A Harvest to Share. By Memphis.

Oh my days what a summer! Sooo much happening all at the same time. Still in the process of moving into our new houses, boxes everywhere, building cupboards and storage as fast as I can. My cousins Helen, Anthony and Cleo came for a delightful and entertaining week’s stay (come back soon guys you were great!)  River’s sister Annie and her boyfriend Nathan arrived this week and will go back to London, with Josh and Eli as companions for the journey, next week. River and I have started the final phase of restoration on the house down at Moses in readiness for the Purdays arrival at the end of August after their camping trip round France, Spain and northern Portugal. It’s all go.

And then there’s the heat! 45 degrees plus on some days with no decent rains since early June. That means a whole lot of watering every day in various parts of the land. Watering the veggies on the kitchen terrace, watering the trees up and down the roads, watering the orchards down by the stream, watering ourselves drinking 4 or 5 litres a day.  

With this level of heat, inevitably comes fire. As I write, Portugal is suffering in many parts with forest fires. Some huge. And some also not too far from us. 2500 hectares burnt just this week in the Serra da Estrella National Park. The smoke that lies down the valley here some nights is a somber spectacle. I will write more on fire once the summer has passed. 

In the midst of all of that, as you will see on the videos below, River’s garden has exploded and we dug up our first potato harvest. There seems to be some innate sense, as River says, that a harvest is best shared. What a pleasure it was then to have had Helen Ant and Cleo to dig together in the earth for potatoes then devour the chips that followed. I hope we can share the grape and olive harvests similarly with others this year.  Any volunteers for November and December olive picking, bagging and taking to the press?

I’ll sign off with this photo of River holding her first courgette of the year. A young one apparently. Of the Italian climbing variety I understand. Tricky to find in shops as it doesn’t journey well. Which is a shame cos they’re rather sweet and tasty, especially when roasted.  

Memphis

My cousin Helen, partner Anthony and goddaughter Cleo pull up the year's first main potato harvest for storage. Great work guys.

Helen brings in the potato harvest on our tractor, expertly driven round the hairpin terraced roads.


River takes up the first potatoes from the kitchen terrace. And Nathan & Josh clear another bed for more veggies.

Ellie karate chops chocolate

One month ago the kids moved into their newly restored stone cottage. Yesterday River and I finally moved in to our house and spent the first of what we hope will be thousands of nights in our new bedroom.

We have one house for Josh and Ellie. One for us. Our children have therefore, in effect, suddenly become our closest neighbours and what lovely ones they are too. I do hope they pop over for a cup of tea every now and again.

Grandparents have come and gone and left us lots of joy, some expertly pruned roses and quite a few soft fluffy veggie beds that River has already filled with more delicious things to eat.

Everything is chaos, obviously. Yet there is an unmistakable stillness flowing that comes from the knowledge that we have finally arrived in the home that will be ours to love for the rest of our lives, God willing. It's been a trip to get here. Travelling then moving from one temporary dwelling to the next 8 times in the last 2.5 years has taken its toll. Now, at last, we feel like we are breathing out. One long sigh.

After months of imagining, planning, procuring and building, I can't tell you how great it feels to be actually cooking in that kitchen, sleeping in those bedrooms, eating in the courtyard and living altogether just as we dreamt it might possibly be.  Lists of lists of tasks await us. Unending work. Oh the sweat and the toil and the blisters. But folks, I wouldn't swap this for all the riches in China.

Enjoy the videos.  Memphis.

Eloise and her friend cook up a chocolate storm in the new kitchen and demonstrate how to chop a bar in two.


The kids secretly film their late night chat with my Dad and get caught on camera themselves murdering an innocent fly.


A peak at Vonetta's new kitchen 'horta'. My, how does her garden grow!

Kids move into their new house

Well we did it. A bit tight to the deadline of my Mum and Dad coming out. But managed to get the house livable before they arrived. Felt very much like one of those surprise TV renovation shows where they only get a weekend to transform a place before the owners get back. On Monday, the day before the royal visit,  6 pairs of brackets hung, 13 huge slabs of granite and marble work surfaces carried down the hill and mounted, 8 sinks 2 bidets 1 shower and 11 taps plumbed in, glass and fittings for 12 doors finished off, all in a single day. We even managed to spend Tuesday morning bringing tractor loads of bark chip down to place around the house to turn it quickly from a building site into something resembling a house. Have a look...







Here's a clip from the kids Oleiros School Gymnastic show in town with every class in the local area doing a wee thing. Great night and this vid is Eli in action (she's the tall one!). Battery ran out for Josh's performance so can't show you that he nailed a perfect front flip off a trampette.



That's all for now. River and I are still sleeping in the house down at Moses until we've finished off the decorating in the new bedroom. Josh and Eli have moved out into their new place. After 3 years of temporary accommodation in which we have moved 8 times it is a lovely thing to have finally given them a permanent home. Until, that is, they fly the nest once more.

Peace and all good things.

Memphis.

Xisto Slate Floors and Bye Bye Lovely Builders

Video blog of the final, yes final, fortnight of professional restoration work on our Xisto stone houses here at Moses. The builders left yesterday. Von and I are immensely grateful for them, especially for all that they taught us in the process. But now they're gone and we have the house to ourselves once again. 3 weeks til my Mum and Dad arrive and still a fair bit left to go before the house will be ready to receive them. Deep breath...

Dry stone walling begins

Today summer feels like it has truly arrived. Bright blue hot hot Sunday. The mountainside and pathways are bursting with yellow and blue flowers and the wild white rock roses are ready to put on their impressive annual display.Just chilling out after a scrumptious Sunday lunch, I thought I'd upload some vids from the last fortnight. The professional bit of the works on the house is drawing to a close. Another fortnight maybe at tops. All the windows are in, just waiting on the doors.

Tiles are on in all the bathrooms and kitchen. Supporting walls are all built and rendered and tiled where required. Wooden rough cut pine tree boards are nailed in to the apex of the gable end. Just waiting for the 100 sq metres of natural cut multi coloured slates to arrive and we can lay the remaining  floors. And waiting for all the sinks and taps to arrive so we can call in the local stone merchant to measure up for the granite worktops.

Built a concrete fossa (water tank in the photo) to house any grey water from the house not usable on the land - for example from the soak sink in the kitchen for when we'll need to wash out the salt from the eating olives and a second drain from the washing machine if we ever need to wash anything in bleach.

We spent most of last week clearing the kitchen terrace from all the rubble and wood mounded there and to make space to begin what we thought would be the long process of restoring the dry stone terrace walls. In fact after just 2 days with the lovely old stone mason João, we've built over half already (he tells why he likes dry stone walling in the video below).

So in a fortnight, the builders will hopefully leave and we will be able to put the finishing touches to the shell, thus beginning the lifelong task and joy of creating; for me that will start with converting the old floorboards from the house into beds, cupboards, book shelves, shutters as well as a pergola on the kitchen terrace. River will continue to be besotted by all things gardening, but her inside time will probably become more focussed on mosaics and fabrics. All lovely stuff. But that is all to come.

Right now we're enjoying the final phases of the restoration work and sensing the pleasure that awaits us when its all done and dusted ready to move in. In the meantime teaching is going well, kids are still top of their classes at school and River has staked more trees on the road (a tractor video tour below if you fancy it) and covered the potato field in more donkey manure and pine needle mulch.

I have a sneaky sensation that River might be at this very moment suggesting that perhaps this afternoon "we" could nip into the forest and cut some Mimosa trees to make the dozens of pea stakes she will need shortly.

"We could dear. Good idea. I'll be there in just a tick."

Oh by the way, Chris Stewart's Driving Over Lemons series, is a must if you've not already read them. Lovely tales from his family's adventure of a remote mountainside rural Spanish life.





Here's the link to the blog showing a video of the the day we first started back in July 2008 with the arrival of the diggers, Demolition City!

Large Leca sacks and iron oxide pigments arrive

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...")

Toodaloo. Té já.

Memphis

Green Roof, Wooden Floors and Lime Paint

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.

Memphis