“A little bit of country side is good for your soul”

When one arises to go to live in the country side you can have an idea more or less fixed on what is it what you are looking for. It may be that you like nature, the tranquillity of rural life, or to have more contact with reality… You may or not have clear which would be the ideal way to carry on with it. However, until one is not decided to he began to search for information and thinking it might be helpful to get a pen and paper in hand. To know if your project is viable. Who have weighed these issues you probably will feel identified with the proposals I describe below. These are some choices we have considered, trying to find the key to all this mystery.

1) buy a land and live off it.

I think that might be the first idea that will came to your head. You would buy a land, preferably in a isolated area of the province (in all provinces there are sparsely populated areas that come out cheaper), in our case and knowledge we talk about Matarraña in Aragon, Spain.  Become a farmhouse, restore a ruin house and live on the  land. This idea from our point of view has quickly became unsustainable for one fundamental reason:  you will need a very big property to be able to get a income of the land productivity, a part from cash to buy clothing, gasoline, tractor, etc… This idea may be good for those who want to live in a completely independent way, but we still think is more a utopia than a reality.

What could be possible is to grow your own food and vegetable for your day-to-day living as well as having some hens.

• Pros: it allows you to live directly in contact with nature.
• Cons: must be savings for investment in land, house and starting the land going to grow ecological food. Field-related businesses are not now very profitable small-scale.

2) buy a property and work in the village

This is another possible option, use the land as in the previous case to feed you, but then set up a business based on a traditional craft in the municipality to which you will belong.

In this way you could live in the countryside developing an artisanal work that would allow you to develop your creativity. Carpentry, work with skins, blacksmithing, pottery, works with fabrics, mills, bakeries, are some of the possible options.

Pros: you would live in the countryside and you could stock up on what you do, not produce.

Cons: initial capital for land, House and business. It must have skills with the craftsmanship and devote time to specialize to be professional.

“The earth has music for those who listen” (Shakespeare)

3) Internet working

If you ideally have a job that you can do from home, like business assistant, consultant, community manager, E-marketing, webmasters, sales…etc… you could live in the countryside and develop your job surrounded by nature.

Pros: You can do your own activity from home, surrounded by nature and beautiful countryside.

Cons: You might need to travel now and then to your bushiness centre in Barcelona, Madrid, London, Paris… but you might find this interesting too.

4) B&& Rural Hotel

I nice option is to build a guest house and share with your customers you day-today living. This will give you a nice income while you are enjoying life. You can use selling platforms like www.bookings.com or www.tripadvisor.com to advise your B&B rural hotel.

Pros: You can live and work on your house, share your knowledge about living in the countryside with new people and making friends.

Cons: If you have the cash to develop the project I wouldn’t think on much problems about this option.

Nuestra Posada in Lledó is a clear example of this last point: http://www.nuestraposada.com/