Our buyer, Naomi and her sister and sister-in-law visited us for the first time last week and have confirmed wanting to purchase the quinta. They stayed with us for 6 hours and were all very excited and delighted with our lovely home. So now we can start to confidently plan for the future move.
We won't be completing the sale until April next year, but there is much to do. Mainly we need to find somewhere new to live! More about that later.
In the meantime we have been sorting out and shedding stuff that is no longer needed or things that we will be leaving behind. Naomi wants to buy virtually everything in the property so we are compiling lists for her and Fraser has begun to pack his studio into boxes. Quite a task!
In addition we have given more clothing, books, DVDs and household goods to the shelter's second hand shop in Oliveira. Suzanne and Jan, who own the shop, have been a huge support and are promoting the raffle and selling tickets too. So fingers crossed that we manage to sell all 500 tickets.
The rest we will either be selling off finally or giving away.
It is amazing how much stuff we have collected over the last 11 years but we are determined to simplify and reduce our possessions, as hard as that is going to be.
I made some new advent calendars to sell this year again. Not much luck so far but there is still time before December. Parcels of advent treats for the boys, their girls and Lexa are due to be posted on Monday
Groundwork goes on as usual and Fraser worked with friends Mark and Karen to pick our olives on the trees closest to the house and prune the trees at the same time since they have become really overgrown over the past two years. It is a lot of work and sadly the olives weren't good enough to produce oil as the water content was too high because of the early rains.
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| Karen picking olives from the branches |
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| Mark and Fraser cropping in growth |
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| Fraser in action |
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| beautiful olive wood |
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| brash for burning |
