Two of us, and seven years of looking for the right place.
Not a highlight reel. Seven years of looking, walking away, and looking again.
The two of us
Business & permaculture
Ushuaia
Ushuaia has been building businesses since he was 12, and working in food and drink since 2004. Somewhere along the way, permaculture and sustainable food production stopped being an interest and became something closer to an obsession, one he's followed for well over a decade now.
For 11 years, he gave away 10% of the profits from an earlier food and drink business. These days he spends part of his time helping small businesses and non-profits find their feet and grow.
Psychology & therapy
Jules
Jules trained under Gabor Maté in his compassionate inquiry methodology, and now works as a trauma-informed therapist specialising in neurodivergency and trauma.
She came to this from a background in big business and a degree in psychology, and a slow realisation that she wanted to work with people more directly than that world allowed.
We met in 2015, and the idea of a farm or smallholding of our own was one of the first things we bonded over. Different as our backgrounds are, business and permaculture on one side, psychology and therapy on the other, they've ended up pointing the same way: paying close attention, being honest about what's actually working, and being willing to do things slowly if that's what it takes to do them properly.
Why this, why now
Where the idea began.
By the time Jules and Ushuaia met, the idea already had roots. Years earlier, Ushuaia had spent long stretches in Mexico, six weeks at a time, and six months there in both 2011 and 2012. It was there that land, and a slower, more careful way of working it, stopped being a someday thought and started to feel like something worth actually building.
That instinct, toward less rather than more, and toward doing a few things properly rather than many things quickly, is really the seed everything else grew from. So when Jules recognised the same pull in him, it wasn't a new idea either of them talked the other into. It had already been there for years, waiting for someone else to take it just as seriously.
The journey
2018 to 2026
The long way round
- 2018Nº 01 · Mexico2018
The search begins
We started in Mexico in 2018, spending close to a year there, most of it in the south, looking for land around the Yucatán. We loved the landscape and the way of life, but slowly came to understand it wasn't quite the fit we were after.
It was the start of something we've kept ever since: staying long enough to really know a place, and being willing to say no once we did.
- 2019Nº 02 · Canada2019
North to Alberta and British Columbia
From there we went to Canada. Three months, mostly living and working on regenerative farms, cattle, pigs, bison, market gardens, goats, meeting the people running them.
Some of it was hours from a main road, on farms that had only just got electricity for the first time. We came away with real, hands-on skills, even once we knew it wasn't the place itself.
- 2020Nº 03 · A pause2020
The years that paused
Then Covid arrived, and everything went quiet for a while. Plans sat on a shelf.
Looking back, the pause did us good. It gave us time to think properly about what we were actually looking for.
- 2023–2024Nº 04 · Portugal2023–2024
Travelling the length of a country
When we started again, it was in Portugal, in the south first, in 2023. We went back in 2024 for almost a year, this time travelling the central regions and the north, spending a lot of that time talking with people who'd already found and settled their own land, learning from what had worked for them and what hadn't.
It was beautiful, and for a while we thought it might be the one. But something kept us looking, and we've learned to trust that feeling.
- 2026Nº 05 · Somerset2026
Where we're looking now
Somerset is the first place the answer has come back quietly and consistently yes. We haven't secured the land yet.
We're actively looking, and it might take a while. But for the first time in seven years, we're looking in one place.
We're still in that last stretch, somewhere in Somerset, waiting for the right piece of land to show itself. Everything else, the animals, the growing, the making, is being planned in parallel, ready to begin the moment we find it.
Jules & Ushuaia