Hi Adam! We're not living in Bulgaria full-time yet due to visa requirements post Brexit. I'd wanted to move for over ten years, but for various reasons wasn't able to apply for residency under the old rules. We have a small house on over 1/2 acre in a rural village in the north-east. about 1/4 of the block is the house garden, the rest is semi-wild.
I get over as often as I can to work on the house and garden which had been very neglected. It's a long story how we ended up with a house that was so NOT what I was hoping for. That list of "must-haves" makes me laugh when I look at it as this place ticks very few boxes, but I feel we're in the right place. The neighbours are welcoming and amazingly helpful, and the village is small but still alive.
The area our house is in has always had low rainfall, and big ag has drained the aquifers so most village
wells are now dry. Weather patterns seem to have changed and rather than lowish rainfall spread through the year the region now seems to get huge storm events with long dry spells in between. Our neighbours have a wonderful and hugely productive garden, but use loads of
irrigation. I intend to set up rainwater collection and swales, and in the meantime am planting plenty of seeds to see what can survive and produce despite sheer total utter neglect.
As Timothy said, a
thread showing your build would be great!