The DarthCoin Citadel - part 1
Why and how I start building my own Bitcoin Citadel, a nice and cozy homesteading place.
This is the story of The DarthCoin Bitcoin Citadel…
Somewhere on the planet Earth, deep into the mountains wilderness.
I will split this story into multiple parts for easy reading and also helping me to organize all the information I gather during this journey into small episodes. It is a lot…
This “citadel” is not a Death Star, a castle, a mansion or an Eiffel Tower. Nothing like that. Will be just a homesteading place, with some small houses, a vegetables garden, fruit trees, some domestic animals and other utilities, enough to live a simple life in a self-sustaining way as much is possible.
For those that are new to this, the term Citadel in Bitcoinlandia is not about a fortress, that is just a figurative expression. It is more about a place where the bitcoiner is retreating himself, living in peace, far from distractions, sporadically or permanently. A place only for himself and maybe some friends. It doesn’t have to be specifically a homesteading place out of the city, it could be even your own simple apartment, but organized in a different way to adapt to your “bitcoin life”.
I hope that this story of my Citadel will be also an inspiration for many others, especially bitcoiners.
WHY?
I always wanted to build something, with my own hands, to remain in history, for humanity, so people can see it and remember me.
In my past I tried many things, even when I was a kid, but nothing at this level: building a house, a homesteading place, that could remain in time visible.
We are living all day like in a hamster wheel and what we are leaving behind? Almost nothing. Something that even in 50-100-200 years still stands and people can say “look, this thing was built by that crazy guy…”. Doesn’t matter if they like it or not, is something that REMAINS there for long time and your name and history is there. Like the Bitcoin blockchain timechain.
Some of my friends told me “but man, with your stash of bitcoins you could easily just pay somebody to do the hard work of digging and constructing”. Well… I am not “that guy to pay somebody else to do its job”, no matter how much bitcoins I have. Is about the feeling of building your own house with your own hands, not depending on anybody else. It’s an amazing experience and you are learning a lot of things!
I am just an old IT guy, now retired, because I want to follow my dream: having a homesteading place only for me. I have no skills in building houses, construction techniques or something like that. Growing vegetables and animals, I have some experience from my past youth, from my grandparents place, that is the easy part.
I am not afraid of failure. That could happen too. But I will continue trying again until it will be the way I wanted and is OK. We are learning from our failures, always. But the hard thing is to recognize when you are failing and start over.
HOW?
For many years I was looking for a good place to start. Walking many mountains, valleys, routes, paths etc. Taking notes, sleeping in a hammock, listening the surroundings, looking for resources (water, food, dirt composition). Is not that easy and the most important thing is: you MUST feel the place, to let your heart telling you which one is the best, which one will give you peace. That’s why I was sleeping many times, just in a sleeping bag, under the stars and listening the forest during the night. That deep silence that could put you in trance sometimes, is “talking” to your heart.
So, I found the place, I like it and I start building, with my own hands, my own brain, in my own style, with local materials, natural, simple, organized and strong. A message for next generations and also a living style: natural, simple, wild, isolated from “zombies civilization”, almost self-sustainable (I know is very hard to obtain self-sustainability, but I will try).
The place is situated at 14km away from a near village (with people), passing over a high mountain of 2000m and rocky path. Another route is through the river valley, 9km, walk in the forest, but have to go around with a car like 25km and leave the car in that village. Another path is like 10km but again I have to hike a 2000m mountain and go down like 600 m ramp until reaching my place, through not so easy route.
I choose to be like that, far from civilization and hard to reach it, just because I don’t want people to come around. I want PEACE.
I know is hard to carry materials up there, but I get used to carry large kilos on my backpack. So I have to use the materials onsite: dirt, rocks and wood. Other small tools, food, beer and consumables could be carried away with my backpack.
THE PLAN
I am doing this construction without ANY 3D plans software, blueprints, papers, shitGPT crap, calculators or something like that. All will be ONLY in my brain. I am trying to use as much as I can only my brain and intelligence, visualizing in my mind all pieces that have to be put together, the steps to do, distances etc.
Here is me, every evening with a beer, visualizing and calculating my next moves:
On this terrain of 100 x 50 meters, surrounded by very old stone walls and trees, will be at least 2 houses, a big garden patch, chill out corner, animals shelter and a nice natural jacuzzi in the near small river, maybe later a small fish pond.
The place is right between 2 small rivers that come together into a very nice and quiet valley. One is cold (for beers) and the other one is warm (is mostly on the sun side all day), good for baths.
At the entrance, I will put 21 stones and will engrave the 21 reasons why Bitcoin will save the world, to remain there, in stone, forever.
Also the 1st house MUST be ready on the day of the Bitcoin Halvening, around 17 April 2024. Will be a small private party with close friends and a lot of beers and barbecue.
The main idea / plan is to have:
a 1st nice “hobbit house” (more will come later), digging the dirt from a small hill, making earthbags and stone walls and cover it with the same dirt on top, planting some aromatic flowers over. Later a 2nd house, bigger or even more.
a stone oven outside, near to the 1st house, for making bread and pizza and a barbecue place.
a vegetables garden, in front, with wooden beds and self irrigation system (water is at only 5-7m). In winter with some small greenhouses. I have plenty of terrain for growing food.
some fruit trees, chickens, ducks, goats
a small river turbine (water lily) and solar panels for electricity, running water and filtering, sauna (for long winters)
satellite antenna (internet, communication), maybe some bitcoin miners too and radio station. Depends how much electricity I could grab from that small river I have.
All these in stages, year by year, slowly, with patience and calculating each step, each move. Due to weather conditions and the fact that in the beginning there’s no other place to sleep than tent and hammock, I have to work mostly in the summer, between June and end of Sept. All the rest of the year is quite complicated to work (heavy rain, snow, wind, cold). The place is at 1400 m altitude and the weather is quite unstable.
STAGE 1 - 2020 - Digging
Cleaning the house place from vegetation and leave the small hill clean for digging.
Build at the entrance some stone steps for easy walk inside the terrain.
Prepare a place where to put all the soil taken out from the digging and later re-use it.
Start digging the hill, to make a 7 x 4 meters hole, enough for a small house for 2 persons at least. This 1st house will be used as a base where to sleep and keep all necessary until the whole homesteading facilities will be ready.
Until this house is ready, I have to sleep into a tent or hammock because there’s NOTHING else there.
STAGE 2 - 2021 - still… digging
Yes, due to bad weather in september 2020 I had to stop the work until next spring-summer of 2021.
A lot of big rock boulders I had to take out, really hard work, by hand, alone.
All that dirt you see in the back is from the hole. Same as for the rocks on the left and right piles, that in time were growing and growing like hell. This is not like those fake Youtube videos with indonesians building in 1 day a house in the jungle with sand. Is fucking hard to dig around those boulders and take them out because the soil is also full of small rocks compacted, like a cement.
This was the construction site at the end of August 2021:
It was already a hole of 6x3 meters, with a height of almost 2m at the end. I was amazed by myself of how much I could dug out in one summer. Damn hard work.
STAGE 3 - 2022 - still… digging
In late June 2022 I came back to work. Usually in June is a rainy season and I had very few days able to work. In July I had some family visit and also I worked quite few days only. August was really hot and was working only early in the morning until 12 o’clock. Afternoons only between 17 to 19:00 when the sun was going behind the mountains.
Finally at the end of Aug 2022 I could reach the planned surface of 7x4m of the base foundation. It remain a little bit more digging on the laterals, when will be ready to start with the earthbags.
The back side of the house will have 3 walls of earthbags, the left half part will be with stones, where will be the fireplace and the chimney also. The front wall will be built only with big stones, with 2 nice windows.
On the right side, will be extended a little bit more with a big window and a sofa, a nice place to stay and look outside how is snowing, with a good cup of warm wine.
In August 2022 I start working also on the chimney:
The chimney will be continued later more up until 4-5m height and is somekind of outside of the walls. Will be also reinforced more.
Aaaand this is for this part 1 of the story, will continue with the stage 4 (2023) in the part 2, that is a bit longer and will not fit well into this episode.
Stay tuned, will come back soon!
Felicidades, está genial, me gusta ese plan. Algun día también lo voy a hacer. Solo es cuestión de tiempo.