For most people living off-grid means acquiring an expensive solar kit and several batteries to make sure the everyday commodities are always available. However, the reality is that one can change habits to avoid the high cost of getting set up off-grid. In fact, after a month living off-grid, we have to admit that we’ve surprised ourselves by how well we are doing without a fridge, internet, electricity or even grid water. To be honest, it’s been a life-changing experience…
Living off-grid in Portugal without a fridge – was a real life-changing experience for us.
Without a doubt, the ability to preserve food without a fridge was my biggest concern. Although, as a Canadian, I’m quite used to camping and changing ice packs in a cooler. I have to admit, the prospect of living without a fridge for 1+ month truly scared me, as ice is a 35 minutes drive from where we currently live.
Living without a fridge sure took some getting used to. And perhaps this has been one of our biggest challenges when embracing this new simple life. Indeed, as we’re only in the setup phase of our homestead, our cooling facilities are limited since we don’t have the luxury of a root cellar, nor do we have time to build one as all focus is on the house nowadays.
Living without a fridge off-grid in Portugal has forced us to change our eating habits. As we were prepping to come and live in our dream house to continue building, I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that I was tempted to go a little crazy and can a mountain of chili con carne, beef stew, and spaghetti sauce. Yet I didn’t, and it sure was a good thing. I’m now convinced the heatwave would have spoiled everything.
Changing our eating habits
The thought of a juicy stake or a well-seasoned lamb rack always makes our mouths water. As we’re true carnivores, it was evident that preserving meat would be a priority. However, after realizing the efforts it took to enjoy a BBQ, and that our cooling facility wouldn’t allow us to keep raw or cooked chicken for more than 12h we had to get creative. After binning most of the meat, we bought from the store only a few days after our first grocery, it was not only a shock to the wallet but the system too. We hate wasting stuff. And because we’ve harvested our own meat before, for us, a chicken is not just a chicken, it’s a life.
So we became temporary vegetarians. I can’t even believe I’m writing this. I’m also convinced that our friends will possibly not believe it as they have all known us to enjoy meat on the very rare side. At first, we had to find a way to “trick” our brains into thinking we were eating meat.
The first 100% veggie dish I cooked was spaghetti “meatballs”. LOL, you’d be surprised what a bunch of spices could do to bread crumbs, grated courgette, potatoes, lentil,s and onions. Not to mention, since it’s courgette and potato season. Our neighbors are more than generous with their harvest going “temporary veggies” and also helped us save a lot of cash. In a heartbeat, our weekly grocery bill went from around €125 to around €70. And when you know that a meal at a restaurant costs between €8- €15 per person, this gave us some “extra” cash to go out and eat meat. At least once a week. So we took the conscious decision to become seasonal eaters. That I am convinced we’ll continue implementing in our lives even when we get a fridge. It totally makes sense to us to eat what’s fresh and in season. And with the amount of money we are currently saving on not buying meat, it means that once our house is done, we can reinvest the cash into improving and extending our growing season with a greenhouse, for example.
But make no mistake, this piece is not to convince you to go all-in veggies – we still eat meat, just not at home. Plus, in Portugal, it would be merely impossible to be vegetarian or vegan as most Portuguese restaurants have no veggie alternative other than salad, rice, or potatoes. Some even consider cod a vegetarian option.
Becoming seasonal eaters also forced us to look at the lineup of projects we had. Our new eating habits mean we shuffle things around to make sure in future summers, we will have the means to harvest meat and cook it right away. This means that sooner than we thought, we’ll be introducing pigs, rabbits, quail, ducks, pigeons, and turkeys on our homestead. I don’t think we’ll ever have goats, sheep or cows our land it too small to keep these animals happy and well fed. Because we’ll eat with the seasons, it also means that instead of buying a huge fridge, we can be content with a smaller one that will in return, lower our electricity consumption.
Watching TV off-grid in Portugal – how does it work?
The simple thought of not being able to watch our favorite summer shows like The Block AU made me wonder how we will ever fall asleep. Indeed, in our past life, Dan and I were TV junkies. At home in Spain, the TV was on pretty much 24/7, and if the news were not on, well, we’d binge the latest Discovery or History channel shows.
Now, of course, no internet and no electricity means that we had to change our consumer habits. Thankfully, Dan discovered that Amazon Prime has an offline service. So whenever we go to town or in an internet zone, we can download stuff on our table or phone to fall a sleep too. From time to time, we also treat ourselves to a proper popcorn night as we have bought a projector which has 6h battery life. So whenever we start up the generator to charge the battery or laptop, we make sure to plug it in so that we can watch old seasons of 24 we downloaded years ago.
Not being able to watch TV “on demand” has also changed us. Often, Dan and I found ourselves lost in discussions talking about foreign politics and reacting to the news we had watched during the day. Now that we don’t have news access this well, it feels that our conversations have deepened. Not only that, but we find ourselves being less irritated as we are not exposed to things we consider nonsense.
Not being able to watch TV whenever we want to change the way we will be organizing our furniture in the house. In fact, we have now decided NOT to buy any TV so the sofa can point in any direction in the house. Because we have no TV, we spend a lot more time outside, even at night. We have rediscovered our passion for stargazing, and that can only be a good thing.
We’re also playing a lot more board games. Even if Daniel still has trouble beating me at backgammon. The thrill of a game with him never fails to get my heart beating as I know that we are spending priceless quality time together.
Being more together was one of our main goals when we moved to Portugal. So now we can say mission accomplished.
Water in times of drought – how did we deal with this?
By now, if you’ve been following our YouTube videos, you may already know that we have 2 IBC tanks at the top of our cherry hill (a total 2000L). While we are still waiting on the municipality to connect us to the grid – been waiting for 2 ½ months (since we’ve paid them a total wait time 3 ½ months) we had to find a solution to stay hydrated (us and the boyz), water our mini-garden, cook, clean and wash ourselves.
Summer 2022 has been especially hard in the northern hemisphere. In fact, when talking to our farmer friends, they all told us that they had to abandon some of their fields and that their animals not only struggle with the heat. But the drought also caused a shortage of fresh hay for them to eat.
Initially, when we bought the land, we were told that we should get grid water in around 1 month. However, because of the drought, the installation has been delayed. According to our municipality, many existing water installation has to be replaced in surrounding villages, which apparently explains the delay we’re experiencing nowadays.
Living with “limited water” in times of drought has changed us. The truth is, if it were not for our farmer friends who have filled up on tanks a couple of times, we would have been probably in deep trouble. (THANKS MANEL and THERESA!!! YOU ARE THE BEST).
But how did limited water supply change us?
It’s easy to think that one only needs to ask the neighbor who has a free spring to fill up our tanks. But nor Daniel or I are big on asking for favors. The truth is, we were raised to be very independent and work hard for our things. In a strange way, we believe that if we’d ask for a favor, it would be a sign that we are not really in control of our life. So we rarely ask for anything (LOL we don’t even ask people to subscribe to our YouTube channel and nor do we ask for coffees or Patreon donations). This is just not how we were raised.
So you can imagine how we felt days before moving when we realise that we would not get town water. I recall the massive pit we both had in the stomach when we realized we needed a hand. To avoid asking for anything, we even considered gradually filling up our tanks by hand using a spring that 1 km. To be frank, it took us a day to master the courage to even speak about it. But one needs water to live…
After finally gathering all the courage we had in us, we spoke with our neighbor, who took 2 seconds to come up with a solution, and he offered to fill up our tanks with his massive hose. Seconds after, another neighbor offered to help too. Just writing this brings tears to my eyes, as the kindness people of the village have shown us goes way beyond what one could imagine.
Once our tanks were filled up, HOO we were so careful with this precious resource. To start with, we adopted the Aussie way of living “yellow mellow”, which means only flushing the toilet for solid. We also poured just a little water in a “sink” that we used, re-used, and re-re-reuse to wash our hands – we took very, very short showers and made sure never to let the water run for anything essential. After 1 month off-grid in Portugal still no rain and still no signs from the municipality. Thankfully our new way of consuming water means that we still had 400l left.
Then our sweet neighbor popped by for a coffee one day to ask for a lift in the village she had just milked the goats and had 2 large buckets of milk that needed to be carried up a very long hill – so with no hesitation, we said yes we’ll take you home. At the same time as we enjoyed a coppa, she asked us how we were doing with water… if we needed more and if she could help. It’s then we told her that we had 400l left, and in a heartbeat, she said, ok, I’ll get my husband to fill up your tanks in the morning. We felt so incredibly embarrassed and grateful. She told us you never have to be scared to ask for anything here. We are here to help. Here we help each other, it is just the way we live.
It’s then that Daniel and I realized that if it were not for the community spirit, we’d be in deep trouble. And that maybe the old pioneers of Portugal had no choice to rely on their neighbors if they wanted to thrive. Little by little, we are changing the way we are thinking. That does not mean we’re ready to e-beg. Nah, that’s still a no go zone for us. But here love to help, here asking for a favor is actually a sign that you’re close to someone. People love to know that they can help the “new folks in town”.
Our village is owned by 2 families, helping each other is all they know. While we still have much fear of asking anyone for anything, it seems that here favors are not seen as weaknesses that one can exploit. Instead, they are just acts of kindness that must exist if one is to thrive in this simple way of living. And we have to get used to that, even if it means stepping on our pride a little.
Laundry off-grid – how do we deal with this?
I would not qualify myself as a girly girl – but I do love dresses. In fact, in my past corporate life, dresses were all I’d warned to go to the office. While there is no doubt that my collection of Monsoon dresses is not appropriate for a homesteader life. They are even worst when it comes to doing the laundry by hand.
At some point, I’m sure we’ll buy an electric washing machine. But doing the laundry by hand, the old way makes me more appreciative of the clean clothes I own. What’s more, there is something “romantic” about cleaning your husband’s closes by hand, carefully looking at a t-shirt to make sure all the stains are gone. And Dan is incredibly appreciative when I do the laundry, even more now than before. Sure our whites are not as whites, but no one in the village will judge us for that.
Now these are just a few ways of how we’ve adapted to living off-grid in Portugal with no real solar kit. We do have 2 small solar panels (camping style) that we use to charge our phones. The phones are paramount as we use them to film for YouTube. But since we’ve been living off-grid in Portugal, both Daniel and I are less concerned by then as we have no reliable 4g-5g signal on our land.
So is living without electricity, town water, internet, and grid water worth it?
Absolutely, in fact, we’d go as far as saying that it’s something everyone should experience at least once in their lives. In the same way that we think all meat eaters should harvest their meat at least once in their life.
In our opinion, many of the commodities we own are designed to increase the speed at which we do things, and maybe that’s a bad thing… I’m not sure at what point going to bed with the sunset and waking up with the sunrise disappear from our lives, but I am convinced that we now live a much healthier life, and we live more than then we ever did.
We both came to this realization yesterday as one of the properties we own was connected to the grid. We still have a bit of work to do to get our house hooked up. But all things considered, we’re not in any rush to get electricity. We think it might be best to continue living with minimal electricity at least until the sun sets past 9 pm.
Sure one could also be an ecowarrior and preach that consuming less means lessening the weight on society. But actually, beyond that, consuming less water, less meat, and less electricity simply makes us more appreciative of little things. And that can’t be a bad thing to be grateful in life.
