The idea!

Rich and I moved to Spain nearly 12 years ago now, started The Orange House in 2003 and work our arses off looking after climbers, stags and hens and families of all shapes and sizes! In 2008 we started to rent small houses away from the main house as we needed "our own space". Paying rent gets to me (actually spending any money on anything gets to me!) so a few months ago I decided we needed to do something about that so started to look at what we could afford to buy.

Even though we have a recession here in Spain what we did have wouldn't get us very much, maybe a car park sized house in the village, but with our growing animals (check out the facebook "farm" page) that was not going to work. I made contact with a local Agent the lovely David and he showed me a few houses for sale. I mentioned to him that what I would really like was to buy land and build something.

He mentioned that he knew someone that was about to split a few plots into 3 and that they might not be too expensive. I was interested and went to have a look at the plots. Only 6 mins drive from The Orange House was the only good thing I could see at first glance! Rich came with me on the second visit and we decided to venture onto the scary track and take a look from up high!

I was gobsmacked by the great views the higher we got and the one great bonus I couldn't hear any dogs barking (the bane of my life in Spain). Rich liked it and the price was great,  I can buy this on my credit card I joked! We arranged a meeting with the owners,found a friend to buy the plot next door (great idea dont you think as his wife hates dogs!) and that was it, decision made lets buy a hillside and build some eco pods!

Now what do we build???? I have watched every episode of Grand Designs, some even more than once, although I hate the revisited ones when they show the "whole" of the original show with a tiny new bit added on the end! whats that all about then? One really stuck in my mind from 2007 I think when a family moved to France to build a house with old truck tires.

I loved the shape of the building, all natural and none square. I think I said to myself at the time "I would love to live in a house like that".

This is a Scottish Earthship, nice and small

As you may know already we have "Oranges" that stay with us at The Orange House and work in exchange for board. When I mentioned this to one of them, Niall said that he had made contact with a couple down south from here and gave me a link to their website www.earthship.es and a seed was planted.