Walking on Water

Bom Dia. For those of you who have been following our blog over the last 5 years, you'll know the adventures we've had here at Vale de Moses and the times where we've needed more than a mustard seed of faith. Through all the restoration work to the houses and re-cultivation of the land, we've always known that one day people would come to this valley to find rest here.  But we never imagined they would also be able to walk on water.

We've just finished our 4th Yoga Retreat of the season, and it's a wonderful thing to watch how our guests relax and open their bodies and their spirits through the course of the week. Even their faces change. They soften.

Yesterday we all went for a wee trip down to the River Zêzere, for a mud bake and swim in isolated paradise. It is one of my favourite places on earth. The feeling of swimming out to the middle of the warm river, with not another soul for miles, floating on your back, admiring the Herons and Kites and Eagles as they circle overhead eyeing their next fish meal swimming beneath them. It's an experience I treasure.

And to top it off, thanks to a Portuguese artist, João D Filipe who was born in our village of Amieira, I now know that the River Zêzere is also the purist river in Portugal, as it runs to Lisbon for its drinking water.

The mud bake thing is a ritual too in its own way. We discovered the therapeutic and cleansing effects of mud baking in 2007 while wild camping in the Abruzzo mountins in Italy. And have since taken any given opportunity to smother ourselves in river mud and bake hard in the sun. Just as floating in pure flowing water of a river or the sea connects you to all the waters on our planet, so in some way smothering yourself in mud connects you to all the earth too.

We love it and it's a real joy to be able to share the experience now with others.

We have a week off until our next guests arrive first week of June for our "Rainbows on your Eyelashes" retreat. You'll be pleased to hear that we managed to get that big list of projects done in our last week off. Patio in the courtyard now has a red limecrete and stone, easy to clean floor. The chicken shed (more like palace) is finally ready for layers to move in. The kids have metres of new wooden bookshelves in their rooms. The farmhouse roofs have their boarded trim to protect the wooden structure underneath and the saloon doors are hanging cutely in the library so Moses and Saphira can sleep in the hall. Next week I'll be making and hanging kitchen and bathroom cupboard doors, and an outside fox-proof (here's hoping) fence for the chicken run.

The work never stops. But neither does the water flowing in the river. Nor the thanks for the life we have here in the forests of Portugal.

May you all get to walk on water this week.

Namasté

Memphis

Fishing in the Rio Zêzere

The colour green

School’s out. The kids and I finished term on Friday. Our final week was spent here all by ourselves as Von has popped over to the UK to build tipis with Ian and Merle at Glastonbury. Missing her terribly. But surviving. She is the air we breathe.

In that final week, apart from all the pining obviously, Josh and Eli got their marks from their exams. Both got A’s. National Exams are only in Portuguese and Maths for their years, but twas still an absolutely awesome achievement (note the alliteration in A’s) for the first year in Portugal. Only 1 other pupil in each of their year groups got 2 A’s, so they weren’t easy papers. How proud? Academic achievement isn’t everything in life but they love it and are flying. Both looking forward to being in new parts of their school next year. Eli in the second ciclo (Year 5) and Josh in the third (Year 7). But for now, we have begun the 3 month summer holiday til the middle of September and are busying ourselves pottering around the house and garden, beginning my Portuguese lessons from the kids and swimming as often as possible in various rivers to cool off from the 40 degree sun. Boy it’s been hot.

Today we took Moses for a dip in the River Zezere and the kids swam to the other side and back all by themselves. It’s a big full wide river at the moment and although we have swum it a few times together it took a fair bit of courage to do it on their own. Nice one kids. Anyway, while we were there today, I noticed, probably for the first time, how utterly green the surrounding landscape is. Not just one green either. A myriad of greens. The mass of emerald of the deep slow moving wind rippled river. The dark established, near silhouettes, of the pines and eucalyptus against that perfect blue Portuguese sky. The occasional olive trees with their silvery leaves sprinkled sporadically on the higher parts of the steep folding hills nearer the villages. The golden yellowy mottled foliage of the mato or bush of the forest shrubs. And where the forest stops and the river banks begin, there’s a series of clearly demarked variations aligned in stripes of pea green with vivid bright, almost lime green of young meadow like growth on the banks.

Words just don’t do justice to the spectacle I'm afraid. Nor do photos or videos. It could be painted I guess. Although the experience is one of being surrounded on all sides, above you and below. Yet the most surprising thing for me is that I discerned the greenness of it all in the first place. Remarkable actually. Seeing as I’m colour blind. Mainly in the spectrum of greens oddly enough. So for those of you with non dysfunctional sight, it must be an even more impressive breath-taking display from good old mother nature. Gawd bless her.

On the way back from our afternoon splash, we stopped off at our favourite café. Laurinda’s.

Laurinda’s Café in Abitureira

As you know, many of our neighbours are getting on a bit. And as such, they carry a wealth of knowledge and insight that they are gladly passing on to us, green as we are (sorry, had to keep the topic alive somehow) when we need it. But more interesting than what they can teach us, are the people themselves. Real characters. They’ve seen a thing or two. Sometimes, in our chats over a coffee in their houses, or in a stop off for a quick chinwag in the villages, or longer ones over wine in their adegas, or even longer ones like on our fishing trip to Proenca yesterday (where by the way, Eloise caught over 30 fish, more than a kilo, single handedly – Josh would point out here that he’d have caught more but for the fact that he was at a sleep over at a mate’s house) it feels like there would be some pretty interesting books or screenplays that could be written about the drama of their lives over the years.

The variety of interconnectedness in their families, their work at home and abroad, all lived through the changing Portuguese political dictatorships, revolutions, and wider European, African and other historical conflicts, evoke a mysterious realm outside of our own inculcated cultural understanding and experience.

Our arrival here in the midst of them is just another saga to add to their own rich heritage of existence. We are a phenomenon. The English family choosing to move into their neighbourhood (or more accurately, their forest), while their own offspring have chosen to live far, often very far away. To us they are fascinating, intriguing and alluring. And nice. As I expect we might be to them. Although it is not our differences that warrant any specific mention. Our similarities seem to be the underlying force at play here. Our desire to learn from their ways, learn their language and customs. Our predisposition to converse and to help whenever we’re asked, whenever we can. Our passion (well Von’s actually) for growing vegetables and flowers and all things green (sorry couldn’t resist, won’t mention it again, carry on).

One of these cherished neighbours of ours is Laurinda. And as I just mentioned she runs one of the 2 cafés in the nearby village of Abitureira. Laurinda is 72, sprightly with pretty twinkly eyes and an elegant demeanour. Vonnie says, she would be well happy if she could develop even half the gardening skills and energy that Laurinda seems to have. Her husband, 91, is as you’d expect, quite deaf. But instead of shouting to him, she relays the nature of our conversations, when they concern him, by leaning into his vicinity and tenderly whispering into his oversized ears. “Too sweet” as the Bajans say.

Laurinda’s café probably hasn’t changed much in the last 50 years or so. And as such, is a den of quite charming disposition. We visit her weekly, sometimes more often, since she is also our nearest grocery store, where we buy emergency supplies of milk, juice, tinned food, meat or fish from her freezer, or toilet roll to go along with the obligatory coffee and more often than not, a glass of their home made sweet sloe gin beverage known here as Ginginha. But each time we go in, as those who have visited her café with us will remember, the joy of the experience is in the conversations. Each coffee / shopping trip usually lasts at least half an hour, sometimes twice as long, depending on what we find ourselves talking about. She is always so excited and enthusiastic when we take the kids, and when we take our visitors too, especially when they have babies.

There are no babies in her village now. There are no children either. In fact, the youngest resident must be in her late fifties. It’s a shame as she has recalled many fond memories of Abitureira being full of kids and family life. Even had its own school at one time not so long back. Now bereft, she lavishes her affection on our two, and on us as well. It’s an experience to be savoured and one we’ll miss tremendously when the day inevitably comes for her to no longer run it anymore. But while she is, we relish it. And her. Gawd bless her.

Loads else has happened since our last blog entry including another wonderful joint 30th birthday party for Francisco and Raquel (8 months preggers and looking fabulous) at their place down in Gafete, plus the rather posh and extravagant wedding of Pedro and Inês (they own the bar Calado and run the campsite) with 420 people, was a big one. But nothing more on the restoration work on our other houses. Portuguese builders. Gawd bless ‘em.

This week I’m doing teachers’ meetings at the school where I’m having to write reports on each child in Portuguese. It’s stretching me. And that can only be a good thing. Josh is being terrific in making corrections. Looking forward to a summer of improving the lingo with him and Eli.

Von arrives next week and I’ll be able to breathe once again.

Wild Boar and the Parents

You may think these are totally exclusive concepts, wild boar and parents, but maybe not so. My Mum and Dad came out from London last week for a quick 6 day break with us. It was fabulous to have them stay here. Last September they popped over to see what we were doing but unfortunately we didn’t have the space for them with us at the time so they had to stay in the local campsite in Oleiros. This time though, we prepared our place as much as we could for the royal visit so they could both feel safe and comfortable. They helped us too, enormously, by cutting down young mimosa trees to use as bean poles and a grass cutting compost bin. They cleared a couple more parts of the terraces and planted in onions, aubergines, beans and some more sprouting broccoli. And gave Moses lots of attention and early morning walks. Thanks guys, you can come again. Anytime and stay for as long as you want.

In between sessions of helping us about the place my parents both had time to consider what we are doing here and enjoy the pace of life and connectivity to the natural beauty of this place. It was interesting how the experience seemed to stir up their own childhood memories of living in the countryside. For my Dad that was in rural Kent living with his sister, my Aunt Sally, in an orphanage that their mother helped run during and after the second world war. His reflections were interspersed with naming the calls of the abundant bird life here and once or twice mimicking a cuckoo to entice them a little closer. “When I was a boy I once had 6 cuckoos circling around my head doing this.”

For my Mum, she reminisced about her young life in the village of Wrington, Somerset with her family. She said Vonnie regularly reminded her of her own mother. Maybe it was the fags and the early afternoon G & Ts (or the local equivalent called Ginghina made from sloe berries) or perhaps it was because Vonnie had successfully managed to populate our vegetable beds here with pretty scented geraniums that had once started their life as cuttings taken by my Granny for her own garden, from where my Mum took more cuttings for her garden in London, from where we took further cuttings for our garden in Shardeloes Road, and finally emigrated with us to Amieira in central Portugal. It’s amazing how plants can help you to recognise the interconnected nature of all things.

In the middle of their stay, Angel bought them a present one morning, of a live wild rabbit. Poor scared thing was running around under their bed. Angel regularly catches mice, lizards, snakes and birds, bringing them into the house as gifts. I have no idea why cats do that. Maybe they’re not presents at all. Maybe it’s just that cats like to play with their prey, nay torture them, in the comfort of their on home where escape is an unlikely eventuality. Whatever the motivation, we had a rabbit in the house and didn’t know quite what to do with the poor creature. I picked her up, took her outside and tried to calm her down by sitting down, stroking her and covering over her eyes, while we decided her fate. Option 1, to let her go, might result in recapture by the ever present prowling Angel, unsure why we were being so gentle with her conquest. Option 2, put her out of her misery as she was sporting what looked like an injured, possibly broken, leg. Option 3, keep her and nurture her back to health until we could let her go back to the wild with at least even chances of survival. Option 3 it was. Von ran around clearing out a wooden crate, putting in fresh bedding, food and water. When all was arranged, I carried the little rabbit to her new house cum 5 star recovery clinic. No sooner as I laid her on her new bed, did she have a heart attack and died of fright on the spot. Angel?! Please don’t catch rabbits again. But if you must, definitely don’t bring them back in the house. That was the first wild rabbit I’d ever held. And the first creature to die in my arms. Nature can be harsh. No doubt about that. Life is precious and can go at any time.

This morning, Vonnie and I were taking a stroll passed our Adega (small stone cottage used for storage and particularly pressing and making wine, an ancient and central aspect of Portuguese rural culture – “you do not truly know a man until you have fought him” is a line from The Matrix which I transpose to say …”until you have drunk with him in his adega.”) and along the little river. Suddenly the bushes on the other side of the valley began to shudder and there right in front of us, maybe only 50 yards away, passed a family of wild boar along on old overgrown path. A mum, dad, dark brown, enormous, frightening and powerful, followed dutifully in single file by their 8 smaller, but nevertheless impressive, stripy and incredibly cute youngsters. I’d like to see them again one day. Maybe invite them in for a cup of tea.

Although my parents didn’t get to see the wild boar up close and personal as we did this morning, their presence is a good indication of the wildness of our new home. A wilderness that seemed to inspire and evoke so many memories for Mum and Dad. Our 30,000 square metres here is set in the middle of thousands of hectares of unpopulated pine and eucalyptus forest, home to a vast array of wild creatures and birds, of which the wild boar have the freedom to live without fear. Until that is, the annual barbaric boar hunts, with military type men, not usually from anywhere round here (therefore serves no vested interest for protection of land and the such and is just a cruel brutal sport), their guns and their dogs. We suspect the hunts used to happen on our land in the years when no one was living here. Now we are here, we hope the hunters will now have to choose an area much further away from us. In effect we think we’ve created a little gun free reserve for the boar just by living on the land. Bless. Run free little boars. And by the same token, run free Mum and Dad. Don’t forget what you learned to do here. More time spent doing nothing. The rest is really good for you.

Teaching is still going well. Many of the 6 to 10 year olds are making really good progress with their English. Mainly it appears they are learning to have fun with a new language. There are still a few of them that seem to have written off the possibility of ever speaking English because it is too hard. But more games, more songs, more nursery stories, and very soon, I hope, they will forget they ever thought they couldn’t do it because they will be speaking it. We’ll see. But apart from the occasional shout and now and again having to eject one or two out of the class, they are all lovely. Full of energy and ever so adorable.

It’s hot too. And getting hotter. Yesterday, 40 degrees. So the kids and I took Moses for a swim in the big River Zêzere to cool off. Video below. Which means I have a new phone, but have managed to keep the original number of 00351 96 421 9028. Sorry for the confusion this month. Will try not to lose this one. Promise.

Final video is a quick tour of the work around the house. Quality of videos isn’t as good as last phone. But hope you get an idea of how things are looking now.

Taking another dip in the Zezere...

Quick tour of the grounds...

Just had a call from another stone mason. He’s coming to visit us this afternoon to see the work we need to do to our other 2 houses at the top. Let’s hope he comes. Let’s hope he likes it and wants to help us do it. And can do it soon. Here’s hoping. Although I suspect if he is any good we will have to wait a good long while til he can start. But we're getting used to that. Waiting.

Ta ta for now.

A Foolish, Unlearned, Nobody in Peasantville.

Hey ho. Hope all is well in the lands across the seas and beyond or from wherever you maybe reading this today. Welcome.

Here in the land called Moses, deep in the heart of the forgotten Portuguese interior, it has been a most fascinating season. After the rush and madness that was the end of 2008, the joy of Arlene and Annie’s Christmas visit, the reflections that followed in the stillness of those long cold, wet, winter evenings, Spring is now emerging all around us. Bright pink cherry blossoms nudging through here and there, white and yellow daisies devouring the roadside verges, heathers under the pine and eucalyptus forests bursting into purpleness, warm sunny afternoons, all revealing the promise of much much hotter and longer days ahead and the full glory of nature that we know is about to explode just round the corner.

It should now, you’d think, be the perfect temperate weather and, after our long winter’s rest, the perfect moment in time for Von and I to now be in top gear with the restoration of our other 2 houses. But au contraire.

I am not exactly sure why, but we’re not too concerned. It feels like we are riding the flow of natural rhythms in this most enchanted of places and consequently we’re in no hurry to push things along at the hectic pace of 2008. Slowly, slowly and all things shall come to pass. Não é, Shanti? We have though, managed to clear both the other houses ready to start the first part of renovation – raising the old stone walls by a metre or so in height (in stone, not straw bales, cos we’ve found an old local guy who can do it brilliantly and quickly, prepared to also teach us how in the process, and we haven’t been able to find a decent straw baler near here for love nor money) and then installing new wooden roofs on top with a carpenter roofer who happens to be the boss of Michelle’s gorgeous young Brazilian boyfriend, Warley (captured here squatting down by one of the granite pools in the river that flows round Moses).

We’ve also been able to do a few cool odd jobs around the place: like carving a drain out of the lime floors to transport the sudden emergence of an underground stream that ran through the house after all that rain fell in January (the most for 20 years in Portugal); pruning a dozen or so of our 40 silver leafed olive trees (like this one in the photo); building a neat tri-chamber compost structure from old floorboards; making the house feel even more like a home with simple bookshelves of long sweet chestnut planks on red fire brick pillars and some much needed kitchen storage space; a chimney in the bathroom so we could fire up the elegant old wood burning stove that we’d found abandoned in the ironmonger’s car park in Oleiros; new fascias for the bath and toilet from sawn off pieces of old broken wine barrels; vegetable beds edged with boulders fallen when the new terraces were carved out last Autumn; and new graduated steps along the path that connects the houses at the top (Cabeco) with the house at the bottom (Moses) heaving chunky trunks of felled pine trees up the hill and then back filling them with rubble and clay. That actually sounds like quite a lot of work now I have written it, but it really has only taken us a couple of hours a day and nothing approaching the generally accepted notion of ‘strenuous’.

Meanwhile, the kids have both had their birthdays, Eli’s 10th & Joshua’s 12th, and continue to fly at their lovely school in Oleiros, making great grades and even better friends. They are fantastic little creatures and we love them lots. The very sweet little Brazilian lass in the photo is Ju Ju, Eloise’s best mate here, (Hatti will forever be her bestest mate in the whole wide world) and she’s spending the weekend with us at the mo’ making cookies and cakes every few hours. Josh will be entering another photo competition this week called Splash Flash 09 featuring the best of the waters in Oleiros. He won the prize for the most original photo in the council’s last competition, so he’s keen to do well again this year. Here’s just one of his amazing shots. If he ever finds the time between his full-on studies to write another blog, you might get to see some more of his talent. Last weekend we nipped over to Coimbra to buy them new clothes and shoes cos they were looking a tad dishevelled. The clips below are from that trip to Portugal’s University City.


Coffee and bike rides alongside the Montego river in Coimbra…







Anyway, enough of the catch-up, let me explain the title of this blog entry as well as the reference to peasantville in the skits above.

Our closest neighbours are old. Joao and Eugenia (not the ones in the village but the other ones round the corner in Vale da Figueira) and José & Eugenia (whose Father built our houses over 80 years ago) have lived in these parts, in their current houses in fact, all their lives. They, like so many people round here, are kind, generous and expert stewards of their lands. We can’t help but admire the way they live, so simply yet enjoying the rich abundance of the fruit and cultivation of their toils. Not much cash and as such, together with their rustic lifestyles would be thought of by townsfolk and city folk as mere peasants. In the next 20 years or so, if we are able to learn even half of what they know how to do, we will be gloriously content.

In contrast, the so called civilised learned sophistication of the London we left behind and in the shopping malls and universities of Lisbon or Coimbra, doesn’t really seem to make much sense to us out here in the sticks. On so many levels, we have been unlearning, deconstructing, dropping much of what we thought we knew and in response are in the process of seeking the authenticity of a more firsthand physical and, in particular, spiritual existence. We have no idea if anyone will ever pay to stay here and therefore whether we will have ‘enough’ cash to live. But, strangely, we’re really not that bothered, most of the time. This place, the potential of the land, in itself, in ourselves, is more than enough. To some we know this will appear like pure irresponsible foolishness. Maybe it is.

Moreover, we were previously surrounded by a world where people, including us, were seeking, often with all our might, to become important, or at the very least useful to our employers and/or to society at large. Here, however, we’re slowly recognising that we’re moving towards a lifestyle where most of those people would consider us useless nobodies. And boy, let me tell you, it feels just great.

When I grow up, I want to be a foolish, unlearned, nobody.

Ironically, this label for my new found self awareness makes for quite an apt acronym. F.U.N. So much fun in fact, that if ever our kids tell us one day they are off to the mountains to renounce the world and become foolish, useless, nobodies like us, it will be a delight. (As would be the case if they said they’re off to become doctors or actors, scientists or artists – just in case the grandparents get too worried by all this new fangled babble.)

I went fishing early this morning with Josh by the Rio Zezere (not in the pretty little stream in the photo which runs at the bottom of our place, but the big river just over the hill). Didn’t catch a thing. Obviously, hapless fisherman that I am. But to spend a couple of hours with my boy, appreciating the awesome tranquil beauty of a thick cold March mist being dispelled by the heat of a rising Springtime sun, chitchatting philosophical nonsense together about life’s existential quirky dilemmas, while waiting with not so rock solid faith for the trout to bite, is one treasure I would not swap for all the treasures of this world. Well, maybe I would to land an actual fish one day. (Just for the record I should note that what we were doing probably shouldn't be called fishing until I catch a fish, so if you wouldn't mind please re-read that para to begin 'I went sitting this morning...)

I will leave you with this video clip of Von and Slinky sharing a quiet moment on the yoga terrace yesterday. For the more discerning of you, you will note that Slinky begins to move into a very familiar yoga position, which I, unsurprisingly, misname, and which Von, the yoga teacher, even more surprisingly, can’t remember. Correct answers on a postcard to Moses, Amieira, Oleiros, Portugal, 6160-052. Previous experience of yoga, or of anything else for that matter, is not a requirement for entry. Prize winners will be chosen next month. By Moses the dog. Of course.

Cheerio.

Everybody loves the Sunshine

Only time to post up a few videos today. Will update you on renovation works on the houses and gardens next month.

River on the road to Cambas...

The snow covered mountains of Serra de Estrella...

Joshua's 12th birthday pancake picnic with a rare cameo appearance on film of the elusive Shanti B...

Right after, we took Moses (!) for a swim in the Rio Zezere...

Cherries in the Sun

It’s been a great week. The sun burst out last week and with it, came Spring’s final vivacious splash of meadow flowers and fruits before it inevitably and gracefully bows out to make way for the impending arrival of Summer. It sure is already hot in the middle of the day, but the mornings and evenings are still, thankfully, refreshingly cool. Even nippy.

Josh with Eli kindly assisting, made the first pass at "Tom and Jerry"'s cherry trees this week. Oh my days are they delicious! Half a bucket went in a couple of days. Here’s proof….

Von planted in some extra veggies into 4 more of her new beautifully crafted permaculture compost beds. I think we now have hot peppers, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, butternut squash, red and white cabbage, cauliflowers, more broccoli, more lettuces and strawberries all in situ happily growing. I’ve also seen evidence of seed trays planted up with yet more goodies and a sack of tatters ready to go in once we’ve worked out the best place for them to grow in the heat of the next few months. The guys round here plant their potatoes in Jan or Feb and are now harvesting. So we might be a tad late. We’ll see.

Von has also impressively transformed Harry’s house this week in 2 days flat. It now resembles a kind of Moroccan boudoir. Seriously, it does. Have a sneak in the video below. It’s a wee bit surreal cos suddenly we now have a proper home to enjoy with all our stuff from our old life in London surrounding us. Yet when you look out the window it’s not really very New Cross is it? The cherry on the cake (alright enough of cherries already) is our beloved bed. For 4 nights now we’ve slept deeply, and boy what a difference it’s made to rejuvenate properly at night.

Last Sunday, we went for an outing to the pretty little nearby xisto (pronounced sheestoo, means slate stone) village of Alvaro organised by ‘Champagne’ Ines who works in Oleiros council. Much of the village has been restored with European funding and they’ve done a top job. We picked up a few cool ideas on how to restore our own xisto houses too. After the walk and the lunch, we went kayaking down this curvy and picturesque stretch of the River Zezere. The kids did great paddling a few kilometres downstream and did heroically well paddling back upstream into a fairly stiff headwind. Nice one kids. You rock.

Finally, an update on Moses. The place not the dog. For those who don’t know, we are staying (some would say squatting) now in Bacelo which is the house (sorry, Estate) of "Tom and Jerry"  Moses is another place separate to Moses, almost bordering it but not quite, consisting of 4 falling down old stone houses in 2 hectares of forested terraced land, 10 minutes walk down the valley, a little more remote, with no roofs or water supply or electricity connected yet. Which is why The Winters and Michelle are currently staying (squatting) at Bacelo until we’ve finished (to do that we obviously need to start at some point) renovating everything there.

Anyway back to the plot (assuming there is one), I think we are now waiting for a couple of things to happen. As the rains have stopped, Pedro the road maker can finish his other projects and begin ours, carving out the new terraces we need for the green houses, water tanks, sports area and, of course, the yoga sala at the very top of it all. Sounds like the road work could begin July, sometime, maybe later. Not holding our breath though. We also found cool carpentry and building firms that seem to understand what we want to achieve restoring our houses using mainly the materials we can find on the land and are prepared to work alongside us to do it. But we’ve yet to see a budget. If the budget is good, if we see it, we hope to appoint them and they might be able to start in August. Possibly. Depending on other things apparently. We’ll fill you in on when we know anything more (which implies we know something now, which we don’t really).

However, and it is a big ‘however’, the land down at Moses is looking utterly outstanding. All by itself. With no help at all whatsoever from us. These last 7 photos are just a few of the many we've taken this week, although they simply don’t convey the experience of being in a place that is so inherently magnificent. Truly breathtaking. We love Moses. We really do. One day we will live there. And grow more things there. And entertain there. And make new friends there. And grow old there. And eat more cherries in the sun. And olives, and other tasty home grown stuff too. But as you probably can tell, it’s just we’re not entirely sure when that day will be. It doesn’t matter though, cos the journey to get to Moses is already proving to be a whole heap of fun.

There's no rush, so we ain't rushing.

Work in the Spring Rains

Hello folks. Just a quick update on a few bits and pieces. It has been raining here for most of May. It's a bit odd as usually the heavy rains finish by end of April in Portugal. They have a saying here to describe every month. For April it is "Abril, aguas mille" the month of the thousand rains. But the climate is changing rapìdly and unexpectedly all over the planet so I guess the old sayings might have to be reworked in future. The plus sides of all this rain are the gigantic size of our veggies (the broccoli really are mahoosive), and more importantly, the risk of fires this summer in Portugal is now zero as the land has been soaked so deeply. The down sides are that we've all been a little under the weather with colds and coughs, and the vines and olives are at higher risk of catching blight. Apparently, their foliage requires lots of sun at this time of year to dry them out ready for fruiting over the summer. But we'll wait and see what the effect of it all will be later in the year. For now, the downpours haven't dampened our desire for cracking on with the work around here and below are a few pictures to show you what's been going on.

This is the first structure we have erected for shade on the terrace of what will this summer be the restaurant. Peter and I used the trees we had cut down in March that had the dangerous caterpillars nesting in the top of them. When he returns in a couple of weeks we will finish it off with some green material hammered in over the top. This space will double for a while as a yoga space. Now the sun is beginning to shine a bit stronger, this shaded flat area will be perfect for practising.

Harry's house has had a fair bit of work done to it in May. We finished rendering the internal walls in a lime, sand and cement mix, which as they are all now dry, Von, me and the kids should be white washing this week. Peter had made new barn style doors and shutters the week before he left. Von had been wondering what to do with all the mimosas we cut down last month. Thought about buying an industrial strength shredder, but as seems to be the emerging way here, Von found another more creative solution for all that waste wood that doesn't actually involve buying anything. The large mimosa branches have been set aside for building future structures - pergolas or possibly in the cob houses. The straight branches we have chopped up and inserted in between the beams that support the tin roof of Harry's house to act as bit of insulation and cos they look well pretty. The long thin bits we are weaving together to form the sides of new beds on the veggie terrace. And the small end pieces will be used for dry matter on top of the beds.

The latest bit of new thinking came from a trip we made to Barbara's (the one with the chopsticks) place last weekend. There we met Josh and Rosie, a young couple from the UK who've been in the Algarve for a couple of years but recently met Barbara and decided to move in with her. They are fascinating people. For work, they are clowns. No, really, they are. And their hobby is Permaculture. We've heard a bit about permaculture from a few people but to speak to these guys and see the start they have already made at the Mount of Oaks was really inspiring. Here's why. With all this rain, the weeds have sprung up everywhere at bacelo. It was a touch disheartening cos I only strimmed the whole terrace 2 weeks ago and now it looks exactly the same as it did then - hip high bracken and grasses all over the place. But with a system Josh told us about and then Von researched more on the web, it's all really cool that there are so many weeds growing here.

All those weeds are not pests that need to be battled with for the next 20 years, they are good things. They are in fact nitrogen fixers, and you can cut them, leave them where they are and layer above them with green veg leaves (to encourage the worms), a neutralizer like wood fire ash (plenty from our fire that we weren't too sure what to do with either), then a layer of damp cardboard that controls the weeds underneath from emerging on mass (we have all those moving boxes), above that a layer of chicken manure in sawdust or straw (we have bucket loads of the stuff from the chicken coup that has been nicely maturing for 10 years and we will have more from the chicks we want to buy soon), and finally a layer of bracken or pine needles for the top. Hey presto you have a foot and half high compost bed system ready to go for planting into immediately (as you can see from the new cabbages plugged in this evening). Any weeds that do break through the layers, can be cut and laid over again with more dry matter. This has taken a huge pressure off us. No back breaking digging, annual preparatory rotorvating or endless weeding of exposed soil required. Phew, what a relief that was to find out! We are all hoping the system works as sweet as it looks too.

A couple more pictures for ya...this is Ellie enjoying painting a few prayers in a well cool prayer space that Barbara created out of living, bent mimosa trees and added some plastic sheeting to keep it dry. It was lovely to see all the contributions people had hung up over the months from a whole range of religious and cultural perspectives. (We want a space like that!) And her underheated bath, although a little small for giants like me, was surrounded delightfully in mosaic and recycled bits and bobs. (We want one of those too! in fact, we want to be like Barbara when we grow up.)


On Sunday, I took the kids with Jorge and Filipe (our neighbours' lads) for a trip down to the River Zezere. The fishing season kicked off May 15th and with the waters as full as I've ever seen them, the whole place was in fantastic nick. As it's a little remote down there, about 20 minute drive from Amieira, only a handful of fisherman and noone else. It is such a peaceful place to stay for an afternoon. We promise to take you down there when you come. Moses of course, spent all the time chasing sticks thrown for him. We'll buy our fishing licenses this week too (only 10 euros for all of Portugal's rivers and lakes - cool eh?) so if you fancy messing about fishing, swimming and maybe even on a boat (if we can find someone selling one), any of us, including Moses, will always be delighted to accompany you down there.

On the way back home we stopped again at a beautiful estate Von and I had previously stumbled upon in the week, with 6 or 7 cute old stone houses on a lovingly cleaned piece of terraced hillside and views to die for down the river. Got a tingling feeling that one day it might just be the home of John and Caroline Purday, their kids and their kittens. I have no idea who owns it now or even if it is for sale, but it would make a remarkable artist's retreat. Now wouldn't that be another lovely dream to happen one day. Purdays will be here end of July, so we will let you know how that little adventure pans out.

Need to go now as Slinky is mewing constantly next door for yet more food. And sounds like the kids are running down the hill after been dropped off by the school bus (yep it's definitely them), and Von could do with a cup of tea after hours of toil in the rapidly taking shape kitchen garden. More updates next week.