Ask HN: SWE who started an organic farm in Europe, where did you go?
Interested in stories of (ex-) software engineers who started a different life and run now a farm (maybe just on the side).
Which place did you seek out and why?
Which place did you seek out and why?
He’s definitely French.
More details: https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/should-y...
- What prompted you to make that switch to rural developer?
- Are you an expat or French? If an expat, what was your pre-France life like?
- What is cost of living like, and how does that compare with your salary?
- Does/did your salary get affected by your remote location?
My wife's parents live in the countryside. Coming from an urban place, I enjoyed being surrounded by nature. Best thing for me is coding under a tree, listening to birds.
It's my life journey, I was't happy in cities. I just found my balance in that way but it took us time to find the right place (not to remote, not to expansive, not to "old", etc...).
- Are you an expat or French? If an expat, what was your pre-France life like?
French.
- What is cost of living like, and how does that compare with your salary?
It is really subjective but I feel like living in abundance. Earning 50k€/yr after all taxes (working 30 hours a week, 10 weeks OFF). I bought the farm for 300k€. Standard houses (100m2 with 1000m2 garden) are loaned for 600€/month around here.
- Does/did your salary get affected by your remote location?
I have always worked remotely so no change at all.
Wow, that's insanely good!
Can I ask how to find such a great job? I live in Austria and make 50k€/yr BEFORE taxes, 40h/week, 5 weeks off, significantly worse off than you, but that seems to be the norm in this country.
Almost 15 years ago I came to Vienna as a sysadmin with 5-10 years of experience for a ~2.5-3kE net monthly salary. I left the country after a few years and around 2017 I came back for over 100kE still for sysadmin/Citrix/automation work (this included the usual 13th salary). Was it just my luck?
You're basically making six figure salary for much less work than 40h/week, and at a small company while WFH to boot. Unreal. :)
How common is that in France?
Huge boost for my mental health - I can go for beautiful walks anytime I want, the local village has a huge sense of community, I've been spending more time with my family (which I'd neglected while building my career abroad over the last 15 years), the food is so tasty and all local, I'm very close (~30 min drive) to mid sized cities, and my cost of living necessities is not even 1k euro a month...
The one downside is that dating is pretty close to impossible. Pretty much anyone over the age of 25 has kids, and it's not in tiny mountain villages that you'll find people who are into the same kind of nerdy multicultural things that you are. (the postwoman is pretty cute but huh that seems like a bad idea). I've been back in the bay area for work since, but turns out "I spend most of my time on a farm in rural Europe" is a turnoff for city people, YMMV.
So definitely do it after you're partnered, if that matters to you.
Any blog about your buy experience?
Any Tipps?
Are you doing both SWE job and farming, as the OP? If so, how do find time for walks etc.? I imagine farming itself is very time-intesive activity.
I guess I won't starve if my beans don't make it, which is a nice privilege for sure.
Also not having kids helps a lot with remaining master of your time and energy :)
Great local produce and strong farming culture. My neighbours have been here for generations.
I think you mean seems like a very cute romantic comedy!
Totally agree, partner before.
Tarn is pretty young and dynamic though, lots of associations (permaculture, ecology, etc..).
I'm surprised that most of my neighbors in my 1800 people village are relatively young (30s/40s) with kids, again I had this image that it would only be old farmers.
That's a Curb Your Enthusiasm plot. Beware if you want to reset the relationship!
50€ for truly unlimited traffic.
Fiber coming next year in all the Tarn!
I'm from Germany and France countryside is so much cheaper than anything in Germany, looks nice and they have great food.
I also want to work remote and actually can.
Do you have more to share? Blog? Email? Are you from France?
Any knowledge on building code?
Did you check future proves like water table?
Sorry no blog. Email in my profile, we can have a zoom.
> Any knowledge on building code?
I am a developper since 10 years.
> Did you check future proves like water table?
I did my research, looks ok to me. Long topic.. Got a well and 8m3 of buried tank currently, planning to build 10m3 more. But I am not a prepper.
If France has cheaper real estate than Germany then you could be much better off there even if the cost of groceries is higher.
Sure, if it were cheaper then less of your money would go towards your mortgage. And if wages in France were cheaper than in Germany upkeep and repairs would be cheaper. And if English were their national language, you'd not have to learn French. None of that is true of course but if it were we could rave about it on HN.
We bought an old farm in the east of Bretagne. I'm mostly into growing trees. What kind of farming equipment do you own for 2ha ? It's too big for growing anything by hand, but not that much for a big tractor
They're simple enough machines and you can still find parts for them; if you want to add machining to your skillset, you can also find the manuals that tell you how to machine new parts yourself.
If you speak spanish go and ask in the agroterra forums.
I am not a farmer, and I don't enjoy spending my time cutting grass, that's why I am planning on adding small animals as they eat grass all day. I am trying to minimize the "human" part of the land, so I am using basic thermic tools (mower, brush cutter...) to cut grass and trees.
I was under the impression that it would (soon) be too dry.
Youtube and concret experiences (eg : start with urban farming in shared garden).
En https://www.youtube.com/c/RichardPerkinsofRidgedale https://www.youtube.com/c/jamesprigioni
Fr https://www.youtube.com/c/AgricultureVivri%C3%A8re https://www.youtube.com/c/LepotagerdOlivier https://www.youtube.com/c/AntoinelePotagiste https://www.youtube.com/c/PermacultureFrance
Are you extroverted or introverted?
Are they mostly nosy or indifferent?
Also, do you find younger neighbors easier to connect with or age doesn't matter?
Thanks!
I'm inspired, and I'd love to hear more. I'm curious about the prices: I spent a while just now looking up real estate and saw land ranging from 3,000eur (in accessible, no road) to 80,000eur (inaccessible, no road, but near a village) for about the same area, a hectare or so, in the east near the Alps. I don't know enough about France to know if I was looking in a particularly representative area: for interest, my goal would be to live in a stone house (maybe one I built myself) in deeply mid-European forest (oaks, etc) near hilled mixed forest/farmland or near forested mountains.
I'm looking at Estonia for the same reason (plus I live there already.) Few hills and no mountains, and a long winter, but it is a very forested country, and very high-tech.
Make sure you’re making very little money before moving to Slovenia (very high taxes although you can avoid most of them by earning less than 100k EUR)
That said, I’m software and she’s finance so we might be able to find something
I think you only need to visit the country once a year. Lawyer writeups seem to confirm this: https://www.immigrationspain.es/residencia-por-compra-vivien...
AFAIK, yes you can convert it to permanent residency and it is quite easy.
There are other easier routes, for example if you have Jewish ancestry or if you are a national of many countries in South America.
I am trying to make a business combining the two extremes. I sell rural or remote wilderness land with a high-tech solar off grid tiny house with very good internet for around $50.000. At any moment I have around 10 suitable plots of land on offer. The best are in nature reserves, the largest 100 acres. It takes on average 24 months or more to find land, get permits, build the road, water, electricity and internet infrastructure and move the mobile tiny house onto the land. Spain, Portugal and Arizona mostly.
This is for programmers and other remote workers, retirees or people who can't afford a house in the city. Since Covid there has been an large increase in people moving to remote rural locations. Most of them homestead, some take on the #vanlife.
A new trend will be permanent living in a mobile house, RV, bus, truck while working remotely. This only becomes affordable with Starlink and an electrical truck completely plated with solar panels. Water is purified onboard.
I expect the trend of going rural or mobile to increase even more in the next 10 years. I'm looking for cofounders to accommodate this increase in my business niche.
Asimov and Larry Niven wrote some science fiction stories before 1970 on this theme. When Star Trek transporters become possible, you could go live remotely on or inside a mountain or another planet.
Chris Stewart's "Driving Over Lemons" is a nice book describing the move into the country.
I currently send out a spreadsheet brochure every week with new rural lands and tiny or mobile house and van conversion options to choose from. I do virtual tours around the nature reserve or farm lands online, augmented by Google Earth and Streetview tours with video conference sessions. I shoot video tours and photo galleries of the available lands and houses. Most of the time its more like a coaching session, explaining how to get a visa, how to find reliable remote programming jobs, how to get a loan. Explaining why its very hard to make the transition without my professional help.
Some want to buy a turnkey house, land and infrastructure. This is possible but moving to a rural existence is much more involved than these customers think. A sales website would not convey this, this is why I prefer online tours and discussions.
morphle at ziggo dot nl to request my brochures or book a personal tour. I'm looking for cofounders and sales people (on commission).
I constantly search around the world, but most lands do not qualify because of local political rules. My best is a 100 acre(!) forest on the slope of a mountain. I have several mountain plots with a whitewater river flowing all year. Land plots with an entire forest or lake.
I tried to offer land in Kazachstan, Ukrain, Bangladesh, India, Argentina, Costa Rica, Australia and the Amazon rainforest but either foreigners are not allowed to own land or it is without Starlink or fiber backbones where not available or the country is involved in a war.
Above $50K (including the land, mobile house and infrastructure) I have a lot more offerings worldwide. Islands in Belize or very remote pacific islands, but you need a boat so its more than $50K. Desert locations, but you must have 4WD and only have two satelite or radio 100mbps connections and need multiple batteries, no fiber. Medical facilities only by plane or helicopter.
No electricity, has to truck in water, nearest paved road is 45 minutes, closest big box store (Costco) is in Phoenix, dirt roads flood when it rains and he has to camp out in the post office parking lot when it snows so he doesn’t get stuck trying to go work.
And he loves it…
So I have set up a few companies (a Coop, a non-profit and C-Corp, LTD, B.V.) in the Netherlands just for this purpose. You register yourself as a cofounder/owner of this company (free) and put $4500 in the company bank account. You now qualify for a working visa and can start roaming all over the EU.
I'm a little vague here, because I want to sell you all the advice and legal work to set all this up for $1000. You first get advice from all the other Americans I helped emigrate to Europe over the years. morphle at ziggo dot nl
Without my help it will cost you a few months, three visits to the Netherlands, setting up a company from scratch and hiring a notary, a lawyer and an expat fiscal tax lawyer for at least $19.000 all together.
Are you referring to DAFT? Isn't this only for NL though? Also don't you actually have to show that one of your companies is making money or they won't renew your visa after a year or so?
I must give the standard HN disclaimer though, I can't give legal advise in public, I can not give legal advise here without knowing your individual situation. Talk to you lawyer instead.
The whole point of the turnkey house+land+permits+visa+remote working+infrastructure package we make brochures, a community website and a Coop for is that you need legal support on top of the land buying, (off-grid) house building and electricity/fast internet, water recycling and remote working. We can't give legal advise in public, we can just warn you that is complicated.
A friend of mine is building entirely off-grid in Finland: https://medium.com/@upnorthandoffgrid
I’m not that interested in off-grid, but I am in a nice plot of land with nature, a decent home on it (as sustainable as possible) that I can use for a few months/year.
Let me know once you launch a site.
With so many interested people I think we should set up an online community. It could grow into the support network for us remote rural people worldwide. I'll add the myrad links to the biographies, blogs, vlogs, websites, articles and resources. I'll put up this website at http://ruralremote.org and a backup at http://fiberhood.org within 24 hours
The reason I offer rural land plus working visa plus a tiny house and infrastructure as a package is that it is very hard to arrange all this by oneself, especially for city people. It took me three years fulltime work, thousands of hours of video and many failures before I was successful. But its all worth it, off course! Waking up with deer drinking at your own river, walking for an hour through your own forest to reach the edge, getting lost on your own land, planting an acre of trees, planting and eating your own food, having meetings with customers from all around the world with a laptop under a palm tree, it really is as magical as I thought it would be.
But you still need at least a $1000 income from remote work and a visa, without it its even harder to make remote living work at all. Maybe we can help you find that remote work too, now that we have a large group of interested people.
More than 50% of people who attempt it wound up broke, ill or destitute, giving up after 10 year at moving to a rural off-grid existence.
Don’t be fooled by the low land prices, it is the easy part. Building and living permits and working visa are hard. Anyone can get an acre of land for $1000 in most of the US and Europe. Few can actually live there for more than a year (cold, drought, crime).
Cheap land is not the problem you have to solve. How to be warm in the winter, how to make a living when the nearest town is 2 hours driving, what to do when you are sick and 300km from a hospital, where you get the money to buy food or transport. How to find a partner or how to deal with loneliness.
I’l sell you an almost turnkey solution but you still need months of planning and preparation while your custom tiny house is being built (or existing house being renovated). I sell you my construction labour for $8K, $15K internet,electrical heating and water infrastructure, $21K house building materials, $6K legal fees and experience from a network of people who have made the transition.
As a Spaniard, I'm curious on how you're dealing with the amount of BS most municipialities throw at you, specially construction permits.
Also, why don't you make it as a community? I mean, it would be way easier to pool resources, make it cheaper for your customers and a more stable income for you, although they wouldn't be owners but renters.
Also, IDK in Portugal but getting on-grid electricity and internet (even fiber, if you're not too remote) shouldn't be a problem in Spain
I am making it a community site, with a HN type discussion forum and video blog hosting.
Fiber internet outside of a town is very much a problem in Spain! Electricity hookup (its called 'Solar' in Spanish) is almost impossible because you first need building and living permits and you simply will never ever get one. In Portugal its usually even harder. Laws are different in Arizona but still a big problem. You might need permission from the local tribe, or bridge a few hundred miles with microwave dishes as a backup to your Starlink. Having reliable electricity at night requires inverters and batteries that are not for sale yet, they must be custom built. And then you still need road access to your cheap rural land...
These are the reasons my company needs to help you find suitable land, get the permits and build your tiny house, because you can not do all that on your own, especially the electricity, water and internet you need for remote work.
First you need a community of rural land owners to fund the (minimal $25K) infrastructure build out . My company Fiberhood sets up a 300 Mbps Starlink Premium for Business ($9000 for the first year) on your land with 4G backup antennes and then builds a local fiber network to all the farms in the neighbourhood. After 12 months we hook up the fiber to the fiber backbone 100 km away, then you get 10 Gbps for around $99 per month on your rural land, fit for running a remote business.
As a Spaniard you point out the BS the municipalities (Ajuntamente) throw at you about permits. Don't forget the regional governments, the tax department, the electricity companies, etc. All over Europe this is a problem, but rural Spain and Portugal are especially difficult. This is why we only offer off-grid living in a few dozen locations this year. Only these locations where we have already managed to convince the local governments to give us permission, or place where we have found legal loopholes in the law. One example I can give is land in a nature reserve where you will never get a building permit for any house. But you are allowed to park a truck in that forest and live in it. In other places we get permits on our land because we build infrastructure to the local town as well. But you alone would never get that building or living permit, ever. You need to befriend the local technical architect and the mayor, buy them a couple of beers and have you children play soccer with them for a year before they will even listen to your building proposals that took you $5000 to draw up by another technical architect you hire. And it would still take a few years to get the 11 or so permits you need. We figure all this out for you, build the infrastucture and make a liveable house. You can off course do some of that work yourself (on top of your remote work you also do) but you still need our help in the first 2 years with permits and infrastructure.
Interesting. Is this an intentional thing i.e."We don't want people to live outside of towns so we're not going to issue any occupancy permits", or a bureaucratic incompetence/corruption thing?
For example, you can not build on rural land outside of town, not on farm land or on nature reserves. The government owns the water, you can't just digg a well. You can only get permission to build a tool shed in some areas if you own at least 5000m2. The police will evict you if you start building or living on your land, tipped off by the neighbours who don't like foreigners or competition from your farm. If you rent out your house to tourist, you'll need a permit and pay more taxes. And anything is slow, you'll run out of money much quicker than the government runs out of ways to delay you. Watch the 17 years of Dutch episodes (thru a dutch VPN) of "Ik Vertrek" for all the horror stories of people buying land or houses in Europe and losing all their money.
Maybe I would say that for ISPs there are plenty in rural Spain happy to lay fiber if you can assure them enough recurring revenue.
Even with the not so small ones like Adamo you have a chance of getting fiber laid.
My biggest problem (besides having stock photo pictures of national reserves as "brochure" (including a photo of an eagle - what does it have to do with anything?), and basically a completely lack of actual facts) is that I cannot figure out what is the business in all this for YOU?
The only thing I can imagine is that you are not really selling land (actually, these are not even your properties atm, are they?), but you are planning to buy some of these properties for your company using the money of punters, split them to smaller pieces, and then somehow lease them / sell them on. Which might be acceptable for some people I guess - but not exactly as "advertised"...
As you very rightly described, buying some land is not really the biggest hurdle - it is the administrative costs, the transportation, the time spent etc. And then there is the value of the know-how. Even if you know everything, it is a lot of extra work, and there is no way someone would do it for the price you mentioned (€50k fully inclusive?) ANYWHERE in Europe. I'm from the Eastern part of Europe, and even there, this would be a "steal" (ie. an unbelievably good price).
So I'd be very skeptical about this whole story, and remember, if something is too good to be true, it probably is. I'd be happy to be proven wrong though. Do you have anything _real_ to prove your story? Land+houses that you _have_ built and sold? Contacts to previous customers for references?... Any physical location people can visit and have a look around?
Burned out on startup hours and the hamster wheel of tech and realized I was barely spending any time with my young family. I always wanted to help and learn how my in-laws made such incredible wine, olive oil, and cured meats.
My SO is Croatian, so the move itself wasn't that difficult. The culture shock was real, though, and developing fluency in a totally new language in my 30s was, in retrospect, a full time job that I badly underestimated.
The change in pace of life, horizon expansion, new relationships, learning adventures, and the pride in bottling my very own extra virgin, organic, hand-picked olive oil... Worth every struggle even at twice the cost.
A directory of farmers that allow volunteers in exchange for room and board (that is the default but there is also plenty that also provide extras like small stipends and training). Little hard to do if you already have a family but great if you are single and want to see what farming is like.
Turns out, most people value you less if you give away your time and energy for almost free, instead of value you more.
For short times it might be fine, as the initial welcome may still balance some of that. But any longer term and you’ll likely feel an imbalance.
I'll do this on the side so I can have a place to stay, food to eat, and a "base" to keep my stuff at. I'll keep traveling in the summers, keep doing software engineering. I'll also have RV spaces to rent out and also for WWOOFers
It took about 2 years to be an integral part of the community in spain; Portugal took a few months and we don’t speak Portuguese yet because everyone understands English and with Spanish Portuguese is not hard to understand. But all communications are in English really.
No children (by choice) so cannot say anything about that.
Really interesting! Can you provide ballpark as to prices. I know 3-4 families from NYC area that moved to Portugal recently. If you wish to buy a vineyard here, in a choice location, you'll be priced out at like $50k per acre. If you can even find a plot of tillable land available that covers 50+ acres. Alternately, Amazon is subletting 10M of warehouse space in NJ, so you could grow grapes indoors?
CERN / Swiss Alps / French Burgundy region also looks like it has potential for those seeking the "Château de Guédelon" medieval lifestyle ;)
The cheapest regions in France are probably in the center, in Seine et Loire I saw many offers for very cheap houses.
Be careful about buying medieval ruins: they can be cheap but they come with a VERY heavy regulatory framework. You have almost no freedom in how you will rebuild something that is classified as a historical monument and the cost of work and maintenance will be several times the buying cost there.
[0] https://www.europeantax.blog/post/102h41p/thinking-of-moving...
>"But let's not get ahead of ourselves, as the draft bill still has to pass through Congress unscathed."
Do you know if this draft bill ended up passing? I wasn't able to find much about it's current status.
What resources would you recommend for people looking to move to the Porto region.
And what sort of budget should one have?
I still do iOS development professionally — but now fully remote from the farm.
Climate was our biggest consideration in choosing the region. I don’t know that any place will completely escape the challenges of climate change — fire is something we have to plan for an adapt to for instance.
Anyone interested can follow the Instagram account we set up to share updates of what we’re up to:
Schools are closing one after the other. The countryside is littered with abandoned schools. People there are despaired to see their cities shrink.
When we arrived from Tokyo with a young kid, we were more than welcomed and locals helped us localize the best houses for us.
* It’s bad for people who don’t own a house, which disproportionately impacts the poor and the young.
* It doesn’t really help homeowners either: their property taxes go up but the increased land value will just be spent on the increased cost of a new property if they move nearby.
* So the only way to realise increased land value is to move outside the local market. This turnover reduces the community of a neighbourhood, and creates pockets of dull old homogeneous people with no shared history.
* The only real way to benefit from rising prices is to invest in property, further concentrating wealth among the wealthy.
* Treating one of society’s most important assets as an investment has a ton of negative side effects, like poor utilisation due to land banking, cheaply finished low quality buildings rather than ones that vest serve their occupants, evictions, further increased community turnover.
* It’s a self perpetuating cycle, as the wealthy investors vote, lobby, and just straight up are politicians.
https://cirkularodling.se/build-an-aquaponic-indoor-farm-par...
what do you want to know?
worked for a year doing that.
made friends with a master carpenter i worked with and we teamed up to start the business.
im designing a system for remote watering control.
im always looking to optimize.
I am drawn to the tech scene beacause or the intellectual exchanges, and I am worried farming communities might not be where I can thrive!
Other than that: Income. How did you adjust to a lower level income in the beginning?
I find I have much more interesting and intellectual conversations with people outside of tech.
No truer words have ever been written...
Out at the farm its real easy to meet people and make new friends. Your neighbors will go out of their way to come meet you, and are overwhelmingly friendly. If you are friendly, well spoken, honest, not inflammatory, cooperative; then you will do fine. People are helpful and there is an air of reciprocity. In town its more difficult, but that is the same anywhere.
> I am drawn to the tech scene beacause or the intellectual exchanges, and I am worried farming communities might not be where I can thrive!
I learn a tremendous amount from the locals. But i have an expanded sense of what is interesting. I dabble in just about everything. Yes the available intellectual stimulation has changed. People arent particularly tech savvy here. There are a fair number of science and medical folk. Intelligent people are distributed everywhere, but it would be up to you to find them and stoke their interest in technology.
I would say there is a market opportunity in starting up a coding bootcamp here. If i had more time and resources I would start one.
> Other than that: Income. How did you adjust to a lower level income in the beginning?
I have no debt for one. I have no dependents. And i reduced my standard of living temporarily, lived in a trailer on the land.
I was making $15 an hour for the year i was learning. Now, the business (first contract was in Jan 2022) is producing more than enough for me to live on. And i have passive income from the farm, for now, while i make the necessary improvements. it produces a ~2% dividend, which i re-invest.
I have definitely made a fair number of tradeoffs. But it is a vast improvement on how my life was going before. I was depressed. I think the whole city lifestyle induced depression in me, and led me to cope in unhealthy ways. I'm now in the best shape of my life, and im happy. And i'm slowly building a network of people i enjoy being around, something i didnt have nearly enough of living in the bay area. No support real structure. I have one here, already, 2 years in. On the other hand, its far more physical. But i wanted that after 13 years of sitting.
Where/how did you learn?
For allotments, the RHS and the NSALG are the places to go, they have information on growing, allotment etiquette, seasonal produce etc:
https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/beginners-guide/allotment-basi...
As for permaculture, I follow this magazine, which is worth every penny:
And as for finding an allotment, there's a handy gov.uk service that will tell you which local authority to get in touch with:
https://www.gov.uk/apply-allotment
Most allotment sites have a waiting list, but there's always some turnover as people lose interest (or in some cases, die of old age!).
I grew up on the country side and I always dreamed of having a small homestead, with some animals and living a quiet life. I've been living a nomadic life for about 8 years when I decided it was time, 3 years ago. I found an old farm (5000m2) I could rent temporarily until I found my own place near my home in The Netherlands. It got out of hand pretty quickly with 30+ chickens, ducks, gees, a couple of pigs and goats. I was really loving it.
Unfortunately I didn't expect the pandemic to turn into a crazy frenzy where everybody seemed to flock to places where nobody wanted to live before. Rest to say my plan to buy something near my hometown failed for now.
Currently I'm in Galicia (Spain) looking to buy an old 1 to 2 hectare farm. The climate is great here, it's lush and green everywhere and there are affordable farms to find.
It is the kind of farm that appeals for those who don’t want to wrestle with tractors, are nature lovers, not tech phobic and are ok with farming co-operatively.
Initial stages..so any input on what SWE/farmers really expect would be much appreciated. It would help me figure out what my future tech farmers would want and what they can tolerate.
The main focus is on automating enough so one person is able to handle 1-5 acres(0.5-2 hectares approx) without additional labour. And building a community so there is tool sharing and collectively sell as a co-op.
I have taken in inputs from mostly Americans. I don’t know if something like this will work elsewhere in the world. It’s certainly challenging in the USA…not least because of zoning and certain other issues. Especially in California.
I would probably look at different ways to design the various gardens and fields in a smart way so as to limit work rather than automate it.
Full time farming while amazingly fun and fulfilling is really hard physical work.
When I came back to engineering a lot had changed quickly. Took years to “catch up” and overall it was a struggle to return.
Glad I took the wine away though.
Pfaf.org plants for a future
Ic.org intentional communities
Basically "unproductive" land is/should be cheap, being out of the hustle and bustle of city life is great for clearing your mind, travel to a warmer climate (or snug it down) in the winter, consider it'll take you about a decade but your barren land can become a real cornucopia... There's a feel good film out there called "the biggest little farm"https://youtu.be/UfDTM4JxHl8
This is easy to do if you are an US citizen. I wonder how us, poor Europeans, can do the same thing.
So the trick's to be Western/Northern European, and move to Southern Europe. /s
There's still plenty of remote opportunities with good pay in Europe that could sustain this kind of living.
Is it? Isn't there the issue that you can't just move to the EU as a US citizen unless you get hired by a European company which means no more SV salary.
What do we need to know? Any resources you recommend we check out?
Now I'm starting to look again. Greece seems to have very cheap land, on various islands you could even get a płot for with a sea view for less than 50k€
We just bought (2 weeks ago) 7ha farm from southern Finland. We've been dreaming of it for 10 years but finally the time was right and a perfect place came along. We will move there in August. First season we are gonna just settle down and do some small scale homesteading (chickens, goats for milk and vegetables) but our plan is to start farming food for sale as well in the long run. Don't know if I'm ever able to drop from tech - not even sure if I want to - but plan is to do consulting (well, subcontracting) gigs during winters and focus on farming during summers. Let's see how it goes.
I am cofounder of an online community for software developpers interested in agro-ecology and resilience. It is called TheRemoteTribe.cp. We are on Slack. We share tips for growing and cooking our products, tips to reach some self sufficency, hens, bees....
If interested, send me an email and I will send you an invitation : theremotetribe@gmail.com
About myself, engineer, former developper and now I am a Tech recruiter. I work remotely.
Gwenael
https://syntax.fm/show/466/supper-club-coding-burnout-and-ga...
Here's some inspiration from Sweden: https://youtu.be/J_htLIUKX1Y
It is really nice to be able to take a break from coding, step outside, and turn the compost.