a steep incline. I expect our situation to fall between those two points. Eventually we plan to collect rain water, and to install electricity as a backup.

For cooking we’ll use my original solar cooker, which I’ve had for several years now, supplemented by a two-burner gas stove. The sun at this time of the year is always bright and hot from about 10 am to 3 pm, and will cook beans, rice, soup and even bake bread. Soon we’ll have a wood stove as well, built into the house, but I hope to continue to utilize mostly solar cooking.

Guy is completing two projects – our first privy and a kitchen table. He can tell you about them the next time we post.

This morning the macaws flew over our straw hut, chattering as usual in their rough cawing voices. As we drank our coffee, sitting outside in the sun, a brilliant turquoise bird with a coal black face alit on a tree nearby and sang a welcoming song for us. Last night, the first night we slept here, the stars were magnificent in the dark sky, and looking at it from outside the straw hut was magical as the light from the lantern shown through the lacy pattern of the palm fronds. We snuggled in our tent with three blankets to keep us warm because the winter air at 3000 feet gets down close to 50° F.