pissed piggie

For the last few days I've been collecting windfall fruit and giving it to the pigs to eat, great free food for them and healthy to boot.........

Yesterday morning I arrived at the farm to discover that the youngest pig was having trouble walking and standing up, she also seemed completely confused.......



In my usual dramatic way I assumed she'd suffered some kind of brain injury, had a dreadful disease or had had a stroke or seizure. After a quick chat with husband and some shouting I called a friend, who suggested she may be drunk. In observation it would have seemed that he was right and husband proceeded to take the piss out of me and the pig, lots of jokes etc. I, on the other hand was still being deadly serious about the whole thing and rather concerned, I stayed with her all day and had to leave as it got dark, with her lying in the middle of her field. Stupidly I didn't sleep a wink and as soon as the sun came up today, I went to see her. There she was all tucked up in bed with her mum, she walked out of the house like nothing had happened. I am releived and feeling obviously rather silly, I shall never hear the end of it no doubt. It was the quinces that did it apparently, now the locals tell me don't give them quinces!!!!!

Bloody livestock

festa-ing

We never take any time off together, or go anywhere together for that matter, so we decided that this year we would visit all the Festas in our area. Every weekend from July until the beginning of September most of the villages in Portugal have their own Festa, a party to the likes of us, but most have a religious significance, processions, church services, but also local bands,
raffles, I failed to win the first prize again, a goat



big sit-down meals and tasty snacks



We visted the Vinho Festa, were we banged a lot of nails into a piece of wood, much hilarity was had, mostly with the ridiculous hammer. The first one with a nail down, pays for the nails, 10c each, the last one down, buys the drinks, and here in Vinho, you can hit anyones nails...we literally got hammered!!





Unfortunately for us the evening events don't really kick-off until after 10pm which makes it difficult to attend (I am usually in bed by 11pm), but we persevered.
We planned each weekend carefully, making sure we went to the village with the best band on Friday and Saturday nights and by Sunday we were burnt out but attended non the less.

We gate crashed a procession in Pai Das Donas, visiting each open house with the father and son accordion players, eating snacks and drinking some very dubious alcohols, always being forced upon us This particular event started very strangely as we really were clearly not part of the village, but we knew the accordion player and his wife and were begged to stay and continue, by the end of the night we had made lots of new friends, some of who only come once a year. Pai Das Donas is a tiny village with a permanent residency of 9!!

We nearly got the hang of the dance (although we were still the laughing stock of everyone!!)





There is a lovely sense of celebration here in the summer, a celebration of life, a real family event, a coming togetherness. Something I've not experienced before. It's amazing to feel part of that and to be welcomed into the hearts of so many not to mention the houses and the food and the drink.
Thank you kind people of Portugal/obrigado gente amável de Portugal

more things figgy

Preserved figs in lemon and brandy syrup



yum yum

seeds and what not

I have been breathing a sigh of relief as the season changes I can finally get out and do some stuff, I love this time of year in the garden, bit of a neat freak anyway so clearing up is one of my favourite things on the farm, have been collecting seeds and continue to harvest the soya beans,



I now have over a kilo for planting out next year and hope to have at least 3 more kilos from the crop on the borrowed meadow. it has been a very good crop on our farm, needs no watering at all and maybe one day i will have enough to feed the chickens, just need to figure out a way to pod them that isn't so time consuming. If anyone wants a starter pack (about 20 seeds is what I started with) let me know, would be happy to share.

Also did an experiment this year with blue hopi corn, planting a couple of rows either side of my corn patch to see how much cross-pollination there is, figured that the crossed stuff would show up in amongst the blue, the only stuff that crossed was my own, so that is good, am saving some seed for next year





and the rest will get ground up for the chickens. Blue hopi corn contains 30% more protein than normal corn so will be growing even more next year for the birds, slowly getting away from the need to buy in feed for them, two ingredients of which are genetically modified, corn and soya, have now proved to myself that i can grow both so, we'll see what colour the chickens eggs are after consuming the blue corn!!

The wildflower meadow has died back and I have collected all the sunflower seeds, these will also go towards bulking out the chicken feed



harvesting the chillies and tomatoes for sauces and my favourite, chilli jam



wondering around picking figs fresh from the tree, feeding the windfalls to the pigs and making fig marmalade



making loganberry jam with fruit from the freezer



More seeds I have collected in abundance are

Cherokee trail of tears beans



Yard long beans



Parsnip (Gladiator)



and hollyhocks



again, if you want any of the above, please let me know, I have loads

walking on the dark side

I've been spending some time over in our chestnut woodland, mostly clearing the path.



There are some really really old chestnuts the trunks of which are still standing and acting as grandparent trees











Our concern is that there are a lot of dying pines standing in our woodland and above that will fall in the next year or two, rick doesn't have time to fell them at the moment and we'll have to let nature takes it course. It's a very beautiful, cool and dark space, a pleasant reprieve from the blistering heat on the rest of the farm