Opening our exciting parcel

Beautiful beads

Reading the lovely card

Beautiful princesses and fairies

Group photo

Snow White

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR OUR LOVELY PARCEL.  We had great fun and the outfits and toys will continue to get used on our Friday get-togethers.

(p.s Sorry Alice and Isabella that it took so long to open the parcel – we have been away and missed quite a few Fridays)

Little Ladies who Lunch at the quinta

Painting Fun

We have also started to go to Carregal do Sal to a lovely swimming pool on Wednesday afternoons if anyone wants to join us contact me for details.  We might have to change our name from Little Ladies though…as we now have Luca (a month old) who is joining us and another little boy who has just moved to the area with his parents!

We now have our own youtube channel, so watch out for more videos soon!

http://www.permaculturinginportugal.net/blog/help/

… the fruit didn’t get picked and preserved

… the peach suckers i pulled up and stuck in a bucket of water didn’t get planted into pots full of compost

… the already cooked mixed fruit didn’t get turned into jam, instead it waited until today to be turned into a (very runny) crumble

… the poo didn’t get cleaned up out of the horses’ field

… my garden didn’t get watered, apart from the bit that I’ve already set up with drip irrigation

… we sat up late into the night talking (after the visitors had left) fuelled by the remains of the wine that got started with dinner – and consequently today is another day when most of the above jobs also didn’t get done

But having visitors also meant that …

… we got to meet some lovely people

… we talked, laughed, joked, ate, and drank wine

… we saw an adorable little girl’s eyes light up at the sight of juicy ripe strawberries, peaches and plums  and witness her eating them with almost as much enthusiasm as she polished off the yorkshire pudding!

… I went horse riding (and got to see some of the amazing countryside and views we enjoy here daily through new eyes experiencing them for the first time)

Site’s “100-Foot Diet” Brings Local Food Movement Home

PASADENA, CA. – July 7, 2008 – Think of it as Facebook meets the Farmer’s Almanac: A social networking site for backyard pioneers who want to fight soaring food prices and global warming by growing their own food. At FreedomGardens.org, novice and expert growers from all over the world can gather to post success stories, ask questions, and challenge one another to ever-increasing levels of self-sustained living.

The site is backed by the example of its founders, the Dervaes family, the urban-dwelling “eco-pioneers” who have been growing most of their own food since 2001. On their one-fifth acre residential lot in Pasadena, Jules Dervaes and his three adult children, Anais, Justin, and Jordanne, grow over 400 varieties of fresh fruits, vegetables, herbs, and edible flowers-with enough left over to run an award-winning “green” business selling fresh organic produce to local restaurants and caterers.

Few can match that output, but the Dervaeses say that by growing at least a portion of what they eat, “Freedom Gardeners” everywhere can take back control from the corporate food system. In the process, they can improve their health, reduce their ecological footprint, and save money. With food price inflation at the highest levels since 1990, the latter may be the most compelling reason to join what the Dervaeses call their “homegrown revolution(TM).”

To motivate new gardeners and focus their efforts, Freedom Gardens offers challenges like the 100-Foot Diet. With a nod to the 100-Mile Diet and other “eat local” initiatives, the 100-Foot Diet urges people to garden in whatever space they have available, be it a small patio or a spacious backyard, then prepare at least one meal a week using as many homegrown ingredients, and as few store-bought ingredients, as possible.

Mr. Dervaes uses the illustration of a target to explain the 100-Foot Diet in the context of the global food economy and the distance food travels from field to plate. “The outer ring of the target is overseas, while the circle at 1,500 miles represents the average distance produce in a grocery store travels. The 100-mile diet is getting you closer to the center. But, the 100-foot diet is actually bringing you right back to your home, and that is the bull’s-eye,” he says. “We want people to look for food security in their own backyard.”

Freedom Gardens is an offshoot of the family’s first website, PathtoFreedom.com, a seven year-old sustainable living blog that gets 5 million hits per month from 125 different countries. The new, more interactive site uses social networking software to connect visitors with other gardeners in their area. They can share tips about local climate and soil issues, display which challenges they are participating in on their profiles, and find others nearby doing the same challenge.

“We are providing the setting for ‘over-the-fence’ chats,” says Mr. Dervaes. “Neighbors can help each other more than we can from our particular locale. Through the website, we facilitate their getting together.”

Growing your own diet is not easy, but the Dervaeses are living proof that it is not impossible either. In their first year of full-time gardening, the family’s harvest was over 2,300 pounds; by 2003, their yearly take had reached over 6,000 pounds. This year they have challenged themselves to reach a new all-time high: 10,000 pounds from a one-tenth acre urban garden.

The Dervaes family has received several local awards and congressional recognition for their environmental contributions and outreach efforts. They have been the subject of numerous articles in newspapers around the country, including The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times, and were recently featured on ABC’s Nightline and CNN.

About Freedom Gardens

Launched in May 2008, Freedom Gardens is a social networking website for gardeners and homegrown food enthusiasts. The site’s founders, the Dervaes family, draw on years of personal experience on their model urban homestead to help others take back control of their diets and their budgets by growing more of their own food. For more information, please visit www.freedomgardens.org.

Food Not Lawns
Combines practical wisdom on ecological design and community-building with a fresh, green perspective on an age-old subject. Activist and urban gardener Heather Flores shares her nine-step permaculture design to help farmsteaders and city dwellers alike build fertile soil, promote biodiversity, and increase natural habitat in their own ‘paradise gardens’. But “Food Not Lawns” doesn’t begin and end in the seed bed. This joyful permaculture lifestyle manual inspires readers to apply the principles of the paradise garden – simplicity, resourcefulness, creativity, mindfulness, and community – to all aspects of life. It includes topics such as: plant ‘guerilla gardens’ in barren road intersections; organize community meals; start a street theatre troupe or host a local art swap; free your kitchen from refrigeration and enjoy truly fresh, nourishing foods from your own plot of land; and work with children to create garden play spaces.