About Home & Harvest | Self-Sufficient Living & Food Forests

About Home & Harvest

Intro: from finance stress to self‑sufficient life

Hi, I’m Nicola, and Home & Harvest is my way out of a stressful finance job and into a life that actually matches what I care about: real food, healthy land, and more time with my family.

For years I’ve worked behind a screen, constantly stressed and chasing numbers that never seemed to mean much in real life. At the same time, I’ve felt a growing pull in the opposite direction—towards soil, seasons, and a simpler, more self‑sufficient way of living.

Home & Harvest is the journey I’m taking to replace that old life with a new one, and to turn the things we grow and make into an alternative income for our family.

Where we are now

We’ve already made one of the big moves: we live in a rural part of Europe, surrounded by land, trees, and the space to grow our own food. It’s beautiful and it’s also challenging—new language, new systems, and a lot of learning by doing.

Our aim here is simple, but not small:

  • Become as self‑sufficient as possible in our food and home.

  • Gradually replace my old finance income with natural products, digital guides, and food sales.

  • Use what we learn to help other people do the same, wherever they are.

Alongside growing our own food and building alternative income, we’re also slowly renovating our old house here in rural Europe. Every wall we fix and space we restore is about creating a home that works with the climate, uses less, and gives us room to grow food, make products, and eventually welcome others to experience this way of living.

 

What Home & Harvest is about

Home & Harvest is where I share the roadmap I wish I had when we started:

  • Self‑sufficient kitchen: moving away from toxic, expensive supermarket foods, learning to read labels, and filling the cupboards with simple, real ingredients.

  • Preserving and making the most of food: recipes, preserving, and batch cooking so less is wasted and more is homemade.

  • Growing our own food: from herbs in pots to a home food forest, le

  • arning how to work with the land instead of against it.

  • Natural products and soaps: creating things like our Quinta Da Oleo soaps and other natural products that can support both our skin and our income.

This isn’t about overnight perfection. It’s about a real family taking small, consistent steps and sharing what actually works.

Turning products into an alternative income

One of my big goals is to make sure our income comes less from spreadsheets and more from soil, skills, and creativity.

That’s why Home & Harvest has two main sides:

  • Education: practical guides, checklists, and courses that help you detox your kitchen, build a self‑sufficient home, and start growing your own food—even if you’re starting small.

  • Natural products: soaps and other simple, natural products  that reflect the way we want to live: low‑toxic, kind to the land, and made with care.

Every guide written, every bar of soap made, is one step further away from the old job and one step closer to a life built around land, health, and family.

The bigger vision: regenerating land across Europe

This isn’t just about our little corner of the world.

Long term, I want Home & Harvest to help fund the regeneration of degraded land across Europe—especially places that are drying out, flooding, or sliding towards desertification.

That means:

  • Supporting and creating food forests and perennial systems that hold water, build soil, and provide food.

  • Sharing what we learn so more families and small projects can restore their own patches of land.

  • Proving that a small, family‑run brand can contribute to real ecological repair, not just talk about it.

The more this business grows, the more we can put back into the landscapes that feed us all.

Walk with us

If you’re also feeling the pull away from stress, ultra‑processed food, and supermarket dependence, you’re in the right place.

Through Home & Harvest I’m sharing:

  • Our honest story—what’s working, what’s messy, and what we’re rebuilding from scratch.

  • Recipes and ideas for a more self‑sufficient kitchen.

  • Guides and products designed to make this journey easier for you than it was for us.

This isn’t just my escape from finance. It’s an invitation: to build a more self‑sufficient life, to care for the land under your feet, and, together, to help regenerate the landscapes we share across Europe.