In the previous issue, I wrote about the fact that excess forest had been cleared on the plot for our future libertarian village and road construction had begun. As of today, the road to the plot is fully graded, and I can now ride my scooter right under the shade of the native olives.

In the second half of October, I personally took a job working on the road construction and plot clearing, and by yesterday, we already had a full women’s crew working. The work is, of course, not easy, but here in Montenegro, the ladies are quite tough, and one has to keep up. After the first working day, I spent a couple of days recovering, but then I eventually got into the swing of things, and over the past three weeks, I’ve even grown a bit stronger.

The plot has brought in its first small income: several kilograms of olives and some firewood. The highest quality olives were salted, and a tasting is expected in mid-December. The lower quality ones were turned into a liter of oil. I will continue the harvest, but overall the scale will remain modest: without special care, the yield of our olives is small.

As for the firewood, it was sold mainly to neighbors, for self-pickup, and quite cheaply—because long-haul trucks cannot reach the plot, so the logistical costs of hauling the firewood far away would simply eat up all the profit. As of today, 475 euros of this profit has been earned. After this, we will likely stop sales, and the remainder is intended to be kept for the future needs of the village, for which it will be necessary to equip a storage area.

Since the construction of houses will soon begin on the plot, a trailer was delivered there, which is planned to be used as a utility room and a guardhouse. And since the permanent residence of a guard is expected, this will also require the deployment of some minimal domestic infrastructure. The trailer had to be hauled up the hill by a tractor, so we will soon need to concrete the steepest sections of the road; otherwise, it will be difficult to deliver many cargoes. In time, the road will be fully concreted.

Since the construction of houses is about to begin, the issue of privatizing individual plots for building has become urgent. For now, a preliminary plan was drawn up, and mechanisms for mutual agreement on who gets which plot were tested in the chat. For instance, I was chased off a piece of land I liked twice, until I grabbed one for which competition was slightly lower. In addition, a drone was purchased; it is intended to perform aerial photography, tie it to the stakes set in the ground by the surveyor (whose coordinates are precisely known)—and then the preliminary plan can be corrected taking into account the features of the terrain and the remaining trees on the plot. A test flight was conducted yesterday; it didn’t go very well, and it is expected to be repeated soon with slightly corrected parameters. The drone, as is customary in Montelibero, was purchased by a private initiative group through equity participation and using the tokenomics built around the project; its use is regulated by an agreement drawn up between them, and whether they use it for entertainment or monetize it in some way is their business; for me, it is more interesting as a practical solution to various problems related to property rights.

Last week, project volunteers carried out a humanitarian special operation: they rescued one Russian political emigrant from an anarcho-commune at a farmstead near Bijelo Polje. Following her, another communard migrated to us on his own (he is the one we plan to use as a guard living in the trailer). This is how communities work under ancap. Ideologically, they aren’t very close to us yet, but they will do as fellow travelers, and we’ll see from there.

But we are, of course, not so much stealing people from other projects as we are attracting our own settlers. For example, the other day a family of five migrated to Montenegro, which is a record for us so far. Unfortunately, the project website is updated very rarely and sporadically because there is no one to manage it, so the settler counter on it is unlikely to be up to date. As for the freshest information about Montelibero, as before—it’s in the project’s telegram channel.

Finally, I would like to recommend an English-language blog about settling in Montenegro by one of the project participants, which is posted in the English-language Montelibero telegram channel under the hashtag #josesbarme. There are slightly fresher impressions of the country and how local life is organized than what you can find from me.