Hidden caves stone hut food forest stealth homestead walkthrough

We'd been looking for a while for a piece of land where we could try things out. Then one day a listing popped up, a little forgotten plot with a shepherd's hut tucked into the hills near our place outside Barcelona. So this is the road we use to go for a run. There you go, you can really see that forest with the little shepherd's cabin that's the place. It just felt right so we bought it based on a couple of photos. Here is a fig tree. This is the path leading to the shepherd's hut and the little cave. Wow this is beautiful. Here tucked away by the trees you have a nice place to sit here. I can see that while they were working on the fields generations ago some people would just come here. So here the annex cave and the little shepherd's cabin that I didn't know but has views to the only lake, an old reservoir in the middle of a park. Unfortunately I didn't bring the light so I'll bring it tomorrow. And I'll show you inside. 7 in the morning. As you can hear the forest is waking up. Look at these massive boulders here. I'm gonna need help to repair some of this stuff. This is the edge of our property. Can you notice how thick is this? This property is by a castle that is from 12th century. I bet these walls have many, many, many, many centuries. So the perimeter of the property there is one side where the wall is basically crumbled. There was a big thick wall here so it's going to be fun to rebuild this. It's a beautiful sunny day in the fall. See all the moss. Let's go down to the cabin. This is one of the things that I like the most about this property. This entry. And you cannot fake this. I'm trying not to step on this guy. Another of the sports in the area. People love to get edible mushrooms. And then this plant here is asparagus. So wild asparagus. Another one here. Getting wild asparagus and mushrooms is a real sport. Another friend here. Okay so we arrived. The hermit cave and the cabin. Wow oh wow it's connected to the cave. It's the same space. The generous door. Walls are thick made of dirt and stone. And then you have two little caves in there. One and another one which had one door a long time ago as you can see. One door which we'll try to recover. One of the things I noticed is that the height is spectacular. I cannot even touch the beams. And one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Twelve feet. The square is 10 by 12 steps more than feet. So I would say it's 20 square meters. We can make something interesting here. Then we have 12 more feet in each one of the caves. We have two, one of which, which is this one, had a door. And now the door is gone. This is longer. This one is longer. Has a really long burrow. It's funny that this is just excavated. I think we should keep going in here. There are different, they just excavated different places probably to place objects. And actually they reinforced the door with concrete on both ends. I think they wanted to secure some tools they were probably keeping here. I don't see any damage, any water damage. I do see a tree root. This is a root of an alive tree that is going to remain there. Why not? They actually, there are more roots on top. It's actually the roots of that tree, believe it or not, since it's very dry, this clay, are holding those two caves together. That's why they haven't collapsed despite the fact that they may have decades, if not centuries. Okay, so here maybe some animals did those little burrows. As far as the material goes, this would be the traditional finish in the area. As you can see, there are some stones, but it's mostly this sort of raw and rough clay finish. It's actually very crumbling. It's basically dry stone put together with dirt. It's not even limestone. And then, yes, when they could afford it, there was some natural plaster sometimes. Again, only clay on top of the stone and clay. I don't see any damage in the structure, especially because it was reinforced. There is one remaining hinge for the original door. Metal one, so the door was nice and tight. Two old bottles. There's not even a brand. I don't know how old this can be. It's another little bottle. I can see there was a division. There's a line here. There was some sort of division here. I think there was a room, and before those concrete beams, there was probably some central wooden post just getting some load. As you can see, the back of the house, which is against the level of the dirt behind the house, is up to here, which is probably my height. It's a little bit over 6'2". Then the rest is stones put together like the rhinestone walls. Okay, there, as I was explaining to you, the back of the house is over 6'0". You see, this is the level of the property. In this case, it goes higher right away. This part of the house is sitting on here. Here, this is the finish. You can see clay applied on local stone. This is crumbling. You can actually get rid of it. You see, what happens once this whole protection of dirt falls apart, what you get, which is also beautiful, is something like this, an exposed wall. And you see that crumbling stone on this area. They are really crumbly limestone. I just noticed something here, which is almost like a signature. It's something in the middle. You have like a piece of metal, maybe. Maybe something to keep an animal in place. And there we go. We have a date. It's 1944. That's five years after the Spanish Civil War. And there was still one year to go in World War II. Wow. So this plaster was supplied by somebody. Probably the men just work in this field. Probably the owner. The person who applied that was living five years after the Spanish Civil War. I'm telling you, those were really tough years in this area, especially because Catalonia suffered a big defeat because it was the Republican side. And before Franco came, there were some internal battles also. So five years after the Spanish Civil War, somebody was using this little tucked away structure. And who knows? Maybe somebody was hiding here. So this is the part where I'm sleeping. So what I do, I do have an inflatable mattress. I just set up at the bottom. And then on top of the inflatable mattress, I do have a little wool, natural wool mattress. And then a sleeping sack. And I sleep like if I was a bear hibernating. It is a very, very cozy place. It's interesting how little we need to feel sheltered and to feel protected. There's something really enchanted with hermit little caves. And when I come here, I have the feeling that this is a really, really, really, really special place as a getaway. Another thing to consider is that we just forget that a lot of natural things are also shaped by man. So at the beginning of the 20th century, this whole area wasn't as forested as it is today. This was a place that in medieval times was almost like a transition place from the valleys where people would cultivate and the coast, since it was so rocky and limestone, it was pretty marginal. People attempted to use the area for cultivation, despite being almost impossible because of limestones and rocks. But they managed to do so. And also, it was just half animals. So no trees were in the area. And now, now things have changed. Look at here. As you can see, there is some undulation. I'm sure this was a vineyard to make wine. It's the main hub in the area. Penedes is actually one wine country since Roman times. And our house, from this perspective, as people left for the big town and this became eventually a park, this was cultivated not long ago. All you see now is just a place difficult to tell from its past. You can see a lot of stone mounds. I don't believe these are walls, since these fields were cultivated. So what they would do is to collect all the limestone of the area in mounds. I actually found grape plants. So there was wine making. So this area of the property was used to make wine. It was properly delimited because actually there is a level difference. There is a little cliff from this part of the property of a few thousand square feet and a level up. This area, which is very close to the house, could represent an opportunity to keep clear. We have some space to try to regenerate a little bit of what was before the forest. So we can actually create this sort of edible forest within the bigger picture of the forest. Within the property, of course. This forest, in a lot of sections, is improving from the past. So one of the things I wonder about when I see this land is how to have a strategy and not be overwhelmed. It's a forest and it's a part of a natural park for that matter. So in order to be a steward, you also have to understand that, one, you cannot clean the forest. If you talk to people who manage places like these, one of the things they tell them is that if there is a falling tree decomposing, you better leave it because you are actually improving the land. As we can see in this property, this was a crop area. So let's say the original forest had been totally wiped out. But then people abandoned the fields. After that, what you have is a process of nature regeneration. First, you have shrubs and opportunistic trees that really spread fast, like a white pine. Once the situation is improved to the point that there is some shelter, you have other tree species that belong to the Mediterranean that require some sort of shelter, like the Mediterranean oak and alzina in Catalan. Here you see there's another one. There is another oak tree here. As you can see, it's very young. So this process is a process of decades. And it's actually a blend of different things because there are also olive trees surviving. You see down there? You see the white pines? They just really, really took over the canopy. But then underneath, the remains of the olive tree plantation are there. And actually, those are new stumps and they were not planted. I would like to keep those olive trees. They are a part of human intervention, but they are already there. And we can actually go to those olives and eat them or make oil with them. Let's keep going. Keep exploring the land. Another olive tree. This little guy here. Another baby olive. Arbequina. Another guy here competing with this skinny white pine. Another one here. Look at this olive tree. Olives. You see? These are Arbequina olives. They are random, very small. These are not only really to pick, they are almost... They are past their moment. Right now, you can actually use these mature olives to make one of the best olive oils. Arbequina olive oil is very distinguishable. Another olive tree. I think that's wild. And so is this one. And down below, the Mediterranean trilogy. Well, here there is no wheat, but you have two of the three. You have grapes and you have Arbequina olives, which are also these ones. So maybe we can mix a little bit of olive oil. Here is a division between the two properties. As you can see, here this hatch. Let's keep going on this path. I really need to look at the map, the satellite map. Oh my... Look what I found. No way. There is another cave. Secret. This one is not even... Nobody told us about this one. Oh my god, there's... I mean, it goes to the side. Actually, that's deep. Look at this little cave. Nobody told us about this one. The person I talked to when we bought this property told me there was a cave and a shepherd's hut. But guess what? What she didn't tell me, we have another cave along the perimeter. We have another cave and this one is a beautiful one. Look at this door. It's vernacular. It's a bigger slab on the middle holding the top of the door. And then look at this stone and clay door just to get in this cave. Oh wow, this goes deep. I think some animal just made a place to sleep there. So we have two caves and one shepherd's hut. And there you go. There you go, the cave. You see this tree here? This is a carob tree that grows in the Mediterranean. And this fruit was turned... Especially when there was war or in the Middle Ages, some sort of pandemic. One of the things people would do is they would just grind this to make flour for bread. And you would plant carob trees next to your houses. If you wouldn't be using this shepherd's hut for staying sometimes... I'm not saying somebody was living permanently but somebody was staying here. If you wouldn't be using something like this for staying, then it doesn't make any sense to plant a carob tree, to plant a fig tree, and to have all this clear here just to do things like threshing. This is why I think this place was not only a part of a field but also probably worked and inhabited many times over. There is another mound. That's also an old wall but this one is really, really old and in bad shape. Here, this is one of the mounds. And there you go, the mushrooms. It's a non-edible mushroom. There are some species of mushrooms that are edible on a part of the region's cuisine, especially the ruballó, which comes with the first rains. Some people just go for a walk, for a little hike in places like this, and it just really changes your day. And you can see why, you can tell why. It's just beautiful. Look at this beautiful wall. Yeah, there was some channel, a way to channel the water there, a little canal. The Mediterranean region can have southern water downpours, southern storms, and so as you can see there are ways to deal with runoff that are traditional and look beautiful. So that's how you hold one area properly. You channel the water so when it downpours it goes to the area you want and actually it can irrigate crops and you just prevent erosion. There is another wall in here. That's how you prevent runoff traditionally. I was in this place a few times, just on top of the hut and the cave, which is down underneath here, down below. It's a little like micro meadow there. The threshing meadow is actually here where I'm just collecting all the brush I'm just cleaning. And it wasn't until I was walking the perimeter that I actually noticed something that, believe it or not, is already present in this perspective. Well, here there are several things in this perspective I want to show you. There is a reservoir, there's water there, okay? It's a little farm, the whole area that is still farmed. This is the edge of the property where the cliff is and look at there. Okay, that I discovered yesterday. The perfect hermit place. Literally inside of the rock in the cliff. That's actually a part of the property. So we don't only have this cave that is below my feet now or the huts but we have a third element here. I haven't found any other thing so far other than the two wells. Okay, so this is the edge of the property with the road and then here's the second well. It's been sealed. It's been properly sealed so nobody falls. And here the hole to just test if there's water. Yeah, that's a well. I wanted to show you some ideas I had for the cabin. Given the fact that we are dealing with a building that is very dark, I think we should design a door that has a transformer mechanism. A few years back we visited a friend's country house called El Molino and our friend John had designed a door. There were movable parts. There was a mechanism and you could flip actually those little wooden parts to let air or light in when you were using the house and then you would close it again once you leave. So I was thinking about the possibility of transforming a wooden door with two positions. So this door could be interesting for us. Another thing. I was thinking about collecting some river stones to make a floor out of them. Here you can see the property how protected it is. So that's why I think the place has a really introspective spirit. It's very close to a village. It's very close to people or you know you could just almost walk to a store. You are not super far away from civilization and there is a cultivated field you are looking at. So it's a very Mediterranean place. One of the first things I'm going to do is just to try to restore these walls. Putting back these stones and at the same time we'll recover the two paths going to the cabin. One on one of the sides of the meadow where the fig tree and the bico tree are and the other through the other side and down to the cabin. I don't know if you guys can hear it. A car in the distance just went by. There is right there. There is the road that goes along the reservoir all the way to the coast. Super pleasant to be here actually. This is the country actually. It's been in nature and to be honest it's the best of both worlds because you're still close to a village. But here you're super detached. You're on your own. I do think it's really... it's a special place I think. So it's almost reminiscent of the ideal getaway place from Roman times when they were talking about otium ruris. Basically a rural leisure, right? Having a country place to just go and be with nature. I do like it. I think it's almost like another dimension. You know days are packed in a new property when you are just doing so many things and your senses are capturing so much information. So you end up just get tired at night and I really sleep well. I guess now I understand more those pyramids that just go in the first centuries. They would just go up in the mountains somewhere in places like Egypt and deserts in the Middle East. Those early Gnostic Christians would just go up in the caves in the desert and stay there on their own. There is something magic about this. You're an animal now. You're the owl. Okay guys, good night.