
With the growing season upon us, it’s fair to say that our simple life suddenly got a little complicated. Indeed, having the responsibility to feed my family from our garden, start a business to support us and entertain tourists with a lush garden is no small feat for a novice gardener like me. But I’m up for the challenge. Yet, I keep on telling myself that Rome was not built in a day and that it’s about the journey …
Sure I’d love to have the public garden all up and running but what matters, in the end, is that this year we are progressing.
Looking outside of the window, I see our cherry hill in bloom. And I cannot help but picture the perennials we planted in full bloom too. But a quick stroll on the hill yesterday reminded me that gardening is also about pulling weeds. So I’ll need to get cracking on that imminently and I didn’t account for this. Doh!
A little off schedule
By now, I’m convinced that those who’ll read this know that Daniel and I are structured people. In fact, a lot of planning goes into everything we do. From planning our crops to the garden and the next step of our business we have a road map and we follow it. But it does feel that this year our timing is a little off.
It’s funny how the timeline that one has in their mind sometimes does not match the one on paper.
For example, according to our timeline, we should start building the ice cream kiosk in 9 days. And there’s no way we’ll be ready to start the job then. So it looks like phase 1 of our business will need to be revisited a little.
Adapt and overcome
With a rough plan and mock-ups of what we’d love the ice cream kiosk to look like. It was then time to get some quotes for the building materials.
Yikes, we thought inflation was bad when we built but it seems that it’s not gotten better since we last bought building materials. Overall, to build the ice cream kiosk our hamlet deserves, it would cost us around 5k today! Now there is no way we can put that sort of money on a building, especially when we hear hotel owners around us saying they don’t even run at 50% occupancy.
So 2023 is a bad year to start a business and invest in infrastructure. So it forces us to adapt and overcome and rethink some of our plans.
The revised business plan to fit an economy in crisis.
If tourists stay home because everyone is broke nowadays, what can we do to get up and running I asked myself. Well, tap into the local market… This means that our priorities have now shifted…

Looking at our context and understanding opportunities.
Having lived in Portugal for 1 ½ years, it’s been easy to make great friends and establish a potential business network. Not only do we know lots of hotel owners, but we also know a few restaurateurs and bar owners.
The word on the street is the same everywhere, people don’t travel and don’t spend money on luxuries. Thus, it’s key for us to find a little gap in the market that we can fulfil to put bread on our table. If infrastructures are out of the question, maybe what we need to do is get a product to market and generate sales to finance expansion.
Our requirements. (yeah you know that was coming)
- Reach local people with an affordable product to produce that’ll stand out on the shelve.
- Create a product that’ll require little equipment to make and keep.
- Create a product that is easy to pack.
- Create a product that’ll be appealing to locals.
What’s happening right now?

Despite the difficult economy, some established hotels as still opting to invest in infrastructure. It’s the case for our friend Henrique at Mosterinho who’s currently building what we have called an Olympic size swimming pool. This pool of his represents a business opportunity for us.
Indeed, Henrique plans to sell relaxing day passes to local folks. So we thought, ok what could be more relaxing than to eat a locally made ice cream by the pool? By making our own ice cream and delivering it in key spots, it’ll give us the chance to test recipes, discover favourites and of course, generate some revenue too.
So what we decided to do.
We’re still juggling with the thought of making ice cream cones, ice cream sandwiches or ice cream bars. But one thing is sure, we will be making ice cream this summer and we’ll be selling it to folks who visit our friends’ hotel. We can also sell it to locals who visit restaurants and need a bit of refreshment. But first, we need to learn to make ice cream and buy a freezer and an ice cream machine. Ho well, this too will happen at the right time we’re convinced of this.
Infrastructure wise. Initially, we had budgeted around 1.5k for the kiosk. While inflation means all prices increased, our build budget is still the same. So what we decided to do is to be on the lookout for a mini caravan that we could refurbish this summer and hopefully be up and running late summer or next.
Caravans are not easy to find.
Sure folks would say finding a used caravan is easy. Yet, these folks forget that the caravan needs to fit between the narrow road at the top of our land. So we’re not looking for a big one, and these are hard to come by at a good price because they are vintage.
Another thing is that our budget has not increased. But that’s ok. In Portugal trading between people is common. So maybe, we can make a deal with someone who owns a caravan like this and do some carpentry work in exchange for the good.
While the current economical contexts force us to rethink things. We still have much fate that life will bring us exactly what we need and at a right time. We just need to be open to changing our vision and be open to different opportunities.
The new vision


The dream
