Permaculturing in Portugal

With all the clearing work we’ve been doing in the woods, there’s now a need to get all the firewood-to-be under cover to season well before use. The log store we’ve been constructing next to the main building at last has its roof – a patio area – complete. We just need to relocate the things presently occupying it – like the washing machine – which, as is the way of these things, ideally requires completion of another couple of stages in the project beforehand.

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

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In a coincidental but fitting end to 2011, we’ve been finishing up several jobs that were almost but not quite complete. Both upper rooms in the larger building now have new floors and finally we have finished the roof!

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Following on from the last post on the subject – and a bit overdue since they’ve been completed at least a couple of weeks now – we have finished the stairs on both sides of the building. This makes 3 sides of the building now protected from the weather by an extra overhang. All that remains now is to complete a lean-to roof along the back wall, dig a large drain into the bedrock behind it, and we should have a substantially watertight building … even without all the windows and doors.

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As well as work on the outside of the larger building, we’ve also stripped out the floor in the left half of the building in preparation for reflooring and started cleaning and preserving the chestnut timbers. We stripped the right side of the building last November and it still hasn’t got its new floor yet … ah well … the best laid plans of mice and (wo)men …

In doing so the building revealed more of its life story: something we hadn’t been aware of until letting all this extra light in.

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After a break of the best part of 3 months, we’ve been able to start work on building renovations again. The first priority is to complete the roof of the larger building. The roof over the main body of the building itself is done, but we need to extend it either end of the building to cover the external staircases, and to butt a lean-to roof up to it along the back of the building before it’s finally finished.

Extending the roof area right round the house in this way will, aside from providing covered walkways, give all round protection to the walls from most direct weather action: a major consideration with dry-stone walls, especially ones that are going to be clay-pointed.

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Progress. The balcony, patio area and log store outside the main building are now substantially finished.

It has been quite a transformation.

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We have been living on the quinta now for over a year with a severe lack of convivial eating furniture. Last year a slightly decrepit foldaway camping table and some slightly decrepit foldaway chairs did the job, but barely. 6 people to a meal meant there was only enough room on the table for the food. Plates on knees didn’t make for easy enjoyment of the fruits of our labour in the garden, and neither did the occasional chair collapse, so a workshop on lashings at Easter weekend’s Encontro Verde provided both inspiration and skills to remedy the situation.

A few days ago I went up into the woods to cut pine poles for the purpose with Valeri, our new WWOOFer, and today we started work.

Lashing 3 long poles together to make a tripod. The middle pole lies in the opposite direction to the outside pair.

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Both buildings on the quinta are being worked on at the moment. A while ago we fitted locally-made chestnut doors and windows to the smaller building, and today it got a new roof.

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We’ve started work on the larger building again. Or, to be more precise, a local team of joiners has started work. We’d planned on doing this with help from local friends, but reassessed when their own building project took off and we got to scratching our heads over where we were going to source sufficient sweet chestnut poles for the job. I’ve been buying some from the Presidente of the local junta (and the previous owner of this quinta) who has a pile of old, well-seasoned chestnut vigas that have been lying about for the best part of the last decade, but he doesn’t have enough, or enough of the right size, for what I had in mind. In the end, it was going to be quicker and far more economical to call in the team, since the team come complete with the wood.

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Finished at last, complete with arty-farty bits of tree. Not quite so easy to dismantle as originally intended, but still a stand-alone structure that’s not fixed to the yurt, and which allows the covers to be removed every year. The sawmill offcuts morphed into rough timber boards – there weren’t enough offcuts left of a suitable thickness.

The simple side, the walnut strut

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