Self sufficient living in Bulgaria

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On the self sufficiency side of things, most village properties appear to come with at least 300 sq meters of land at a minimum, in the very center of a village, often 1,200 to 1,500 is a 'normal' plot size, and they can go up to 2,500 msq.

If you are looking to feed yourselves that depends on what standard of living you are aiming for, Bulgarian pensions are around 500 lev a month for a couple, and while they are not thriving on that much money, growing their own food, fruit, veg, rabbits, chickens, ducks and geese, sometimes, pigs, sheep and goats can be maintained on a village plot.

If you are looking to market garden, produce meat etc. or specialty items cheese, wine etc. that will vary by how much you bring with you in skills and money.

With all things like this you are constrained only by time, money and ability to weather the bureacracy to get legal on all fronts, permits, licensing, health requirements.

Once you have residency sorted you are obliged to join the bulgarian health system @22.40 leva/month.    This reduces the costs of seeing a GP from 10 leva plus per visit to 3 leva and most hospitalisation costs - you still need to pay a hospital bed tax and if having surgery for any hardware.    Medication is not subsidised.   

If you haven't reared animals/grown crops before I'd suggest you start small and build up, a lot of people seem to move here set up their small holding and then find out it's bloody hard work so give up within 2 years.      Because of health issues we have downsized our livestock and the 2000sq metres that previously grow fodder crops is being planted up with fast growing timber, for heating purposes.      That still leaves us enough land to grow some animal food and 60% + of human food

@beezone are you still doing this please? we have produced meat and dairy for ourselves for a few years now. we are moving next month to plan to start in april/may time.  we have 2500ms of garden to work with. so not huge. were downsizing from 5 acres.  but we wont be having 30 sheep or 10 goats

id love to pick your brain if possible. ive read you can only have 1 cow. im wondering how that works with welfare being a herd animal. if thats true at all. google is as good as google always was

@beezone

What is that fast growing timber called on bulgarian? How fast does it grow? And can u get wood from the forest in Bulgaria,like fallen tree branches and stuff? Is wood 🪵for heating that expensive in Bulgaria 🇧🇬? What about those pellets for heating 🤔?

Suzi, there are EU rules on how much livestock can be kept on a village property. Whether they're enforced or not is another matter. Many smallholders worldwide do keep a single dairy cow without problems. The cow might make their humans their "herd" instead.

Merry, the fast growing firewood could be black locust, which seems to be grown a lot in the area my house is in for firewood. It coppices well, burns hot, and grows fast, but is hard to cut. Also officially a noxious weed in some parts of the EU. Softer fast growing firewood is hybrid poplar. It needs more wood to put out the same amount of heat but grows very fast and is easier to cut.

We already have some black locust on our land so I hope to coppice it. I may change my mind when I try cutting it - apparently it's very hard! There's also a block of land next door that's growing black locust that appears to have been coppiced in the past. I might ask my neighbour who owns the land because I'd would love to buy it. It's a pretty little woodland anyway and I could pay someone to do the woodcutting.

I think residents can collect wood from the state-owned forest but need a permit. You might need to be careful just picking up wood from any forested area as someone else could own the land. Fallen trees along roads are probably fair game to collect. Pellet stoves burn compressed sawdust pellets and are a different type of stove to the usual woodburner -- you can't burn pellets in a petcka.

@janemulberry

Ty for the information Jane.

You're as always full of useful tips

You will do great in Bulgaria 🇧🇬

Good luck 👍 and Happy holidays

Black locust is also used for firewood in the US and Canada as it's cold tolerant, a favourite permaculture tree! Not so good a choice for horse owners as it's toxic to horses, though I imagine they'd only eat it if there was no other fodder available. I've seen a horse grazing in the woods next door.

A lot of the wood sold for firewood in Bulgaria is either oak or pine as that's what grows naturally in the mountain forests. But in our area black locust predominates.

Happy holidays to you too!

@janemulberry

I think it is acacia...акация on bulgarian

    Suzi, there are EU rules on how much livestock can be kept on a village property. Whether they're enforced or not is another matter. Many smallholders worldwide do keep a single dairy cow without problems. The cow might make their humans their "herd" instead.
Merry, the fast growing firewood could be black locust, which seems to be grown a lot in the area my house is in for firewood. It coppices well, burns hot, and grows fast, but is hard to cut. Also officially a noxious weed in some parts of the EU. Softer fast growing firewood is hybrid poplar. It needs more wood to put out the same amount of heat but grows very fast and is easier to cut.

We already have some black locust on our land so I hope to coppice it. I may change my mind when I try cutting it - apparently it's very hard! There's also a block of land next door that's growing black locust that appears to have been coppiced in the past. I might ask my neighbour who owns the land because I'd would love to buy it. It's a pretty little woodland anyway and I could pay someone to do the woodcutting.

I think residents can collect wood from the state-owned forest but need a permit. You might need to be careful just picking up wood from any forested area as someone else could own the land. Fallen trees along roads are probably fair game to collect. Pellet stoves burn compressed sawdust pellets and are a different type of stove to the usual woodburner -- you can't burn pellets in a petcka.
   

    -@janemulberry

thank you for the info. thats an amazing start for me to start my research

i actually agree about cows. we have a couple of ponies. im confident the cow would become an "pony"

we will be burning wood not pellets. im bringing 2 woodburners with me. i love my little camping burner. silly how attached we become to a lump of metal

ill have a google on the eu rules. i didnt do self sufficient life when we lived in france. just a couple of ponies and an couple of goats

    Suzi, there are EU rules on how much livestock can be kept on a village property. Whether they're enforced or not is another matter. Many smallholders worldwide do keep a single dairy cow without problems. The cow might make their humans their "herd" instead.
Merry, the fast growing firewood could be black locust, which seems to be grown a lot in the area my house is in for firewood. It coppices well, burns hot, and grows fast, but is hard to cut. Also officially a noxious weed in some parts of the EU. Softer fast growing firewood is hybrid poplar. It needs more wood to put out the same amount of heat but grows very fast and is easier to cut.

We already have some black locust on our land so I hope to coppice it. I may change my mind when I try cutting it - apparently it's very hard! There's also a block of land next door that's growing black locust that appears to have been coppiced in the past. I might ask my neighbour who owns the land because I'd would love to buy it. It's a pretty little woodland anyway and I could pay someone to do the woodcutting.

I think residents can collect wood from the state-owned forest but need a permit. You might need to be careful just picking up wood from any forested area as someone else could own the land. Fallen trees along roads are probably fair game to collect. Pellet stoves burn compressed sawdust pellets and are a different type of stove to the usual woodburner -- you can't burn pellets in a petcka.
   

    -@janemulberry

ive been searching for the eu rules on numbers of stock and found everything but i think!

do you know where i can find this please?

Suzi, I know I've seen figures quoted in something official, but now can't find them! As we're not planning on keeping larger animals, I didn't bother bookmarking it.

There's been a lot of misinformation this year about smallholders keeping livestock being banned in Bulgaria, which isn't at all based on fact. Any limits are simply based on normal animal welfare requirements - so much land per head of stock. And I doubt it's enforced unless there was a real issue of overstocking a piece of land which led to complaints.

If you had enough land to keep more than one cow, I doubt it would be an issue. What the rules are about is preventing people setting up overcrowded feedlots.