Choosing to live this way, living in a small space means not really having many material possessions.
My partner and me never wanted our children to be registered beyond their birth, so being able to receive payouts from the government was never an option for us.
We also do not want any hassle with regards to how we choose to raise our children.
We really only buy things that we need, which with a family of 2 girls (at the time of living in our bus) was food and fuel to allow us to move.
This post is about our time travelling around France in our bus, although we did continue to fund our lives in this way in other countries as well.
It was not always easy, but we were free to roam and be together with our children.
We purchased our food from farmers markets because they have the best selection and also because it allowed my partner to busk. Alot of the time, we would travel from town to town finding out when the farmers markets were, my partner would busk early in the morning and then make enough money in order for us to buy our food for the day and fuel.
We are really lucky that my partner has a great talent for music ( well I think that, he doesn't always agree, but then again he can be very hard on himself)and he loves to interact with the crowd, especially with children, which meant that he was usually very successful with his busking. In the photo's above we were in Mirepoix in Ariege. It is a beautiful medieval town with a great market.
I hate to throw things away, and having a baby and hand washing their clothes, means that alot of the baby clothes get stained and cannot be passed on. So I decided to make little toys out of them. Snails and owls, they were all hand sewn and I used untreated sheep’s wool insulation to stuff them. I really did enjoy the process, it took me a long time to make them but I have always found sewing to be therapeutic and I loved the opportunity to get creative.
We sold them while my partner was busking or sometimes at festivals. We were at a festival in this photo above, you can see the sheeps insulation in the photo, I was really trying to create a spiral with it, but it had it's own ideas and always uncurled.
At other times we would set up a little cafe outside our bus and sell food, usually only one dish, as it is alot of hard work. We would do this at festivals, especially at free festivals or cheap ones. They always had to be family friendly, that was really important to us, because some behaviours we just don't want our children around.
This was at the Festival of Colours again in Areige, we sold nachos and beer and organic blueberry cordial. Having a fridge was a great help as it means that our drinks were cold. We set up a little creative space for kids , where we put out paper, paints and crayons. It was great as we attracted lots of kids and our children were very happy.
Another time my partner worked doing the Vendange, i.e. harvesting grapes for wine. I don't really have any pictures of him working as he would be gone early morning and I would spend the day foraging with my kids. Above is where we parked up and not far from here we found some really delicious Chanterelle mushrooms, they were amazing fried in coconut oil with garlic. Thinking of them makes my mouth water.
We were also lucky to get some work helping to make yurts, we had to sand and oil the poles which is quiet nice work to do and we could do it at our own pace and most importantly have our children around us.
That is really why we chose to live this way, we get to work with our children right next to us.
They get to see us being creative and learn about how important that is in life.
I wrote this post as I have had a few people ask how we made money whilst living a nomadic lifestyle. I hope you ave enjoyed reading it and I will continue to write some more about our life on the road soon.
All photos are my own except the first which came from http://www.romansleighcollection.co.uk
Here are a few links to my other posts about nomadic family life:
@trucklife-family/anarchy-gardening-in-a-french-squat-nomadic-family
@trucklife-family/being-a-nomadic-family-roaming-around-france
@trucklife-family/converting-our-bus-into-our-home-nomadic-family
@trucklife-family/the-call-to-be-a-nomadic-family
I am part of the ecotrain, if you wish to read great content and be inspired please check it out. It is one train that is full of very diverse and creative passengers. And we all know that diversity is the spice of life.
