Blogging the stories of our family life on a yoga retreat in the magical village and valleys of Amieira, Central Portugal. Everyday we are tending this beautiful land and its stone dwellings in our journey towards self sufficiency. Moses is the Portuguese name of this place, meaning many mill stones. And, providently, is also the name of our beloved golden retriever, without whom, we'd never have found it. We love you Moses.
Just a couple of quick videos today. We have been manically painting for the last fortnight, as you know, with paint made from 18 month old slaked lime. Each wall needs at least 4 to 6 layers and we have a lot of walls. Arms are a bit tired as you can imagine. The tiles for the bathroom and kitchen walls and the slate for all the ground floors should be delivered this afternoon too. So next week we'll be tiling and laying floors and building walls to support the granite worktops. Not long to go now before we're in.
(In the vid above I promised to link to the blog post where Von started slaking the lime way back in November 2008 "Horses and Nuclear Waste Monkey Suits")
Von's mum Arlene finally made it on a plane back to London last weekend after the craziness of Iceland's revenge on the rest of Europe. It was so lovely to have her for one more week enjoying the grandchildren and the gardens and the cooking. Come back soon Mum.
Josh and I are off to play our first cricket game of the season tomorrow. We'll post up some video action of the boy. All very surreal. A delightful white picket fenced cricket field in the middle of the Portuguese countryside about 2 hours drive south of here with a real multicultural bunch of fanatics messing about with a bit of leather and some willow. Can't wait.
While we're away, Eli and Von will be at home having fun with the new iron oxide pigments making deliciously coloured wall paints. (I tried to make that sound like there might be some kind of equilibrium or reciprocity in this weekends' activities, but failed miserably. The boys will in fact be playing while the girls are working. "But Cricket is so much more than just a game ma cherie...")
We can make out the finishing line, we sense the day we will live in the houses we bought in the Autumn of 2007, is just round the corner. Still an enormous amount of work left to do. But the structure is in place and the rest is really a matter of decoration: laying stone floors, tiling, building the kitchen and bathrooms, painting. And yesterday was a big day cos we made our first lime paint after slaking it over 18 months ago.
Anyway have a butchers, we're off to Tia Laurinda's Café now to buy some local goodies for Arlene to take back to London with her tomorrow.
When I started putting those stones in the wall I didn’t know if I could do it. I didn’t know I could finish it. Our true summer began with the filling of the first holes in the walls of what will be our bedroom. I remember the day clearly, utterly terrified that I would do something wrong and the house might fall over instantly. But it didn’t and it hasn’t and I don’t think it will. I think our work is there to stay for sometime. But it is within the framework of building this house that our summer began and expended itself into our autumn and soon to be our winter.
Within that summer we have spent precious wonderful time with family, friends and strangers. Sally and Papops, my Mum, Sister and Tia Avril, Uncle Andrew or Uncle Manly as he has been renamed, shanti B, Paula and Alfie and lots and lots of new friends and people we may never see again. It has been one action packed summer a glorious summer and a gentle Autumn.
When we finished the main structure of the stone walls I knew something more had to be done. The room we built lacked the charm of the little stones characteristic of stone houses in this region. For hours each day I sat looking at the beautiful stone work of our present little shelter – the house actually called Moses (our houses midway up the land are actually called Cabeço meaning head like the head or source of a spring), anyway I sat and stared at these walls and one day knew what to do. I would have to put the small stones in after the main structure was up. That way we could get the roofs on in time for the winter rains.
When the big stone work ended and most of the roof structure of our bedroom was in order I went up the hill to start on the face of little stones, I started as tentatively as the first stone I put in the house, I started with a little corner. The next day Senhor João the eldest stonemason, came and asked me who was doing this work. Prepared to hear this is terrible and shrink off down the hill to go to my duvet, I tentatively replied, I did. He grinned tapped me on the shoulder and said “this is the way. The old way it takes a long time and no one has or wants to do it this way but this is the old way”. An even wider grin appeared on his face as he said “one year to finish the small stone work on both houses”.
At that moment, my eyes panned out. I looked at the house and thought I don’t even know if I can finish this wall let alone the whole house. But set up the scaffolding I did with the help of my Memphis and I started with no instruction, no idea and no capacity to think of the whole wall let alone the whole upper floor. Builders came, built the childrens house, roofs went up, tiles were put on, school started, ill health and good health has come, sun, rain, fog, and green grass grew from the terraces. The grape harvest brought in. The river got its voice back and the olives started to swell. Strawberry fruit tree fruits started glowing jewel like, tantalising out of reach. The school term started for Josh and Ellie, and I lost me Memphis to the little kids of Oleiros, Orvalho and Estreito, his days changed to singing nursery rhymes and dealing with naughty impish behaviour and still I continued on these walls.
At the beginning I felt sick to death of it. Thinking I would do this and it would be pointless, it wouldn’t look the same or the stones will fall out instantly or I might dislodge something important. But with every single stone my confidence grew until I was doing it without thought. Without thought or instruction I have learnt a great deal about stone. The little stones have taught me about their quality, colour, how they will open up or whether they will crumble. Where the fractures are and how each quality of stone is best bonded to the clay. Which colours glow more in the night and wet and which stones will stand defiantly clear in colour in the face of the sometimes scalding Portuguese sun. They taught me to stack them just like the big stones for the most stable support so that actually I was building mini walls within the bigger walls which we’d put together earlier on in the summer.
Every day for the few weeks Senhor João was here, he would come and shake his stone hammer at me and say “don’t think about the time, go to the wall”. If he saw me deflatedly looking out over the horizon he would come and say “Maria, go to the wall”. The truth is he was right it was the only instruction I needed. Go to it, keep doing it and you will learn the way. Very yogic, Zen even.
Mario gave me my next lesson when one day I exasperatedly threw a stone over the terrace wall. “What’s wrong Maria?” he asked. Oh this black stone keeps falling apart. “There are many types of black stone” he said dismissively as he walked away. And with a big Mosey sigh off I went to look for these elusive black stones and I found them. I even learnt how to put in the crumbly stone letting it crumble or keep form depending on what I wanted. From that experience I learnt that there isn’t just one way in the universal sense, but that each stone has its own way.
Paulo taught me to look after myself, make sure I had a secure, safe and comfortable work place. Filipe has taught me to grin, jiggle to the accordion (yes I confess I have jiggled to the accordion on top of the scaffolding from time to time). And Eugenia has taught me I must eat and rest on Sunday.
I knew I was on to a winner when Mister Farinha in his usual stern manner, said incredulously and with a dash of admiration, not too much mind you, “How many stones have you put in that wall?” I learnt my style was more different perhaps more feminine as female visitors would come over and gaze at the quartz or powder blue soft stone, while the men nodded at the hard black flint. Hard because while it may take 10 minutes to break up a huge soft stone it takes over 30 mins to break a brick sized piece of the hard flint. I also learnt not to break up flint with a stone hammer on dry grass or twigs. Very important lesson when living in a forest.
I am so grateful to João Antunes for teaching us this way it is slower but nothing moves not one stone can be easily removed and put back the walls are so solid, centered and strong like so many of our Portuguese neighbours.
With each small victory of stone put in that house I realised the mammoth nature of the task. But last week I finished the small stonework of the bedroom. I finished it and even up to the last stone I didn’t know I could finish it. Perched on top of the highest corner wall of the house I hammered in the last hard black stones and when it was finished, I stepped back and my eyes panned out and realised it was complete. I had done it. The walls of small victories were over.
So much has gone into those stones, joy, anger, frustration, fun, laughter, disappointment, tension, apprehension, divine certainty, forgiveness, peace and above all love.
My eyes panned out further afield and I saw once again as new, all that we would be honoured to do in this land and once more I saw the mammoth task. But I now know in a calm, patient and reflective way that it is possible perhaps even probable, since each task, whether it is picking Olives, or collecting seeds or planting trees or building walls or collecting firewood, each mammoth task is made up of a number or small, sometimes tiny, victories. These victories are happening all the time until they come together and something apparently impossible has taken place.
I have finished what seemed like a mammoth task and at last I feel I can exhale, let go, kick back and know that whatever else we have to do, somehow we, whether that we be made up of Memphis and me plus the kids or with our neighbour Joao, Filipe, Jorge and Eugenia or with builders, or guests or friends, we will do what we can and we can do quite a lot when all those little victories have been added together. We will, under the grace of the Infinite, find a way to do it and that is no small victory.
Thank you Memphis for encouraging me and stroking my back and telling everyone how beautiful it is that I was doing this. I really really needed that.
Paz e amor
River
P.S. As I stood and looked at the jeweled walls, all of 10 minutes after finishing, my favourite João came and said “It’s beautiful Maria, now you can start the filling in the old walls of the house!”
Another awesome week at work folks. Lots of fun. especially as we are beginning to move into a period of working with wood rather than stone and clay. Beams for the roof. Pillars for the verandas. And then on to the floors. A couple of videos this week. A long interview with me and Vonnie at the end. We're trying to record somehow how we're seeing and feeling things right now, for our benefit mainly. But hope you like. Especially the monkey one.
Andrew Brocklesby, a friend of mine back from university days, is staying with us at the moment. More hands. More stones carried. More legs to bear the weight of lugging 3 eleven metre beams down from the forest. And nice to have him here too. London's beginning to drop away from his shoulders. Bless.
Bought two rabbits with the kids today. Computer or playstation was not touched all day. Biscuit and Flopsy are already contributing nicely to the compost pile. Little shitters.
Tommorrow we're back to the work of love that is our house. Can't wait. Ta ta.
Hello all. Been a while. No excuses except it's been well cold here at night and as our internet access is outside and we've been staying huddled together inside, no blogs. But today is different. It's Sunday morning and the sun is shining bright in a cloudless powder blue November sky with this as my view across the Amieira valley here at Bacelo. Sweet.
But before I update you on what's been going on here in The Shire, just took the following fly on the wall video of the kids 10 minutes ago. Every morning they are up before 6 off up the hill at 7.30 to catch the school bus at 7.50, have classes all day from 9 to 5, then get back at 6.30, do their homework, eat dinner, share the stories of their day and collapse exhausted in bed by 9. So on Sundays they can have a lie in. Bless their cotton socks. We are very proud of them. They are learning so much so quickly and are growing physically and emotionally as a result. Well done kids. Keep it up. You are stars.
Hello from the kids on a Sunday Morning
November has been pretty full on. Von and I have been working together Monday to Friday on restoring our first house down at Moses. We got all the easy stuff out of the way in the first 6 weeks - clearing the house, creating the internal wooden structures, laying our first roof, laying our first floor and rendering all the walls with lime. Now we are into the harder phase which will require outside expertise - electrics, plumbing (picture here is of Senhor Lucas installing the pumps and tubing into our new bore hole which is 300 metres up the hill from the house) hot water water system (thermodynamic panels from a company called ENat), hand crafted double glazing and pine staircases (from a lovely carpenter called Senhor Dias), railings for the internal veranda (an ironmonger in Oleiros) and a handmade wood burning stove (from Guillierm in Esteiro). All of which have been arranged and now we wait to see this last phase unfold while we lay more floors, finish the rendering build the kitchen and paint. So if all goes to plan over the next 4 weeks, we'll be able to move in for Christmas. Yaaaaay.
Anyway here's a couple of videos to update you on the work.
Nuclear waste factory monkey suit
Our first floor: slate dust topped
The weekends here in the last month have been quite hectic. We had a farewell party by the fire at Moses for Ian and his family as unfortunately Merle had to return early to Germany for the unexpected death of her mother there. Guys we hope you are all OK and your journey has not been too painful. Following weekend Shanti B and her great friend Emma from Ireland camped with us down at Moses. Emma taught us how to express the joy of life in just one phrase that we've been using every day since. WOW!!! I LOVE....(insert anything you like here - this place, that word, the bigness, fires, synchronicity, etc etc etc etc). Thanks Emma. You can come again anytime you want. (You too Shants of course, no invitation necessary.)
Last weekend we visited the National Horse Festival in Portugal's capital of horses - Galegã. It was a wonderful chance to experience another dimension of Portuguese culture. Horses and their devoted human companion admirers. The town has some exquisite architecture that we've seen elements of before but not on this scale. Streets and streets of gorgeous old buildings with hundreds of horse stables inside courtyards hidden behind the street frontage of the houses. And in the centre of the town a magnificent corral where all the horses were on show, either jumping or just trotting around the circumference. Kids, adults, intrepid horse enthusiasts the lot of them. Splendid. We'll be going again next year. Definitely. On Saturday night we stayed in Lisbon again so we wouldn't have too far to travel on Sunday for Josh's last cricket game of the year, played, of course, in delightful sunshine all day with the usual blend of multicultural languages from India, Pakistan, South Africa, England and Portugal ringing in our ears. Von has a tale to tell of that day coming soon....
One final thing to mention is that after 6 weeks of being pretty cold at night we finally have had this wood burning stove installed in our room at Bacelo. And what a difference it's made. Although the days are still sunny and hot, the evenings have been bitter when the wind blows. So thank you to "Tom and Jerry" for buying and fitting this stove for us. Toasty.
What a week this was! For two and a half months River and I have been removing an enormous quantity of stuff from the 3 houses at Moses. Walls, stones, wood, windows, lintels, tiles. It’s been quite a destructive phase where everything feels a little chaotic, with piles of the stuff taken out of the houses neatly laid around clearly demarking the place as a building site. But before this week we hadn’t really done any building, any construction. Last week we began with learning to mix mud and setting slates with it on top of the bathroom walls. This week however, was a very different story. Proper construction. Just River and I. And I tell you, it feels fantastic to have finally finished the roof, our first task on the 14 week plan to restore Moses before Christmas.
We had a few hurdles to overcome. First was finding a good supplier of wood and fixing it to the eucalyptus beams. Second, finding roof felt and fixing it to the wooden ceiling. And third buying all the tools we need to do so now and for the next few months ahead. At the weekend we found a great lumber yard on the road to Serta who delivered some tongue and groove pine, which we lumbered all the way to the bottom of the land in readiness to put on on Monday. However it was the wrong type, too slim, and wouldn’t have been strong enough for the tiles on top. So we lumbered it all back up the hill and returned to the sawmill to ensure they delivered the right type, which they did, the same day. Of course we then had to carry the new, heavier wood, on our shoulders, down the hill one more time. This work is definitely growing muscles we didn’t know we had.
What a pair of roofers we are....
Michelle told us about a local place in Estreito that sold a type of roofing felt called Underline. A bit more pricey than the ordinary stuff but the ease of using it with its ‘simple to lay tiles on top’ ridges is definitely worth it. Reusing the original old tiles that Von had carefully removed while my parents were here at the beginning of September, was a most satisfying job. They now no longer make tiles the way they used to. These old clay ones, are all unique. Each one has a slightly different pattern of moss grown over the years but more interestingly has a different curve and shape too. This is cos they were formed around people’s thighs before being kilned. Some are wide and short (made by the thighs of smaller fatter Portuguese) and some are narrow and long (taller skinnier ones). Quite incredible really and it kind of connects you, handling and laying each tile, to another time, another way of living, another world. As a result, the finished roof has so much more innate character than one we could have built with sparkly new uniform tiles. It’s old, it’s gorgeous and we absolutely love it.
Yesterday, we started rendering the bathroom walls too. We tried a mix suggested in the Building Green book, which is 3 parts sand, to one part hydraulic lime, to half part straw. The straw is shredded by sucking it back through an ordinary garden leaf blower and is soaked in water before adding to the mix, so that the lime can extract the water from the straw helping to prevent cracking when it sets on the wall. We’ll see how it turns out but it was a lot of fun plastering our first wall together beneath the beautiful pine boarded, eucalyptus beamed roof we’d just put on.
So today, with a new roof and 2 walls half rendered with just one coat of natural plaster, I feel that everything is possible. To be honest at the beginning of the week I was emotionally fluctuating between a deep contentment in what is already here now and a blind overwhelming panic at the immensity of all the work in front of us. Yeah the journey is more important than the destination and all that, but sometimes the distance to the destination can affect the way you feel about the journey. But you can only do what is in front of you to do. One step at a time. Yes we have many steps to take, but it is still possible to see each one, individually, as splendid in its own right. That’s how it is today with our first roof built with mud, slate, trees, straw and tiles from the land and a little sand, lime, felt and wood bought from round the corner.
On the road to Oleiros last night for a celebratory meal, we stopped the car, got out and took a moment to enjoy this exquisite sunset over the surrounding mountains and valleys. What a life this is. We only get one shot at it, and we’re making the very most of it. Yeah baby.
