In a coincidental but fitting end to 2011, we’ve been finishing up several jobs that were almost but not quite complete. Both upper rooms in the larger building now have new floors and finally we have finished the roof!
Permaculture, yes, but this is only the beginning. The first baby steps. To truly work with nature, not against it, we need to listen to our elder brothers …
Activities like this – saving seed to plant next year with enough over to share with friends and neighbours – could soon be literally illegal. Technically, in Portugal it already is. Sitting here stripping seed from the dried seed heads of various plants that have been hanging up drying in paper bags recycled from the padaria, I’ve found myself thinking about this often.
Following on from the last post on the subject – and a bit overdue since they’ve been completed at least a couple of weeks now – we have finished the stairs on both sides of the building. This makes 3 sides of the building now protected from the weather by an extra overhang. All that remains now is to complete a lean-to roof along the back wall, dig a large drain into the bedrock behind it, and we should have a substantially watertight building … even without all the windows and doors.
After a break of the best part of 3 months, we’ve been able to start work on building renovations again. The first priority is to complete the roof of the larger building. The roof over the main body of the building itself is done, but we need to extend it either end of the building to cover the external staircases, and to butt a lean-to roof up to it along the back of the building before it’s finally finished.
Extending the roof area right round the house in this way will, aside from providing covered walkways, give all round protection to the walls from most direct weather action: a major consideration with dry-stone walls, especially ones that are going to be clay-pointed.
Progress. The balcony, patio area and log store outside the main building are now substantially finished.
It has been quite a transformation.
When I wrote about this site on its home page “It’s our virtual scrapbook, repository of working ideas (I can’t lose them if I put them here!) …” I was kind of half joking, but having just spent a good hour trying to find the piece of paper on which I scribbled last year’s vegetable planting schemes, I should have paid my own words more heed.
With Spring now on a pogo stick, the clocks sprung forward, and the weather getting warmer by the day, work in the garden is now a dawn-to-dusk priority. It’s become a race to get trees planted and raised beds built before the season overtakes us.
Having completed the raised beds on the yurt terrace, I’ve moved on to the terrace immediately below the larger of the two buildings. This terrace faces southeast and is the other side of the barroco from the main part of the valley around which the terraces on this part of the quinta wind. While it’s separated from the yurt terrace by a linear distance of only a couple of metres, its extra height and aspect takes it out of the flow of cold air which comes down the valley with the stream. This small change in position is enough to create a 5°C or more difference in air temperature between it and the yurt terrace.
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