Quinta das Abelhas

get up, drink cevada (barley coffee) & check & answer emails. boys go to bread man (he stops his van at top of our track every morning) & bring me back an estrela cake for breakfast.

drive equipment (press, big buckets, wine bottles, corks, corking machine, huge boiling pan) for grape juice making over to our friend’s place. get shouted at by her neighbour, antonio, for turning my car by driving onto his track - the only place to turn, and his track mind, not his land where he grows stuff, the very same bit of land that last time i went down there he came over all smiling and hand-waving saying ‘park on my land, park here, it’s ok’ … aaarrggghhh. probably he hadn’t drunk enough wine yet thismorning. then to make matters worse our dogs have followed us over and start barking at him on his own land … thought i better make a quick exit.

get home and continue the tedious task of updating the pure portugal website, something i’ve been meaning to do for ages and haven’t had the time (or motivation) for. been doing this for past few days and have developed a serious coke (the drink, not the powder) habit to keep me going …

get fed up with that, and i’m sure as a result of the coke, decide to paint the metal door of the kitchen. a loverly green colour.

do some washing in the sexy new machine. including the rug on which the dog puked up something he’d eaten which had obviously been dead for a long, long, time by the smell of it.

clean & tidy bedroom.

have cheese & salad roll for lunch.

do the washing up. this involves fetching & boiling water and taking it to ‘the washing-up place’ outside the adega. the still (amazingly) fully-functioning shelter with built-in shelf for washing-up bowl and drying rack which i built with help from my mum about 2 years ago and which we decided to chain to the wall of the adega (through one of many of the holes between the granite stones) to keep in place. the upright poles sit in hollow concrete blocks wedged in with old bits of wood and the tin roof is held on with rocks. now how’s that for not-so-techno peasantry?!

tidy up around the washing-up place. this involves shifting piles of bricks, 5l wine bottles, old cardboard boxes, dog food bowls, plant pots, etc. quite looking forward to a time when tidying up around the washing-up place means wiping down some worktops …

clean kitchen.

boys get back from juice-making and mess up my lovely clean kitchen making themselves a mid-afternoon snack (burgers). not quite sure how we got to be a household with coke in the fridge & burgers in the freezer …

more working on website.

boys start yelling ‘that dog is back’ - it’s a badly injured stray dog that’s been coming down here for past couple of days but has been chased away by our dogs before i’ve had a chance to look at it. today it’s down by the pond so i quietly go down and it comes up to me wagging its tail and very friendly. i recognise it as the dog that lived here before we bought the land. it has most of one ear missing and a really huge hole going into its head. it’s really bad, it stinks and the wound is full of maggots and there are zillions of flies around it. boys notice it also has a big hole in its backside. andy thinks it must have been shot to have such big wounds. wei don’t know what to do. we don’t want another dog. we can’t afford to take it to the vet. if it doesn’t have to be put down then it’s going to need major surgery and then a home to go to. i can’t just leave it to die. so andy phones some friends who mentioned they wanted a dog, to see if they want to take it on, it’s really a lovely dog. but they don’t. as i decide i’m taking it to the vet it disappears off up the track …

back to the website update.

make quiche for dinner and andy makes chips & picks salad from the garden.

eat dinner. check emails. write blog. now i’m going to bed.

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get up early today (i’m knackered) and go off to meet clients to show them property. it’s been arranged for a while and then my car has to go into the garage so i’ve emailed them a few days before to say there’s a bit of a problem meeting them, i might have to get the owner out to meet them or i might have to hire a car, but not to worry, one way or another someone will be there to meet them and show them the property.

turns out i have to hire a car. i get to the meeting place just before 9.30am, the pre-arranged time, and at exactly 9.30am i get a text that says ‘we’re not coming, sorry’. am i PISSED OFF or what? i’ve done my absolute best to meet them as i said i would, kept them informed in plenty of time, and they don’t even have the decency to tell me in advance that i don’t need to go to loads of hassle and expense.

PAH!

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ohmigod i think our blog has it’s very first fan. i’m so excited. hey pablo, thanks for the comments. shall i start a fanclub? is that a bit pre-emptive? ok, tenho calma.

seriously, it’s really great to think that someone (apart from my mum!) actually reads all this waffle. and gives me a reason to try and be a bit more on the case with updating this ‘ere blog.

so, pablo & mum, you will be sad to hear, i am sure, that the car must away to the mechanic again on monday. i actually had to call him out to rescue me today when the so-called repaired brakes completely seized on me and lots of blue stinky smoke started pouring from them. i was a bit desperate as i was on my way to meet people at one of the holiday homes we manage - didn’t really want to be the reason their holiday got off to a bad start by not being able to get into the cottage they’d booked for the week. so, the mechanic finished his lunch quick and dashed out to rescue the damsel in distress - a quick temporary fix and i was on my way. hoorah! until i noticed when i left the cottage (after meeting the people who were almost an hour late - bah! well actually not bah cos i enjoyed some peace reading my book and not working on the computer for a change) …. anyway …. i thought, on returning to the car, that it was a little strange the brake lights were still on. after all, it was just sat there. parked. handbrake on. nothing else. i got in. took the handbrake off, and the car rolled back down the hill. as it should. so i made a mental note to mention the weird light thing to the mechanic and drove home. only half-way back the damn brakes seized on me again. damn. damn. damn. couldn’t decide whether to go straight to mechanic and dump the car then then try and get home, or just go home. after letting the brakes cool down and unstick of course - even i wouldn’t drive 20km with the brakes stuck on.

so … the car is now home with the battery disconnected so the brake lights don’t drain it and mean i can’t get it to the mechanic on monday. and the hire car is booked for me to show clients property for sale on monday and tuesday. and i am not thinking about where the money is coming from to pay for all this (and the 300 euros we already owe the mechanic cos we always get everything done on tic and then it just mounts up and it’s hideous and … ok, what was that i said about calma ….?

on the upside, we did manage to go shopping. and i did get chocolate. all is not lost.

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apparently, according to a friend, that’s us. actually quite a good description i think. though ideally i’d do more of the peasanting and less of the techie stuff. in fact, i really should blog more about the peasanting and less about the technology.

recent peasanting activities:

• making grape juice
• disposing of dead chick
• showing friends how to make wine
• picking huge basketloads of tomatoes
• dreaming about buying the land next door so we can have horses and lots more land for lots more peasanting and lots more peasant-loving visitors (otherwise known as wwoofers)
• baking bread
• felling trees for this winter’s firewood (left it rather too late - again)

today’s technopeasant activities:

• sorting out a friend’s broadband connection in return for several tins of mushy peas (urgh, but the kids like them), a big box of organic veg, some echinacea seeds, and 20 euros.
• typing this blog whilst a giant hornet buzzes about my head (you get used to it!)

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moonflower, originally uploaded by pureportugal.

Our first moonflower bloomed on the balcony outside our bedroom last night. The smell is wonderful.

I couldn’t take a photo of our actual moonflower cos the camera is in the car which has been at the mechanics last week - something wrong with the starter motor methinks we were in carregal loaded up with 400 wine bottles when the car decided to give us the silent treatment every time I turned the ignition key. always an upside to everything though as we took the opportunity of not being able to go anywhere for a while to browse the 2nd hand & antique furniture shop we spotted opposite the wine bottling place. not exactly cheap but certainly good prices compared to other similar stuff we’ve seen. and a couple of great leather sofas that I am now determined to save up for well, that was last Friday and it’s now been one whole vehicle-free week. Good lesson for us in just how self-sufficient we are, as we were on our way to go shopping when the car decided it didn’t want to go anywhere, so we’ve had a week of eating (mostly) only what’s growing in the garden. Soon as I get the car back I’m going to buy something other than tomatoes, courgettes, carrots, aubergines, marrow, & eggs to eat. Chocolate! Yes! Chocolate! Wonder if it’ll grow in Portugal …..?

Anyway, lacking a photo of our very own moonflower, I did a google image search and found this great picture, at the same time discovering the fantastic website that it came from www.ericandleandra.com (hope they don’t mind me borrowing their photo).

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