Potatoes planted the Portuguese way

Gloriously Sunny by River

It is a gloriously sunny day today.  Though the calendar tells us that Winter is fast approaching I have been working all day in shorts and a t-shirt.    I am alone, well without human company.  Just me and Moses and our new puppy Safira.  Angel my wicked cat is around somewhere, probably trying to tease hibernating voles out of their holes.   The children are already at school and Memphis has gone to work on the roof of some friends.  It is a good day, a quiet day. (photo Yulia and Safi on yoga retreat)

It has been almost a year since my last entry and I know some of you have been wondering where is Von, thanks for the emails.  To be honest, I have been working and this year has flown by.  We have had the great pleasure of housing, feeding and watering a number of Woofers (Willing Workers on Organic Farms), visitors, family and friends.   A great deal of work has gone into the vegetable production and with thanks we have eaten well all summer and into the autumn.  (Bill, Becky and Ollie round the Nov 5th bonfire)

We are still learning the art of organic vegetable growing, and believe me it is not without challenge.  This year we have met the challenges of tomato ad pumpkin blight.   Little horrible bugs I have never had the horror of meeting eating the broccoli.  I have had to sow all of our winter veg twice due to some naughty get away chickens and a frisky puppy, even now the horrible caterpillars are munching away on my lovingly watered and fed cauliflowers and nothing organic I seem to try really works.  Right now I am preparing to begin the disgusting task of picking the buggers off one by one, perhaps this will be futile but gardeners are known for the obsessive love of perfect plants. (Entry in our Guest book by the frisbee throwing wwoofing gals of Kansas)

I know the caterpillars will be back and we will laugh through this just as we have learnt to laugh at all the trials and tribulations we have had here so far and press on regardless. (Jonny battling Memphis at scrabble)

On the lighter and brighter side, the chilli peppers have been sublime and after two years of trying to grow perfect chilli peppers, the chillies this year have been my crowning glory!  Hallelujah red hot chilli peppers by the basket full.  It is still warm enough for the Calendulas and Californica Eschlotzias to be flowering.  Their iridescent orange colours are greatly welcomed at this time of year.  Strangely enough my Red hot Pokers are rising valiantly out of their sword like home of leaves , their conical flowers just beginning to bronze, I look forward to their ever increasing reddening, perhaps we will have Red Hot Pokers for Christmas. (Eloise and Joshua, the most established of all the plants in our garden)

The Olive harvest was speedily completed with the help of one of our very much appreciated German Woofers, TK, big thumbs up to TK!  It was great fun being up in the trees with you.  We are now pleased to have our own Olive oil again this year, only half that we made last year as the trees are semi biannually producing. 1 year bumper, 1 year low.

The other big news this year has been yoga.  After thirteen years of grabbing practice time when and if I can it has been wonderful to wake up before the sunrise and practice.  I believe this is how I have managed to keep sane, this year, mind you.  Before we came here, yoga was largely about the relaxation of the body, busy Mums need to find ways to relax.  This year however, it has been wonderful, delightfully centering to simply be within myself, despite all the plants that need watering, and the clothes that need washing, and the hurts that need cuddling and the house that needs cleaning and the people that need feeding.  It is from this state of stillness of meditation that all else has been given invitation to flower.   Or, maybe I am just middle aged and needing to be still a great deal more.  Either way I can safely say that meditation is a revelation.  If you have never tried it, do, it will change your life.

This year I have also had the pleasure of teaching our first yoga retreat in Portugal and also teaching some Woofers.  How wonderful to wake up in the morning and just watch lovely young people stretching, earnestly trying to relax.  Very sweet.  I hope to do more of this as the years unfold here.  It is a beautiful place to meet oneself face to face.  There is something about yoga that invites the bubbling up of the naughty happy child within us, and it is that child that will bravely go forth to face the most gruesome of challenges, such as horrible caterpillars. 

My first Christmas present has arrived from Memphis, a tractor load of goat poo!  Hooray.  Not the glamorous handbag or necklace kind of present, but it is just the thing to put a smile on my face.  Big!  Big!  Big pumpkins next year.  2012 big! (Memphis relishing the battle with Jonny)

 I guess one could say we are simply living a normal life now.  The builders have long departed.  The furniture, paintings and photographs are largely in place.  The days are now made up of morning yoga, gardening, cleaning, sewing (I learnt to sew this year, thanks Aunty Sally).  The nights are still nights of bonfires outside and music but all in all it is just life.  There are still an infinite number of projects we hope to complete, chicken houses and barns and the little Adega at the end of the hill.  All in all this Winter 4 are still bobbing and jumping and jiving their way through life with all the enthusiasm we can muster, maybe we are getting older but some meditation and silence is creeping in there too.

Off to finish the Christmas tree.  Happy shopping to all…  Thanks for the new tunes Ian, digging the classical music.  However, I must say that Chase and Status are wonderful for chopping firewood too, thanks Aunty Helen.  Getting older is better…

(Josh on da karaoke)

Peace and Love

River


  

Kitchen Garden in July

We're back in Portugal after 3 wonderful weeks at Glastonbury with our friends putting up and taking down their handmade tipis. We'll post up something on that adventure soon along with more of Josh's photos of Saphira and Moses, cherries, roses and sunsets, but for now here's just 3 videos. Latest walk round the kitchen terrace and herb garden with River. And 2 vids at our neighbour's 150 year old orange tree courtyard learning how to make delicious Portuguese cornbread baked in a bread oven as well as filhõs, a cross between a donut and a yorkshire pudding.

Peaceful and harmonious vibrations to you

Memphis

Ready to play

We began writing this blog 3 years ago, after our Poop in Europe tour blog had run its course. The whole blogging experience has been invaluable. It's been like a rudder through the meta narrative of the story we find ourselves in. By telling the story to those that drop in once in a while to hear it, one constantly re-orientates oneself. Our blogs are also, obviously, a personal record, albeit in public journal form, of our adventure together since we jumped out of the Matrix of London back in Feb '07.

Walking in Yokes and Chains through England, touring southern Europe in a motorhome, magically discovering the once fruitful and now almost forgotten and abandoned mountain way of life of the Portuguese interior, and some houses nestled in a fertile valley that carried the same name as our dog.

How we bought Moses. How we found such kindness here. Such generosity. Such humanity in the Portuguese people. We fell in love. With the people, the culture, the language, the food, the music, the air, the water, the land, the stones, the roses. The blog is a record of how we also tried our best, although unfortunately unsuccessfully, to set up a yoga retreat together with 3 other yoga teachers from England that we invited out to join us.

After which we threw ourselves whole heartedly into restoring our own houses, with the outstanding help of local artisans, stone masons, carpenters and blacksmiths, who together with our ageing neighbours, have taught us so many things.

Skills we were desperate to learn; how to build in stone and clay and lime and straw and wood, how to look after the land in this valley, how and when to plant everything we need to live in this very particular micro climate and so so much more.

Flicking through the scrapbook of our lives that is this blog, I realised something quite clearly today. We're tooled up. We're ready for the life we have chosen. And we're full of gratitude. For all of it. The ups and the downs. The happy times, which simply could not have happened without those sad heart breaking times. It all had to happen exactly as it happened. That's just the way it is.

Being connected into a land as beautiful, as mysterious, as powerful as this, a human can actually live in harmony with planet earth. Seriously. Life works like this. It's enough.

Yet, if you believe the soothsayers, independent economic analysts and other pesky bloggers, our current dominant global civilisation known as the monetary market economy, finds itself on the verge of pending doom and collapse. I reckon they're probably right. I hope they're right. I can't yet see how it can be fixed. It's set up to keep rewarding the most powerful, the most wealthy, time after time after time. While enslaving millions in debt so they have to carry on earning cash to pay for the life essential food, water and services that we are more than capable of providing for ourselves.

And contrary to the very definition of economy, this current "economy", is anything but. It is the most wasteful, polluting, non sustainable, murderous, species annihilating version of a human civilisation that this old planet of ours has ever seen. If we survive it, which I am certain we will, I suspect history will remember this particular human epoch simply as Democratic Capitalism.

Wake up.

Before it's too late.

If you have any land in your family, however distant in relation or miles, go. Go now. Learn how to build. Learn how to cultivate food. Learn how to live in harmony. Learn how to love the earth. Learn the old ways before we lose them. Convert all you have, it's alchemy. And it is a whole heap of fun.

Do it! Jump! Blog it as you go. What's the worse that could happen?

In peace and in play,

(Just off to pick up a little black Labrador cross German Shepherd puppy from Joshua's friend Paulo. We'll let you see her shortly I'm sure...)

Memphis