I remember (almost fondly!) of the time we first arrived at Casa Azul and the weeks of bramble bashing I had to do to clear the land. Well, three years down the track I’m at it again. This time, it’s clearing the roastie run for a new intake. It’s amazing how quickly brambles can take over. I’ve not even gone right up to the wall as I want to provide a bit of shade for the little darlings. before afterWe do have some more beneficial prickly customers though. Our neighbours gave us some prickly pears last November. We reckoned they would be good for us as they need little water. We were right as they have thrived in our arid conditions and we have been rewarded with quite a bit of fruit. Here’s a photo of one. Unfortunately the prickly pear with the most fruit was stripped clean before I got the camera out! prickly pearsIt’s not the end of the fruit though, or fruit processing. Most of our neighbours are busy taking in the grape harvest. We only have a few vines, so Jackie’s dad, who thought he was here on holiday rather than being employed as a ‘woofer’, has been taking in our meagre harvest and we have been making some grape juice. We decided that as the local wine is so good and cheap we wouldn’t bother trying to make any grape wine.
However, it’s not the last fruit to ripen. That falls to the quinces which are also now ready. And that means Jackie springs back into action to make Quince jelly. No rest for the wicked!
Can’t sign off without a mention of the pigs. They escaped again! This time one managed to lift the gate off its hinges and then headed off towards the veggie patch. Fortunately not much damage was done and after their little adventure we managed to get them back in their paddock. It was just after this that Jackie happened upon an article in the Guardian where a pig farmer was eaten by his little babies. and apparently it has happened before! At 105kgs each, I think it’s time for the chop. Watch this space.
…but it’s the perennial complaint – not enough! Our UK readers will decry me for this comment but we had been looking forward to thunderstorms and heavy rain which had been forecast for last night. This morning however we were greeted by nothing more than a damp squib. We are now well and truly scraping the bottom of the barrel or rather in our case, the well, which will be bone dry very soon.
The pigs were happy though, as their dustbowl of a field is at least damp. They also continue to grow. they are now 90kgs each and getting ever closer to the chop!
The bees have also done well. Or at least one hive has. I took a further 4 frames last week which means we’ve had a total of 14kgs of honey from this one hive and absolutely nothing from the other hive. At least the bees from the second hive have produced some honey which should see them through the winter. As I have no honey extractor, I cut the honeycomb off the frames and then strain the honey out. With the remainder, I can then extract the wax by heating it and then straining it through a pair of tights.
So we’ve now got almost a kilogramme of wax so once we get some wicks we’ll be able to make some candles.
I’ve also been busy doing more woodworking and made another chair:
Although there is plenty to eat from the garden, we’ve also been doing a lot of foraging hereabouts. There are a number of ruined houses in our village and a lot of them have mature fruit trees. Therefore we’ve been enjoying fresh peaches, apples and especially damsons. Jackie has made damson jam and a most delicious damson ice cream. We’ve also collected some sloes, so the sloe gin should be ready by Christmas.
No posts for three weeks but we’ve still been busy. Jackie on the veg patch (she will post when she’s finished bottling the tomatoes!) and me with more woodworking projects.
One of these projects was a garden chair. I picked up some tongue and groove floorboards from the local sawmills and this is the result:
I’ve also made a table for the courtyard (the purple colour is Jackie’s idea in order to match the colour scheme of the courtyard which is… purple and blue).
It’s not been all work and no play however. Our Spanish friends Scott and Delia visited and one of the things we did was go swimming in a local river. Of course the hairy ones loved this and Betty learned how to swim!
It’s a little strange when you see the same thing every day, you just don’t notice it changing. This is especially true of nature which is constantly changing but usually too slowly to notice. This seemed to be the case for the pigs.
Actually, the changes should have been obvious, as they have been going through over 2kgs of pig food in addition to food scraps every day. Anyway, I measured them recently. I’m sure it would be nigh on impossible to put them on scales but you can get a rough approximation by measuring their length and girth. My rough calculations came out at over 60kgs each. Boy have they grown!
So now the 60kg beasts have decided they are big enough to flex a bit of muscle, especially if their carers are a bit late with dinner. And that is what happened the other day. Dinner was late and so they decided to go after it themselves. The fence stood no chance and Jackie was soon screaming, “The pigs are out! the pigs are out!” Fortunately I had the food bucket to hand and they were soon chasing me back into their field. While they chowed down I made the necessary repairs (fingers crossed).
We won’t be late with dinner time again I can assure you.
Meanwhile, they still enjoy a bathe and as temperatures have risen into the thirties recently, here they are enjoying life.
pigs in heavenGot some grub for us?
Not just the pigs, but other things have been sprouting and after a few years of famine, last year’s pruning seems to have done the job with the apples and very soon, the peaches. So we are presently enjoying quite a few apple crumbles and apple and sultana cakes (recipe to follow as it is seriously delicious).
Following on from the last post, I got 7kgs of honey (that’s 14 jars) from just 4 frames in one hive. I can take another 4 full frames out of the same hive but I think I’ll leave that for a few weeks to enable them to recover a bit. I think I’ll leave hive number 2 this time around – they should make enough honey to last themselves over the winter but I won’t take any.
As I don’t have an extractor, as I described in the last post, I had to cut up the comb to let the honey drip out (a proper extractor just takes the honey and leaves the comb intact). But this had the advantage that I could use all the wax myself and after a bit of reheating and filtering (through a pair of tights), I managed to get over 500g of pure beeswax. We just need to decide what to do with it now. We’re going to try and make candles but need to do a bit of research first.
As many readers will know, after producing stellar amounts of honey last year, our bees buzzed off last November, never to return. Undeterred we doubled up this year and now have two hives.
I’ve been keeping an eye on them over the months and it has been a little odd to say the least. One hive has been going ahead great guns as far as honey production, while number two, although seemingly very healthy, and with loads of flowers about – especially lavender, it just hasn’t been producing.
The bees in hive 1 have only just started to produce cells in the top box after which they can start to think about making honey. Meanwhile in hive number 2, the top box is almost full of capped honey and so is ready for harvest. So today I took off 4 frames. Here is one below.
As we only have two hives and an extractor costs in the hundreds of Euros we have to get the honey out the hard way. Basically I cut the honey out of the frames and allow it to drain through a colander as below.
So, I’ll take off 7 frames from hive number 2 in the next couple of days and see how we go.
I’ve been away for a couple of weeks and can’t quite believe the change to the garden. Despite Jackie telling me the weather has been ordinary and un-summer-like to say the least (Jackie’s last post, ‘Here comes the summer’ seems to have been a false dawn), we have still had very little rain and so the garden, especially the grass, is looking very parched. However, the lavender, oleander and roses are thriving, so it’s great to have some colour.
Jackie has also been extremely busy coping with the annual glut of plums. This time the red ones were first and so we have plenty of plum crumble, plum cordial, plum vodka and plum jam. However, that’s just one red plum tree. Now the yellow plums are coming on stream, which will be shortly followed by the green plums and greengages.
yellow plums
Talking of fruit trees, after a few barren years we will finally get some apples.
Things are moving fast in the veg plot. We have had our first tomatoes, corn on the cobs and courgettes and as I type, Jackie is busy making green tomato chutney – horror of horrors we have exhausted last year’s stock of all types of chutney.
On the livestock front, the pigs are doing well – they love the excess plums, and are fattening up nicely, I dispatched the last of the roasties yesterday and I can hear the bees busy about their work. The hens are also fine, despite the fact that Jackie recently caught Betty with one of them in her mouth! It was rather shaken but resumed egg laying duty the following day. I suppose that will teach her for flying out of the chicken run. Meanwhile, the dogs are taking it easy. Enjoying the cool weather while it lasts. Betty looking like ‘butter wouldn’t melt’. If only…
Way back in March we picked up a pile of old tiles (azulejos). We used some of them around the tree we put in the courtyard (see Tiles) but we had plenty left. In the traditional Portuguese style we decided to cover a wall, or at least part of it behind the orange tree in the courtyard.
…and the tree hasn’t done too bad since March either
Everyone round these parts has a brick barbeque. And they are all identical. Only problem is that we think they are very ugly and also very expensive. As can be seen below. PS the bricks are actually fake so it looks even worse in the flesh.
Solution? Build one myself! Jackie is already in position to direct operations.
I’m ready! Where are the pork chops?
Done! Meanwhile the rest of the gang are resting up…
End of May, beginning of June is the most colourful time of year at Casa Azul. The flowers are having a last hurrah before the heat of the summer kills everything. Strangely enough roses are really popular round these parts and everyone seems to have at least one in their garden. We are no different and they look great at the moment.
We have also been cultivating some wonderful bright yellow flowers – I believe they are called dandelions. Here they are in all their glory before they were strimmed to death.
The long hot summer is great for lavender though and we have plenty of it. We had a bit of a worry with piggy number one recently – she had a nasty abscess on her neck. When it burst it was even worse. I’ll spare you the details. I had to rub in some cream and attempt to keep it relatively clean which wasn’t the easiest of things to do but it seems to have healed remarkably quickly. Apparently they are quite common but I don’t fancy nursing the pigs through any more.
On the roastie front, the last lot have met their maker and we’ve already had the first for supper. Needless to say it was really delicious. I look forward to the rest of them. We don’t hang about though. No sooner had one lot been dispatched than we got another lot. They’ll be ready in a couple of months.
…since my last confession post. Plenty has happened in that time. We’ve had lots of rain followed by a bit of sun and then more recently, even more rain. This has been excellent for the garden. Fortunately the rain stopped long enough for me to attack the undergrowth. Two days of strimming later the grass was back to a more manageable level and we could actually see some of the new plants and trees we had put in. Plenty of flowers are now in bloom including the roses and the poppies which are appearing out of the cracks in the threshing square.
Of course the pigs love the wet weather and are thriving.
Only downside is that they are much keener on the expensive pig food rather than the cheaper vegetable peelings. Those pork chops may turn out quite expensive in the end. Meanwhile the roasties are doing very well. So well in fact that they are already living on borrowed time.
The veggie patch is also doing well. The asparagus has been and gone, we’ve dug up the onions and the garlic, and had some cauliflowers in addition to some rhubarb. The potatoes will be ready soon.
After an intensive course in animal husbandry for Jackie’s dad (practice in feeding and watering the hens and pigs), we (me, Jackie and the hairy ones) managed to leave the house for a few days and headed off to the Algarve where the hairy ones learned to swim in the sea.
Of course by the time we got back, more sun and rain had done its work leaving us with even more things to do in the garden…
