Liquid Gold

After almost two whole weeks of continuous picking (only short days tho', maybe 4-5 hours a day) we took our olives to the local lagar. We used a lagar that Rick's new barber recommended and discovered that people from miles around use this lagar because the olive oil it produces is better than the lagars with newer machinery .............

we had our sacks weighed, 125 kilos in total, and although we didn't have enough for an individual pressing, we did come away with 15.5 litres of olive oil!

Several local Portuguese people came over to look at our olives and commented on how amazing they looked (even though they were covered in leaves and stuff - the olives that is not the locals!!).

We have bottled all and feel that despite there being a million other jobs to do, this job has been a job well done and worth doing..........

Christmas Day

Happy Christmas

We visited Portugal's highest village today with our Neighbour Lia and her dog Jack, and then went on to beautiful lake in the Estrella mountain range, glorious sunny day. 

Skipped the usual roast turkey madness and ate clementines and some chocolate money!!

Sarah

Clearing the land

We are slowly making some progress on the land (compare with photo "some of what we bought", you'll have to look very closely to see difference!.

As Rick harvests olives, i'm pruning trees and generally tidying up. There are a lot of brambles everywhere and my gardening gloves are not man enough for the job. They don't sell gardening gloves for women here (obviously). My hands are full of thorns and are very sore, thank god I bought the Sudocrem with me.

I found our first creature yesterday, a great big toad living in one of the terrace walls, Rick tried to make me kiss it, I naturally didn't............

More of the same today and more fruit tree planting

Making our rental warmer

We bought a fantastic wood burning stove with us from UK, but they don't work well without a register plate, so after several days of burning a lot of wood and not feeling very warm (it's bloody cold here, and wet), Rick decided to find piece of sheet steel to make a register plate, easy you might think.

Several kilometers and a few hours later, we did find a guy and he cut us a piece to size, Rick spent some time bashing the hell out of it (dressing it to shape!) and now we have a functioning stove and are a bit warmer. Rick is also not having to find and cut and chop quite so much wood.

Harvesting our olives

We know we're a bit late, but they're just hanging there asking to be picked so we are. The Lagars are still open so we'll crack on.

Today was the first fruit day in the bio-dynamic calender, so after alot of digging, we have decided to convert one of the terraces near the house in to an orchard and top fruit garden. We planted nectarine, cherry and walnut, gooseberry, redcurrant, blackcurrant, raspberry and strawberry. We pruned all the olives on that terrace and had a great fire. Tomorrow it's back to olive picking and we'll pick until either there are no more olives or the lagar is closed, whichever comes first.

We´ve arrived

Journey from Colchester to Plymouth was uneventful - great.
Passport control, uneventful and the dogs and cat didn´t get scanned, glad I didn´t go through the recommended rigmoral of getting a million rabies jabs and blood tests done, infact they haven´t been checked once ......

The boat trip was OK, "Seasick Rick" felt pretty sick and only wanted to eat oranges or Haribo Sour mix, got the latter as no oranges on board, I think he thought he might get scurvy!
I on the other hand had a wonderful french meal for one, no really, it was good and some wine. The boat was incredibly hot which didn´t help with the sea sickness.

The dogs kennels were barbaric and they didn´t go for a pee or poo for 24 hours, can´t say I blame them, the toilet facilities were very poor. Somehow they managed to survive, i have never seen Stanley piss for so long when we finally got them to beach in Santander.

Had yet another uneventful journey through Spain ( possibly the bleakest country I have ever been to, yes, even bleaker than Scotland!). Stayed in fantastic hotel by motorway just outside Valladolid called El Montico (if you´re ever passing, pop in!), you could smoke everywhere (hurrah!), they let us put the animals in the room and walk them through they´re very busy and posh lobby!. Live music in the bar in the evening and a slap up meal, probably last one for a while.

Anyway, back to now...

We have been harvesting our olives, with little information but a lot of energy, watching what the locals do. I´ve also been digging so I can get in some fruit bushes in.
We have made some new friends, been to a car boot sale; went to church for St Nicolas day; bought a phone; chopped a lot of wood; had a meeting with the architect.
Our first week has been hectic and willprobably remain that way. Still feels like we are on holiday, even though we are working hard. Not missing anything...........