As I’ve taken over the job of looking after the chickens on a daily basis I’ve been more inspired and motivated to get on and create the Chicken Garden.  Add the enthusiasm of happy helper Theresa and we finally made a start on it yesterday.

We dug out all the couch grass and brambles.  We want to make raised beds alongside a new paved pathway (Lester – who now lives in the village but first helped build the chicken shed when he was here as a wwoof-er about 5yrs ago – just offered today to lay some leftover paving slabs to make the path for us).

I also dug out the foundations for extending the chicken shed “veranda” as the soil has become really badly eroded and I want to put a bigger ramp in so it’s easier to get a wheelbarrow into the pen.   We also want to put a turf roof on the shed, and extend the roof over the veranda so the chickens have some extra shade in summer and cover from rain in winter.

Most of the area is now dug over and levelled!

Responsible travel, or voluntourism, is becoming increasingly popular as people seek to give something back, submerse themselves in a different culture and, possibly, change their lives.

Read the article at:
http://www.alicegriffin.co.uk/Images/164_NGT_0111_161_volunt_SING_R1.pdf

After my first week at Quinta Das Abelhas, I feel that anyone who eats – period – should spend some time WWOOFing (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms), or at the very least, on a small, organic farm.  I’ve volunteered in Seattle at Marra Farm, a four acre plot within the city limits that produces more than 16,000 pounds of food for the local community. But dropping by to play urban farmer for an afternoon is drastically different from living the day-to-day reality of what goes into making a self-sufficient farm function.

My duties at Quinta Das Abelhas have run the gamut from harvesting basketfuls of vegetables from the gardens and readying beds for the winter with fertilizer and seeds to making quince jelly with fresh picked fruit, helping to remove mud from a trench after a heavy rainfall to building a stone wall.  After more than a decade of declaring defeat when working with yeast, Sophie even helped me bake my first successful loaf of bread. The list of what I’m learning about self-sufficiency is endless.  The beauty of volunteering in this kind of environment is that there is always something to do, the work is rarely repetitive and it’s fun. I love, love, love being here.

I decided to WWOOF with Quinta Das Abelhas because I try to eat locally and seasonally whenever possible and take great interest in knowing where food comes from.  Portugal is a far distance from Seattle (5,836 miles each way to be exact – I have a lot of carbon footprint making up to do), it’s a place I’ve wanted to visit for a long time and got a really good feeling about Andy and Sophie from their website and blog.  (I also saw a photo of a gigantic zucchini a friend’s father in Lisbon had grown and had a feeling that people around these parts knew a thing or two about farming.)  My gut was spot on. I know a lot of people who’d pay large sums of money for this kind of experience and to achieve the peace I’ve experienced here.

For starters, the property is stunningly beautiful. So even when you’re shoveling manure, you can’t help but have repeated “ah ha” moments.  I’m no skilled farm hand, but even so, you feel like you’re playing some small part in the success of a small, family run operation and that feels good.  It takes a lot of hands, heart and sweat to make this place run. For all of your hard work, volunteers are rewarded with amazing meals made by Andy and some of the sweetest slumbers ever – I’ve made no secret about how much I love living in my comfy, cozy yurt.  After volunteering with four other organizations over the past four months, working for kind people who truly care makes a huge difference.  (That’s probably the number one thing I’m grateful for.) Living at Quinta Das Abelhas is a simpler way of  life than I’m accustomed to, but it imparts such incredible feelings of calm and satisfaction, that I’m already scheming ways to adopt some of these aspects when I resume my usual urban routine.

My time at Quinta Das Abelhas has reiterated something I feel strongly about: More small farms means more locally produced food, which makes the planet happy.  Would you rather be on a first name basis with the farmers who grow your food or do you prefer food that has wracked up thousands of airline miles to make it to your plate?  A silly question, really. In a perfect world, less people would eat food produced in massive industrial farms and far off places and more would support the individual people who put so much care into making sure our food is safe, healthy and delicious. WWOOF and you’ll understand why.

Charyn Pfeuffer

Can’t wait until we get our bread oven built, it was waaaay too hot to be cooking them in the gas oven in the kitchen!

The joy of arrival was only slightly tempered by our accomodation being moved from the then-uninhabitable yurt to a cosier (smaller!) caravan, and we soon realised that this was a symptom of life at the Quinta being more relaxed than we could possibly have hoped. It’s no picnic, we get up at hours I normally only see from the other end of the day to shovel horse-shit and do the heavier jobs that are unbearable once the mist clears and the temperature climbs, but when we have time free in the day I recall Sophie suggesting we take a picnic to the river, so sometimes it is.

There is certainly a lot of work that I would not describe as fun. Scrubbing yurts and weeding (especially in the heat of the day) is in no way my particular cup of herbal tea, but I was surprised to find that once done, and done well as part of a team, the satisfaction is considerably greater than that gained from, say, skiving off in the shade to ‘blog’, as I’m doing now and do a lot back home.

I wouldn’t say that wwoofing is for everyone, but the great thing about Quinta des Abelhas is the relaxed attitude to it: no-one has ever asked me if I’ve done my 6 hours of work on a particular day, and they haven’t needed to. With such a variety of tasks available to get on with in our own time, everyone seems very happy to spend a few hours making a mosaic, some time in the garden, a dip in the pool to cool off and then off to the kitchen to bake bread. There was no question that taking two days off in the first week to go wild in Porto at San Joao would be a problem, and likewise when Matt screeched to a halt in the 4×4 when I was on the way to watch the football, saying “Need a volounteer to put the yurt up, it’s gonna rain!”, it didn’t occur to me to point out that I’d already done 6 hours work that day. If my employer in London asked me to work an extra hour for free I’d be laughing all the way home. I even missed the Holland game yesterday to watch Andy’s Geoff Lawton film, “Creating a Food Forest”, which was a revelation. It’s great to realise that there’s a way to live off the land without stripping it bare and spraying it with pesticides. I would recommend coming here to wanting to learn about permaculture, as long as you don’t mind shovelling shit at 7am.

Here the recipie (for 5 people):
500g potatoes
1 egg
170g flour
30g butter
oliveoil to fry the slices

How you do it:
Cook the potatoes, peel and mash them. Let the mash cool down, put the melted butter, the egg and the flour in. Knead it to a smooth pastry.
Form small balls and flatten them to small slices (you may need some more flour to not stick the slices to the ground).
Heat a pan up, put in pleanty of oliveoil and put the slices in. Fry them on both sides until they look lovely brown.

Potato slices are traditional served with jam. They taste also good with cheese and salat.
Enjoy your meal! Or as it is said in Austria “Guten Appetit!”

Inga Marén

For a herbs fancier like me an absolute no-go. Herbs need to have space to grow, a lot of sun, water und abundant manure.

No sooner said than done. After digging lots of weed roots out, dunging with rotten horseshit (a great manure!), watering the plants and renewing the border the herbage bed is totally revitalised.

Marjoram, mint, thyme and apple mint do grow now in a new glory. What a pleasure!

Inga

They found the perfect spot at the edge of the garden just below the vines. But….there was a problem the big nasty, spiky couch grass had invaded the area and was spreading its invasive  roots everywhere. This evil weed had to be banished to a faraway land (i.e out of the garden not even on the compost heap) in order to allow the comfrey to grow and to prevent the couch grass ever returning.

After many hours of digging, weeding, watering and three barrowfuls of magical manure later the bed was ready!!!!!!!!!

The comfrey plants were tucked in tightly and given another drink to live happily ever after and the horrible couch grass was never to be seen again.

The defiant wwoofers and host finished for lunch (yummm) and prepared themselves for their next task of pruning the raspberries.

The End.

• How To Make A Raised Bed

Although the aformentioned may be true (with slight exaggeration), there are so many unexpected delights to be experienced that we could never have prepared ourselves for… The plentiful garden which is so colourful and ripe and delicious; the genorosity and kindness of our hosts; the entertainment and discussions with the other wwoofers; the different culture and language; the beautiful weather; the incredible views; the precious time and nuturing from our hosts.. we no longer feel like visitors but part of a hardworking team that achieve lots each day.

We hurt a lot. But this is mostly from laughing… Andy & Sophie, you have really been the hostesses with the mostesses. Thank you awesome amounts from Ella & Ali.

I’m a wwoofer let me stay here forever.

cheers.