Growing Food Off-Grid 🌿 Fruit Trees, Herbs & Sustainable Living Pt 1

Join us on a unique travel adventure as we visit a fellow YouTuber’s off-grid homestead in Cyprus! 🌱

While traveling overseas, I reached out to my YouTube friend Dawn, who graciously invited us for a tour of her incredible homestead. From hugelkultur gardening to discovering carob trees, figs, olives, and more – this is a wholesome look into sustainable living in the Mediterranean.

Whether you’re into homesteading, permaculture, off-grid living, or just love exploring different cultures through travel, you’re going to love this one.

#HomesteadTour #CyprusTravel #OffGridLiving #Permaculture #CarobTree #Hugelkultur #SustainableLiving #YouTubeFriends #TravelVlog #FruitTrees #GardenTour

Video Chapters / Timestamps:
00:00 – The Surprise Visit
00:39 – Picking a Gift from the Nursery
01:25 – Arriving at the Homestead in Cyprus
02:00 – Touring the Garden: Hugelkultur Explained
04:15 – Off-Grid Living Setup (Water, Solar, Borehole)
06:10 – Exploring Fruit Trees: Oranges, Figs & Mulberries
08:20 – Discovering the Carob Tree (And Tasting It!)
10:50 – Why Carob Trees Are Protected in Cyprus
12:20 – The Role of Goats & Goat Rustling in Cyprus
13:15 – Purple Plums & The Food Forest
14:45 – Composting & Organic Gardening
16:00 – Oriental Spinach, Nightshades & Edible Greens
18:30 – Quince Trees and Olive Oil Production
20:10 – Final Thoughts + Ocean Views Near Paphos
21:00 – Outro: Like, Subscribe & Stay Tuned!

🎥 Check Out Dawn’s Channel Here:
👉 http://www.youtube.com/@newbeginnings-myeverydaylife

Go check out some amazing video’s below from New Beginnings where they share their knowledge with others and where you can grab some fantastic ideas which you can use around your homestead garden! Don’t forget to subscribe to their channel so you don’t miss out on some great advise!

What is a Carob and what are they used for:

All about dates and growing dates from date palm trees:

The Growing Stages of Olives. Growing our olives to produce organic olive oil:

Pomegranate Information and Growing Stages:

Quick, easy, simple – pick and peel cacti fruit:

Creating an organic fruit and food forest and edible pine pollen collection

How to Peel a Pomelo Fruit – Plus – Growing a Pomelo Tree From a Pip:

KOHL RABI – Beginners – When and how to harvest, prepare and cook – easy, simple recipes. PLUS Colin Cat at play:

Olive harvesting/olive tree pruning/harvesting dates + almonds. What’s growing December in Cyprus:

How many PRODUCING TREES do I have in my GARDEN?

Hugelkultur Permaculture: Step by step- How to build a Hugel Bed:

PUTTING THINGS INTO PERSPECTIVE – OUR PLOT TOUR and from above:

Renovation of Abandoned Derelict Donkey Stable SECOND SECTION -Episode ‘A’. Plus rural Cyprus goats:

Complete Re-build and Re-purpose of Old Donkey Stable – EPISODE E of SECTION 2 – THE STAGE!
https://youtu.be/yM94OECFB4A

Instagram: @smallurbangreens

🌿 Start your own small-space homestead today! Let’s LEARN together as we GROW together!

🔔Don’t forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more urban gardening tips.

🎥 CAMERAMAN: Ella-Rose Gass
📻 MUSIC: Heycan- Simple Guitar Riff

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This was the big surprise. [Applause] [Music] [Applause] We were basically traveling to um visit my sister and I thought before we come here, let me just message Dawn and see if she would be okay if we meet up. And we both follow each other on YouTube. So, it’s been really nice to come overseas and visit a follower. So, we are going to go and visit one of my YouTuber friends in Cyprus and they’re going to do a little tour with me and we’re going to see what they grow on their little homestead. But I’m at a nursery quickly just to pick up a little gift for them. So, let’s take a look and see what we can get them. Getting them a mother-in-law’s tongue. They live I think just before Papas. got this wrapped for her. Looks quite nice. And now we are heading off to their place. Um they’re going to give me a nice tour and I’m taking the whole family with me. Make it a a little bit of a day out. [Music] Cool. So, we’ve just arrived and this is the view. Really, really nice. And today I actually get to come and visit. The climate here is totally different to South Africa. I find it very dry and hot. But I’ve learned one thing in Cyprus is the fruit trees here and how they actually adapt to the heat here, which has been very interesting. And so Dorne is going to take me around her homestead and we are actually going to take a look and see what she grows here. [Music] I grow in white work is hoole culture. Okay. And I I do what I call proper hoogle culture. Some people dig a big tit first. I don’t do that. Some people put soil in. I don’t do that. It’s very natural. So with the hoogal culture building up and keep putting hay or straw on that is all just cut from our land. Okay. Doing that it keeps the heat out from the roots and keeps the water in. That makes sense. But that also works for we never get frost in this part of the island or cold or snow anything like that. You don’t. Okay. So that also would stop frost and that kind of thing as well. So Google culture I can’t emphasize it enough. Oh wow. Okay. And this we had so many. It’s only a small one. We got three date palms. But um we got so many off of that dates. That’s something that grows really well in cypress. So it produces dead swim. It seems to actually be this one every 2 years which is bizarre. Okay. because I would have thought every year, but we want to keep it small like this cuz obviously we haven’t got to do that thing where we shoot up the tree and keep it quite short. And that’s another thing growing in the heat if you keep things quite small. They don’t have to take the or the energy up. Yeah. Yeah. Now, this is a lot of people in Cypress open them up and use it as swimming pools, particularly the size of this one. You could do that. Um, we got videos on where we had a leak and it we’ve never touched it. It’s always been here for eons and eons. Okay. So, we started to get leaks. There was a whole series on it. We had no water because of this. And this is also our fire safety because we can just open it up if there’s a fire nearby and the land. Oh, that’s good. The water from here comes I’ll show you from over the other side the land. It comes up a bore hole like a whale, you know, a ball hole. Yes. Yes. Yes. comes up there and then we pump some to here and the rest up on the roof for water for the house. So, we’re totally off grid here. Oh, that is totally no electric, no water. That’s nice. So, this waters the garden. So, you can see how nice and small this orange tree is. It’s already bearing two um fruits there. And then we’ve got some figs there. The malbury tree. So you see one’s a red and one is a black mberry tree. See like little beans beans and what you do with that, right? The beans you can harvest and sell. But when you sell, you sell them as the whole carob. Oh wow. Okay. So you sell the whole carob. Um the beans, you know the saying when you buy gold carrot. Okay. Yes. It comes from the word carob because no matter what size these carobs are, every time you take a bean out, they’re exactly the same size and weight. So, they used to weigh gold with carobs. And that’s where you get the name carrot gold. It’s carob gold. And we just learned something new there. Now, if you feel that round, it’s sticky. You can chew it. So, it’s like kind of toffee. Oh, okay. What? Just like this. Yeah, the outside’s a bit hard now because they’ve been on the ground, but the farmers go out in the fields and actually pick up the carobs and chew them when they’re hungry for a snack. What? Spit it out or No, chew it. Eat it. Well, let’s try this. Yeah. So, carrot this. I don’t know if you can see the juice. The juice. But it actually looks like a caramel. Yeah. It’s like toffeeish. Yeah. So, or licorice. Oh my gosh. Nice. Yeah, you’ve got to try some of this. Oh my word. I was not expecting that. And it’s very good for you. Good for your digestion. If you’ve got an upset stomach, it’s really good for you. When you go around tourist areas, you see they make the juice into they call it like um a chocolate sauce but as you say you agree with me it’s more toffeeish but you can buy sauces in bottle chocolate sauce you can use on ice cream. Yeah. Also they grind the whole lot up in when you sell the whole lot they make it into the closest I can say it’s like a plastic but it’s not plastic. You get it. You know records where you used to play music. People were like, “What records?” Vinyls. Vinyls that was made from carob the the vinyls. Oh, wow. Carob’s used in lipstick. Lipstick has uh carabining. Some types of that. Many things, as I say, things you imagine as plastic or vinyl is made from carob. What do you think in the road? So good. Yeah. It’s so good. I love it. So over here we got a beautiful carob tree. It’s a massive tree. And if you look here, it’s got these beautiful pods. But the best part is is that if you break this open, you’ve got like seeds in here. And let me show you something. So, if you look inside here, it’s quite juicy and it it reminds me of um like caramel, but this is the best part. You just eat it and I can’t explain the taste. It’s like a sweet. So, I’ve fallen in love with this tree because I’ve never known about this. So, learned something right there. Okay. So just share that with me again. It’s illegal in Cyprus to cut down a carob tree. Okay. I guess because it’s food for everything and it’s a national tree. You don’t you can trim it back. So you could trim bits off and it makes very good firewood. The best firewood you can get, but you it’s illegal to cut it down. Okay. So these trees you’re not allowed to actually cut it down at all. We can trim it. And I was just asking about the watering and that, but we think it must go quite deep down in order for it to get to water because that’s what happens with uh 90% of the fruit trees that grow in Cyprus. They survive because they actually tap into the moisture in the beds a little bit further down. So that is a beautiful carob tree. So it’s considered a hobby or a joke. Hobby if you only got 100 goats. So there’s people that have what 500 goats and then that’s that’s you doing it properly. You’re doing it properly properly. And the other thing up until even when we moved here those years ago the biggest crime in Cyprus why people were in prison we only have one prison in Cypress. The reason people were there was goat rustling because they’re such a commodity. Wow. Goat rustling was the biggest crime in Cyprus when we came. Oh, that’s the crime. And that one is a purple plum. They seem to be doing rather well. So, I’ve tried the yellow plums. I found the purple plums are much sweeter. Yes. And they’re still quite young. Yes, I think it was 2 years ago. One of I call on my video the food forest because this is a new fruit trees. We got fruit trees elsewhere, but I call this a food forest because I want to get more and more fruit trees here. This is the food forest. So this over here, obviously every homesteader needs a compost bin. So there’s two compost bins here and it’s anything that is weeded out of the beds here or even cut and trimmed thrown there and nature does its course. It just breaks down nicely and gives you this rich organic compost. Over here some or jeans aka eggplant aka bringilinach. And then over here it’s something called um oriental spinach. Um, it tastes different. Different. Yes. Just because it’s called oriental spinach, it’s not like spinach at all, is it? And it doesn’t grow like it. And it has small leaves. So, how would you eat that? Um, like that. Or I basically if I cook rice or something like that, I just put it in rice. You can’t eat it. No, it’s poison. Yes, it’s poison. It’s we Okay. So this is um a weed. No, we eat the fruit off of it. What is it? Yeah, they are. I don’t know. Is it the red or black ones? Black. Okay. So yeah, back home they say it’s poisonous. Um so they just pop up and we just take them out. Right. There are different types. There are all different types of night shade. Some is totally toxic. This one’s not. This one’s not. This they’re like mini mini tomatoes. That’s what they are. Okay. But I did a video on it to counteract any issues with it. Um you can eat the leaves, but obviously if you’re not sure what one it is until you get the fruit, if you eat the leaves, it could be the toxic one. Okay. So this one is a nice shade, but it’s not the toxic one. Think of a very sweet, very small tomato. What it tastes like. Wow. It’s something you wouldn’t eat loads and loads and loads of but yeah. Okay. These are I think end dive. Okay. Forgetful variety of end dive. It’s a nice size also it’s flowering. Yeah. So I think these are endive. These are salad. What is corn salad? It’s just a leaf. You can eat the leaf as is like a salad leaf. But the long ones or this one. So there’s corn salad. These are young ones. Try the young ones cuz they might be more tender anyway. So these are the young ones. [Music] This is um corn tree grown from seed and it’s about 4 5 years old. And there’s what? Two. Yeah, two. We’ve got some quint seeds that we What do you do with your quint? It’s raw as well. Oh, no. Puts a little bit of salt on it. Oh, you eat them raw. So, that’s how my father introduced us to the quint. Um, he cut like an apple, right? Um, and then he put some salt on it and then he ate it like cuz we cook them like cooking apples like like crumble and apple pie. You use it for that. That’s how I do them. I must try it next time. So this will be about end of November. We’re harvesting. It’s November. So right now we in summer in Cyprus and the olives are all green still. So when they start going into like winter, they start ripening and then you can harvest them around about November. And we make our own olive oil. So So we’re moving on to the next section. We’ve got some grape vines here and then loads of carrot trees, some random olive trees, and then we went down to the end there where she had some other fruit trees. So, we’re just going to carry down to the second leg of three. Another one. I think that’s the sixth one. Seventh one. I on my live yesterday, I replayed a video where I go around and count how many I’ve got of each type of tree. So, if anyone wants to know, fantastic. So, guys, I will leave the link in the description where you can go and follow and just check some of these videos out. Um, it’s really nice to learn about other cultures and how their their um farms and that all operate. But if you look in the distance there, you can see we’re not very far from the ocean. And where’s Pos from here? Down there. So up and over. Okay. So POS is not too far out there. So we’ve just finished the first half of the homestead and I think we moving on to the second half. Um it’s really really hot. I would say it’s about Let me just see my phone. It’s about 36° now. Um, and now we’re just going to enter the next phase of her homestead. So, let’s see what’s on there. [Music] So, if you enjoyed this video, please give it a like, subscribe so you don’t miss out on any more of our little tips and adventure, and I’ll see you guys all in the next video.