Animals – Page 3 – the story of Casa Azul

Breakout!

August 8, 2012 richard Comments 4 comments

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.

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.

Here comes the summer!

June 25, 2012 Jackie Comments 4 comments

Walking into the courtyard the heat hits you and there’s no relief to be found under our shelter – it’s reading 35C in the shade. The hens have disappeared deep into the brambles (you can just hear the occasional moaning cluck), the roasties are inside their hut with their beaks permanently resting in their drinking water (which has been put inside for the mo) and the dogs are not even bothering me for a run; they have collapsed on the tiled floor, legs akimbo and slightly snoring. Our bees like drinking from the pond’s edge (careful where you stand while looking for the frog!) and there are now bricks in the dogs’ outside bowl as mice and shrew keep drowning in it overnight. The wild birds are also grateful for the pond and start their morning with a splash.

And the pigs? Well, they love their mid-afternoon bathing session:

Meanwhile the raspberries are giving us a bumper harvest, a perfect afternoon for making ice cream!

Blooming

June 3, 2012 richard Comments 2 comments

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.

It’s been a month..

May 21, 2012 richard Comments 0 Comment

…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…

Proper rain and pigs

April 21, 2012 richard Comments 13 comments

Two big events recently. We’ve finally got the pigs and it’s started raining (and still not stopped!). Pigs first. The bloke from the pig farm came round in his truck and said take your pick:

Between him, Luis our next door neighbour, and us, we decided on two little red heads. Or to be more technical, two Durocs. The pig farmer reckoned they would be the best as they are good for keeping outdoors and are delicious! Wikipedia wrongly stated that they are originally from USA – they are actually from Spain/Portugal and we hope that wikipedia also got it wrong when it said they tend to be one of the most aggressive of all the swine breeds!

Here they are settled into their new home. Received wisdom says it is better to restrict their movement to their hut first and then let them out into the bigger field in a few days.

And the rain has finally come. After almost two weeks of continuous drizzle, it is starting to get a bit tiresome (that’s why we don’t live in the British Isles) however we are fortified by the knowledge that we really need it (and a lot more) for our plants now and into the summer. And we can see the benefits already. The fruit is plumping up nicely. Last year we hardly had any peaches but this year promises to be a bumper crop judging by the progress of these little beauties. Maybe even the apples will be big enough to eat!

Here are some birds who love the rain and are still pumping out a regular four-a-day!

The dogs, however, have decided they prefer it indoors and now there isn’t even room for me on the sofa. Just as well Jackie is in Madrid for the weekend.

Rain! (well, drizzle)

April 12, 2012 richard Comments 0 Comment

Finally a bit of rain has made an appearance. Not much I’m afraid but I suppose you can only expect showers in April. At least it has put a temporary halt to the fires. We went for a drive last week and saw the full extent. Vast swathes of forest turned black. Here’s a photo taken from our house. Originally the hills in the distance were all green, covered in pine and eucalyptus trees. They had started cutting down some (after all much of it was managed plantations) but now all that remains is a small green patch visible on the far right, next to the village (a small white splodge on the photo) which was fortunately untouched.

However, the welcome rain has had an effect on our veggies and even the rhubarb has come through.

And we’ve been eating plenty of onions and purple sprouting broccoli.

The courtyard is also doing pretty well. Here is a bit of the herb garden and our lime tree which is about to burst into flower, as are the orange and lemon trees.

Even the plane tree which was nothing more than a stick a few weeks ago has plenty of leaves.

The animals are also doing well – the roasties are putting on weight and enjoying the grass which has started sprouting everywhere.

And of course the two hairy ones enjoy it whatever the weather.

Don’t fence me in!

January 26, 2012 richard Comments 0 Comment

Some readers may remember that we had a marauding pack of wild pigs in the garden recently.

Admittedly that sounds a bit worse than it actually was as the only damage caused was a few nibbles out of the cacti and some bulbs were dug up. However, I’d been meaning to do something about the wall, or lack of it, which leads from the end of our garden to the fields beyond and this spurred me into action. One gate and one fence later and we are fully protected!

Emboldened by this success (i.e. surprising myself by being able to make a gate and fence), I started work on operation porco. We are planning on getting a couple of pigs in Feb/March in order to fatten them up for slaughtering in Nov/Dec. So I set to work on building a pigpen and a fenced off area of the garden for them to roam.

pigpen — bijou residence ready for tenants

It still needs a bit of work but Rome wasn’t built in a day.

But it’s not all work and no play, we’ve also managed to make the best use of what has been a very sunny January by having a few barbies and also visiting the beach. I wonder when we will be able to brave the waves!

Mil ovos!

December 9, 2011 richard Comments 4 comments

A very short post this but I’ve got big news. In just under a year since they started laying, brownie and her mates – hennies, 2, 3 and 4 (we can still only recognise one of them as being a bit darker than the rest) have laid their 1000th egg. And after their little rest in October, they are back up to speed and laying significantly bigger ones. So good news all round.

We’ve also been busy. We went on a short soap making course last week. We’ll start churning out all sorts of soap from next year made with our own olive oil and assorted extras. So now you know what to expect for future Christmas presents!

And I went into the forest with a group of fungus foragers and came back with a basket full of wild mushrooms. It’s been a couple of days and I’m still alive so I guess they were safe to eat – more to follow but here’s a selection (the big one is a scaly tooth!):

The chop

November 28, 2011 richard Comments 2 comments

Our latest bunch of roasties have now had the chop. We bought them on 1st October, a bit younger than we had originally planned as they were only a couple of weeks old. However, they stuffed themselves silly and when I dispatched them this week (when they were 10 weeks old) they had mushroomed in size to between 3 and 4 kgs (the largest was almost 9lbs in old money, the same size as a turkey!).

No photos of the actual dispatching but here I am plucking one in the ‘death zone’.

In order to make them even more tender and delicious, they need to be hung in a cool place for a few days.

We had the first one roasted last night – with garden fresh swedes, turnips, spuds and French beans. I say we had one, actually we only managed the best part of one breast. I guess it’s chicken sandwiches, cold chicken, chicken curry, chicken soup, chicken stir fry…. for the next week. Of the other four, they’ll be frozen and will no doubt keep us in meat for quite some time.

One group is happy to see the back of the roasties – the layers. We’ve moved them into the roastie quarters so they have some fresh grass to eat. No complaints there.

The fall of the monolith

May 4, 2011 richard Comments 2 comments

One of the strangest features of Casa Azul has been a large stone, standing in the courtyard. Well this week we took it down. It went as part of patio project stage 2. Now we’ve done the barn we are paving part of the courtyard and turning it into a small patio area. The stone was in the way but we wanted to keep it so we’ve turned it into a stone seat. Very nice it looks too.

After the recent, much needed, heavy rain a surprising thing happened. I found some puffball mushrooms at the bottom of the garden. Autumn was so dry we didn’t get any mushrooms but here they are now. I’d never eaten them before and I must admit they were rather a disappointment. Like creamy tofu.

Much tastier, I am sure, will be our honey and on the latest inspection, the bees are really going for it. Keen readers will know that we started off with one box (the brood box) and after the bees had settled down we added a second on top. Between the two was a queen excluder. This is a wire frame that stops the queen from going “upstairs”. Therefore she concentrates on laying eggs and making new bees in the bottom box while the workers fill up the top with honey. And after a few short weeks the bees have been busy making honey comb in the top box and filling it with honey. As can be seen in the photo below. This is just one frame of ten, so we are hoping they will all be full by July and ready for harvesting. Thinking of which, I’ll have to do some reading and work out how to do it.

Never mind honey bees, we also have a carpenter bee making its home in the pergola. I’ll try and get a photo of the bee soon (it’s a big black hairy thing like a bumble bee). The nest itself is just a small perfectly round hole which the bee has chewed out of the frame.

We’ve also got a wasp making a nest in the potting shed!

With the rain and now more sun, the veggie garden is taking off. Here are the spuds in all their glory. And thanks to the polytunnel we have been eating strawberries for weeks (admittedly only about 6 or 7 a week) and have enjoyed plenty of artichokes.

Of course warmer weather means the smell of summer is here – yes the barbie!

Most of the locals have small tractors but we’ve got one old boy who still uses the old ways.

Couldn’t resist putting in this photo of the hairy one enjoying a puddle. They won’t be here for much longer.

And of course the wild flowers are still a joy. The poppies are coming up now but we still have a few orchids about. We’re not sure whether this one is a bee orchid or woodcock.

the story of Casa Azul

and a new life in deepest Portugal

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