When we arrived, we found that the jungle had overtaken the fruit farm, and that the house had fallen down!
Our original plan was to live aboard our sailboat, while we fixed the property. However, the shipwreck changed that plan and we began working on the house first. This way, we would have a place to live while we worked on the land during the following year.
Our next challenge was to get building materials to the site. The original builders had used Oxen to pull the stones along an old path. We had a modern idea...using gravity!
The nearest road is 150 metres, as the crow flies to our house. An inconvenience for us was the river and valley between the road and our house, making the trip by foot about 600 metres!
The send off...
Magnus´s mom and Steve spent their summer vacation helping to bag sand and send concrete blocks across the valley at dangerously high speed.
The recieving end.
Here the house is taking shape.
Now, the forest surrounding the house needed to be cleared.
Gardens and fruit orchards need as much sun as they can get, and this thick jungle was not helping.
We learned how to build free standing stone walls, allowing us to terrace our most protected property for food production.
Collecting stones from all over the mountainside, bringing them to site via foot and wheel burrow was a challenge. But now, we have an abundance of food.
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