Meet Fallene
Since moving to Spain in 2022, Fallene has naturally stepped into the role of cat whisperer, rescuing stray cats from our property—many of whom have found their way into our home.
Beyond caring for animals, she has been exploring a wide range of creative and purposeful passions. She has launched a business focused on mentoring others who are seeking to live more aligned, intentional lives.
Her days are often spent among the plants and flowers in the garden—crafting custom hydrosols and body products, creating small-batch beverages, writing, creating our websites, and, more recently, discovering a love for oil painting.
You can follow her journey and her many passions on Substack.
Meet Kyle
Kyle brings a steady energy to our lives at La CasaDel Castaño.
He is meticulous and has lots of patience when it comes to growing seedlings and tending to the vegetable garden, finding joy in every small detail of the growing process.
From garden to table, he creates delicious vegetarian meals often using ingredients from our garden.
He is also the one who keeps everything running—our resident jack of all trades, always repairing, building, and figuring things out around the property.
Beyond the work, Kyle is a natural storyteller with a gift for humor and observation, often keeping us cracking up. He shares some of these stories on our website and his Substack.
More recently, he has discovered a new creative outlet in woodworking, adding another layer to his evolving passions.
About La Casa Del Castaño
When we were researching places to live in Galicia, we came across a listing that had potential—but it needed a lot of love. We had never been to Spain before, but we booked a trip to see a few properties.
La Casa del Castaño was the last house we visited—and even though it was in rough shape, something about it felt right.
The property spans ¾ of an acre and was once a vineyard. It includes a small stone house, a wine lagar, and a large stone barn from 1880 that needed the most work. The narrow stone-walled street leading to the property made us nervous. We weren’t sure what to expect, or if we would get used to making the drive up this street in the future if we picked this place.
Soon as we stepped through the gate, it felt like we’d arrived at our own private Spanish villa.
There were three buildings, multiple terraced gardens, an outdoor kitchen, a little dining nook overlooking the neighbor’s vineyard, and views of the Portuguese mountains in the distance. The land was full of mature fruit trees—apple, pear, fig, grapefruit, avocado, orange, lime, feijoa, and chestnut (from which the house gets its name)—as well as a prickly pear cactus.
Sounds like a dream, right?
Well... sort of, more like the real life version of the movie “The Money Pit”. The truth is, the place was a hot mess!
There was an overwhelming amount of stuff left behind by the previous owners, who were antique collectors.
A wood shed sat on top of an old septic tank, tall bamboo lined the stone wall along with a rotting palm tree blocking the view. The now-vegetable garden was a dump filled with debris, clippings, and lots of broken glass bottles. We found a chicken coop next to a graffiti-covered room with a clown toy hanging inside (yep, really), and a dark, leaky “outdoor kitchen” covered in moss, algae and thick canopies of spiderwebs.
The pool needed to be retiled, all the houses needed some work and there was lots of sprucing up in every direction. But, we saw the potential, thought “why not” and well you’ll have to read our blog to see how this story unfolded!
