Fraser...on September

September…autumn is a-cummin in…though you wouldn’t guess it at noon when it’s in the high twenties. However the breeze is from the North, turning the willows silver and demanding a sweater to be worn at dinner and the evenings are really drawing in now.

The grapes have ripened.

Sylvi has made juice and spiced grape jelly (free-range since it runs pretty well all over the place) from some of the black grapes and as for the rest; we gave the picking to the Shepherd, Manuel and his family. They’ll be making wine from them which is virtually undrinkable, but they like it!
Sylvi hopes to make our own wine next year once we have the kit, know how and the space to make it.

Our builders have now left to do other things, the builder budget having run out. Fortunately the structure is now complete and weather-proof with all doors and windows in, if not totally finished. Studio.....

Downstairs patio doors... We had to get our septic tank emptied before we could patch in sewage pipes to the barn. Quite an experience! We ordered the job to be done at the local town hall and they sent an old guy with a tractor and honey wagon to do the job.All the men found it too fascinating not to watch. Sylvi couldn´t quite work out the fascination of the view down into the tank!

Sylvi has tiled the bathroom and been doing pointing while I’ve been working on stone steps at the front and carpentry generally.
The veranda extension is done. The solar water-heating system’s tank and panels are in place and we hope to get everything connected up next week. We now have water to the bathroom and downstairs and electricity in half of the barn and the rest should be done soon. Got the fire and it’s flue in. Now we just need to build the surround to hide the pipes!

Sylvi’s veg patch is now winding down but there are still squashes, courgette, aubergines and green peppers coming through –

shame the pumpkins never put in an appearance!

All in all though it has been a productive year for the veg and some of the fruit trees. The yield from the peaches and apples was poor because a lot of it was bugged fruit. However we had enough for chutneys and jams in the larder and there seem to be plenty of green figs. We are hoping to see some produce from our new trees next year.

The fish in the pond have been procreating all summer and I’m seriously thinking that I may try and catch a couple of young bass from the river to put in as population control – we seem to have upwards of 50 goldfish of varying size and colour.

We had friends from Bath, David, David Junior and girlfriend Sarah to stay for a few days. It gave us the chance to have a day off! We went to the beach just north of Figueira da Foz.

The two Davids did lots of digging!

It turned out that Sarah was a dab hand at getting value for money from a toy vending machine. Say no more!

A final note from Sylvia…………..One sadness for the month is the death of Paul Newman on September 26th. I grew up with Paul Newman in my life as an icon and lead player in a young girl’s dreams and young woman’s fantasies. My sadness is for the loss of a consummate actor who, even in advanced age, was to eye candy what Moet Chandon is to champagne. But more importantly, because he was one of a rare breed of real celebrities who are true philanthropist. He will be missed by many.

August - Month for Families and Festas

In August Portugal is basically on holiday. The whole of the country gets into family mood and in towns and villages everyone gets ready to party!

Families who live inland go off to the coast and most beach areas are rammed with local and international holiday makers.

In the rural villages like ours, the sons and daughters of the local farmers who work abroad return to stay for the month with their families and to meet up with childhood friends. They are called Imigrantes, since they have left Portugal in search of more lucrative employment. The village population triples during this time and our lake beach is busy. Each village has three or four days of Festas, with music, family meals, dancing and live bands performing late into the night.

So we decided to go on holiday too this year and spent two weeks house-sitting for friends in the Algarve who were travelling to UK for weddings. They have a wonderful villa with swimming pool and so it was a real treat and opportunity for us to do very little.

Richard and Jo... and James and Adela...came to stay with us there for a week for our first whole-family holiday since Prague Christmas in 2000.

We all did very little except swim and read by the pool each day, cook lots of great food and enjoy each others company. I was in hog heaven!

We had two special nights of birthday dinners, since we had not been together for birthdays for the year. Boys´ night - when the boys selected the menu and girls cooked and Girls night when the men cooked the girls´choice of delights.

Lots of organised chaos and nervous preparation ensued but the food was amazing on both nights.So now I am busy working on the holiday video for the family archive! It was a wonderful week and I am now looking forward to the next opportunity to be together as a family. Our thanks to Steve and Jenny, Skaigh, Rimmer and Mittens for letting us use their home for our holiday.

We came back to the farm to discover that our friends José and Francisco, who had been house-sitting for us, had been rationing themselves with water since there was air in the system and the tank was almost empty. We did manage to resolve the problem but felt sorry that their stay had been marred by the lack of water!

Since then we have started painting again at last, since we got ourselves in the mood on holiday. Fraser is working on the veranda using oils...and I am doing water colours and pastels in the attic.It is great to be doing what we really want to do in our retirement and so we can´t wait for the barn to be finished so that we have time to do this other than at snatched moments and weekends.

A bonus this month was having a couple stay with us as volunteers to work on the land for accommodation and meals. Naama and Udi are also newly weds from Israel who are spending their honeymoon travelling in Spain and Portugal. They stayed with us for 5 days and helped us a great deal, in addition to being great company, wonderful cooks and helping us to become vegetarians for the week.

Patrticular thanks to Udi for getting my automatic irrigation going in the vegetable patch and to Naama for teaching me how to cook perfect stuffed vine leavesWe are so thankful for their enthusiasm about our life here and for helping us to remember how fortunate we are to have our own homestead. Udi called it our 'magical kingdom'.We wish them good luck and happiness in their life together in Jerusalem.

Ups and Downs

It has been both a fun and a frustrating time since I last sat here to update the blog, hence the post title .

The Downs
I mislaid (lost) my driver´s licence and had to apply for a Portuguese one. What a pain! I got stung two weeks running by the same wasp ( they looked the same ayway) and learned that I do not take anti-histamin tablets ever again since they give me a hangover without any alcohol. What IS the point?

I am having an "I can´t stand living on a building site any more" moment. We have been living with this now for 5 years... But most likely that will pass after my first rum and coke tonight.

The other thing is that, living in Portugal, so often you find yourself at the mercy of traders for whom "a manha" (tommorrow) is the by word. So when you say "can you do this for three weeks time?" meaning actually 21 days, the answer is always "of course" and 30 days and several hundred phone calls later you are still waiting with the promise "a manha". Aaaaaaaarggh!

Not good for the blood pressure and not good for completing projects on a time limit. Having said that I remember only too well having the same problem in Prague with the building of the new school. So if you are reading this Andy....you were right. It´s the same everywhere!!!!

As a result the barn is still waiting for its new roof on the other side because we are still waiting for the joists which should have been here last week. We had to also wait an additional ten days for the wooden staircase which was promised at the end of June. Mind you we did get a good discount because of the delay.

The temperature has suddenly soared from a balmy 25 degrees and cool evening to lava level 35 degrees in the shade. The water system has been playing silly buggers and Fraser has spent the last week trying to find out why we seem to have shedloads of water coming from our water mine but, sadly not managing to make the effort to get into our tank!

I have at least three hundred(slight exageration here) insect bites of one description or another on various parts of my anatomy, which is a bit unfair since I spend my day fully clothed in combats, t~shirt and wellies - (don´t even ask about the feet!)

OK grumps over.

The Ups

The plus side is that we were able to adjust the building schedule to suit. The joists for the second floor went up and Fraser now has fixed his wooden floor upstairs in his "studio" and the stairs.

The electric cables and water pipes are almost in ( here you build a wall and then knock bloody great holes in it to channel cable???) Go figure!

Walls are up, window and door frames sorted and we have knocked out for the front door of the barn which will open on the veranda side of the house and now we are ready for removing the rustic roof to offer up the new roof beam..................back to waiting for the joists!!!!!!!!!! But no worries, they should come tomorrow....don´t hold your breath!

Having decided to install solar water heating we have to reinforce and extend our verandah to carry the tank and panels, since the front veranda is the only sloping roof facing south, and also to create a cover for the front door to the barn. We also discovered rot in the front pillar so that had to be replaced too.

So today Fraser, Mike and Ant have spent the entire day...in 33 degree heat in the shade, removing and replacing beams to strengthen and extend the veranda roof line.

The veranda at the start of the day

Lots of drilling, sawing,

sanding and dust and sawdust....and at the end of day the frame is up


Time for a beer. Make that several!

A real plus this past few weeks has been having lots of friends visit..

Steve from the Algarve... who gave us lots of good advice about our solar water heating and went with me for a long ride in the countryside!!! Sorry Steve we didn´t take a photo of you or your bike!!!

José from Lisbon

Nigel from Rio

Alan and Lynda from Rio

It makes it all worth while. It was great to see you all.

So to those of you who have not visited us yet so far...come and see us and give us an excuse to stop working!

INS and OUTS

This month´s post is for those of you who haven´t visited us yet and would like an idea of what our cottage farmhouse looks like from the inside!! We recently took lots of photos with a view to matching them with old photos of the cottage before it was renovated. Haven´t quite finished that yet as I need to take lots more most recent shots from the same position as the old ones.

For example:
The front of the house as it was...

And the front of the house as it is now...

But I can show you some then and now photos of inside just as an appetizer!

The Kitchen.. with new IKEA fitted units as it is now..

and how it was.. this is the view of the top right hand corner it was the cellar and used for storage and for making wine....

and this is the wine tank (opposite the corner in the photo above) which became the counter on the left of the column support in our kitchen now.

The Lounge.. used to be the living area which was mainly kitchen (behind the white wall) and had a fireplace in the corner. The stairway now comes up to this floor from right to left along the white wall in this photo, from the kitchen below, and the window on the right hand side is now in the upper hallway.and this is how the lounge looks now.... (well half of it anyway) in the section behind the white wall above! The patio doors replace the bricked-in windows above and lead onto the front veranda.We have got three bedrooms, one on the first floor, which is our bedroom and has a door onto the veranda..and two in the attic with a communal area in between them

There are also two bathrooms, one in the attic next to the bedroom above and one on the first floor, but we have another shower and loo in the utility room which is on the ground floor.

The attic was built onto the main granite structure and did not exist in the original house. Neither did the utility area which was built beneath the extended veranda and onto the end of the front of the house.

BARN UPDATE

Well the left-hand section now has its windows and the vellux in and has been rendered. YES!!!! and the gallery is in and boarded over......

So we are now focusing on completing the interior structure of the other side of the barn ....MORE IN A FEW WEEKS