Quinta das Abelhas, Permaculture in Central Portugal
Getting up very early (at 6.30 am) and walking through the garden is one of the most beautiful things here at Quinta das Abelhas I can think of.
When the dawn lies still over the hills around here and the sun beginns to warm the plants, then it seams as if heaven would kiss the earth awake. Magic moments of totale silence and amazing abundance.
Inga (wwoofer)
You can tell I have a 2 year old because everthing is baby chicks or baby kittens…but anyway 2 weeks ago we bought 5 chicks at the market to fatten up over 3 or 4 months, to then eat. Organically reared chickens…tasty dinners for the meat eaters. However, the chicks came with feed which has something nasty in it as it says you can’t eat the chickens within 6 days of them having eaten the feed…just a reminder of the dodgy practices in the meat industry. At least we will know what these ones have eaten, their food miles will be low and they will have been treated and killed respectfully.
Welcoming the chicks in to their new home
Baby Chick
Unfortunately something got in to their pen and took one last night so we are down to 4, but Matt is currently securing the enclosure so it won’t get seconds.
Moles, voles? Something well and truly munched their way through this onion!
I don’t mind, as long as they leave some for us!
This morning I took some photos of bees, busily collecting pollen from some poppy flowers in my garden.
Now that we have 4 inhabited hives, bee activity in the gardens is noticeably more than in previous years.
The poppies flowering in the edges of my garden are incredibly busy with both honey bees and native bees – bumble bees, carpenter bees and mason bees, all collecting pollen for their young.
In the following picture, you can clearly see their pollen sacs full of white poppy pollen.
Our pollination levels for fruit and veg should be very high, now we have somewhere in the region of 200,000 little helpers, as well as all the other insects here that buzz from flower to flower.
Quite a few of our earliest-planted courgettes are starting to grow fruit. We should be eating our first courgettes later this week!
Unfortunately we can’t afford to construct a natural swimming pool just yet, but we have finally got around to putting up the above ground pool we bought 2nd hand a couple of years ago. Yesterday we filled it almost to the top, and today we’ll top it up. Then we can go for a swim on hot summer afternoons!
The pool will also be available for guests and volunteers to use – we’ll be asking for a contribution of 5 euros per week towards the costs of (eco friendly) pool maintenance.
Next step is to plant pretty flowers around the pool and try to disguise it’s ugly plastic-ness …
The sun is shining, the rain has stopped and our gardens are starting to get down to the serious business of growth!
Wwoofer Aaron has cleared some of the weeds from beds in ‘the hot end’ of my garden, and yesterday we bought lots of pepper, aubergine and piri-piri plants at market to be transplanted through the thick layer of horse manure.
Lettuces are amazing this year, thanks to the incrfedible amount of rain that has poured into the ground. We grow lettuces all through the winter, outside, but they all tend to reach readiness at the same time, regardless of how much we stagger the plantings! So we have been giving away lettuces and the chickens have to get a taste for them.
I also planted a whole bed of Hopi Indian blue corn with trail of tears cherokee climbing beans and a long thin bed of sunflowers, over the weekend.
The summer glut of food from the garden feels like its about to start – the first courgette flowers are starting to open and some of the redcurrants are ripe, while some tomato plants are also flowering.
A solar drier is on our list of jobs, to be done before we need to start drying for the winter.
Our terraces are absolutely covered in yellow flowers, mainly corn marigolds interspersed with chamomile.
We need to strim all the brambles that have appeared over the winter, and many of the pathways that we use, but we try to wait until after the wildflowers have seeded, guaranteeing the bloom of colour again next year.
The bees have been returning to their hives completely covered in bright orange pollen from the marigolds – another good reason to leave clearing them for a few weeks.
My favourite place to visit so far has been the Bucaco Forest about 45 minutes away by car. Benedictine Monks estabilished a hermitage there in the sixth century and it remained in religious hands until 1834 with the dissolution of the monastries. It also was the site of Napolean’s first major defeat in the Peninsular War. But more importantly in my eyes, it is an amazing forest with 700 different species of trees and some fantastic Mexican cedars.
Highlights include discovering caves, waterfalls and panoramic views at the top.
View from Cruz Alta - the top of Bucaco Forest
The site is also lined with seventeenth century chapels in which terracotta figures depict the stages of Jesus’s journey carrying the cross. You can also walk around the impressive Palace Hotel and it’s gardens.
Hotel Palace, Buseco
Wisteria at Buseco Forest, Palace Hotel
A magical place!
Not all our cookery turns out to plan. Glut of strawberries = strawberry jam, an afternoon activity for Poppy = baking scones, and Kirsten offered to buy some cream while she was out. Yum! Cream tea to look forward to!
The jam didn’t set, something wierd happened to the scones (Matt swears it was because we’d run out of milk so he used water instead), and the cream simply refused to whip. Kirsten’s face says it all:
