Well, well, well

Although water is not an issue at the moment it will be later in the year and as i lie awake at night listening to the thoughts in my head ( and Rick snoring!), I get to thinking about all sorts. This week as the rain has been lashing down, I've been thinking about water, where is it all going and how can we have some.
We got talking about it and I decided to investigate the next day, I went off wondering up to the meadow above our first meadow and there it was, overflowing in an unused tank, I had a look and figured that there must have been a system, probably a long time ago, that allowed us to have this water as well as our neighbour. I went back to our land, following the overgrown gulley's and discovered our tank (empty) and ancient water mine.
Spent about two hours removing vegetation, quite rank and primordial, kept expecting to see toads leaping out from the wet walls. I asked Rick to come and help me, showed him what I had discovered and asked him to dig out old, overgrown trenches, with a bit of jiggery pokery and some moving of slates, we opened the flood gates and amazingly, it all worked. We had to shut it off before we left as we would have flooded our land overnight, but at least we know how it all works. Now we just need to discuss this with our neighbour, as we were sure we were breaking about 26 by-laws. But first we need to find out who our neighbour is........mmmmm

Saturday morning chores

The thing we love the most about where we are living is the contrast between modern life and the "old ways", this photo sums it up completely. The bundle on this old lady's head is chicken bedding and weighs nothing. A car is useless for this job, she has come down from the mountain on a tiny track, wide enough for a donkey, that's it.
These scenes are around every corner and are the most humbling, if you were feeling even remotely sorry for yourself you'd soon stop. It's impossible to continue in our usual westernised states of mind and not start feeling faintly ridiculous for having our thoughts, it stops you dead in your tracks, stops you from wanting to rush through your life filling it up with meaningless crap. Taking the time to enjoy the small things and feel grateful for what we have is something I am finding easier to do here as there are less distractions and lots of reminders........

Mavis, one, two, three and four

We are now the proud owners of our first chickens, we've called them all Mavis, or in Rick's case Old Mave!
They seem to be in good health and are quiet and friendly to each other.
Hopefully they will start producing eggs soon, better had or they'll be in the pot!

Still very cold here at nights, frost all over land by the time we arrive in the mornings, usually about 11ish, but once the sun hits us very warm, infact we get so warm we end up taking off most of our fleeces (i'm wearing three at the moment and three pairs of socks!). Managed to have several bonfires to get rid of vine prunings and Rick has finally finished brushcutting the meadows. Hoping to get a local to rotavate 2 of the meadows this coming weekend. We have decided to keep the top meadow for growing animal feeds and I have already planted out 40 brassica type plants for the chickens, bought them in a bundle at the local market for 4 euros, they are about a foot tall. Rick watched them coming back to life this morning as the sun heated them up.

Our neighbour came to the land today and has advised that I take more off the vines than I had, so having thought I'd finished, I now have to go back and do them again......live and learn.

Rick has been clearing out one of the outuildings for our goat.........we think we've ordered one from the local butcher and we think he understands that we want it to be alive.............should be interesting.

Language slowly coming along, the Portuguese speak so fast and rarely finish sentences and mumble alot so makes for interesting conversations.........I just stand and smile and say yes alot and then they go away and I feel like a complete idiot! oh well.

Cold and frosty

You think it's cold where you are.......
Brrrrrrrrrr...........
Last time it was this cold in Portugal was 1932!! apparently people are dying and not coping at all.
Working hard on the land helps keeps us warm and when the sun is out which has been most of the week, it's quite warm, as soon as sun disappears over the mountain, then you feel it.
The rental still remains quite possibly the coldest house I have ever lived in, we're back to two hot water bottles a night again, thought we'd seen the back of that one, oh well, lets hope spring is round the corner.

Three Kings Day and potions

Today was three kings day and the day for mixing my bio-dynamic potion (gold, frankincense and myrrh) for spraying the boundary of our farm, the whole thing took nearly 3 hours, will let you and the Bio-Dynamic Association (www.biodynamic.org.uk) know how it goes, supposed to keep all good stuff in and bad stuff out (hopefully will include local predators!), the eagle watched us from above as we did it, cool.........

Tuesday afternoon rush hour traffic jam

Forget health and safety and closing roads down and putting traffic lights in and wearing safety equipment and fifteen men standing around talking about how to cut the tree down, this is how they do it here, chop it down, leave it lying across the road, chainsaw it up and push it out the way, took about 15 minutes and nobody got cross, all quite civilised really, and not a high-vis jacket in site.

hot springs

We've had alot of rain, which is good, January is the month of rain, but today it was sunny and warm and finally got some washing done and dry. Also visited some hot springs, apparently very healing for shoulders, arthritis, rheumatism etc. we'll be visiting as soon as warmer outside

Grapes of wrath

Happy New Year to all who read my ramblings.........

The locals in Benfeita put on a yearly service and lunch for all new "estrangeiros", fairly unique initiative we are told. One that we were honoured to be invited to. Never sat through a catholic mass, apart from the church being absolutely freezing, it was very humbling, even with all the sitting and standing, standing sitting, copying the locals and not really knowing what the heck was going on. At the end I was dragged out from my pew by a very forceful old lady, to kiss the baby's head....(well plastic doll actually) and then we all went back to local village hall for enormous amounts of food and wine. The Portuguese like to play a game with their tables which Sandy calls hide the tablecloth. You will bever see so much food on a table anywhere in the world, incredible. Some of the older ladies from the community sang local folk songs and one chap sang some Fado. I finally met one of the old ladies who shouts "boa dia/tarde" at me from the road when I am working on the land, hopefully she'll become a good friend.

Whilst Rick has been clearing yet more land of weeds, mint, fennel etc. I have been tackling the grapes, which have to be pruned before end January. We're guessing the land hasn't been properly worked for some years. The grape vines had spread up to 4-5 metres. Totally overwhelming and quite dangerous. As I slowly work out what is coming from where, I cut and pull, often being whipped in the face by the vine or the thing the vine is attached to, often brambles. I'll be happy when I've finished. There are rows and rows of them, all scattered around the meadows, terraces and across the river (haven't worked out how to do them yet, need waders and harness!).

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...........

A few days left

A lot of boxes have been taped together and filled with our possessions,

a lot of people have been visited and a lot of cake eaten,

we've had a proper Christmas dinner and lots of curries and fish and chips......

it snowed