Quinta das Abelhas

we put the rabbits outside in a run we cobbled together out of - guess what - bricks and corrugated iron whilst we cleaned out their shed. thought we’d take the opportunity to check that fat football rabbit (if you want to find out why she’s called that, read becca warren´s livejournal) is actually a girl. she’s not. she (he) has balls! so … we now have two male rabbits. one must go in the pot we think. trouble is wobble is probably too old, and we fancy keeping him as breeding stock, and fat football rabbit was given to us happily as a mum-to-be so she wouldn’t end up in the pot …

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woke up with a bad back thismorning from all the work i did in the garden yesterday. had a bath and that worked wonders, beautiful day and i love our outdoor bath! so then went manic in the garden again.

dug new beds and planted a box & lavender hedge for the border of one of the beds. took lots of box cuttings and dug up some lavender from the forest and put it in pots as i want to eventually edge all the beds with little hedges.

scraped some more paths of weeds in between beds, weeded the comfrey bed, sorted out the compost heap which was collapsing, planted some of the 2yr old asparagus in the new beds we made yesterday, & edged some of the beds with planks.

then gave the horses some hay and filled the other 4 haynets ready for tonight and tomorrow morning. dunno where i’m getting all this energy from but i’ll probably pay for it tomorrow. also i have a stinking cold: cough, runny nose, sore throat. been drinking copious amounts of thyme, lemon & honey tea which is helping.

made a quiche for dinner as the goose has started laying again and we have loads of huge eggs.

tomorrow is carnaval and we were thinking of maybe going to coja for the procession, but just had a phone call from the owner of one of the properties we advertise for sale to say he can’t make his appointment tomorrow to show someone around, so can i do it? he’s in lisbon - for carnaval no doubt

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been so busy with pure portugal work lately i haven’t had much time for anything else. managed to get into the garden for a few hours this morning and andy helped me make a raised bed for the asparagus which is now in its third year so we can start harvesting around may when it starts producing spears! all very exciting. we got the boys to help bring down a load of bricks left over from building the house to make the surround for the bed (which already had the asparagus - and lots of weeds - in it). while they were hefting bricks down the track i weeded the beds and made a flat foundation for the bricks. when the bricks were in place we filled up the bed with compost and horse manure. it all looks very neat now, especially as i also cleared the paths in between the beds. now i just have to get on with making the rest of the garden look as good!

i have managed to clear and plant some beds already this year - with some help from a ‘borrowed’ wwoofer who was staying with friends who came over for the day to have a go at vine pruning - so i already have garlic, onions, beetroot and lettuce growing.

only been riding twice in the past couple of weeks, partly because it’s been raining, but i really need to find more time for that.

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none of the 13 oh-so-cute chicks have survived
not sure if the geese attacked them or just flattened them by accident, but we´re pretty sure it´s the geese that are the murderers.

we found a couple of chicks over a few days flat and dead in the run. then we found the rest all flat and dead next to a newly-laid goose egg ….

so the next job is to build the geese their own shelter (more hefting of bricks down the track) and seperate them off in their own bit of the run.

then hopefully we can get going with some poultry breeding.

the rabbits (did i mention we now have rabbits?) are doing fine, so maybe we’ll have little cute fluffy bunny babies soon. apparently one buck and 3 does can produce 290lbs meat per year (in cute little bunny suppers) … we’ll see. as it seems we are now meat-eaters (albeit occassional) i’d much rather produce our own than buy from the supermarket-factory-farm.

and, as i don’t think i did mention we now have rabbits, here’s how we got them: got a phone call from a friend (we’re getting pretty well known for our ever-growing menagerie and being easily persuaded to take in pitiful strays) who says “i’ve just found a rabbit in our garden, is it yours?” i say “no, we don’t have any rabbits” so she says “oh, do you want one then?” so, sucker that i am (we’d actually been talking about breeding rabbits but not made any decision) i dash round and collect it, not really thinking about where we’re going to keep it. it has to go in with the chickens while we sort something out. the geese honk at it and it refuses to come out of it’s cat travel box. so we clean out the woodshed (being as it’s empty cos we’re crap at chopping firewood in advance of needing it), put some (very expensive) haylage down as bedding, and make a makeshift door with a bit of corrugated iron propped up with bricks. happy bunny.

then … we go and visit friends, dave & becca, who apart from making us feel very pathetic as they’ve done pretty much as much work on their place in 6 months as we’ve done here in 2 years (well, ok, maybe not - but they do seem to work, work, work) give us a female rabbit to keep wobble (yes, that’s his name) company and hopefully produce some babies. so now we have to get on and clear the other little shed out for when she’s pregnant and they can’t be kept together anymore. and these were the sheds destined for demolition in order to finally make a start on renovating the old house …. hey ho.

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We had a lovely surprise this morning. One of the bantams we thought had been lost (probably eaten by a stray dog) came home with 13 chicks. They’re sooooooo cute!

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