Arriving on our permaculture farm

We have arrived!​​​​​​ We made it to our farm with most of our belongings and the big migration was a success. I’m writing this article one month after our arrival in France. In this article I will look back at the last weeks in the Netherlands and the start of our dream project in France. 

Last week in the Netherlands

It was quite intense to have to move out of our rental apartment in Bussum but we were working towards it for a while. We had to empty the house and completely clean it to get our deposit back. The 1300 euro deposit was money we could really use for our project, for a chicken coop for instance. But moving out of our apartment and finding other places to stay was quite intense. At the end it turned out all fine, I had some quality time with my parents and Sander and Khymo where welcomed in Amsterdam. Amber already made the move back to her parents a week before we had to move out. We all had a great new year’s eve surrounded by our loved ones. 

The move

On January 3rd Khymo and Sander drove a dangerously full trailer to France and I made the same way with my former employer Jos and an 8 meter long trailer to get our greenhouse to France. When Jos and I arrived later that night Khymo and Sander made the living room nice and cozy and had the fire already going. We spent the next day unloading the trailer and showing our place to Jos. We are very grateful for his help.

A lot of stuff

Previously we had decided that we would work one year extra in the Netherlands before we would make the move to France. This gave us a lot of time to gather stuff that might be useful for our project… and now, after we really had made the move we found out that we had all this stuff everywhere around but still couldn’t find the things we needed. So our first priority was simple: Organize! We sorted all our things out upstairs and bought two pretty closets at a Brocante to put in the additional kitchen. Sander built a temporary workshop so from now on tools can be found in no time. This made everything a lot simpler. 

Priority list

We bought a whiteboard to write down our priorities and tasks for the following days. Because we had some delays with connecting our electricity we temporarily got power from our neighbors. It’s really nice that we have such lovely people living next to us. 

Working on the list

On top of the list was “getting firewood”. We still had a little bit of wood from a dead apple tree that was lying on our field for years, but we needed a bigger supply to get us through the winter. We decided to try to get a local supplier of wood. Our Dutch neighbour and friend Chris told us he knew a farmer that had storage very close that we could try. We met him and a week later he delivered a very big pile (5m3) of wood on our doorstep. Unfortunately the blocks are almost all 60cm so we need to cut them before they fit in the stove. So now the wood warms us twice…

Freetime

We were working hard and got quite some things done around the house, like installing a bath and toilet, a solar panel and a Starlink internet connection. We also built a shelter at the back of the house. We soon noticed that it is not always possible to get the productivity that you want out of your day. Some days you get a lot of work done and some days you spend the whole day getting hold of one piece of hardware at the builders shop. The best is to accept this, that’s what we have learned. After all this work we felt we could use some freetime.

We went for a hike at Fosse d’Arthour and La Petite Chapelle in Mortain Bocage. It’s great to be able to start working on our project but we realised we really need those moments in nature away from all the work to keep enjoying it. And we didn’t move to France to work all the time but also to enjoy the beautiful landscapes and surroundings.

Our Landscape

At our place we were also thinking a lot about the landscape and our permaculture design. We had decided where we were going to build our polytunnel and veggie gardens. For designing our food forest and tree systems we wanted to take some more time to observe the land and get to know it a little bit more. Trees take a lot of time to grow and to not waste this time we decided to start a little tree nursery. By doing this we save money because we have bigger trees to plant next year. We will make another article on how we build this tree nursery precisely and what kind of interesting trees we have chosen to improve our soil and permaculture systems. 

Speaking French

We were very happy to welcome Loly to our farm. She stayed with us for a couple of days and helped us a lot. Her being French made it a lot easier to go to the local tree grower to get some rootstock for our fruit trees. We had made an appointment to meet with the Mairie of our local municipality the same time that Loly visited so she could help us understand the local council. This was needed because our French is not on the level we want it to be. The visit went very well, we felt welcome in the community and learned quite some things about regulations for building a polytunnel for instance. We spent a day showing Fosse d’Arthour to Loly and took a day trip to the famous Mont Saint Michel. The popular tourist attraction was quiet this time of year and we were impressed by its beauty. 

Summery of our lessons

1. Plan and take time to pack your move.
2. Organise all your belongings. 
3. Accept that you can’t always be as productive. 
4. Stay free and enjoy nature
5. Save time and money with a tree nursery.

We have started to build our polytunnel and are planning on building a chicken compost factory and a worm farm. We will keep you updated on these projects in future articles and we also plan on making youtube videos. The house renovation is simultaneously advancing and we will also make an update on this on our website.I hope you enjoyed this article and thank you for reading.

Lots of love from all of us