The Mongoose Papers: Glut and Groundwork

One morning's picking.

We are both pretty knackered this month since we seem to have been non-stop busy every day doing something or other that just HAS to be done TODAY or else.

First everything edible in the garden and on the land has been crying out to be picked, eaten, processed or put somewhere to store. It has been a great year for fruit and we have apples, peaches and figs coming out of our ears. Neighbours have provided raspberries (as mine just fried in the heat) and plums. So we have peach jam, yellow plum marmalade, raspberry jam, peach icecream, peaches in Limoncello, chutneys of various kinds and even sauces this year.

Likewise the usual green veg and tomato abundance has meant all in all a month of freezing, bottling and making stuff! Here is just a small selection of the preserves. Hoping to sell some closer to Christmas.

Just today I made two savoury jellies, chilli and a tomato, garlic and basil concoction. It takes so much time but I just can't bear to waste. The pumpkins are a huge success by the pond but they can wait another month before harvesting.

That's a first for us.

Fieldwise, Fraser has been busy cutting and clearing overgrown areas of the land and our ditches

Our stream before and after

while I have been clearing steps and the veg patches.

I had my first go with the smaller scythe to help Fraser with cutting the cow parsley and we have collected split and stacked what wood we have for the winter. We collected a trailer full of dried horse manure from friends Shelley and Paul which is now sitting rotting down nicely and we have a load of cut cane that is needing mulching or cutting and tying into faggots for burning ..not to mention all cut undergrowth to sort for burning in the winter.

Amidst all this I decided that we really had to do the tiling on the colonnade pathway and our kitchen outdoor eating area as well as properly creating slate pathways to the back of the house to the patio there. So supervised by our in-house site manager, Lady Scrappington---

and despite back ache, knee ache, swollen finger joints and general body strain, we finally got it all done. It was a lot of hard work and Fraser did most of the crouching and sorting.
The back steps and slate path in progress

and completed

The kitchen gallery finally tiled and tidy...

The major excitement last week was a fire across the river which started in the late afternoon and we went down to the beach (along with some of our neighbours) to watch the firefighters in action. They very efficiently dealt with it in less than half an hour. Very impressive. There have been on average 200 fires a day in Portugal over the last few weeks. Luckily this was a small one.