living the dream but feeling like we should run away .....

“too hot”

“too busy”

“can’t earn enough money”

“house is taking forever to build”

“learning to slow down, trust the process but feeling frustrated”

“ 7 year itch seems to be a real thing, reminding myself daily that it will all be worth it in the end & that we are so BEYOND lucky not to be tied down to a bank with a mortgage or giving a rich landlord all of our earnings each month to have nothing to show for it at the end of the day….”

These are the notes i wrote in my journal for this Substack …. in a fit of rage on a 40+ degree day because I was so frustrated with everything back in the Summer. I felt like getting the words out into writing would help me somehow, allow me to scream it out & bash angrily onto my keyboard without actually screaming because Marlley is the only person around who I can scream at! Instead of screaming, we had a conversation & actually left the farm for a few weeks & ran away to the beach. This was in August…. I have not published this post yet until now, it is October, for feelings of shame or embarrassment because here I am complaining about the fact that sometimes this place is just too damn hard. It felt like a lot of privileged moaning, honestly, but I think it is right to tell you all the truth & be honest about the good/bad times we have here & the real life experiences along the way, if I pretended everything was always dandy then I would be lying, I don’t think anybody lives in a perpetual state of happiness or joy.

We have lived on the land since March 2017, we moved to Portugal with a camper van, big dreams & 1000 euros. Marley’s parents have helped us a lot with the big tasks on the land. The bore hole that was so desperately needed because it has hardly any water in the wells during those dry hot months of July & August & the workshop that Marley needed to keep his tools & to be able to work when it is hot / raining etc were the first big jobs that needed doing. They still help us a lot of course because they are wonderful human beings who want us to live the dream but we ( mostly he ) do all of the manual work like the garden, the stone house, renovating the barn we are in currently, building a kitchen, building a shower room, building a toilet, installing hot water, installing electricity, getting water supplied to the whole land etc. All of this has to be done while also earning money - which seems to be in short supply in Portugal, it is not a rich place or is it a place to live if you want to become rich.

Fast forward to now - seven years of hard graft & also starting a pizza business to help us pay for projects to be completed & also to find a passion that we can collaborate on because I really do not enjoy lifting big old rocks.

We currently have a greenhouse in progress, we have a solar system which needs upgrading because it is degrading, we have a half built stone house. I help with what I can. Right now it seems like we will never get to the end of this build, it is dragging on forever & you run out of steam every now & then & almost don’t even want to crack on with it. We just spent a whole year building a hot shower because we have almost no idea what we are doing, we have to learn new skills to complete the task & we definitely do not want to fuck it up, so we take our time & do things correctly or we make mistakes along the way & then we persevere & correct it. You will not find wood screwed together in an effort to slap something up quick sharp on our land, everything that is built is built to last using the granite from the landscape around us & it will last. It will last as long as the buildings that stood there before we arrived, at least. Perhaps the person living there in 100 years time will read this substack & understand the amount of blood, sweat & tears we put into this land & how after 7 years we almost felt like giving up & going back to the physically easier life of the city at times.

I thought I would get this substack out now…. We are back in the UK with family & it is a stark reminder that life in the city in England is not something we want for ourselves or for our family if we decide to have children some day. We are building a dream life, in a paradise, we just have to remember that things take time when you are not working a 9-5 job & earning a regular persons wage & you cannot pay the builders to come in & fix it all up for you.

So todays lesson & reminder to myself is that good things take time, the slow life is a life lived well. It requires effort, determination & grit but the rewards will be great & they already are. We breathe fresh air, we grow our own food, we do not hear the sound of traffic, we never get stuck in traffic jams, we do not have any close neighbours peeping through our window or overhearing us at night, our dog has space to play & be free, our land provides us with fresh fruit all year round, we see the stars in the evening, we make fires outside & listen to music, we play the drums as loud as we want as often as we want & our children will have that too some day.

If you want to come & be a workaway with us then please get in touch :D

We need all the help we can get.

Big hugs! Thanks for reading, I hope it wasn’t too miserable….

Jaymie