But straw is less than an ideal solution here. For starters, it’s an external input so it’s breaking the feedback loop we aim to establish here to ensure we can build and maintain our soil health and fertility naturally onsite. It costs money … which has increased to around €4,50 a bale this year with the drought through the winter and spring. It introduces seeds of plants which weren’t previously growing here and which we didn’t choose to plant (which can be both a plus and a minus). But perhaps most significantly for the health of the land and ourselves, I don’t know where it’s come from and hence what herbicide and pesticide residues might remain in it.

But compromise between the ideal situation and what’s practicable and realistic in the circumstances is inevitable, especially at the start of a project. Worrying about being totally purist is pointless when the environment is an open system (as many organic farmers are finding as drifts of GM pollen blow across their land …) and concern about chemical residues when I’m surrounded by folk glyphosating the hell out of their quintas might seem slightly academic.

Is that a poor excuse for watering down principles? You could read it that way if you want, I guess, but to me it’s more about pragmatic and realistic acceptance of the present environment we’re living and working within. I choose not to grow that way and do what I can to keep the stuff off the land and create a clear demonstration that it’s neither necessary nor in any way advantageous. But I also accept that some contamination is going to be unavoidable and that minimal and occasional concessions can be acceptable when the alternative is too costly; either financially, in time and effort, or in stress levels and stomach ulcers.

The straw (mostly oat) was there when required – in the depths of winter, baled and ready – to provide protection from the elements for the newly cleared and turned soil of the new raised beds and cultivation terraces. The alternative would have been to cut dead bracken for the job, but being as the areas of dead bracken are also full of gorse and brambles, it’s a major undertaking to harvest and separate if I don’t want to be continually spiking my fingers every time I work in the beds. Which I don’t. Gorse spikes are the worst.

Now we have these cultivation areas established however, there’s no need for further external input when we can grow our own.

And grow it does! The recent rains have produced an explosion of growth all over the quinta. It happens every year in Spring and still I’m amazed by the extent to which the entire quinta is transformed into a jungle over the space of a couple of weeks.

I wasn’t planning to do anything with it for a while yet as there’s little point in cutting it all until the rains have finished as we’d only have to do it all over again a couple of weeks later. Also, when it’s still green and growing it helps retain significant amounts of moisture in the soil and the longer you can hold moisture in the soil through a Portuguese summer, the better.

But I had to cut the comfrey. It has grown so enormous so quickly that things interplanted with it – peas and onions – have been completely overwhelmed and shaded out.

I put a large binful of comfrey liquid manure on to brew and still there was loads of it. So I put the rest on the beds.

After allowing the comfrey to wilt a while in the sun, I then cut a load of the surrounding vegetation (mostly grass) and laid that on top. Mega mulch! It’s now about 15cm (6″) deep. Though it will settle and lose volume as it dries, I’m expecting it will perform even better than the straw did on its own.

The trick in future will be to either time our land clearing and mulching to coincide with availability of vegetation for mulch, or to cut, dry and store mulch material when it’s available for later use. Storage depends on having storage space, so for the foreseeable future – at least until other building works are complete – it’s going to have to be the former.

This time last year I hired a local team of builders to put up a balcony and trellis on the main building, finish the schist facing stone on the log store, and re-roof the small building. I knew their work – many foreigners locally have had them turn schist animal houses into habitable structures – and it’s generally reasonable enough for the price, though you get what you pay for. I figured if I didn’t throw too many unfamiliar techniques and materials into the mix they couldn’t go wrong with a simple wooden structure. The main rationale was that they had ready access to the sizeable amount of chestnut timber which was needed to construct the balcony, and which we were struggling to lay our hands on, but in truth I was also succumbing to the frustrations of slow progress.

Well I got ‘fast’. And I got (relatively) ‘inexpensive’ …

It wasn’t long before we spotted a problem though. Well actually quite a few, but one critical one. The central beam perpendicular to the house which carries most of the weight of the structure wasn’t up to the job. Had it been in the round (or even had it been braced), I doubt there would be such a problem, but it’s a sawn piece – a quarter of a substantial chestnut trunk – and as a sawn piece has nowhere near the same tensile strength as timber in the round. Within a couple of months, it was clearly sagging under the weight.

We factored in plans to replace it, but this week realised that some more drastic action was required.

Wayne, who has been away in the UK for a month and therefore had the benefit of a break in continuity here, was the one who noticed it. The beam was sagging more. And what’s more, there was a crack developing. Not only was there a crack developing, but there was a wet part and a dry part to the crack. The wet part would have got wet the last time it rained. And the dry part must have opened up since. The last time it rained was Saturday.

And we had no acro jacks to hand.

Fortunately, there were some lengths of eucalyptus left over from the rear roof. Although it doesn’t stand up to getting wet very well, eucalyptus has enormous compressive strength, so was the perfect timber to use as temporary props.

It’s just as well that the next item on the construction list is closing off the open wall of the building. And even more fortunate that I had a change of original plan to one that now involves dismantling most of the balcony to reconstruct it in a different way.

Not an ‘inexpensive’ experience then. But a ‘good’ way of finding out that ‘fast’ is easily the most preferable, if not always the easiest, element to sacrifice in the building equation.

Now everything is transformed.

The warm March followed by damp April have sent most of the cabbages bolting straight to seed, but we’re enjoying the flower heads as a vegetable – sweet and tender – along with the also-bolting rainbow chard and perpetual spinach, and the first asparagus tips.

The real delight is in seeing so many of the trees and fruit bushes planted this Spring bursting into leaf. I was convinced the drought would have put paid to at least half of them, because very few of them were watered in after planting. All but a couple of the birch saplings we planted in the woods and terraces are coming into leaf and only one blueberry has failed to make it. All the blackcurrant and redcurrant prunings (a gift from Quinta das Abelhas) that were simply stuck into the ground are now producing leaves and I still have at least a dozen in a bucket waiting for me to find a suitable location for them. I’m always saying you can never have too many berries, but they may yet put that to the test …

We’ve made progress with planting this year towards the eventual forest garden that will occupy much of this quinta. The superb job Duncan has been doing in thinning and clearing the woods has opened up space for planting birch (Betula spp.), medronho (the local strawberry tree, Arbutus unedo), Portugal laurel (Prunus lusitanica) and around 2 dozen blueberries (Vaccinium spp.) which will enjoy the acidic soil beneath the pines, though less so the dry conditions in summer so we’ll see how they do before planting more extensively. This is just a small start. There is much more to do here.

On the terraces I’ve planted …
Shade trees: half a dozen birches (Betula spp.) and a weeping willow (Salix babylonica).
Fruit trees: a mulberry (Morus nigra), 3 pears (Pyrus communis, a selection of old varieties – Comice, Williams and Beurre Hardy – to complement the local Rocha growing here, the Williams and Comice in the yurt terrace raised beds to provide shade), 1 greengage (Prunus domestica ‘Reine Claude Verte’), 1 orange (Citrus × sinensis) and 1 tree tomato or tamarillo (Solanum betaceum).
Fruit bushes: 2 gooseberries (Ribes uva-crispa), 2 jostaberries (Ribes × nidigrolaria, a blackcurrant-gooseberry cross), 2 goji berries (Lycium barbarum), around a dozen tayberries (Rubus fruticosus x idaeus), raspberries and yellow raspberries (Rubus idaeus) and about 3 dozen blackcurrants (Ribes nigrum) and redcurrants (Ribes rubrum).

Two previously uncultivated terraces have been cleared of perennials like couch grass, brambles and nettles, then mulched and planted: a new fruit terrace and the area around our solar outdoor shower which is now a mixture of fruit and vegetables.

Solar shower terrace planted up with blackcurrants, strawberries, leeks and carrots

In the existing beds, the asparagus is now getting into its stride, onions and comfrey are appearing everywhere and the strawberries are in flower and producing lots of new leaves. The lovage is coming back strongly and I’ll be sowing the bed with rocket and coriander to see if the delayed flowering effect we observed last year with the brassicas planted around it can be repeated with these two species that have a tendency to run straight to seed in this climate.

Strawberries and onions

Lovage

There’s an interesting difference in how well the garlic is doing in one of the Hügelbeets compared to the non-Hügelbeet right next to it.

Hügelbeet (right) and ordinary raised bed (left)

Garlic growing in the Hügelbeet. Behind it, a flowering savoy cabbage

Garlic growing in the ordinary raised bed

It would be nice to be able to attribute this difference to Hügelkultur, but I suspect it has more to do with a) the kitchen sink drainage channel which runs alongside the Hügelbeet and b) a garlic bulb with poorer than average vigour in the ordinary bed. There could be a Hügelfaktor at work here, but it’s still difficult to be certain.

And here’s a plant that didn’t make it through the cold of winter. Clearly this isn’t the best position for rosemary (Rosmarinus officinalis) as another bush planted outside the main building is thriving with only minimal frost burn to the leaves. I will find a herb that disappears underground for the winter to take its place.

Since completing the external stairways at the end of September, the southwest corner of the roof has been sitting waiting for suitable schist slabs to complete its covering. The last load of stone (from the community stone mine about 1.5km away further up the mountain, dug out and brought down by man-of-many-machines Senhor Angelo from the village directly above) contained some huge slabs of good-quality roofing stone that were ideal.

The schist is enormously variable. Even across the space of a few metres, it can vary dramatically in colour and density. The stone of the small building the other side of the quinta is quite different to the larger building, even though the mines for each – directly behind and above each building – are less than 150m apart. So it’s easy to tell the new stone from the original roof stone by its colour. In time though, lichens and mosses will grow on it and even it out somewhat.

The curve of the building and its eccentric proportions – accommodated to the shape and curve of the slope it’s built on rather than vice versa – is clear from these images and illustrates nicely why random schist slabs work so well as a roof covering for these dry-stone schist buildings. Imagine trying to cover this roof with uniformly-sized roof tiles!

In this last image, you can also see the foundations for the toilet that have been put in behind the building. The walls for this will be constructed in cob and there’ll be a turf roof extending from the back of the building to the slope behind it. This is a crucial part of keeping the building dry: at the moment, rainwater runoff soaks through the thin soil and comes straight down the rock face and into the back of the building. A substantial gully cut into the rock itself and lined with a stiff mix of concrete to prevent water soaking down through and along the bedding planes (which run mainly vertically and perpendicular to the line of the back wall) should be enough to divert runoff away from the back of the house and, with the roof, keep the building dry without resorting to the use of artificial synthetic waterproof barriers.

Yes, it’s using Portland cement, but as I’ve written elsewhere, there are times when its strength and impermeability make it an ideal material for the job. Yes it would have been possible to construct without it if we were enormously skillful, but when the skills required are in short supply and beyond budget, both financially and temporally, compromises become unavoidable. This is a compromise I’ve been prepared to make; mostly, though not exclusively, in structurally critical instances. The cement we use is dug and fired 40km away (around 60km by road) using energy more than 50% of which is generated from renewable sources. As the main contributor of embodied energy to the project, it could be a lot worse.

Many times I’ve gone over what we’ve done, especially following discussions with those of a more rigorously natural perspective, thinking could I have done it differently, and come to the conclusion that for this project in this context, it’s appropriate. A new natural build on a level site has different challenges to renovating an existing natural building perched on a narrow terrace half way up a mountain. Damp and water ingress is a feature of much of the Portuguese rural housing stock and something people appear to simply live with, traditionally providing ways for water to pass through buildings rather than trying to keep it out (though latterly trying to keep it out with large amounts of cement render which has produced a whole raft of problems). Here we are changing the use of the building and having water running through the ground floor rooms is not really compatible with the use we want to put them to.

There goes another principle … but I can live with it.

Alan Ereira’s documentary film about the Kogi people of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in Colombia and the message to the world from their Mamas, or spiritual leaders, was produced in 1992. Twenty years ago.

When the Kogi talk about the heart of the world dying, what’s frightened them is the death of this area, the Páramo, because when this dies everything below it that depends on it will have to die. That’s what they mean when they said that they know that unless we do something, the world is coming to an end.

“It is the mountains which make the waters, the rivers and the clouds. If their trees are felled they will not produce any more water.”

The Sierra is a model of the world. Global warming does not stop here. We are changing the air and the sky and the balance of life.

“They have taken the clouds from the Páramo. They have sold the clouds. We know what is happening and we’re all in agreement. The world does not have to end. If we act well the world can go on.”

Has anything improved since this film? Unfortunately, no. The opposite.

Further message from the Kogi in 2009
Similar message from the Yanomamai peoples in 2009

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.

The basic human rights to air, water, food, shelter, are being progressively hijacked and turned into revenue streams for multinational corporations. First they did it with shelter. Then water. Now it’s food and medicinal plants.

And if the corporate profit-machine could think of a way to suck all the air out of the atmosphere and sell it back to us in tanks (with all manner of fancy-sounding purification processes and exotic premium sources – ‘Alpine fresh’, ‘Tropical sea shore’ – and designer breathing-apparatus in this season’s colours to make sure we buy a new set at least every year), no doubt they would.

Despite the fact that this misappropriation of food plants and restriction of choice constitutes a violation in fundamental human rights whichever way you look at it, it’s happening quietly in legislatures world-wide. Before people are even aware of it, the right to grow and share their own food has been turned into a government-authorised privilege that can be summarily revoked. Even saving your own seed from heirloom varieties and sharing that seed with your neighbours and friends will become illegal.

And in tandem with this, more and more patents are being approved on ‘developments’ in plant and animal breeding that, on closer examination, are no such thing.

Think I’m scaremongering? Don’t think it could happen where you live? Think again … if your government is a signatory to Codex Alimentarius, it already is. Will it succeed? Well, that’s up to you and me. If we do nothing, it will.

Rather than it being illegal to save and grow your own seeds, what’s of doubtful legality is the process by which this became ‘law’ in the first place. Even if technically lawful, morally and ethically it’s nothing of the kind. Laws devised and enacted-by-proxy by self-serving unaccountable commercial interests are not worthy of that designation.

It is, of course, impossible to ignore how consistent these tactics are with the modus operandi of the giant agrotech companies Syngenta, Monsanto, Bayer, Dow and DuPont. During the last decade or so, with genetically modified crops meeting increasing public resistance, these 5 companies have between them bought around 200 conventional seed companies and now completely dominate the global seed market. Since most of them are also developing ‘terminator technology‘, the capability to produce plants with sterile seeds (requiring growers to purchase new seeds from them every planting season) and so-called ‘junkie’ plants (ones whose growth and maturation is tied to the application of certain proprietary chemicals) it doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to point to where this is all leading. For these companies, it’s just business as usual.

Back in 1999, they were forced to bow to intense global pressure and issue undertakings not to develop and sell terminator technology, but it’s now plain they were lying and merely biding their time until the furore died down and they could get supportive legislation in through the back door. This is the process that’s now underway in our legislatures.

Gandhi comes to mind … “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless or, which is the same thing, corrupt.”

See also …
Seedsavers
Campanha Europeia pelas Sementes Livres
No Patents on Seeds

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.

The stairs to the right of the building were already enclosed by the log store, so all that remained was to construct the wooden supporting framework, bridging the gap between the log store and the building. Again, we’ve used round-pole sweet chestnut for the framework and maritime pine planking.

I’m not overly impressed with the ‘ecological’ wood preservative we’ve been using so far. I’ve still not been able to discover the active ingredients, and although it produces a nice-looking finish when dry, the PVA it contains makes it unsuitable for external use as it becomes milky and opaque if rained on. It also appears largely ineffective against wood-boring wasps since we’ve noticed fresh activity in treated timbers. Consequently, I’ll be preserving these external timbers with 2 applications of borax, then linseed oil, and using a more concentrated borax gel or paste to deal with the active infestation in the treated timbers. When your roof weighs 8-9 tonnes, it doesn’t do to have the supporting timbers eaten away …

The left hand stair well is now in the process of being created. The stairs have been repaired and a schist wall constructed (with cement, since it has to support the weight of the chestnut framework).

We didn’t have enough large lengths of chestnut for this stair-well, and our local source of recycled timber has none of the required length, so rather than looking to buy some, we found a long straight chestnut tree in a crowded area of the quinta and felled it for the purpose, leaving enough of a stump for the tree to regenerate. It feels perfect that the renovations should include timber from the quinta, as well as stone and clay.

Part 1

(Click on links for remaining 2 parts)

Part 2

Part 3

It has been quite a transformation.

Before … The area in front of the main building in November 2008 before we bought the quinta (above), and below, the building as it was in January 2009 during the purchase process.

During … (above) Where we’d got to by the end of last year. The schist stone roof has been replaced and the beginnings of the log store are complete.

After … (below) Where we’d got to by Friday. The log store, as intended, has all but ‘disappeared’ into the hill. Balcony and patio area now complete

The schist patio creates a large outside eating area and connects the log store and battery house to the main building.

I wonder where that electricity pole went …

Yes, Portland cement-based mortar has been used. It’s a material I feel as ambivalent about as a lot of the green and eco-building movement seems to. Is it ‘natural’ and ‘eco-friendly’ or isn’t it? The stuff’s credentials are as grey an area as its colour. In composition, it’s not a whole lot different to lime mortar, which gets a general thumbs-up from the green community. It requires a higher temperature – and hence more energy – to manufacture, and emits more CO₂ in the process, but it also absorbs CO₂ when it sets, a fact not always taken into consideration. It’s non-porous while lime is porous, so it doesn’t breathe, but whether that’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depends on the context in which you’re using it. It doesn’t bio-degrade very quickly, but then neither does rock, and its breakdown products are no less environmentally benign … It has both advantages and disadvantages which, depending on your priorities in any particular context, can tip the balance either way.

In the end, it tipped in favour for the patio floor area and the log store. The steep terrain, the effects of rainfall and the weight of rock and soil the walls of the log store will be holding back once we finish backfilling required a material with a lot of strength. Building a terrace wall out of just schist and soil in the manner of those which shape this landscape is a rare skill now, and even then walls can and do collapse with some regularity after a lot of rain. Alternatives – eg. gabions – would require a lot of rock to be brought in from elsewhere and although it’s mined close by, would still be using a lot of fossil fuel to extract and transport. Not to mention the cost comparison. So cement it was …

Practicalities – which can be as dry as (cement?) dust – aside, it’s been exciting seeing this work come together so quickly. The feeling of space I was already sensing as the first timbers of the trellis went up is now more … ummm … concrete.