starting/small steps to homestead northern spain

hey all,
i'm currently living in Basque country and want to start small steps towards a homestead in the next 2-3 years.
i am looking for land with a house, aware most of this type need renovation ofc.

I really need help and some guidance to start somewhere, what can be done in the first steps and initial phases (small crops that can withstand a north of spain climate) should the land be specifically mentioned as agricultural. Should i look for a land that also provides trees(for wood and whatnot)

i really don't know where and how to start but would love to take steps towards my dream, of more sustainable and slow living.

PS: would love to hear from other folks who have already established themselves around northern spain and are homesteading.

many thanks
alex

Hi, Alex, welcome to the forum!

I have searched and bought many properties.

The first step has always been deciding where we want to live.

The second step has been to find a real estate professional who will help me with the closing of the property I want to buy.

Over the past yers, I have used many different approaches to find the property.  Reading ads in local papers, driving around looking for For Sale signs, and of course the realtor.

With the Internet making it so easy to find properties that is how I found the property where we live now.  I still needed that real estate professional to help me with the closing.

I hope some of this will help and I am looking forward to others folks suggestions.

Which area have you found or have your eyes set on?

Questions I would ask myself would be:
(1) How much can I afford if I am buying cash
(2) How much can I afford if I am getting a mortgage
(3) How much do I have budgeted for taxes, monthly renovation loan payments/saving, utilities, etc in addition to mortgage payment.
(4) Will my utilities be off-grid or not?
(5) Am I okay with growing intensively with a year-round aquaponic greenhouse with less land or do I want to have more land.
(6) Do I want to grow in a drier more arid area where I have less plant pest but I have to use a well/stream.
(7) What's the spacing for the trees in my orchard aka will it be close and I use a well/stream to water it and I prune or will it be further apart and use natural rainfall
(8) Do I want to grow my own firewood? Extra firewood or super insulate my house and use infloor radiant heating?
(9) What type of animals do I want to raise (just chicken and honey bee, or do you want to also grow dwarf milk-goat or will it be 1000lbs meat-cows, they will need alot more pasture, and do I want/need a 1acre pond for food-fishing and mediation-relaxation).

A) Earthworks/Waterworks (swales, infiltration, irrigation piping, well, roads/paths, etc)
B) 80% nitrogen fixing cover crop species for the site at establiment and 20% at maturity
C) Soil Life and Soil Carbon (woodchip mulch, etc)
D) Careful cultivar and species selections for your site: [apple, quince, pear, mayhaw, medlar, juneberry, etc] , [plum, apricot, cherry, peach/nectarine] , citrus family, walnut-pecan family, chestnut family, hazelnut family, pistachio, persimmons, jujube, there is also fruiting vines and shrubs (grapes, passionfruit, kiwi, raspberry, blueberry, gooseberry).

E) What will your pasture mix look like based on your climate/location and the animal you want to grow.
D) Will you get a fish pond? How many pounds of fish do you want to harvest per year, that will affect how big it needs to be.

The climate seems to be similar to Florida USDA Zone 9 with snow happening very rarely, with it possible to grow citrus can you confirm that this is true?

My gut reaction would be to get around 3acres of land aka 12,000m2
1/5 acre for house (septic, solar, well, garage, workshop, outdoor kitchen, pool, lawn, house, etc)
1acre for orchard
1acre for pasture-pond (dwarf milk-goat, fish, chicken-duck, honey-bee, etc)
1acre for firewood

if you want to keep cows that would be 4acres per cow if it is irrigated and doing really well, but maybe 10acres per cow is a better number your year-round forage. But you culd always just get a barn/feedlot and import hay.

Here is a site with some house for sale, let me know what you think of it and feel free to share other sites that are are using, esp if it is in english and spanish: https://www.idealista.com/en/geo/venta-viviendas/pais-vasco/con-precio-hasta_100000,chalets-independientes,chalets-adosados,casas-de-pueblo/?ordenado-por=fecha-publicacion-desc

Hi Benji,
Many thanks for the detailed response and info, they are extremly useful.

I am not sure about the climate if it's that similar to Florida, by doing a quick search and read, i believe the temps here in Basque country are a bit higher than Zone 9 florida.
What is could find is that Donostia is Zone 10a 10b: 1.7°C to 4.4°C (https://www.plantmaps.com/interactive-spain-plant-hardiness-zone-map-celsius.php) -> that's if i was able to read this website correctly. Please correct me if wrong.

For the beginning I want to start small of course, a few patches, a few chickens and ducks. Goats in year 2-3 and not sure about cattle, they do need lots of space and pasture so probably this is for longer term thinking when we may potentially buy additional land for them.

Property wise, due to the prices here all cash is not doable however with mortgage we can manage it very easily. Your idea about calculations help a lot to take everything in consideration as total cost of investment/ownership.

Based on our area, what patches should i try first? something simple like lettuces, raddishes, tomatoes ofc.

Thanks a lot!

Zone 10b means that there is very little need for firewood or for a greenhouse. After buying a 2acre+ site. I would work on the house and then start a 4,000sqft garden. And also get some chickens and a bee hive. I would wait until after the orchard is bearing fruits before I get goat/cows.

Hi Benji,
Sorry for the late reply. Thank you for the idea on garden patches and fruit trees, this is exactly what I needed to get my head around for the beginning.

As we are currently looking for the house/land which suits us best I am keeping in mind the info you shared with me. We are also dabbling with the idea of Valencia proximity, which is can also be 10a/10b but has quite large areas of 9b as well. In any case, i believe the fruit/crops you shared are doable in both with no issues since winters around here are pretty mild.

Thank you again and hope I have good updates soon enough!

Alex,

I would not compare 9b from Valencia's Mediterranean to 9b from gentle Basque oceanic climate with year round precipitation, green summers and gentle sun. These are completely different worlds. 9b only means that the lowest average temperature is -4 to -1C and it does not mean anything else.
If you want to grow food, pick the North.

Oh my gosh! I am delight to come across this website! Alex- we are in the exact same situation. We are looking in the US in the midwest for the best spot for our family. I'm so happy for you that you already know the location. We actually just had some visitors that grew up in the Basque country.  It sounds beautiful! I'll keep watching your posts. We are trying to find the best location either in Northern Wisconsin, Michigan or Minnesota. If anyone has a suggestion on how to pin point the location, please let me know!

As a Basque American homesteading in Northern California, that sounds like a great adventure! From what I can tell, NW California has a very analogous geography and climate, so I would look for success stories here and in other climate analogues (NZ, South Africa to some extent, and other places in the 40s Latitude on a windward mountainous coast with dry summers and mild wet winters).  I would also encourage researching the history of what has worked there culturally for 10,000 years +. Maybe you’re already more knowledgeable than I’ll ever be, but The Basque History of the World, is a great book to start with in my opinion and worth a read. It is not exactly focused on farming, though it revolves around Basque foods integral to our history and culture, and may provide insights into niches of demand you might observe having a current void in supply. I have learned a lot about how to manage my land from the local indigenous cultures here in redwood country, but still have an infinite amount to go in a place with 10,000yr+ old cultures, similar to the Basque Country.

For permaculture design and regenerative ag help, it seems like it may be worth reaching out to Oliver Goshe of The Abundant Edge podcast (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-abundant-edge/id1199230234?i=1000623419111 ), who is based over in Catalonia. He seems to be building a network for helping aspiring regen aggies in the Iberian region.

Best of luck!

I have something to add which is out there.
It may not be considered suitable but I will present my case.
I road race sidecars which is a high speed motorcycling activity, and roads near where I live are great to train on.
My machine is a vegan, I use ethanol fuel, vegetable lubricants, rubber tyres from trees, its important that your property caters for such a sport if you choose to partake.
So often our properties dont fulfill all our needs.
So p[erhpas plan for it.

@ John makes a great point. Selecting land, isn't just about it's physical properties or price. Maybe you need it to be near yur aging grandma. or you want it to be near the hobbies that you have or near a social group or near to a farmers market/resturant in case you want to seel your produce, Or maybe you want it to be close to a hostpital, etc, etc.

With around 1.5inch of rain per month in Valencia, Spain. You would need to water your plants(trees, vegetables, pasture) alot more. So if you have a well it would be okay, and it is a bigger city, so the social aspect might be better?

Katie Marr wrote:Oh my gosh! I am delight to come across this website! Alex- we are in the exact same situation. We are looking in the US in the midwest for the best spot for our family. I'm so happy for you that you already know the location. We actually just had some visitors that grew up in the Basque country.  It sounds beautiful! I'll keep watching your posts. We are trying to find the best location either in Northern Wisconsin, Michigan or Minnesota. If anyone has a suggestion on how to pin point the location, please let me know!

Welcome to Permies Katie Marr. This site has so much infomation, there is always something new to learn/ponder about. Feel free to make your own post(s) about any question(s) that you have. For the areas that you are looking into, I like the idea of it being a zone5 so that you have a bigger list of possible plants that you can grow. Next I like the the of the site having a stream/spring/pond but this is optional. And then the next question would be do you want land for a pasture or would ypu be okay with just 1-5acres.

Thanks Benji, i do want to be close to a city where we have good access to hospital, school etc (we just welcomed our baby girl hence the absence).

A well is a must in south of Spain, it's so dry that it would run the water bill wild watering over the summer. The downside to it is water is veeery hard in the south although crops do well since they are used to the hardness of water.

At the moment we just rented a house in the northern Spain with a very small garden and I already built 4 patches, and got a small bin for compost(which i think i already messed up the first compost).

for the moment we will stay here and I'll try to use the 4 patches to build my skills to grow our own food, before we make a final decision of what we buy and where.

Perhaps one of you can help me with the compost, wondering if it's salvagable or I should throw everything and start over.
I added grass clippings for 3/4 of the bin, then added kitchen scraps (fruits/vegetables etc). It's been sitting there for 3weeks, I did not add anything else like soil or something. Is this usable? or if not, can it be salvaged?

Hi Alex, congratulations on the new addition to your family! It sounds like you are following a good permaculture principal in making small incremental changes and learning from them.
I would suggest asking your question about compost in a new thread in the composting forum it may get more experienced eyes and answers there. I'm of the opinion that you can't spoil compost - it will still be good organic material as long as it was good to start with.

S Bengi wrote:Zone 10b means that there is very little need for firewood or for a greenhouse. After buying a 2acre+ site. I would work on the house and then start a 4,000sqft garden. And also get some chickens and a bee hive. I would wait until after the orchard is bearing fruits before I get goat/cows.

Hi Bengi,
I created 4 patches in my garden
1 large (5ft by 10ft)
3 small (2ft by 6ft)

I really liked the screenshot you shared with me for spring and fall planting, although I have a question for patches where I can plant multiple veggies. What would be a respectable distance between them? Or is that intended for them to be around close by each other, rather than 30cm apart?

many thanks!

Many thanks!!! Already posted in the Composting forum.

Each of those bed is 100sqft (usually 20ft long by 5ft wide) so the beet or chard area is about 1ft by 5ft.
You can overseed and then cull as they grow, selecting for the strongest. Maybe even harvesting microgreens and then keep on harvesting mini-greens every week.  In a dry climate I really like the idea of having the soil always covered to plants so overseeding seems like a good idea to me. Mature spacing of 30cm by 30cm (1ft by 1ft) seems reasonable.