Back in Scotland, our chickens there had a permanent pen we inherited with the property, but most of the time we let them out to range free around the garden. The Portuguese, on the other hand, almost universally keep them penned into permanent compounds with thick wire and often solid concrete bases. This seemed a bit brutal to me. Left to their own devices, chickens spend a lot of their day scratching up the soil in search of larvae and worms, or sculpting out dust baths. They can’t do that on concrete. Coupled with the frequent presence of guard dogs chained nearby, their imprisonment seemed to epitomise the more utilitarian attitude that prevails in respect of domesticated animals here.

But the proximity of the guard dogs is no accident. Chickens are a favourite on the dinner menu for rather too many of the wild and semi-wild animals that hang around the periphery of human habitation here, and there are a lot more of them here than there are in Scotland. Not just foxes and the odd free-ranging dog, but mongoose, pine martens, genets, wild cats, hawks, eagles, rats, snakes … If I wanted to keep chickens, with the emphasis on keep, then they would need predator-proof accommodation.

So a robust and permanent coop was required, even if I free-ranged or tractored them during the day when our presence on the land would deter all but the most ravenous of predators. At the beginning of last May I decided the bottom terrace would be a good location for permanent housing for them. I picked a north-facing spot which gets the least amount of direct sun in summer and started work on the base of a coop, putting in a level platform and the beginnings of a supporting framework. Then, what with the building and the garden and everything else, it got put to one side and mostly forgotten about until New Year when once again I started to think about chickens.

A week ago some friends went to visit a local chicken breeder and I tagged along. There were chickens ready, a month or so off point-of-lay. The perfect number for all of us to have the number of chickens we wanted. So that was it. I had to finish the coop.

The platform for the chicken shed, completed last May

The first side wall takes shape. The walls are double-skinned with a layer of insulation between to keep out 2 more chicken killers: winter pneumonia and summer heat. The wooden planking is offcuts and rejects from the reroofing and reflooring of the buildings, or pieces that have previously been used for shuttering and other construction

The second side wall waiting for cladding. Yes, the insulation is the very unnatural, unsustainable and unecological blue polystyrene sheeting, but it was left over from the battery house construction and was the perfect thickness for the job. We are aiming to send NO waste from our building projects to landfill

Nesting boxes. 2 of them

The nesting boxes, external view. They’re accessible from the outside of the coop where they’ll also be under cover, keeping temperatures inside cooler in summer and the nests (and the egg-collector) dry when egg-collecting during downpours

Side walls and back wall complete, roosting perch in place

Roof on. On the inside of the coop section of the roof is some left-over 50mm cork insulation, on the outside foil-backed bubble wrap serving as both extra insulation and waterproof membrane

Foundation layer of cana (Arundo donax) thatch on the roof, start of the door frame in position

Door with access hatch complete

Ramp to access hatch and cana thatch complete. The covered verandah has hooks for hanging grain and water dispensers at chicken head-height. It keeps things a lot cleaner than having them at chicken foot-height …

The top layer of cana thatch is held down by 2 cana poles lashed together and tied down under the roof eaves

Close-up of lashing

Thatchwork complete

Close-up of access hatch and ramp

Finished!

The chickens are due to arrive on Thursday. So I have 3 days in which to fence off a compound for them for use when they’re not being free-ranged or tractored. Yes … in the end I decided on a combination of all 3. At least until we’ve discovered what works best for us and the chickens.

Log store patio roof under construction – membrane goes down on screeded roof

Schist slabs being laid

Log store roof complete and low walls for seating under construction – there will eventually be a fire pit in the centre of the patio

This store will provide about 12 cubic metres of firewood storage space plus room for a workbench and tools. The wood stored here will be used primarily for the rocket stoves in the kitchen and bathhouse/greenhouse, so another storage area is needed for wood for stoves in the upstairs rooms. This dovetails nicely with the final stage of groundwork and construction needed to keep the main building dry and to provide space for a toilet, a connecting corridor between the upstairs rooms and hanging space for outdoor clothing and footwear.

So the next project is to construct a lean-to roof, along with natural drainage, along the back of the building. A lean-to roof with a difference. We plan to take it right out to meet the slope behind the building, varying the pitch as necessary, and cladding it (after waterproofing) with straw and a light covering of topsoil as a growing medium. It will be left to seed naturally with the pioneer plant species – mostly carqueja (Genista tridentata), wild lavender (Lavandula stoechas) and various heathers – that thrive in the thin dry soil on the slope above it, eventually resulting in a roof that’s almost indistinguishable from the surrounding hillside. So really neither a turf roof nor a green roof, but a living, growing roof nonetheless. Minus brambles and pine seedlings though …

Slope behind the house cleared of mato and brambles

View from the other side

Two days ago, the first day of January’s waning moon, we cut some poles from the few eucalyptus trees we have growing in the woods. Apparently if eucalyptus is cut during January’s waning moon, it has much less tendency to split and twist as it dries. Although most of the eucalyptus grown in Portugal goes to make toilet paper, it can make an incredibly strong building timber if it’s seasoned carefully and kept away from any source of wetness. It’s also naturally resistant to the indigenous wood-boring insect population, so this is what we’re using for the framework for the back roof. We’ll be using the poles in the round, as we have elsewhere in this project.

Eucalyptus poles, freshly cut

7m eucalyptus poles for the main beams, stripped of bark

To minimise the chances of the poles splitting at the ends – the end grain dries fastest – we’ll be painting the ends with diluted PVA to slow the drying process. (A handy tip thanks to Jonny from Quinta das Abelhas, the newest member of our now 4-strong part-time construction team.) As it happens, the ‘ecological’ wood preservative we used for the main roof timbers contains PVA, so is ideal for the purpose. The time of year is also on our side as we have another 3-4 months or so of slow drying in cooler temperatures and moister atmosphere before the summer heat hits us.

All the poles stripped

Wood for a roof, and all harvested from our own woods!

Burning the bark

Once the roof is completed, I’m intending to insulate the back wall of the house externally. The building gets no sun at this time of year so we have no possibility of utilising passive solar gain. In some ways, this actually makes designing for the extremes of temperature here much simpler. The rear walls contain by far the greatest proportion of total wall area in each upstairs room, roughly equal to all the other walls combined. External insulation allows their thermal mass, together with the dividing wall between the upstairs rooms, to be used for heat storage in winter, conserving the heat we generate from the woodstoves for as long as possible. This will significantly improve winter comfort levels and energy use in the building and, with internal insulation on the remaining outside walls, prevent walls at ambient temperature from sucking all the heat out of the room. Anyone who’s lived in an old stone house without adequate insulation will know this only too well …

In summer it works the opposite way round, keeping the building much cooler, especially with the benefit of the solid rock back walls and floors on the ground floor.

I’ve looked at various natural insulation materials and focused on ‘slip-chip‘, or wood-chip light clay. It’s a flexible material with good insulation properties and a wide range of possible ways of using it. We’ll need to experiment to find the best application method – either plastering it directly into and onto the stonework or pouring into reed mat forms fixed to roof timber supports – but the raw materials can be sourced very locally and very cheaply, if not for free. A final coating of lime plaster will provide a breathable finish, and a more durable and harder one than clay plaster (which will be used internally) in an area of heavy traffic where the walls are much more likely to be frequently knocked and scraped. A smooth white-painted wall will also enhance natural light levels in the corridor, which will be lit in daytime by 2 litre clear plastic soda/water bottles filled with water fitted into the roof.

Being out of sight under the turf roof, the insulated and plastered wall won’t detract from the external appearance of the building’s traditional schist stonework either.

Well … that’s the theory anyway. No doubt I’ll stumble on many things I haven’t thought about yet along the way …

The woods before clearing began

The initial objective has been to remove trees affected by pine wilt nematode (Bursaphelenchus xylophilus). We lost some fine trees to the disease this year, including the 3 below on the edge of the track below the forest.

We’ve also worked to open out the woods, particularly removing crowds of pines from around young indigenous hardwoods like sweet chestnuts (Castanea sativa), Portuguese oaks (Quercus faginea) and cork oaks (Quercus suber) which still, amazingly, are managing to germinate in the acidified soil and struggle up through the dense canopy of pines.

I also wanted to make clearings to begin the process of diversification, planting a much wider range of hardwoods and shrubs – some indigenous species and many more edibles ones – which will be able to grow with the benefit of some shelter from the remaining pines, but without overcrowding.

Clearings emerging amongst the pines

A cork oak or sobreiro sapling (Quercus suber) sees the light of day again

The woods after clearing

The last objective was to get ahead of ourselves with firewood harvesting so the wood would have a good couple of years to thoroughly dry before use instead of just a few months. We now have about 3-4 years’ supply cut and awaiting processing. Huge thanks to Duncan for all his hard work.

Not only that, but it’s a supremely funky addition to our power generation capacity and is also, like the water wheel, proudly made in Benfeita! (Benfeita means ‘well made’.)

The axial flux alternator on the back of João’s quad bike in its green and orange paintwork

Following our experiences, sometimes disastrous, with 3 other permanent magnet alternators/generators we were already thinking along the lines of making one since it was clear off-the-shelf solutions weren’t appropriate for the marginal nature of this site. I was consequently more than excited to hear another local friend was going to be experimenting with making Hugh Piggot design axial flux alternators.

João completed the first one before Christmas and after a coat of epoxy paint, it came here for testing today. This is a high voltage version (many configurations are possible) of the 1kW nominal power rating specification. It has very low cut-in speeds which is exactly what we’re wanting when flow rates here are low. Coupled with an MPPT charge controller which can convert excess voltage into amps, the alternator is able to produce a useful input when most others would fail.

João and his alternator

Different sprockets for gearing which Wayne created mounting plates for over the weekend … and Wayne’s breakfast roll

Siting the alternator

In position before drilling out bolt holes on the mounting framework

Mounted, braced, connected and with chain fitted ready to go

Water turned back on

Alternator running

At the moment we have it on a 3:1 gear ratio which slows the wheel down quite a lot under load. The resistance creates some splash-back which equates to power loss. There’ll be a lot more fiddling with different sprockets and the charge controller tomorrow to find the ideal ratio and settings, but what we could really do with is RAIN. The current weather forecast though is predicting temperatures in the low 20s by the end of the week and no rain before next Wednesday …

Update

January 8th

3:1 proved the optimum gear ratio of those we had available to test. We figure the splash-back is going to be pretty inevitable when we only have 1 litre per second of flow to drive the wheel. These are summer flow levels, when it was never envisaged making use of the wheel anyway since we have more than enough solar capacity for our needs once the sun reappears from behind the hill to the south.

At these flow rates, the wheel is making around 21W after the charge controller has transformed the voltage – 0.5kWH in 24 hours. Around 20% of the power we could expect from ‘normal’ winter flow levels. This may sound paltry, and it is, but to me it’s vindication of the decision to stick doggedly by the wheel against the advice of hydropower experts on various internet forums who, pretty much without exception, all advised the installation of a turbine. Why? Because having run our data through the online calculator for the output of one of the more efficient turbines available, we would be making no more electricity with a turbine. The wheel is as efficient. It just needed the right alternator.

But our present flow rates highlight a different problem to address.

This is the second year in succession the winter rains have failed to materialise, so I am now considering how best to optimise what we can produce from the water even at these low levels. We can make 1.3kWH from the 1 hour 50 minutes of sun the solar panels get at winter solstice (if the sun is shining). If I can double that from the hydro component even at 1 litre per second, then we can limit the use of our propane generator to cloudy days only, which are not that common without rain as well. To do this, the only option open to us is to increase the head, so the next project is to re-site the wheel another 6-7m lower in the barroco and lay 150mm plastic guttering into the stream bed. This will channel the entire flow at these low volumes into the wheel chute with the minimum of friction, but still leave the system open to cope easily with the torrents of water, mud, debris and rocks which fly down this channel after a heavy downpour.

Reducing friction losses and re-siting the wheel will allow us to effectively double our head. Double the head equals double the power. Plus a little bit extra for the fact that the alternator will be operating at greater efficiency once we can increase its rpm to comfortably within its operating range rather than right on the edge as it is now.

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

Today I transplanted two young fig trees to positions either side of the ponds. They should thrive there and grow really fast with year-round moisture in the soil, eventually shading the ponds through the heat of the summer and giving us a plentiful supply of fruit. There were no fig trees on the quinta when we came here, so this was something to be remedied at an early stage in the planting schedule.

But now I have. It was obvious really. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it before.

I don’t doubt electric yoghurt makers are useful pieces of equipment that many people swear by, but to me they just feel wrong. In the same way it feels wrong to use an electric bread machine. It’s not just the unnecessary use of electric power. Making bread, making yoghurt (and cheese) have a sense of the sacred about them. Something to be done always by hand in ritual connection with all the millions of people throughout the world for thousands of years who have daily prepared this most basic of all human sustenance. A direct line to a deep and fundamental ancestral simplicity. There is no way I could or would hand that pleasure over to a machine!

But how to make yoghurt in a yurt with no steady source of heat around the right temperature?

Thinking about how long a hot water bottle stays hot under a duvet, it all came together. So with a hot water bottle, a coolbox, some synthetic wool-like insulation material and a heat-seeking cat (who volunteers for the job every time – clearly the coolbox is not the best of insulators), we now have perfect yoghurt a litre at a time.

Homemade yoghurt

This is a technique for a beautiful thick mild yoghurt I learned from a conversation with Katherine Biss at the West Highland Dairy 20-odd years ago. Many yoghurt recipes call for a much longer time at a lower temperature, but this short sharp process works for me every time with cows milk and goats milk alike. The higher temperature favours different strains of bacteria which produce a firmer set and a milder flavour to the more tart and acidic taste produced by the bacteria that proliferate at lower temperatures. 4 hours is all they need.

Heat just shy of a litre of milk to boiling point then remove from heat, cover and allow to cool to around 40°C (or as hot as a hand can reasonably stand if you don’t have/can’t be bothered with a thermometer). While the milk cools, sterilise an airtight lidded 1 litre container (I use a Le Parfait/Kilner-type glass clip-top preserving jar) in boiling water. When the milk is cool enough, stir in the starter culture – a pot of plain natural live yoghurt or a couple of tablespoons of the last batch – with a whisk and pour the milk into the jar. Seal and keep at 40°C for 4 hours. Remove and cool straight away.

(A good quality live yoghurt containing cultures of Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus should theoretically be capable of perpetuating indefinitely under the right conditions, but freeze-dried yoghurt starters and other cultures tend not to last longer than 4-5 batches. Some are designed for single use only.)

The quinta has slate-built concrete-lined tanks on each main terrace, designed to collect water from the stream and its springs, which is then released through sluices into irrigation channels along the back of each terrace to flood-irrigate crops grown on the terrace. Slate-lined channels underground beneath the terraces take the water from terrace to terrace. At the moment, the tanks are full of years of accumulated sludge, the irrigation channels are overgrown and the transport channels don’t function in quite the way they were designed to.

But even were we to restore this system to its original working order, it’s a predominantly anthropocentric system: designed for a specific agricultural purpose and not particularly user-friendly for wildlife. The tank sides, for instance, are far too precipitous for frogs to get in and out, and the very containment of the water limits its use to a particular form of irrigation of a particular form of cultivation. It doesn’t work for raised beds, though it would irrigate fruit trees well.

One idea has been to create a series of ponds for the water to flow through from terrace to terrace rather than using the underground channels. Constructing unlined ponds using Sepp Holzer’s techniques will also allow the development of wetlands in which to grow plants that thrive in this environment and encourage more amphibious wildlife which will hopefully enjoy feasting on our plentiful supply of slugs and snails.

First I wanted to experiment on a small scale with the construction technique.

Underneath the bottom terrace is a pouço – a slate-lined underground dome with a collection tank below it, designed to collect water filtering through the ground above it. In order to keep the ground wet enough to supply my neighbours’ drinking water requirements, this area had become a stagnating marsh, breeding mosquitoes and bad smells, not to mention prodigious amounts of vegetation which considerably slowed the rate of water filtration. Turning this area into a shallow pond fed with plentiful clean water seemed a good project both to deal with my neighbours’ water supply issues and to begin my pond-building experiments.

I began digging with Simeon‘s help back in August. Together we created the first of two ponds, with the outfall of the first to feed the second.

Upper pond dug and filling with water. Some of the fine sludge from the bottom terrace tank was put into this pond and, along with the clay-rich soil, was mixed and trod in imitation of pigs creating a wallow so that a natural seal is formed as progressively finer particles settle out and line the pond.

The digging of the second, lower pond. This pond is directly over the neighbours’ pouço and is necessarily very shallow.

The ponds after a month. Water levels maintain themselves very well with only an occasional adjustment required to compensate for sudden changes in flows upstream. The water is kept moving to prevent stagnation and the pond feeding the pouço is full of sweet clear water. I would like to make the top pond larger and deeper though, and plan to do this sometime before Spring. Frogs have already been spotted swimming.

Duckweed (Lemna spp) starting to grow.

The pond digger