All Quiet on the Western Front

It's been a time of contemplation.

I have moved out of my lovely cob house and back up into the 'shack'. I guess I like change. Also, it's nice to have a break from that hill, and so lovely at the top! The views are captivating.

I intend to rent out the cob house but meanwhile I have two lovely German girls helping me finish the roof and weed the strawberry patch. The couch grass roots go on the roof. Permaulture in action. (Stacking functions)

R is in UK working and I feel tired of farming on my own, so I am letting ideas and opportunities rise up to the surface.

I bought myself a rigid heddle loom and am enjoying learning how to use it. I am making stuff using hand spun wool. It is very satisfying work.

The olive grove has been ploughed for pasture.

I love this curve of land.

All the fields have been ploughed and lots of cistus cut and burnt. The land looks very manicured for the moment, with the corduroy red-brown earth and the vivid green edges where the grass has grown after the baking heat of summer has dissipated. I sat on a fallen bough of a cork oak yesterday and listened in the stillness of the afternoon to acorns falling all around me.

A new year is just around the corner. Best wishes to all.

Rain, finally!

We got the tail end of a couple of hurricanes in the Atlantic. Nothing damaged, but quite a good bit of rain. We are all blinking and feeling strange. Shoes and socks, jeans and jerseys, etc.

My house is dry inside. Yeah! I still haven't finished the roof extensions but it works fine. I am hoping to get some volunteers to help me do the work next week.

Last week I took a short trip up north to a place near Tabua, Coimbra area. It was interesting to see how steep the hills are and how covered in (burnt) eucalyptus they are. It is so sad. It should be a criminal offence to plant those trees, plus the false mimosa which is spreading like a plague.

I stayed with a family who are starting up a permaculture forest. I loved their enthusiasm and energy. I feel a bit jaded, myself. Farming and 'the good life' is a lot of work, especially if you live on a steep hillside with no access to the lower slopes. Still, it is good exercise.

The chestnuts are ripe and big. Time to make that dangerous chestnut pudding. Chocolate, chestnuts and cream...

Also, it will soon be time for fires inside. I am without a stove at the moment but feel I will soon be on the case. I took out my clay fireplace as it was not working. I feel tempted to make a new one but I do have a very good Jotul to put in so I may skip the clay bit.

The figs always get ripe just when the weather goes wet. So there are a lot of soggy figs around, and dizzy, slow wasps feeding themselves up for the winter.

Sweat September

There is nothing sweet about the heat.
38 degrees C outside, I take shelter in my house, grateful for the thick mud walls that keep that intensity out.
The beginning of the month it felt good, the promise of autumn, but now the slanting sun reaches in and burns us all.
I think I'll just go to the beach and enjoy the cold sea.
I think about that a lot.
I have been trying to occupy my time inside, but it isn't always easy.
I have carved some crochet hooks.

I have read some fat books.
I have watched a lot of you tube videos.
I have finished the patch of new floor and waxed it.
The cats lay like flat bits of fur, trying to stay cool.
 

Endless blue sky and dry, brown grass and dust.
Each sentence is a paragraph.

Sweet September

The bliss of gentle heat and occasional clouds and morning mists. The fig trees are full of ripening fruit as their leaves begin to dry and fall. I love the rustling sound of them in a breeze.

I have pulled out most of the tomato plants, etc as it was too pathetic to bear looking at! I have made perhaps two litres of tomato pure from three months of irrigation. Shameful...

The cobbing I was doing has been stopped. In fact, now it must be said that I wasn't building anything. It took a couple of days and a few hardy females (and one good man) to demolish the building and make it disappear. We won't talk about that anymore, except to say that cob is tough. The children will have a lovely playground, that is enough.

Our area is changing, as I suppose many other parts of the world are. New people move here to have a better life, bringing with them their dreams and aspirations. I feel a bit of a reactionary, reluctant to embrace the changes that are bound to happen. I believe in permaculture and helping this beautiful part of the world to resist desertification, both in land and people. The original Alentejanos survived by hard work and a deep knowledge of their land. We can learn a lot from them, but the dependency on artificial fertilizers and weed killers as the modern way to farm must be stopped the world over. I hope that these young energetic people can show how it is possible.

The Shop Window Event, 'Montras', was a great success and today we will all go and picnic in the village square, bringing food from our homes, to celebrate and to finish the month long exhibition of local artists' work.

How dry the landscape is.

I have been working on my house, extending the roof overhang and making cob eaves under it. Very tricky up a ladder. I only do a bit at a time as it is very tiring. I have to remember that I can take my time. Patience.

August - The month of searing heat. It is 35 degrees outside. Too hot to do anything physical and practical. I stay indoors, reading, cooking, sleeping.

I went to Cercal to do the laundry because my washing machine is not working. There is a laundrette there! I sat in the covered deck of the Pastelaria Inacio, drinking freshly squeezed orange juice, feeling the sweat run down my spine. It's not pleasant. Bonnie lay on the wooden floor among the old flakes of previous pastel de natas, panting. I watched as people came and sat and looked at their phones, got out their computers. One rather truculent teenager sat next to her parents painting her nails. Is it the heat or is it the time of our life when everyone seems bored? Or is it a reflection of my own sentiment?

I love my house. I love my family. I love my life. But... I think of doing things and the heat melts my enthusiasm.

I have been helping a group of parents to build a round cob building in S Luis. It is to become a play group. I love the work and how it is progressing. I love the way cob allows people of all ages and dispositions to join in. I also enjoy watching men think they know better.

I am hoping to find some bales of straw to put on my roof, for insulation. The house has held up well to the heat, remaining 26 degrees when it is 35/40 outside. That is pretty good. It feels like a fridge when you come in. The cats and dog like to lie on the cool earthen floor.

The vegetable garden is a sorry sight. A few shrunken tomatoes struggle through their mulch. The strawberries keep on coming but now they are smaller. A few midget aubergines glint from the straw. Next year, I tell myself, I will make the vege garden in a shady place and use more compost and manure.

This time last year

Early morning

I haven't been taking many photos recently. In my next post I will put up some photos of the village decorated with meters of bunting that we all made. It looks so colourful and fluttery, with dancing shadows on the ground.

Meanwhile, I lurk in the shadows, waiting for the sun to loose it's teeth, and dream of building/digging a small pool. Oh, but the work....

Simply Hot

New House Mates

 

I never had cats before these two sisters came to live with me. They are fun. They love to crawl under carpets, climb into bags, climb up the cob walls and chase each other at great speed through the house.

Family Fun

I love that my stairs are good for sitting on.

Summer Landscape

 The land has got that dry brown summer look. We had a few days of scorching weather last week. Scary. My heart goes out to the people of Monchique who have suffered from the huge, fierce fires.

Polishing Earthen floor

I finally found the strength to do the earthen floor and am now in the process of polishing it. I painted it with the red earth from the top of the hill and now as the polish goes on it is beginning to look like terra cotta. Lovely, even though it is full of CAT foot prints....

Bonnie is not thrilled with the new arrivals but tolerates them.

Velvet June

Summer has been switched on. Suddenly. Finally. The temperature has been very pleasant. The warm wind a friend visiting described as being like velvet. Exactly.

I did some of the wood around the edge of the house. It looks so much better. I will need help to do the west side as it is quite high up and I don't have enough hands, to hold the ladder, hold the wood, hold the drill and the screws, etc.

I also made the south bit of roof over-hang more and built a balcony. Cute! I have two kittens and they love to run about on the balcony and the grass roof.

I have started on the kitchen floor. It is going on quite well. Just 2 cm of cob. In this weather it is drying just right. not too fast and not too slow.

I was doing a bit of burnishing with a beach pebble in the evening and found a snake hissing and threatening in a corner, so I decided to stop for the night and hope it would go away. It did. The kittens were fascinated by it.

Laura and Isabella and Sarah came to visit and we went to see the neighbour's horse and foal. Such a pretty one.

There are foot prints on the new floor, of course!

A Cool Spring

It feels like a long time since I last wrote here. It must be because I've been busy!

I had four lovely volunteers, who were keen to learn how to build with cob so they continued with the chicken house and did loads of plastering of the kitchen. The chicken house is well on it's way to being useful and the kitchen extension is now mostly plastered. I am so happy to have had this help. Now my eye is led to the roof where I need to put wood around the edges.

The gardens and landscape generally, are outstanding at the moment. Fields of blue and yellow. I visited Sophie's garden which is looking beautiful.

I also went with Sophie up to the windmill to buy flour. My old home! Always when I come here I remember the years I lived near the mill. The children were still children then. So many memories of a valley I love.

Today was a day spent home, alone. After cutting grass and gardening, I walked down to the cafe for a tea and an ice-cream. When I arrived Patricia called me into the dining area. She was making 'alconqueres', one of my favourite sweet biscuit/cake confections. She gave me a taste of the centre stuff and then I saw all the baking trays going off in a wheelbarrow to her mother's bread oven. I went and watched them finish getting the oven ready, scraping away the ashes. We stood and chatted for a while. I felt so happy to be a part of this small village.

I built a shower for me and my guests the other day. It works very well. I even put in a proper shower instead of a garden hose! Works a treat, especially when the sun shines, which it hasn't done very much this month. A cool spring. Blissful really.

Not Alentejo

I spent two weeks in Scotland, one of which was spent on Iona. It was a very special time of writing, singing and walking.

News From Storm-bound Alentejo

It's been a Hell of a month. Cold frosty stuff which we are not used to, and then came the rain and high winds. Sometimes bits of straw got blown off the new roof, but I have been warm and dry.

The swallows are still avoiding this hill. I have seen them nearer the coast. I wonder if they will come and nest on my clay walls.

Here's a photo of the pizza oven after I had just finished it. It looks a bit weather beaten since this photo was taken, but still functional. When this stormy weather passes I will give it another coat of cal/clay paint.  It is for my neighbours. I hope they like it!

Here is one of the terraces, planted with potatoes and broad beans. When I dug them over the soil was dry. Now, after monster rainstorms the ground is sodden and beans and potatoes are beginning to sprout.

Lower down I have green beans and on the third one the garlic which I planted in November is looking tall and strong.

My house, seen from below. I will never build a two story house again. It is so much more work to get stuff on the walls. I still have to render the outside. We have had a few days of driven rain from the South West and the walls got very wet, but still firm and dry inside. The miracle of cob. The roof needs to overhang more so I think I will make a veranda to go round it, which will protect it from the rain and keep the sun out in the summer.

I thought I'd try a paleo food thing. No bread! No biscuits! I'm into my third week and I feel all right. I sleep like a baby (crying all night Not!!) and have got over the craving for bread. Nuts, apples and meat.

Daffodils are out and lots of plants are thinking it's spring. After this much longed for rain we look forward to the gentle heat that comes in April.

Too Cold for Swallows

Well, it's been COLD!

We are not used to this kind of cold. For so long. Usually it gets cold for a few days, not weeks, and it feels hard to get a room warm, let alone a house. The wood burner works away but to little improvement of temperature... and I have just put the last few logs of old, seasoned firewood in the fire... and madly sawing up bits and pieces of anything that burns to just keep from feeling really cold. The best thing at the moment is the big beach pebble that I warm up on the stove in the evening and put in my bed at night. Bliss. Even the dog knows where to lie on the bed now! Maybe I need two pebbles!

I have also got a new (to me) computer, (thank you Universe!) so it's challenging for a dinasor like myself.

The swallows have not yet returned. I am glad for them due to the temperatures, but I hope they are all right.

I have dug over some of the vegetable garden and two of the long thin terraces on the hill. I put in some broad beans in the terraces and dug up some stray new potatoes which are delicious. The carrots and cabbage seeds all germinated earlier, before the cold set in, and seem to be doing fine. I will plant potatoes in the next few days. Now we can pray for rain.

It is Carnival time in Portugal. Sao Luis is getting a reputation for it's politically incorrect displays. Mostly it's the men who dress up as women and get very drunk. It is quite fascinating and a bit weird. Maybe I could dress up as a man and behave badly... but I'm not sure what that would entail... And would it be fun? Probably not. Seeing them get such pleasure out of wearing tights really makes me wonder. We live in quite a separated society here. There are cafes which women go to and there are cafe/bars which men go to. Some overlap a little. In the evenings, women don't go out. At least Portuguese women don't. I certainly don't as I'm a home-loving person, it's hard to go anywhere after the sun has gone down.

The pizza oven is just about done. Photos to follow when I've learned how to put them onto this computer...

Roll on Spring!

Pizza Oven

My Cob Kitchen

What I'm Working On Now

My Homemade Home

I gave myself a month off and by January I was ready to get on with stuff. I know that now that I have moved into my new bit of house I may never 'finish' it! There is still plastering to do inside, and the earthen floor, and all the outside needs rendering, too. But not now...
Now I am building a pizza oven for my neighbours. I picked up lots of big stones that have been ploughed up on the nearby hill. Put them in the back of the car and took them to the site. Then I built the plinth, dry stone style, and filled the top layer with earth, bottles and sand on top of which went the firebricks. After lots of digging earth for the cob and lots of hauling sand to make a mould, I have put it all together and it is beginning to look quite good. I am waiting for the cob to set before I remove the sand mould. Photos to follow!

Soon the swallows will return!