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.

• the roof lights installed
• the two membranes laid
• flashing around 8 of the 10 light frames completed (we ran out of flashing tape and none of the local builders merchants have any more in stock right now)
• the finishing work done to close the gap at the rear gully
• the last leg to support the purlins installed
• the rear land drain laid
• the gravel infill completed

The PET bottle lights are looking and working even better than anticipated. They’ve made an enormous difference to the amount of available light under the roof, even with it being open at both ends. The loose-fitting lids containing the bottles can also be easily lifted off the box frame upstands from the inside on a hot day to increase ventilation.

I’ve spent a good while thinking about how to waterproof this roof. Although not particularly relevant in this context because the space beneath is, and mostly will be, open to the outside, I wanted to experiment with a system that would allow an enclosed space beneath a living roof to breathe while at the same time waterproofing the roof and keeping the structure impervious to plant roots, etc. The next one we do will be over a bath-house where there could be problems with condensation if we don’t think it through well enough.

I chucked ideas around a while with ‘the mens’ – a team of friends and friends of friends who have a knack of turning up to work here with just the right skills at just the right moment. We do this a lot. Practically all the time. I guess some might call it wheel reinventing, but for me, one of the greatest pleasures of pursuing this way of life is to spend time discussing ideas for homemade low tech sustainable solutions to everyday situations in the company of inventive and lively minds with all manner of appropriate experience. And the pleasure in seeing many of those ideas come to fruition in one or another of our quintas is even greater.

This stuff must be hardwired into the human race! It’s basic survival – collective initiatives in solving how to provide food and shelter in the most efficient and effective way possible within a specific context – and there’s a deep satisfaction that’s felt almost at the cellular level from working it out together. Building a home should be like this! A hands-on natural creative process that engages and involves us every step of the way, both personally and communally. Few people have all the skills necessary to do it alone, and even when they do there’s few ideas that aren’t refined and improved by bringing different perspectives to bear on them. This process doesn’t just result in effective shelters, it builds mutually-supportive community at the same time. What’s more, community where the size of your bank balance, ‘professional’ status, race, beliefs, or family background is utterly irrelevant.

But back to the roof … the upshot of this particular idea-chucking session was a roof covering comprising a breathable membrane laid over the wooden planking, followed by Fondaline – a high density polyethylene damp proof studded membrane.

Fondaline is designed for use as a DPM to protect foundation walls whilst allowing easy drainage. Though it’s on a roof here, it’s essentially performing the same function. The air gap between the studs means that any moisture passing through the breathable membrane and condensing on the underside of the Fondaline has an air gap to evaporate into again. Either that, or it runs down onto the breathable membrane, and from there to the drains at the edge of the roof, which it can do easily between the studs of the membrane.

Meanwhile the upper surface of the Fondaline holds water and soil in its pockets, retaining moisture for longer and lessening any likelihood of slippage. It also gives a larger surface area over which the roots of plants can range.

That’s the theory anyway. We’ll soon see how it performs.

The breathable membrane goes down

Cutting openings for the light box frames

Welding membrane edges with a heat gun. The solar system coped with this effortlessly thanks to it being a blazingly sunny day

Rolling out the second run of Fondaline

Cutting box frame openings

Starting to put flashing tape round the box frames

Installed light box. Just the silicone sealant to do now

Boarding complete along the eaves

Land drain laid in the gully

Shovelling gravel down from the track on a makeshift chute

Gully being filled with gravel

The last barrowloads

Today, the sun returned, and with a rain-free forecast in prospect, we stripped the temporary plastic covering off the roof and got to it.

The light box assembly line. Wooden frames and lids assembled and waiting on waterproofing

When originally thinking about a lighting system for this area, I’d considered solar light tubes. But all the manufactured ones I found were ridiculously expensive and massively over-engineered for our very simple application. Making our own was easily within Wayne’s metalworking capabilities but was going to mean sourcing something to use as lenses. Nothing suitable (or suitably priced) was forthcoming after several internet searches. It remained a puzzle until I saw this video on the recycling of PET soft drink bottles as light tubes. Problem sorted!

The next task was to figure out how to fit them into the roof. In the Philippines and Brazil, where this lighting system seems to have been mostly pioneered, bottles are sealed into metal collars which are then dropped into holes cut in what are generally thin metal roofs. But this roof is to have a covering of soil and vegetation, so the bottles would need to be raised above the roof surface to catch enough light. Also, with the intensity of the sun here degrading most plastics within a short time, I wanted to have a system where it would be relatively easy to remove and replace the PET bottles once they started to show signs of becoming brittle. So I had the idea of creating lidded wooden boxes which would be set into cut-outs in the roof, with the lids easily removable for bottle replacement.

3 frames (stacked) and more in the background

Box lids with PET bottles installed. The box lids are covered with a self-adhesive weatherproof bitumen flashing tape

Box frames. The insides are painted white to reflect more light and the outsides with bitumen so the flashing tape adheres to them

Close-up of the upper surface of a box lid. There is a collar of aluminium foil around the bottle where it fits into the lid so no light is lost on its passage through the lid. The surplus foil will be removed and a bead of silicone sealant used to seal the bottle into the lid from the outside before fitting

10 boxes and lids complete

The first hole cut and frame being fitted

Moving along the roof

Frames in position for the toilet

Drilling for the cut outs. Also introducing new team member Liam “Yosemite Sam”

The toilet light box frames in place. At this point I realised that the lids could easily be removed during summer days

Trying lids on for size …

… and to see what effect they have. Working well!

The lights make a huge difference beneath the roof. I’m planning on fixing collars of 12V LED lights around each bottle, turning them into ‘lightbulbs’ at night-time as well.

Olive tree number two before leaving home. This is one I only narrowly rejected first time around

The digger moves in

Depositing the olive tree on the tractor’s trailer

Strapping it to the trailer

She’ll be coming down the mountain when she comes …

Reversing down the track towards planting position

Backing up to the pre-dug hole

Planted!

I looked at the sorry-looking specimens, some of which were still hiding beneath a choking mantle of brambles and bracken, and wondered whether I should just say no thanks right away …

But olives are tough trees. And these ones growing 550m up on an exposed mountainside at the present limit of cultivated land, surviving years of vegetative burial and neglect, surely had to be among the toughest? Perhaps one of these would be more likely to respond well after replanting at a lower altitude than a larger well-maintained tree would brought up from the valleys?

But which to choose? There were trees with single trunks and others with several main stems, some showing lots of vigour and some barely alive. The most vigorous-looking tree had little spread after being pruned right back to the trunk. Another, already flowering with lots of new growth and a good spread had rot setting in at the base of one of its main stems so would lose it in a year or two. None seemed ideal, except for a couple over the fence in a neighbouring plot, but they weren’t for the taking …

In the end, I compromised and chose one of reasonable vigour and reasonable spread. With some care and lots of water it should come right back in a couple of years and grow to become a good sized productive tree.

Pushing the tree into the bucket as the digger scoops it up

The plan was to put it on the back of the tractor, but it was small enough for the digger to carry it down in the bucket

Lashing the tree to the bucket

Arriving 200m below

Scooping out the soil in the planting position

Big hole. Little tree. We had to fill some of it in again …

Lowering the tree into position

Levelling out the soil

Looking like it’s always been there

And suddenly both space and tree are transformed. A scabby little tree on a mountainside becomes a thing of beauty in front of a house, even in the driving rain. I’m glad I rescued this little tree from the fireplace rather than going for a bigger one. It seems somehow more fitting. And with perfect timing, it’s now raining heavily to water it in.

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.

First conceived of as a covered corridor along the back of the building with a bit of space for outdoor clothes/shoes and a small toilet, its primary purpose was to prevent rainwater falling on the ground immediately behind the building and running straight down the back walls of bedrock in – and into – the two lower rooms. With a roof to keep the ground dry, we would then be able to dig a drain into the bedrock itself behind the covered area to catch runoff from both the roof and slope (surface and subsurface) and carry it away from the back of the building before it reaches it.

By doing this, I wanted to avoid all that stuff with deep digging, tanking with damp proof membranes and concrete, etc, that tends to be the modern solution to water ingress in buildings built into slopes. Stopping the water reaching the back of the building in the first place seemed a much simpler solution. It keeps everything breathing and flowing rather than backing up behind a mass of concrete and plastic which, in any case, would be a mission to accomplish given that the walls are built straight onto bedrock which itself forms part of the structure, so no isolation of the building from its immediate environment is even possible.

And if, after our efforts, some water does work its way right down through the bedding planes of the schist and eventually finds its way into the rooms, then it would be so small an amount as to allow simple evaporation to take care of it. We might even be able to use it to our advantage – for instance, in the storeroom where evaporation from the rock surface would provide a cooling effect and a level of humidity conducive to storing certain root vegetables, so the plan is to build root vegetable storage boxes along the back wall, with shelving for things that prefer a dryer atmosphere kept to the opposite side of the room.

But having thought it all through and arrived at what felt like a reasonably watertight theory, it kind of kept growing …

When it came to construction materials, I started thinking of a living roof covering, and from that it seemed logical to extend the roof right back to meet the slope, so slope and roof would eventually become visually indistinguishable. And to put in 2 drains for good measure: a gully where the roof meets the slope, and one at floor level beneath to catch what might manage to find a way through.

Once work got underway, taking the slope back to bedrock in order to cut in the lower drain opened up even more space. So we’ve ended up with an area big enough for a lot more than originally planned … log storage for stoves in the two upper rooms, shower as well as toilet, generous area for outdoor gear, space for a methane digester to supply a small amount of gas for cooking when we only want to boil a kettle … the possibilities are many.

The schist floor being laid

First eucalyptus timber supports and main beams go up

The beauty of plain round pole timbers against stacked dry stone … though not for long: this wall will be insulated with woodchip light clay and lime plastered between the timbers to enclose the wall’s thermal mass in the interior of the building.

Mid February and the early morning sun highlights the concrete pillars cast to support the main beams where there isn’t bedrock for the purpose. Wayne starts building the rear schist wall between rock outcrops.

First set of rafters and purlins. The entire supporting structure is being constructed in eucalyptus cut from our own woods (with a few rafters kindly donated by the previous owner of this quinta who still owns some woodland next to ours).

The rear schist wall meets the wall plate

Walls curve to follow the line of the bedrock

The first planks go down

A temporary waterproof covering gives a sense of the enclosed space. About a third of the way along now.

João linseed oiling the timbers. All timbers were first treated with borax (disodium octaborate tetrahydrate, not sodium tetraborate decahydrate) and will have 2 coats of linseed oil.

One big shed!

Jonny laying planks

Last of the full length sections

Max, joiner’s apprentice

Nelly’s new look-out post

Planking complete

Huge thanks to Jonny, Wayne, Lester and João for great work and equally great craic. Building should always be such fun! The only trouble is, now we’ve created this beautiful space, it seems a shame to start filling it with walls and divisions …

But plenty of time to think about that yet. The next stage is to place the final upright to support the purlins, complete the drains and check their run, install the lighting system – PET water bottles set into upstands in the roof – lay the waterproof membranes, install roof drainage and containing barge boards and finally lay the substrate for the living roof.

The culprit was obvious. It was Hortense, the larger of the two Cochin-Pescoço pelado crossbreeds, who’s been looking ready to lay any moment for around a fortnight now. Her ‘sister’ Hilda might be ready soon if only she could get used to living on a slope and keep her feet for longer. It’s quite comic watching her skiting about the pen, wings flapping, every time she puts a foot down and it lands lower than she expects it to. As for Hermione and Harriet, the two green legs, their combs are reddening up nicely, even if they’re still comparatively undeveloped.

We had some unusually severe frosts this year. The damage to the outermost branches of the lemon tree is considerable and it will lose all its leaves from these branches. But were it not for the fleece, the entire tree would look like this, so fleecing was definitely worthwhile. The centre of the tree looks green and healthy. Next winter I need to build a proper frame so the tree is well contained inside the cocoon of the fleece and isn’t touching it like it was this winter. I think if this were the case, then the outermost branches might have escaped damage.

I’m also going to experiment with a new location for runner beans this year. Outside the yurt, they don’t get full sun until the afternoon and didn’t do hugely well last year, so I’m going to try them in a location where they’ll get morning sun and then radiant heat from a large terrace wall behind them.

Today I made a framework against the vineyard terrace wall at the back of the new fruit terrace out of cana (Arundo donax), using some of the cut lengths of galvanised steel wire from the first incarnation of the geodesic dome chicken tractor to peg the canes top and bottom into the soil and the top of the terrace wall, and stringing thin garden twine between them to make a lattice for the beans to climb.

You can walk along underneath the framework, making it possible to harvest beans from both sides.