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.

This year’s plantings in our newly-created raised beds and Hügelbeets are the beginnings of a bigger, more diverse and species-rich scheme with a lot more forethought and long term vision than our gung-ho-to-get-going temporary military-style vegetable plot of last year. That gung-ho-to-get-going vegetable plot still had us self-sufficient in vegetables for 3 months with enough preserved produce that we’re still eating our way through it, but now I’m aiming for something more enduring and self-sustaining. Though with a memory like a sieve, I need some sort of record of what works and what doesn’t amongst the annual participants in the scheme.

As a relative novice in polyculture, one of the main frustrations I’ve found in trying to work out potential planting combinations is the amount of conflicting information out there. One source says plant A and plant B are great companions, another says they’re inimical. One says plant A likes conditions xyz, another disagrees. One says sow plant C everywhere as it’s the magic bullet of companion planting, another says keep it on its own because it’s allelopathic to many other plants (yes, it really does get that extreme … and plant C is Lovage, Levisticum officinale). Since there’s rarely enough information about other essential contributing factors in each of these situations, it’s generally not possible to work out why those conflicting results should occur. And given the way unsourced information propagates through the internet, frequency of mention is no indication of frequency of occurrence in the raw data.

Mostly I’ve kept to a combination of broad consensus and what feels right. Ultimately it’s all down to trial and error.

We have a wide range of growing conditions all the way from cool, deep, moist shade through to relentless baking sun; frost pockets for plants that like a good winter chilling, and almost frost-free areas for those that don’t. We have rich, deep, loamy, moisture-retentive, pH-neutral soil through to shallow, poor, free-draining, acidic conditions. We don’t have alkaline or saline soils anywhere, but we can cater for pretty much every other requirement within the cool to warm temperate range. In time I hope to succeed in developing microclimates for more Mediterranean and tropical species. The main limiting factor at present is water availability across the whole quinta in summer, so sorting out effective and efficient irrigation is a priority until the vegetation is sufficiently well developed to create and retain more of its own moisture.

Mulches

The beds on the yurt terrace are all mulched with hay and straw, while for the house terrace I’m trying various green mulches in a continuation of last year’s experiments. Since we were starting all our beds from scratch this year with, in the case of the yurt terrace, bare soil exposed to late winter and early spring rains, protecting the soil was an immediate priority.

The hay/straw is very effective at moisture retention, and at suppressing the growth of unwanted plants – apart from the grasses it’s collected from, but weeding those out just adds to the mulch – as well as protecting the soil, but insulates so well that the soil takes much longer to warm up. It also provides a great environment for slugs. Because of its suppressive effect on growth of seeds sown beneath it, direct sowings can only be covered lightly and sparsely, in which case the mulch no longer retains moisture or stops weed growth so well. It seems more practical to raise seedlings elsewhere and then plant through the mulch once they’re a reasonable size.

The green mulches protect the soil once they’re well enough developed, but are less effective at keeping unwanted plants out and moisture in, at least to begin with.

These are the main plant combinations so far established and sown in the raised beds. There are several more emerging, but so far with only a couple of species. There’s also plenty of free space still for more.

Yurt Terrace

Comfrey, peas, broad beans, clary sage, savoy cabbages

Courgettes, sweetcorn, mile-long beans, sunflowers, nasturtiums

Cucumbers, runner beans, mile-long beans, radishes, savoy cabbages, lettuces, rosemary, marjoram, oregano, winter savory, sage, nasturtiums, marigolds

Redcurrants, onions, strawberries, rainbow chard, perpetual spinach, lettuces, savoy cabbage, geraniums, marigolds

As above but with garlic instead of onions and pak choi instead of savoy cabbage plus yarrow

Onions, lettuce, rocket, marigolds, nasturtiums, Californian poppies

Celeriac, kohl rabi, Echinacea, Physalis

Blueberries, butternut squash, coriander, beetroot, broccoli, romanescu cauliflower, nasturtiums

Redcurrants, onions, cabbages, pak choi, nasturtiums, marigolds

Redcurrants, carrots, beetroot

House Terrace

Melons, lettuces, amaranth, radishes, nasturtiums

Asparagus, basil, tomatoes, parsley, oregano, peppers, marigolds, nasturtiums with a green mulch of clover and mixed salad leaves – lettuces, rocket, giant red mustard greens (Brassica juncea), lamb’s quarters/fat hen (Chenopodium album), lamb’s lettuce/corn salad (Valerianella locusta), endive and New Zealand spinach (Tetragonia tetragonioides)

Peppers, basil, aubergines with a green mulch of clover and mixed salad leaves as above

Tomatoes, onions, peppers, basil, chives, marigolds, nasturtiums with a green mulch of clover and mixed salad leaves as above

Chillis, peppers, aubergines, amaranth, red onions, giant red mustard greens, lemongrass, curry plant

Phase 2 – the top terrace – is now nearly complete with another 4 beds constructed since my last post and already partially planted. While the old woman is in no imminent danger of succumbing to osteoporosis after lugging something approaching three quarters of a metric tonne of compost and manure up 4 terraces and down 2 on her back she’s kind of glad she won’t have to do it again: future additions to the beds will be from compost made on the terrace.

All that remains to be constructed now is a small triangular bed once the present occupants of the site, the cabbages, have come to the end of their useful life.

Small bed at the head of the terrace nearest the barroco. Now planted with melons, radishes and amaranth.

Next down, the asparagus bed, is already greening up with its green mulch of clover. Also planted in this bed are beef tomatoes, basil, parsley, oregano, both types of marigolds, Tagetes minuta and Calendula officinalis, and asparagus seeds to come up between the 6 3-year old crowns which we’re presently harvesting from.

The small triangular bed being constructed in the last post. Now containing sweet peppers and basil and sown with marigolds round the edges.

Long bed containing peppers, beef and wild tomatoes, chives, onions, basil and marigolds. Also sown with a green mulch of clover

Long bed which at the moment contains 15 piri-piri chillis (we want way more chilli jam and sauce this year!), lemongrass, and a curry plant. It’s waiting for aubergines to fill in the gaps.

Another angle and a closer view of the curry plant and lemongrass.

Most of the seedlings have been bought at market. At an average of 1€ for 5 seedlings, it’s still economical to give the garden a good start this way until such time as we’ve built the passive solar greenhouse for raising our own seedlings. I haven’t bought Brassicas at market though – neighbours have found market seedlings tend to have a much higher incidence of club root than seedlings they’ve grown themselves.

The slope by the house cleared of pine last year is being replanted with olives.

We’ve also planted 5 hazels, 2 apricots, a Granny Smith apple tree, a nectarine, a pomegranate, and several redcurrants, raspberries and blueberries.

And lastly, the potatoes in the potato bin are away!

As well as this, the terrace walls are part solid bedrock, making for substantial thermal mass, and the soil is comparatively shallow. Consequently this terrace warms up much faster in Spring and retains enough heat from the sun during the day to be frost free much earlier than the yurt terrace. So this is where we grow our heat and sun-loving plants like tomatoes, peppers, aubergines, chillis, asparagus, etc.

With the benefit of well aged compost cleared from the animal house above it, we grew a considerably quantity of vegetables here last year. Even some that we never planted. But as with the plantings on the yurt terraces, beds without borders led to a number of casualties and a fair bit of soil compaction from feet carrying hosepipes for daily watering. I wanted to create raised beds here too.

The layout of the beds takes into account the existing plantings of fruit trees and asparagus which, none too cleverly, I planted last year without thinking about creating beds on contour. However, zig-zagging irrigation channels across the narrow terrace is equally possible and shouldn’t compromise our ability to keep the soil moist, especially with a good quantity of mulch which we didn’t have available to use last year.

The asparagus bed, which we’re already harvesting from, is now complete, including bamboo poles (grown on our bottom terrace) ready for tomatoes. We used the native cana (Arundo donax), also growing here, to support tomatoes last year but found that it wasn’t robust enough as a single cane support to last a full season or hold a heavy fruiting tomato plant. Since both asparagus and tomatoes are heavy feeders, I have sown this bed with a cover crop of nitrogen-fixing white clover (Trifolium repens) rather than mulch it at this point in the year. We will likely add mulch later on when the weather becomes much drier and hotter.