Dear Pip

Today we said goodbye to our lovely Pip!  Primrose Goldberry :-)
we were with her from when she popped out from under the stairs in Pirbright, 'til the end. She had a lovely life and was a wonderful companion.

love ya Pippy!

Sunshine at last!

The wet weather has finally broken and we're so busy all of a sudden!
Preparing for 3 new piglies coming soon- they are a Wild boar/Iberian black pig mix.

 We've also got 6 new goslings- hatched a couple of days ago- enjoying being out in the sunshine aswell!

All the trees are coming into leaf and its a pleasure to get out on the land finally!

Bit of a bore part 1 - water water everywhere!

Well despite all the rain recently we need to prepare for our future summer droughts and we've finally got round to having a bore-hole installed. It's been on our 'to do' list since we came here as although we have loads of water though the winter, we have to be very very careful with our water when the summer months come.
The arrival of our borehole license (7 months after applying) brought the engineer who carried out an in-depth survey - well not quite-  it was a guy with a twangy bit of metal who wandered about in a strange slow zigzag with many 'hmmm's and ahhhhh's'. They decided where they wanted to drill and turned up with all their kit (taking out the odd pine tree, olive and terrace wall in the process).

We both found this apsolutely fascinating- i guess when you've seen one bore-hole drilled you've seen them all- but for us- it was a monumental day at Velagota and we were glued to the spot- waiting expectantly for the huge gush of water which our neighbours had promised us!

Drilling starts

The installation of all the gear and the drilling took two days in total.
They have the truck close with all the core-bits (i like to call them 'Ronnies'- Ronnie Corbett- oh never mind!)- these core-bits are 3metres long which can give us an idea of how deep they are going- (and how much its going to cost us -roughly €75 every time they load a new one on-gulp!)
First the soil layer, then things get very dusty when they hit rock, and then after what seemed like forever they hit water! (at around 60-70metres)

 (and yes we weren't disappointed it really did whoosh out- filling the air with spray! although i think most of it was pressure releasing from the drilling machine!)

When they eventually got to a depth that everyone was happy with (they continued to 136 metres in the end)- they put in the rigid blue pipe.

Then they packed up all their gear- and we were left with a big mess, but big smiles on our faces!
Paul will be carrying out stage two of the process (watch this space!) with the installation of the pumps and the plumbing etc, and hopefully soon we will have our very own water supply to the house and we will be able to drink straight from the tap.
No more having to go out on a rainy Sunday evening to get drinking water from the village spring, and we can use our current well for irrigating the land and garden (yes I'm already designing the next planting areas!).
So overall a big investment, but a good one hopefully for the future of our house and quinta!

Christmas 2012 and a Happy New Year

Apologies for being so slack with the blogging over the last few months. We both sadly lost our fathers recently so motivation has been very hard to find lately!
However, a new year brings lots of new projects, so we need to dig deep and get ourselves back on track!
We had a good Christmas. As usual, lots of home produce and everyone mucked in with preparations- picking a pine tree for the house, making and decorating the Xmas cake, home-grown sausages and freshly baked bread for breakfast, and of course the multi-bird roast!

above- Christmas cake decorated by the girls

                                  below- home-made sausages from our half wild boar pigs

Pauls been making fresh bread pretty much every day!

We went for a four bird this year to keep things a little bit more simple and it was probably our best yet!

After the birds were prepared- goose, duck, cockerel and turkey (still havent produced our own turkeys- but maybe next year!) they were de-boned and then wrapped up with a bacon, apricot, almond and parmesan stuffing (with lots of fresh herbs - sage and thyme and some lemon rind)

 

We witnessed a few amazing sunsets aswell this Christmas, and some unusual skies with rings around the moon on a couple of nights (trust my family to think it was aliens! obviously had too much vinho!)

So now we move into 2013 and hopefully a good year. The birdlife seems to be getting better every year, and thanks to leaving some olives on the trees outside the house windows we've been able to see loads of birds- particularly Song thrushes, which the Portuguese hunters are allowed to shoot at this time of year, so we're extremely happy to see them here!
We've spent the last two Sundays doing some clearing and putting up more birds boxes. We've made a selection suitable for tits and thrushes, blackbirds and nuthatches. We found loads of info. on the RSPB Liverpool site http://www.rspbliverpool.org.uk/helping.htm

              Below- Song Thrush eating olives in the tree outside the kitchen window

Paul and myself up trees!    -  a week on and the new boxes are already being checked out!

                                  Below- the geese having a wander about in the January sunshine

 

Images from Velagota

Bad weather has stopped play this weekend but we are trying to get our olives picked- there's alot this year- some of the trees are apsolutely loaded and we're getting a whole sack full of olives from one tree. 

I love the olive harvest- Paul isn't quite so keen- up and down the terraces with ladders, long beating sticks and large sheets. You can guarantee the wind will  pick up as soon as the sheet is down but not quite secured-  blowing it off onto the terrace below. I have found this is easily rectified by using a handy dog- in this case The Weasel to sit on the corner of the tarp (just need three more Weasels and we've sussed it!)

 The boxers just can't understand what all the fuss is about- ''it's not like they're growing dog biscuits- these things taste awful!''

Elsewhere things carry on as usual- apart from the rain the land is so beautiful at this time of year. Lots of foraging for wild mushrooms- we've managed to find some Ceps or Porcinis, and plenty of parasol mushrooms. I've identified lots of others- Slippery Jacks, Boletes and Chanterelles but neither of us are knowledgable enough to be apsolutely certain and we only pick the ones we are really sure about!

 

 

The chickens really aren't impressed with the wet weather, although we are still getting wonderful fresh eggs daily, but the geese continue in their usual destructive manner- trashing anything that I have planted but forgotten to put a net or fence around.
In fact some of them will certainly be going in the freezer soon- look out guys goose is back on the menu!

Inside- progress plods on with the house- Paul has been working hard on our study- building some beautiful shelves so we can finally get some of our nick nacks out of boxes!

Flooring is going down and ceilings are going up- it's really feeling like our home now and not a building site!

 

Porco no Espeto- and a secret sauce!

We spent last Saturday doing some clearing on the land and the neighbours kindly offered to help. As is the way here, lunch was provided for the workers- this time it consisted of Fresh Sardines- simply salted and grilled on the barbeque (no gutting, no herbs/lemon- just plain old sardines with a good sprinkling of sea salt- perfect!)

 We have been saving one our free range black pig/wild boar pork legs in the freezer to do a Porco no Espeto or Spit Roast. Our neighbours kindly organised all the gear including the special 'Molho' which is the basting sauce and is a closely kept secret. At €3 per litre you can understand why they don't share the recipe- only sell the sauce! A large bay tree branch was cut and the leaves all tied to the front of the stick for basting onto the pork. The leg is then continuously brushed with the sauce and turned. As it cooks the pork is carved off and put into a pan to keep warm until there is enough to start eating! It was served with fresh bread, hand-cut chips and salad from the garden, and of course washed down with plenty of wine!

I have done a little bit of research to find the secret recipe and found a few versions of it- here is a list of the ingredients most base their recipes on, and then put their own take on it with fresh herbs etc.

vinho branco -  white wine
whisky -  whisky
cerveja preta - black beer (stout)
alho -  garlic
limões -  lemons
gengibre -  ginger
sal grosso -  course grain salt
pimenta - pepper
piri-piri malaguetas pequenas-  piri-piri chillies
louro - bay leaves
massa pimentão -  red pepper paste
oleo - oil
cominhos -  cumin
persil - parsley

some add a pineapple flavoured yoghurt!


The sauce is best made 24 hours in advance and stirred a number of times.

Spring '12

Sorry we've been slack with the blogging lately. I've been busy blogging over on the Puro site http://purosoaps.blogspot.pt/ and also trying to put a basic site together for our landscaping and pool company http://www.watersedgept.com/.

Lots has been going on- we had family with us over Easter and we visited Bussaco Palace which had a beautiful wisteria arbour in full bloom.

We've been busy working on outside areas- trying to get steps up from our small side garden. It still needs some work but it's already helping the rain issue- which used to run down the bank and mess up the garden at the bottom!

We've also got the vegie garden planted up- we decided to downscale it this year as the spring had been so dry and we were concerned about watering, but since we planted it up it hasn't stopped raining! We've just kept it to a small area and grown the things we use alot- various salads, courgettes, squash, carrots, tomatoes, peppers, chillis, and a few runner beans, cucumbers etc

The garden we planted up last year by the house entrance is filling out nicely aswell so we're feeling pretty chuffed that we are starting to create real garden areas out of the very rocky and very wild land we have here!