Permaculturing in Portugal

We’re very sorry to have to tell everyone this, but our wonderful beautiful boy Aonghas is no longer with us. He went into hospital 2 days ago for a repeat of an operation he had in August that hadn’t worked properly, there were complications in the procedure, and despite everything everyone did, he never regained consciousness. He left us yesterday, just before 3pm.

We have no idea right now how we’re going to fill the Aonghas-shaped holes in our lives, and we miss him horribly, but at the same time there was an enormous beauty, perfection and even humour in his passing that’s already starting to eclipse the pain. He was a unique human being who touched so many people in ways that many are only now starting to realise. The world is poorer for his loss but infinitely richer for the number of hearts he opened.

We’ll be having a party for him when we get back to Benfeita with lots of good music and good cooking, his two passions in life. Details will be posted here as they become available, or you can follow progress on his Facebook page which we’re keeping going for him so people can share their photos and memories of him. (You will need to have your own Facebook account and request Aonghas to add you as a friend to see this.)

Bye bye Bangy. We love you so much.

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It’s so brilliant, particularly for the kids (small and big), having this 250m down the hillside.

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Haha. This is me at Arganil Market. Liking The Shades? It’s great fun there because they sell almost everything! From Tools to Clothes And Even Kittens. Aaaaah.

There’s lots of Cafés there! I’m sitting at the usual one! The annoying thing about this Café is … they have their seasons all mixed up. They serve luke warm soup in winter and hot soup in summer?!?! Weird huh?

It’s always great fun there! Well… Shopping’s my thing. Hehe.

Well. You’ll Have To See It For Yourself! At the moment while I’m writing this blog I’m sitting at Benfeita café.

Byeeeeeeee

No longer just the dulcet and idiosyncratically erratic tones of Benfeita’s church bells to wake us in the morning. It’s crazy buzzing 2 strokes revving around the valleys from first light. Some unseasonal downpours have meant that everything is growing with amazing vigour and terraces that were cleaned only a few weeks ago are having to be done again already. As for terraces that were last cleaned in April, well …

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While idly Googling around, as you do (or at least as I do), for interesting snippets of online information about the Serra do Açor, I somehow stumbled on a photograph of Quinta do Vale as it was 5 years ago on April 17 2004, snapped during a weekend hike by a member of the Associação para a Defesa do Vale do Bestança on their way along the track towards the path up to Pai das Donas.

Vegetables growing on the fruit terraces and lots of equipment in the house.

It underlines how fortunate we’ve been to find somewhere that hasn’t been badly neglected for a number of years (though I’m guessing it probably also means a fair few chemical residues in the soil).

This is me with my webdesigner hat on.

For some time I’ve been looking for companies offering renewable energy-powered website hosting for both my own sites and to offer my clients as an option for their hosting, but was never particularly inspired by what I found. Recently I’ve discovered 2 UK-based hosting companies offering hosting powered 100% by renewable energy, Ecological Hosting and Solar Host, and I’m planning to switch my own sites over to one of them when they come up for renewal.

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This is the second post coming from Quinta do Vale! To be precise, the middle terrace next to the waterfall from inside a £28.99 (Halfords sale) 2-person tent with one person (and a laptop) in it. (The children have gone to their paternal grandparents for a week, so I took this opportunity to come out and take delivery of our yurt plus all manner of tools and gardening equipment shipped out from the UK by the intrepid and very excellent Fred and Nancy Morris.)

Yesterday it rained quite a lot, which is when I discovered that you get what you pay for in terms of tents. Still, the leak wasn’t too bad. My sleeping bag only got a bit wet. The fact that I’d bought myself a bottle of vinho tinto to toast my first night on the quinta and failed to also buy a corkscrew didn’t really seem to matter. I had enough thermals, etc, to keep me warm enough through the night, so all is well and this morning I woke up to this.

Kind of says it all really.

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A wait can be a bit of a weight at times if you let it. But we’re just going with the flow of things. Less stress all round that way. Right now we’re in Scotland (with snow on the ground) and here until the end of May at least, so our plans have had to be put back a bit.

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Creating this site has been an extraordinary process for a number of reasons. It’s not that I’ve finally taken the step of learning how to run WordPress blogging software on my own site, because that isn’t particularly extraordinary. Nor is it that I’m putting this site together before the formalities of the purchase have been completed, even if that is a bit extraordinary (and possibly more besides).

It’s this. To write something vaguely coherent about our experience, to boil it all down into a few (though doubtless still too many) paragraphs, I had to take a step back from it all.

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