Living green in Uruguay!

As many of you might know by now, Clara, KC and I have decided to move to Uruguay. A big part of this choice relates to the vision of manifesting a life style, where we spend more quality time with Nature (KC has been a big proponent of this initiative - the leash and the restrictions to freely pursue squirrels have made him a firm believer of life in the fields).

So aligned with this intention, we have purchased a 6 hás (almost 15 acres) piece of land just outside (25 kms | 15.5 miles) Montevideo. For many of my friends who live in the city, this seems way too far... and for Uruguayan standards it certainly is. Right now, from the perspective of living in LA, it seems almost insignificant... we will have to see how it feels on daily basis.

In any case, the most important criteria to select the place, was too find a piece of land that had plenty of trees, and we did! We are so excited. It's not as easy as one would imagine. Most of what was available was 'pelado' (without trees). Either because it has been used for agricultural purposes or because people in need resort to selling the wood for profit (I already had some proponents!). Well, this place is awesome... no matter where you are all you see are trees. We have as explained by my friend Santiago (who makes a living cutting down forests and selling the wood), three types of eucalyptus and several fruit trees - a great start for our organic farming.

Talking about organic and this new lifestyle that we are envisioning... we found that the land is full of tics (garrapatas). It turns out that the wasy way out to get rid of them (the chemical bomb approach) it's not compliant with our plan to have an organic non pesticides farm... so given our limited knowledge (thus far) probably we will have a green farm and a chemical dog! :) We'll keep you posted on this adventure... we (including KC) remain committed to the green approach!

We intend to host in the beautiful place a sustainable green (perhaps off the grid?) home. Constructions is due to start sometime between March and April. Clara and my father will be leading the efforts. I'll keep you posted on the developments.

Below you can see an aerial view of the land! Keep you posted! Martin.