Renovation Update

Our builders return, the sun comes out and renovation work starts up again in earnest, while Vonnie continues to open up more holes and plant more trees along the road and sow more seeds in the lounge. Snow still on mountain tops of Serra da Estrella here in the photo in the distance.

Coming to the end of term so kids and I are a bit whacked, as is River, as you can imagine, after planting for so long. We are all looking forward to the Easter hols next week in which we will have Von's mum Arlene over for a fortnight as well as John and Caroline Purday and their girls for an extended weekend.

Some videos below on the restoration update but first one is an inside view of our compost heap. Making your own soil, or at the very least improving and caring for what you've already got, feels like one of those things that is going to become increasingly important for humanity. Can't explain that. Just feel it.

I will write something more substantive over Easter. My heads spinning a bit right now with all that's going on here. It's full on, and of course it's all delicious.

Peace and all good things

Memphis

Welcome to Moses

Welcome to our new blog all about the journey of our new life project in Amieira, a gorgeous and remote village in the middle of the hills and forests of Central Portugal. It is here that we - "Tom and Jerry", Michelle, Vonetta, Andrew, Joshua, Eloise and our accompanying pets (so far Moses the dog, Angel, Harry and Blue the cats) – have chosen to invest our lives in creating a place of outstanding natural beauty. We are inviting people from all over the world to come to this magnificent place in the hope they too can find peace and healing for their lives.

To find out how we found this place and came together, you can visit our previous blog at http://poopineurope.blogspot.com/ . We are still not sure what we will finally call this project. Several names are flying around including Zion among others but at the moment its simply called Moses, because that's what the first houses we saw and bought have been called for a hundred years. And its also the name of the winters dog. Which, providently, is actually the reason we are all here.

Over the next year we expect to be working unbelievably hard to prepare the land for self sufficiency, renovate our old stone xisto houses, build new accommodation and restaurants out of cob, and install the latest water and power systems ready for guests to stay with us from April 2009. Some people will come to practice yoga. Some might take part in photography and art workshops. Some could fish and explore the relatively undiscovered treasures of this part of the world by foot, by bike, by 4x4 or on horse back. Some will visit just to stop and deeply rest.

Below are a couple of videos to whet your appetite on our progress. Sorry 2 are wonky so you have to turn your head to see them; Andrew is a bit new to all this video publishing thing. We hope to get internet installed next week in "Tom and Jerry's" place so will be better able to publish our progress here every fortnight. Watch this space. We will be open for booking shortly, but in the meantime do get in touch by emailing itscalledmoses@gmail.com or to "Tom and Jerry" or Michelle's emails (we will add these on the contacts shortly).

Vonetta and Michelle putting the final touches on the new state of the art self build composting bins constructed out of mimosa trees:


Vonetta in Monsanto park at the top of Lisbon showing "Jerry" the stunning umbrella pines that she wants to introduce to land at Moses: