coinsky

hello,

This is my first post here and I would be really grateful for any advice!

I am coming to Abruzzo in a few weeks to look at some land, which currently has a ruin on it. My plan is to knock down the ruin and put a small log cabin on there instead. Mostly because I am on my own and renovating a house seems like too much work for me by myself. I am looking to move to Italy permanently, and grow as much of my food as possible, the cabin and land will be paid for and then maybe try and find a bit of work to just keep me afloat (teaching english, fruit picking..anything really).

I would really like to know if anyone with experience thinks this sounds possible? My mum is Italian so I speak it quite well but mostly the dialect of my mums region which is further south, but I am hoping I will pick up the Abruzzo dialect fairly quickly...

The land I am looking at is in Palmoli..

Any advice or info on Palmoli, growing food in the region or anything really would be a great help!

Thanks

Fiona

Lorna at Vicenza

Hi and welcome to the forum.

I don't want to put any dampers on your plans, but anything you do with the ruin or anything you build will need local planning permission. That can drag on so be prepared for that.

As for food, I live further up North and in a village where almost everyone seems to have a small or large veg patch. Things seem to grow really well and I've seen all of the Italian classics growing .........

tomatoes, courgettes, onions, herbs, spring onions, leeks, beans, potatoes, peppers, aubergines, cabbages, various types of lettuce and radicchio.

The market has stalls that sell both packets of seeds or baby plants ready to be planted - so do the garden centres.

You'll probably be able to get a bit of work teaching English privately. Lots of people and school or University students are often on the look out for help. It's not always regular work though unless you build it up and keep taking on new people when a student no longer needs you. People cancel and get sick too so when you were expecting 5 students one week you might end up with none.

Good luck with your project.

coinsky

Thanks Lorna!

I have seen a nice plot which is 6 acres and has some olive trees on, I was toying with the idea of maybe planting more trees and trying to make a little living off selling the oil..

Does anyone here make any money from olive oil? I really have no idea how much say 200 trees might make?

But I am really looking forward to growing lots of my own food.

Fiona

asik

Great idea, Fiona! I think renovating a house would be a bit easier than getting a permission for a log cabin. I am renovating a house on my own with very limited Italian and it is going OK. It would be much easier if I lived there though. Palmoli seems to be quite remote!

I'll be in Abruzzo June 10-17, PM me if you want to visit my area (provincia Pescara, La Majella). As far as I know there are some houses with land for sale near my village.

PAT M

Hi All,

Have been visiting our son in Spoleto and have been catching up with everyone's news. I don't have much experience about the pros and cons of making a living out of an olive grove but I can tell you what my Italian relatives who have land in the Taranto (Puglia) have complained about. They say to employ people to assist costs 40 euros for six hours labour (and they are in big trouble if they are found not to have paid insurance contributions for them) and the olive oil co-op pay only about 35 euros for a quintale (100 kilo) of olives. If they only have a few trees alot of people just collect the olives for their own use as they cannot afford to employ help and be paid so little for the olives. Likewise with grapes, the co-ops pay you for your grapes after three years, but will give you a sub at an interest.

We have a small vegetable patch with 5 citrus fruit trees on one side, we love looking after it and it's great to eat your own produce when there is a crop but it is not all roses, we have to buy the plants, canes, insect repellents (we don't try organic, we'd never get anything to eat with all the snails, slugs and fruit pests ready to devour everything). We have had an infestation of "cocciniglie" a bug that ruins citrus trees by making the trees and rind of the fruit turn black and it has cost us alot of money on insecticides, spraying equipment etc etc.

I don't want to put a damper on Fiona's plans and wish her well but life down here in the south is not cheap, gas and electricity is expensive, the winters are very cold - despite spending 20 euros a day to keep ourselves warm our house never feels cosy from November until March.

Pat





Pat

coinsky

Hi Pat

Thank you for the advice, realism is appreciated too so don't worry about putting a dampner on things.

I was planning on having a wood burning stove for heat - i don't know how this compares price wise for expense. It's something I am going to have to consider obviously.

May I ask how big your house is? My (planned) house is only 36 sqm internally so I was hoping this would be cheaper to heat..

Thank you!

PAT M

Hi Fiona,

Our place is very big, the part we live in and heat is 175 sq metres and the height of the rooms is 3m 20cm so not surprising that it costs a packet to heat. We have gas central heating but it is prohibitively expensive to use it for more than 4 hours a day so we had a huge pellet stove installed in the corridor facing the bedrooms and a smaller pellet stove in the living room - these are relatively cheap to run (after the cost of buying them) a sack of pellets cost from 3 to 5 euros (I have just run down to my OH to ask him how long a sack lasts) and he said we spent 4 euros a day using the pellet stoves to heat the place up for 12 hours a day. By the way the temperature inside the house drops to 9 degrees without heating. We also have a log fire in the kitchen which we use and a 100 kilos of olive wood for firewood costs anything from 12 euro 50 to 16 euros 50 depending on the time of year. My sister in law has a wood burning stove but she said she has to continually top it up and she thought my pellet stove was less bother. Good luck with your plans.

coinsky

Thank you Pat. That's really useful to know about the pellet stove, I will look into them.

Fiona