"a goat is not a chicken" 

“a goat is not a chicken” 

Portugal, 2022 - 2023

The sound of bells tied on the goat necks, the crowing roosters and the barking of dogs are part of everyday life for the big family, living on an off-grid-farm in Portugal. 

Growing up on this farm, one learns more than ‘a goat is not a chicken,’ as one of the children said. The children, six of them ranging in ages from 4 months to 16 years, know how to harvest a garden, bake bread, build a house and care for the animals. 

Living on the land gives a lot of freedom as they are allowed to do whatever they want. The parents do not say no, unless it is a health or safety issue. 

With no infrastructure on the land, except a well, the family then built everything themselves.

“If we were in the situation of having to live off the land, we would not starve, but we have kids of various ages and we have fancies ourselves - we come from very regular households with full fridges and we like to eat chocolate. There are things we import from the outside world, but it’s nothing we couldn’t live without if we had to. So this is the most sustainable thing I think we can do in Europe without vanishing somewhere.” 

Spending almost three weeks on the farm, Carmen Körner was fascinated by the family living an almost self-sustaining life having grown up in a big city herself. Having a full-sustainable farm nowadays is very complicated since generations before need to have planted trees. 

To create a cooperative photo-book, to tell the children’s stories, Carmen Körner gave them little digital cameras and interviewed them. 

See the whole story as an index.