Living the Dream... Portugal

The Story so Far…. August 1st 2007

Well its been an incredibly busy and productive year. Finally the Mara’s cottage room is finished, at times we didn’t think it would ever get done!! Or so it seemed. We have to thank a couple of people for their help, Pedro for all kinds of help, this website included, Phil for a weeks hard labour blocking when he was supposed to be on holiday.. and Jon of course for all his help with the roof. Rik was working dawn till dusk for weeks to complete on time… and we think its come out very well… a lovely place!!
So what else have we achieved so far.
We now have running water to the house, and hot running water upstairs, the bathroom is plumbed in, in a very tempory way as we don’t have the time or money to tile and make it beautiful, Rik at least made sure we can have a bath and a working loo… sheer luxury !! The kitchen and dining room project came to a halt while we completed the cottage and hopefully now will get some money coming in it may get started again sometime, its not a rush job though.. but I do have an automatic washing machine that I can wash heavy stuff in… I still use the washtank in the garden for most things, the water out there is free, and so is the elbow grease… it’s a wonderfully productive way to keep cool during the summer.

We don’t plan on doing much more to the house this year, although very basic, we have most things needed for a comfortable life out here, the rest will wait and we will do things as we go along, we now plan to start on sorting our land a little better, although we’ve had a good year growing wise, we need to give serious time and attention to the olive trees, and the fruit trees. Almost all are riddled with every kind of disease and bug you can think of, and also need radical pruning. The whole place needs strimming and clearing and general maintenance . Rik also plans some landscaping to generally make the area a little more attractive and less like a building site…hoorah!!

Down in the vegetable patch I’ve had reasonable success and one or two failures but it’s a very steep learning curve…

We’ve grown broad beans, runner beans, and dwarf beans, millions of beans!!! The freezer is full, and I’m now trying to dry some too for soups during the winter. We had weevil in the broad beans and didn’t get many…but what we had were lovely.

Also. Peas, millions of them, cabbage, tons of it, I’m harvesting our sweet corn at the moment and its wonderful, , the peppers are going great guns and will soon be ready, salad stuffs good, apart from the toms which have rotted due to overhead watering….
The parsnips are still growing so we have to wait and see…
Spuds were poor too… but we’ll try a different place and new seed next time…
I’ve just planted 100 leeks…. Its all go!!
All in all, we’re eating from the garden most days, even if it’s limited, so we are very pleased…
This year has been very wet here, our grapes have more or less rotted on the vines, and the lashing rain washed the olive flowers off so a poor crop there too… never mind, we can continue to prune and tidy and hope for better to come. Now we have to start the long haul for amassing enough logs and winter firewood…
Maybe by next update I’ll have managed to clear some more land to get ready to plant my fruit orchard….

the beginning | July 2008