Quinta das Abelhas

The last couple of weeks we have been very busy. Our daughter Aliss and boyfriend Henrique have moved into our small house, we have moved into Sophie’s yurt. Aliss will be dropping our grandson within the next 2 weeks hopefully, and is going to have a home birth here. So its all change here.

We also have 2 wwoofers here now, and we have all been busy in the gardens, getting main summer crops into the ground. Heres a bed of (very small) okra in my garden, with peppers at the back bought at market:

The sticks are an attempt to keep the cats off the soil. They seem to think its a big litter tray!

Everything is looking clean and sorted. The whole farm is covered in flowers, which really brightens the place up after what seems like a very long winter. Heres a couple more photos of flowers to brighten up your day!:

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I love May. Its rarely too hot, rarely chilly, seedlings are coming up, chickens are laying and sitting, and the odd rain shower saves us the job of watering the garden. And plants are in bloom all over the quinta.

These are beautiful spreading succulents that started as one small cutting a year ago:

These also started as a small cutting, spread like mad down the stone walls:

This was a plant bought at market. I don’t know what it is called, but its pretty and doesnt require much water:

And finally, heres some really stunning poppies that came up within the bed of broad beans:

Everywhere you go in Portugal at this time of year you will see splashes of colour from all the flowers. Not only in peoples’ gardens, but also the fields of wild flowers - corn marigolds, chamomile, lavender etc - its all eye candy and puts a smile on my face!

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“All spring I try to plant something every day - from late February, when the early peas and spinach and garlic can go in, on up to midsummer, when the main potato crop and the late beans and lettuce go in. Then I switch over and make it my rule to try and get something put away for the winter every single day. That lastas until the pumpkins and sunflowers and late squash and green tomatoes are in. Then comes the struggle to get the most out of the stored food - all winter long. It has to be checked regularly, and you’ll need to add to that day’s menu anything that’s on the verge of spoiling, wilting or otherwise becoming useless.” Carla Emery

The Encyclopedia of Country Living by Carla Emery

We’re going to do our best to join in with Sharon Astyk’s Independence Days Challenge

“I challenge myself and all of you to work on creating food Independence Days this year - that all of us try to do one thing every day to create Food Independence. That means in each day or week, we would try to:

1. Plant something. Obviously, those of us who live in the Northern Hemisphere and having spring are doing this anyway. But the idea that you should plant all week and all year is a good reminder to those of us who sometimes don’t get our fall gardens or our succession plantings done regularly. Remember, that beet you harvested left a space - maybe for the next one to get bigger, but maybe for a bit of arugula or a fall crop of peas, or a cover crop to enrich the soil. Independence is the bounty of a single seed that creates an abundance of zucchini, and enough seeds to plant your own garden and your neighbor’s.

2. Harvest something. From the very first nettles and dandelions to the last leeks and parsnips I drag out of the frozen ground, harvest something from the garden or the wild every day you can. I can’t think of a better way to be aware of the bounty around you to realize that there’s something - even if it is dandelions for tea or wild garlic for a salad - to be had every single day. Independence is really appreciating and using the bounty that we have.

3. Preserve something. Sometimes this will be a big project, but it doesn’t have to be. It doesn’t take long to slice a couple of tomatoes and set them on a screen in the sun, or to hang up a bunch of sage for winter. And it adds up fast. The time you spend now is time you don’t have to spend hauling to the store and cooking later. Independence is eating our own, and cutting the ties we have to agribusiness.

4. Prep something. Hit a yard sale and pick up an extra blanket. Purchase some extra legumes and oatmeal. Sort out and inventory your pantry. Make a list of tools you need. Find a way to give what you don’t need to someone who does. Fix your bike. Fill that old soda bottle with water with a couple of drops of bleach in it. Plan for next year’s edible landscaping. Make back-road directions to your place and send it to family in case they ever need to come to you - or make ‘em for yourself for where you might have to go. Clean, mend, declutter, learn a new skill. Independence is being ready for whatever comes.5. Cook something. Try and new recipe, or an old one with a new ingredient. Sometimes it is hard to know what to do with all that stuff you are growing or making. So experiment now. Can you make a whole meal in your solar oven? How are stir-fried pea shoots? Stuffed squash blossoms? Wild morels in pasta? Independence is being able to eat and enjoy what is given to us.

6. Manage your reserves. Check those apples and take out the ones starting to go bad and make sauce with it. Label those cans. Clean out the freezer. Ration the pickles, so you’ll have enough to last to next season. Use up those lentils before you take the next ones out of the bag. Find some use for that can of whatever it is that’s been in the pantry forever. Sort out what you can donate, and give it to the food pantry. Make sure the squash are holding out. Independence means not wasting the bounty we have.

7. Work on local food systems. This could be as simple as buying something you don’t grow or make from a local grower, or finding a new local source. It could be as complex as starting a coop or a farmer’s market, creating a CSA or a bulk store. You might give seeds or plants or divisions to a neighbor, or solicit donations for your food pantry. Maybe you’ll start a guerilla garden or help a homeschool coop incubate some chicks. Maybe you’ll invite people over to your garden, or your neighbors in for a homegrown meal, or sing the praises of your local CSA. Maybe you can get your town to plant fruit or nut producing street trees or get a manual water pump or a garden put in at your local school. Whatever it is, our Independence days come when our neighbors and the people we love are food secure too.

We hope that you will join the challenge too!

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Its been quite an oddly cold year so far, but finally spring seems to have sprung.
Mother goose has been sitting on eggs (including some chicken and duck eggs) for some time, and today i discovered that mother duck has started sitting in the other corner of the chicken shed, probably on a few chicken eggs as well as her own!

Oca that I planted last month is now sprouting. This is an unusual tuber Oxalis Tuberosa, from South America. The leaves look like clover, and the tubers are used like new potatoes with a delicious lemon taste (so they say, we havent grown or eaten before). We got 5 small tubers from the Real Seed Catalogue. They need quite a long growing season, as the tubers reproduce at the end of the season, providing a supply of winter food. And they arent related to potatoes, so dont suffer from blight or colorado beetles. Hopefully we’ll get enough crop from these few tubers, to eat enough to decide whether we like them, and to plant a decent plot next year.

I have actually planted out peppers and courgettes three times this year, only to have both previous plantings wiped out by late frost. Finally now the weather looks like it will stay warm enough for these heat-loving plants, and the few in the garden are starting to grow. We also now have 100s of seedlings coming up in trays, including 29 varieties of tomatoes! This is our most developed courgette plant:

Beans are also doing pretty well. The broad beans, favas, are now in full swing, and we are eating them almost every day. Soya beans are coming up. Some chick peas are in flower, while later plantings are poking through. And a couple of rows of Cherokee Trail of Tears beans are doing very well:

And I have just planted some rows of Indian Metre-Long beans - these are fantastic. The beans can actually grow to a metre! Last year we grew 3 plants, and had a meal of the beans at least once a week. This year we are planting many more of the seed beans saved last year.

There is a lot of activity in the gardens now, as we fill the raised beds with crops to eat fresh through the summer, and to bottle, freeze and dry for winter food stores. We are eating asparagus every couple of days, and it is starting to look like an even better year for strawberries. Salads are becoming more interesting as more and more variety abounds in the garden.

Over the winter we have done pretty well with salads and the stocks of food preserved from last year, but it is great to now be eating more fresh stuff. In previous years we havent managed to be eating much home grown at this time of year, but this year we are already often eating meals almost entirely from our own labour. With the steadily increasing price of petrol, and the knock on effect this has on food prices, it is reassuring to be eating our own produce, grown from seeds we saved in previous years.

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I’ve been planning on sharing a few recipes for ages. During the summer we have a lot of visitors, and I may have become a bit big headed about my cooking, especially the vegetarian meals I cook, so I plan to share some of my inventions here.
We have an egg glut. Its amazing how many eggs 8 chickens and 2 ducks can lay, so I was recently looking for an eggy recipe and came across a 5 egg cake recipe. But it wasnt healthy enough, so I experimented:

Melt 200 gms butter with 200 gms sugar (brown please). Add to 225gms selfraising flour, mix and beat in 5 eggs. Thats the basic recipe. But now add a couple of handfuls of seeds. Whatever you have - sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, hemp. And then add a handful of rolled oats, and a pile of fruit chopped small. Again, whatever fruit you have, whatever is in season (or even cheap at the market). Pineapple, strawberries, sultanas we have tried, but I reckon any fruit will add a little something different - plums, peaches, figs, apple, pear, cherries, raspberries, currants, mango, orange, lemon zest. Whatever is in abundance.

Put in the oven on high until it rises, then on low (our gas oven only has two settings!) for some time, until a knife comes out clean. In a wood fired oven, probably just leave in for a couple of low heat hours. Or you could probably heat in an oven and then in a straw/solar oven for a few hours. It needs to cook slow.

Now I just need to grow some grain crops, find an alternative for sugar and butter (olive oil and stevia?) and grow our own oats (which we are this year)! Its a truly scrumptious and filling cake that everyone will love.

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