Every orchard begins with someone believing an empty field can become home.
Hello, and welcome.
My name is Alejandro, and together with John, we've started what has slowly become one of the most meaningful projects of our lives.
Not because it's the biggest.
Not because it's the most ambitious.
But because it feels like the direction we've been walking towards for years.
This project is driven by curiosity, passion and consistency. It's about slowing down, finding a healthier balance between technology and nature, continuing to learn, making things with our hands, and building a life that feels more intentional.
Like many people, we've spent years moving quickly. Chasing deadlines, collecting experiences, jumping from one project to the next. There was nothing wrong with that. In fact, many of those experiences brought us here.
But somewhere along the way we started asking different questions.
What happens if we stop trying to optimise every minute of our lives?
What if curiosity becomes more important than productivity?
What if building a meaningful life looks more like tending a garden than climbing a ladder?
Those questions didn't arrive all at once. They appeared quietly, over conversations, travels, books, workshops, walks in nature, and countless cups of coffee.
And perhaps the most important thing happened when we slowed down enough to notice them.
In my case, COVID was a much bigger turning point than I realised at the time.
I went from living in China, flying all over the country almost every week, to suddenly being locked down in Spain with something I'd been missing for years.
Time.
In 2019, I counted around 110 flights.
Some weeks looked ridiculous. Shanghai. Beijing. Xi'an. Chengdu. Guangzhou. Back to Shanghai.
Repeat.
I genuinely loved it.
Looking back, though, I think I loved the pace almost as much as the work. Maybe it was the dopamine. Maybe I simply didn't know another way of living.
Then one day I caught myself thinking...
What the hell am I doing this for?
Asia changed me in ways I'm only just beginning to understand. That probably deserves a few notes and future Field Notes of its own. For example, how swimming in public pools in China and reading Eckhart Tolle's A New Earth somehow improved my approach to life.
Looking back, I don't think COVID gave me answers. It simply gave me enough silence to hear the questions.
And once you've heard those questions... it's surprisingly difficult to go back to pretending they don't exist.
Slow mornings. Hearing the birds while having my morning coffee. Quietness. Time with friends. A walk in nature. Hobbies like painting or clay. Emotional healing. Learning. Having a real orchard.
Funny enough... I still went back afterwards.
I chased the same definition of success for a while longer, even though I don't really believe in that version of success anymore. But something had changed. There was already a seed underground.
That seed started growing strongly in 2025, during probably my worst year. Another reflection for another time. But somehow, everything clicked together and made sense. So we entered the next phase in our gardening “profession” and here we are.
This journal is our way of documenting that journey. A journey that started long ago and is only becoming clearer and clearer.
Not because we think we've figured anything out.
Quite the opposite.
We're still learning. We're still experimenting. We're still changing our minds. But we are pretty clear about the direction, and we think the value is in the journey.
The Last Nomads has lived in our heads for a long time. When I registered the brand a few years ago, I had a rough idea of the direction, but as a serial entrepreneur I kept several options open with a business-like approach. It never arrived as one grand idea. It grew through hundreds of small decisions that all pointed in roughly the same direction: a lifestyle change.
Looking back, it's funny how many tiny seeds were already being planted long before we realised we were building an orchard.
Today, we can finally see that orchard beginning to take shape—both as a real place we will build one day in the near future, and as a way of living.
Funny enough, we are starting to think that the way of living is almost as important as the ideal building setup.
We still love to do a thousand things, but we are learning to slow down. For us, building that lifestyle before having the place in the middle of nature matters because, as we have experienced in the last few years, life can be quite a rollercoaster.
I think most of us know that. Pandemics happen. Jobs change. Plans change. Sometimes we change.
But I've noticed something. Little rituals seem to survive all of it. So I am learning to make them stand out, make them part of my philosophy, slow them down and fully enjoy them.
They reflect what I dream of, but more importantly, they anchor me in the now and help me feel aligned.
Obviously, I would love to walk outside, pick a fresh, flavoursome tomato from my garden and make a lovely toast with freshly grated tomato, olive oil and salt. Simple, but delicious.
However, I can keep dreaming about that, or I can choose to find that quality tomato from a nearby local producer and perform the same slow act almost as a ritual.
So these days I buy them from a local grower. Same toast. Same little ritual.
One day, maybe the tomato will come from our own garden. Until then... this one tastes pretty good too.
I think that's what this project is becoming.
Not waiting for the perfect version of life before starting to live it.
And we'll bring you along for all of it.
Every few weeks you'll find something different here.
Perhaps a ceramics class. A beautiful farm we visited. A book that's making us think differently. A conversation worth remembering. A workshop. An experiment that worked. Another that didn't. A new project.
Or simply an idea that's still waiting to grow. I still have far more ideas than available lifetimes. I'm working on that. Happy to share many of them for other people to embark on.
Some of those things may have nothing to do with your own journey, but others might arrive exactly when you need them.
If one small idea encourages you to plant a seed of your own, then this journal has already done something worthwhile.
In this journal
If you stick around long enough, you'll probably notice we become a little predictable...
- Clay, trees, books and good coffee.
- Learning completely unnecessary skills that somehow become useful later. We love learning, and this will always be a key part of what we share.
- Creative experiments: reusing things, giving them another life, making with clay, digital animation, oil, watercolour, wood, or anything else that comes around the corner.
- Growing food. That's non-negotiable. We don't know exactly what the orchard will look like yet, but there will definitely be fruit trees. We'll also explore food forests and regenerative living.
- Cooking. We are foodies, and I have a slight sweet tooth, so learning how to find healthier alternatives is another project of mine.
- Long conversations and people who inspire us.
- Clay, craftsmanship and making things slowly. You will see a lot of ceramics here, but we will also be applying whatever new skills we learn.
- Books worth lingering over.
- Animals: dogs, cats, geese, ducks, chickens... maybe a donkey? John still isn't completely convinced, but I've been helping by sending him donkey videos on Instagram. Let's just say his algorithm now thinks he's planning a small farm.
- Places that remind us to breathe. We'll share some of the experiences we've had and how they have shaped us. I lived mostly in Asia from 2006, and obviously it has shaped me in many ways.
- Technology. Yes, we genuinely love AI. We also think one of the healthiest things it can do is give us more time to be human. It is up to us how we build a healthy relationship with it.
- Ideas that are still in seed form.
I have far more ideas than I'll ever have time to pursue. One of the nicest lessons I've learned is that maturity isn't having more ideas—it's choosing which ones deserve watering.
And probably far too many references to orchards.
You've been warned.
Ultimately, this project isn't really about building an off-grid home or learning to grow food or making pottery.
Those are simply expressions of something deeper.
It's about creating a life that feels a little more balanced.
A little more connected.
A little more intentional.
We dream of a place surrounded by nature, where we grow some of our own food, work with our hands, continue learning every year, contribute to a community around us, and allow technology to be a helpful tool rather than something that constantly asks for our attention.
Will it look exactly like that?
Probably not. But the key word is now, and how we shape our life to be closer and closer to that dream.
Life has a habit of surprising us. And that's part of the adventure.
This journal is simply our field notes along the way.
If you've read this far...
thank you.
I don't know exactly where this journal will end up.
Hopefully somewhere surrounded by trees.
Hopefully with a few more skills than we have today.
Hopefully having met some wonderful people along the way.
And hopefully with a lot of stories we'll laugh about years from now.
If any of that sounds like your kind of adventure... pull up a chair. The coffee's on.
Welcome to the orchard.
Next in the orchard
Issue 002 · What Clay Is Teaching Me About Patience
A reflection on creativity, craftsmanship and why I’ve realised my ceramic studio already exists—even if the building doesn’t.