Our slow day. Oct 27th 2010.

Thanks to Heiko over at  http://pathtoselfsufficiency.blogspot.com/ Ive been meme'd. So first, I'll tell you a little about us and why I chose yesterday as my slow day... not that any day here seems to us to be slow... but I guess compared with most peoples lives its wonderful. And the other side of it being 'slow' is that we are working slowly towards a general plan, growing our food, improving our land and our quality of life, with as little harm to the planet as we can. Our food really is 'slow food' .

Right, enough rambling on...
We are Rick and Pat, we came to Portugal almost five years ago now, to escape the 'hamster wheel' our lives had become in Uk. We found our house, in Central Portugal, which was far too big, cost far more than we could afford (hence its still semi ruin) had no water, electric, sewage..... you get the picture... but we fell in love, and bought it... and have never looked back, we love it still..
We grow as much of our food as possible, harvest our own olives and make our own wine. and generally live as basic & frugal and peaceful a life as we can. with almost no money...
I choose yesterday, as its an average day, a little of everything for both Rick and I workwise...

6am  Rick is woken to the dogs outside the bedroom door... its breakfast time... He gets up and lets them out and then comes back to get dressed, I turn over for another hour or so... lucky me.
He goes down for his first coffee of the day,turns on the irrigation for the winter garden,  and gives the dogs their food. He has to supervise as Beesa is growing so fast, she's such a pig, she'll steal Bonnie's food as soon as you turn your back, Bonnie is such a gentle soul, she's stand and watch her do it.
Rick eats breakfast, he likes what I call a crap breakfast... sugary cereal, its one of his few indulgences really so I try not to mind... He then lights the log fired range and makes me coffee all ready for when I get up...

7.00am ish... I manage to force myself from the nice warm bed, Im not a morning person, I hate leaving the warm in the mornings, especially now its getting nippy ... Im not even worth speaking to untill Ive had at least two coffees... generally three, I dont eat breakfast, yeah I know its probably worse than a crap one... I'll eat some bread with jam at mid morning (around 10.30 ish ) and thats fine for me.
When Im awake and reasonable, we tend to sit and have a chat of what we plan to do that day...

8.am Im now dressed and take the dogs out across the road into the forest for a short walk... tends to save scooping in the garden area... its a beautiful day, the sun is warming up nicely and I dont need a coat... we love walking in the forest, during the warm weather the pine small is predominate, and during winter and wet weather the air is a soupy mix of pine and Eucalypt... its wonderful... I manage to collect a bag of pine cones for firelighters along the way, I have quite a lot in the barn already but I cannot resist them...

8.20. Back home and searching for my gloves, for gardening, I dont generally wear them, but this morning Im off down the orchard area to clean up, some trees are covered with Ivy and the whole lot of the terraced walls are choked up too. Its a mammoth task, but I plan to keep it as my winter project... just a bit every day possible and hopefully I'll get it done before it all grows again... All kinds of 'things' live in the walls so Im being sensible... plus there is brambles everywhere.

Rick is chopping and splitting wood, he then throws it into a pile in the barn, where later I'll stack it. Im very territorial about my wood barn... I hate being cold, I was cold all my life until we came here so a full well stacked barn is so important to my peace of mind before winter... we collect all our wood from the forest, we dont cut trees down, we just collect all the scrap, left by the loggers, that would be wasted if we didnt use it. Its free, and is using what would be just left to rot... its just,  again, an enormous amount of work, collecting cutiing and stacking... but it runs the range, which is the heart of our home, ... we havent paid to heat our house for four years now, we cook on the range, it heats the house and drys all my washing during winter... I love it.  Plus we put all the ash back on the land and our veggies. Im also making Lye for soapmaking at the moment. Each time I look at the barn, I feel warm...

10.45am  Both of us back to the house for a coffee and slice of homemade fruit loaf.. its my soda bread recipe with just sugar and apples and a handfull of dried fruit added...

11.30am I make a start on stacking the split logs, while Rick does a little digging out at the side of the house, as our house is set into the hillside quite deeply at the back and one side, we've had problems with water ingress, a bit in the kitchen but often alot in what I call the cubby, the small room cum barn type place where you come into the house. Eventually it will become a entrance hall type place with somewhere to hang coats and leave boots etc... but for now its full of my freezer, junk, boots, all my jars and unused bottles, the recycling... everything in fact that I dont know where else to put... and the fact that the floor fills up with two inches of water when it rains is a tad inconvenient... So he's slowly digging out a trench all round... bless its so hard, apart from the top few inches ... solid rock..

12.00 Time for me to prepare lunch... at this time of year we tend to eat soup most days, with a couple of slices of homemade soda bread and an apple or hopefully now the lovely Ruth has brought me a yogurt maker off freecycle I'll be making yoghurt.. Its cheap, tasty and healthy. And fills you up...

So I like to pick something from the garden fresh every day, I wander down and pick a few outside cabbage leaves, we have tons of the firm heart shaped cabbage, which Rick loves, but he is picky about the stronger outside leaves... so I cut the cabbage, leave the outer leaves and then pick them every day fresh for soup. A few baby carrots, I use the nice lush green tops too, added to a little parsley and Ive the makings of a big pan of soup. I'll make a big pan today to use up tomorrow. I added a cubed potato, a chopped onion, some garlic olive oil and there you go... green soup... Its also nice with a dash of cumin..

1.30pm We get ready to nip into the town 4klm away to check emails etc...

3.00pm Home again. Changed clothes and both spend a little time tidying upand doing a bit of weeding on the veg plot, we are trying to keep a larger winter garden this year, all part of my drive to make us less reliant on the freezer for storing food. I keep a huge store cupboard of dry stuff, rice, pasta, cooking sugar, coffee, flour, pulses etc, I buy a bit here and there all summer and stash it away, we rely on our holiday cottage for income mainly, but its no where near enough to live on, so when we get a little money I buy food to store for winter when we dont have any... I make all kinds of preserves, pasta sauces, tomato puree, herb concentrates,  plus dry tomatoes, and figs, Im planning to alter the way we grow food to include far more veg that stores well, more sqashes, pumpkins, etc. Im increasing our jerusalem artichokes so we can have them all winter too. Plus with cabbage, grelos, leeks, winter peas and broad beans we should have fresh something right through till late spring when the new stuff comes through...

4.30pm  Im knackered... and decide Ive done enough for now and go to sit in my favourite place , the sofa in the kitchen by the range... and put my feet up with a book untill I have to prepare dinner.. I put my treat on the range which is the coffee pot, real fresh Columbian coffee... my indugence... the rest of the day we drink cheap instant..

Rick has fed the dogs again and is sitting at the table brushing up his Portuguese with a tape and a book... he's so much better than me... but thats because he works at it so much more... I find it hard, so tend to get lazy about it...
The decision to put the old sofa in the kitchen was such a good one, I love it there, most days I flop on it at some point... and now its getting chilly outside at night, we have a nice snug place to sit , we live in our kitchen now, its comfy, cosy and very welcoming on a cold night. My most favourite place...

5.30ish... Its hard to document the day when we dont have clocks or watches...
Dinner is a creamy pasta dish we love, cheap tasty and easy to make... I chop onions and garlic(everything I cook seems to start this way) add to a good dollop of olive oil and saute, add chopped aubergines,  peppers, tomatoes, an odd courgette I found in the garden earlier, let it all cook till soft, add a drop of water, a spoonful of my homemade tomato puree a good dash of cream and a huge handful of basil... we have it with spagetti... hmmm yummm I even have some Parmesan left too... we get friends to bring it when they come as we do Marmite as its so hard to find here...

6.00ish while dinner is bubbling away we walk the dogs for their long walk... I put the pan on the slower side of the range, shut it down and off we go... we have a huge loop we follow in the forest, its hilly and hard the first half... which kills me... Im not the fittest of people.. but luckily, what goes up... must come down and the last bit is downhill all the way... its classed as a Municipal road.... hehehe for that read dirt/rock track... but we like it that way, as it means no one who values their car... comes very often and we usually see one car or so a day... bliss...

7.00ish... we eat dinner, have a glass of wine and as we dont have TV, internet radio, etc etc... we play Scrabble... sometimes we watch a DVD, but thats upstairs... and its cold... We often play cards, read, I sew, mend our clothes and we talk.... real conversations... Its suprising how many people when told we dont have tv, ask... but what do you do all evening.... we never find a problem filling our time or enjoying our evenings...

10pm ish... I go to bed as I like to read a little... Rick likes the light out as he's dead the moment his head hits the pillow...

Well there you go.... not really interesting or stimulating... but its a life we love and would never change...

I pass the baton on to Kristina at  http://thefarmwifesgarden.blogspot.com/
and http://contadina.wordpress.com/
Come on then ladies....

Ive been Meme'd

By Heiko over at http://pathtoselfsufficiency.blogspot.com/ and that involves telling you about  day in our lives... The term meme seems to be when a lot of bloggers all write about the same thing, then pass it on to other bloggers... Its about  a day in our 'slow lives' which is a chosen way of describing how we live..
well it will take a little thinking about, so I'll be doing this over the next couple of days and then you'll be able to read it..

Frugal Living, Recipe for Soya..

For economy and nutrition you cant beat  dried Soya granules, wonderful stuff, cheap, and so full of protein, and quick to prepare.
I buy a 500gm bag for 1.35 euros, and only use a couple of handfulls at a time. A bag would do us around 10 meals for at least two people, more with lots of added veggies.

I soak a couple of handfuls for around 2 hours in cold water, just cover it by about 2-3 inches and leave .. when soft, drain and squeeze gently... use as mince. It doesnt have much taste on its own, but used as I do, as a spag bol mix its lovely,
So. soak your soya.
To a large heavy pan, add a dollop of olive oil, a med chopped onion, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers.. whatever veggies you choose really, I often use a jar of my own homemade veggie pasta sauce.. a dash of sugar, tons of basil (or a good spoonful of Pesto will do) when all cooked up nicely... add the soya. Cook for another 10 mins or so then serve...
This mix works well for Lasagne too... or cottage pie... jacket spuds...  or anything you'd use a nice tomatoey herby mince for. I add more stock, a spoonful of Marmite, some cooked dried beans and make some dumplings and we have it with potatoes as savoury mince... hehehe you could live on one large batch for a week if you wanted... It doesnt go off either as its not meat... obviously the cooked mix would need to be stored in a fridge or cold place till used up...
Cheap moneywise as you've made three days worth of meals in one go, plus  you are now free to go do other things with your time...

Frugal Living, Recipe for cabbage leftovers..

If like us you tend to eat tons of cabbage at this time of the year, leftovers is something to deal with often... mind you Rik would eat a whole cabbage to himself... every night... he just loves it..
So...
Take a pan of leftover cold cabbage, add, a large chopped onion, as many cooked dried beans as you like(or a jar) a good handful of broken up bread, the heavy stuff is best, a good dollop of olive oil and some salt to taste... then 5-6 thinly sliced garlic cloves, put on medium high heat and cook fast... .  till onion has softened .stirring often so it doesnt burn... Its scrummy. If you want you can add some cooked cubed leftover potatoes, I also fry off a little cubed belly pork sometimes and add that... You'll be suprised how good it is... It also works well with Turnip greens instead of cabbage...

Frugal Living -Menu Planning

I cannot stress enough how important menu plannning is to me... to know exactly what we are eating and what I have to prepare, to organise for the week is vital.
Many of our meals contain dried pulses so I have to soak and cook them, and as we are e just lighting the range at mid afternoon now, I have to work out tonights dinner, plus tomorrows lunch, and cook bread etc ... so planning it is important. Batch cooking and baking not only is frugal with your money but it frees up time do do other things...

I bake three loves of soda bread every other day (one extra as we have our french helper Valeri)
At the same time I make a large pan of soup that will feed us all two days, I cook the dried pulses at the same time too. then the following day, I have all day to wrk on other stuff outside.

Our menu this week looks like this...

Sat.   Lunch -  Big soup.  Chorizo, potato, onion, garlic, french beans, and a good handful of soup pasta...  served with soada bread. Dinner is a mix of last nights leftovers, (cabbage & potato) cooked with a little cubed belly pork, onions garlic and dried beans, into  a kind of Migas.

Sun.   Soup / bread.
          Roast Pork, potatoes, cabbage, and squash,  and Valeri has promished to make Crepes.. as we have friends coming to dinner.

Mon.  Cabbage soup /Bread , Dinner will be Soya Spag Bol, (I'll make a giant batch of soya )

Tues.  Scrambled egg /bread.  Dinner,  Soya Lasagne

Weds. Homemade beans on bread.  Dinner will be the last batch of the soya with cumin and beans added with potatoes and dumplings as savoury mince...

Thurs.  Soup /bread   Dinner  is Pork (frozen leftovers from Sunday dinner) &veg  rissotto.

Fri.  Tortilla -  Dinner Im hoping will be Pork and chestnut stew, if the chestnuts which look almost ready have been picked by then.

I'll try to come in to blog early next week to post some of the recipes Ive mentioned here.  Almost everything will come from my storecupboard or the freezer, I'm trying to only buy milk and the odd thing at the moment..

Less Freezer... More fresh..Frugal Living

As the weather has turned cooler and cloudy and I've hurt my finger... dont all weep at once... I decided to come in to blog instead of being good and staying home and working..
So... after a lot of discussion last night, weighing up the good and bad.. we've decided to make a real effort this winter to not rely on the freezer so much for our supplies, although I still will freeze all our surplus, I plan to grow more variety during winter so I have a better selection of fresh food in the ground to pick than having to always use our frozen stuff. It'll obviously be better for us, but will mean more work throughout the winter when I usually have a rest, it will also mean more nutrients needed for the land, so I will be planting a lot more Comfrey in the spring for next years manure, but for this winter we may have to invest in a little organic fertiliser.
In the ground now, we have.. cabbage, we always have plenty nowadays... and Im going to plant another 20 or so over the next few days, plus in two weeks I'll plant more turnip greens to ensure a nice continuous crop. The onion seed is just showing its head so I'll plant somemore within a few days, although again they wnt benefit us till spring. The swedes are pretty poor, and very few showing, but I'll try a few more in another place. I'll plant up some baby leeks over the weekend too, so that will help us for early spring, I must look into what else is will grow over winter, not just for spring, but to eat during winter..
Any ideas?
Next season I plan more squashes, our crop this time (35) was pretty poor compared to the mammoth 146 we had the previous time... but I have new seed and a couple of new varieties now to try, good ones that will store for winter.
I must look at ways of storing food that wont take up freezer space, Rik has promised me a large drying rack for sundried tomatoes and figs, the pasta sauce this year is excellent, as is the roasted tomato puree, so we'll keep that going next year.
Im looking forward to the sweet chestnuts coming ready, they seem very late this year, still green and not even cracking yet... I look forward to cosy nights by the fire roasting them... plus I cook them with dried pulses into a sweet tasty lunch ...
I think its important for our frugal living aims to utilise the different ways of storing food instead of using the freezer, which uses power, I dont really expect to ever do without it, but you never know!

Vines , vines and yet more...

Well yet again, Valeri and I have been clipping vines, Ive cleared another one free  of the strangling effects of the Ivy and we've cut the vine back hard. Its a scary thing to do as although I know its needed, some of these vines are as old as the house over two hundred years old, and although old wood is constantly cut out and new shoots trained in, the original rootstock is very old. We've been cutting down stems today that I cannot reach around with both hands... and I worry we'll lose them... but... they are suffering without the help now so , I think its the right thing to do.
We have two more to do, and then its all done. The place looks so different, somehow lighter and brighter..
Tomorrow we'll make a start on the land between the cottage and the house, which we call the back garden, we grew all our tomatoes there and some corn this summer, but it all needs clearing, there is rubble from the building work, weeds, rubbish and branches  all over, then we hope to strim it and make room for Rik to get there with Hermann so he can till it all and make it so tidy ready for winter.
Everything we can will be burnt, and the ash put on the medicinal herb garden area, everything I can find that is going to do the land good will go on there all winter, so when I come to plant up, the soil will be beautiful and rich...
We are cutting bracken and piling up to rot down for the herb garden too, it makes wonderfull compost and grows everywhere here.
We are also  saving and drying any wood from the vines that we can, its lovely for the BBQ in summer, it burns well, gives a great smell and taste to the food. So Im squirreling that in a special place...
Tommorrow we'll have a huge bonfire, so jacket potatoes for lunch... cooked in the ashes of the fire, you just cant beat the taste...

Essential Oils.

If any of the Portuguese readers know where I can buy Essential Oils please could someone let me know. Ive tried Farmacias here but with no luck. I can send to Uk but really dont want to. Apart from the additional cost for postage, Id rather spend what little money I have in the country I live...

General Update

Well we've been very blessed, Ive picked 17 of the huge Parasol mushrooms so far, and generally we get a second flush come up in about three weeks.
We've open frozen most of them and they cut into small chunks and bagged them up. But we've also been eating them fresh ... hmmm lovely, we've had soup, and last night I cooked pasta and made a delicious sauce . I sauted onions, garlic and some of my home grown sundried tomatoes (I'd soaked them in balsamic vinegar and olive oil all day to rehydrate them) two of the lovely big mushrooms cut into chunks, a diced courgette, and then a large handfull of basil a dash of water and when almost cooked, a dash of cream... yummy... we ate it with homemade beanburgers and a little salad... delicious...

One of our helpers has moved on, (Sarah)  but worked really hard and accomplished a lot while she was with us, and I enjoyed meeting her immensely. Valeri our French helper is staying on longer as we are having such a good time, yesterday we made some excellent  herbal skin and lip balm, and later maybe some toothpaste and we are preparing the ingredients for soap. Its so exciting to have someone who really knows what they are doing and can share and swap recipes and tips with me. Im learning sooooooooo much !! She's been so kind and helpful, and giving me some real ideas as to the planning of the medicinal herb garden, its good to get another persons input when you are in the planning stages , she's already come up with some problems in my plans that I hadnt thought about... better to find out now than later when Ive planted... Im really excited and impatient for the Spring to come now so I can do more than plan...

All the vines around the front of the cottage have now been clipped back to the wall... wow its such a shock when you walk round there... hopefully this will improve the grapes for next year... Im busy pulling Ivy off walls too, a horrible bugridden job..

This morning I finished stacking all the split and chopped wood, the pile looked so big... now we can see we dont have enough for winter, so a few mre days and I'll be out in the forest dragging out logs... oh joy..
Also this morning Valeri worked hard and cleared and broke up the ground on a patch for us to plant Grelos, (turnip greens) and we managed to get those in before lunch too... so we've been very busy today...

When we get home we are going to crush olives and start off some mixture for soap making... and I have all my notes to write up ...
The fine weather continues and its been wonderfull, fine dry and sunny, its getting very cold at night now, we had to shut the bedroom window last night for the first time.. but during the day its still over 20º so perfect working weather..

Herbal Toothpaste Post.

Ive been very interested and inspired by the blog by Heiko at http://pathtoselfsufficiency.blogspot.com/ such great posts and a real tips and usable stuff... Luckily he's a nice bloke too and has kindly given his permission for me to post this here for you to all enjoy. Ive imported the complete post instead of editing it as I liked it so much..
Pat

Homemade toothpaste


 Any dentists out there are welcome to disagree with me and butt in with their comments, but I am very cynical about their profession.
Like any good boy I have always been told by my teachers and parents that it is vitally important to go to the dentist regularly at least every 6 months, whether you have a toothache or not. So I did for the first 21 years of my life. I never actually suffered from toothaches, except during actual visits to dentists. In those days they didn't give you any anaesthetic for some mere drilling, only for pulling.
In my experience at every visit to the dentist he always found something: "aahh, you have a bit of caries on your upper left molar. We need to drill that out and give you a filling." Next visit he'd have to replace that filling, drill out some more caries and start on a different tooth. Once he finished off my milkteeth in that matter, he started off on my adult teeth. Two of my molars he had managed to hollow out so much that they finally collapsed and he had to pull or rather extract them bit by bit. Much to my relief at the time as that would stop him drilling in them. The other plus was that that made some room for my wisdom teeth.

My last regular visit to this dentist was before a 6 month trip to India. I felt I better have my teeth looked at before trusting some village jaw breaker in a developing country. As a farewell present I got my one remaing molar filling replaced and the neighbouring tooth drilled into and filled. Nothing happened in India. When I came back I moved to another city and I decided to give dentists a bit of a rest. 15 years later, I was falling into the same trap and tried encouraging my step-daughter to visit the dentist regularly, problems or no. She quite rightly pointed out to me that she never noticed me going, so I decided to register with a dentist for the first time in England.
This time round it turned out to be a rather attractive female Swedish dentist, which almost convinced me that I should go more regularly. When I answered 15 years to the usual dentist question: "how long since your last visit?", she looked rather taken back. "We better X-ray your teeth to see what's wrong with them". They didn't do that sort of thing last time I had gone.
Much to her disappointment, the X-ray didn't show any problems at all, so she proceeded in polishing my teeth (another novelty since my last visit) with a fancy machine and urged me to come back in 6 months time. I would have, if it hadn't been for the fact that free dental care had also become a thing of the past and I got charged £50 for nothing.

Since then I've had a problem some 3 years back when I bit onto an unpopped popcorn with my damaged molar (damaged by my original dentist now almost 30 years ago!). The outer wall is now slowly crumbling away and I get food trapped in there, which occasionally leads to infections. I went to see a Dutch dentist in Italy one day when this was particularly bad and she put a provisional filling in, which has now disappeared again. I find now that as long as I keep that tooth clean I have no problems.

Anyway, cut a long story short, I reckon dentist are just after your dosh when they tell you to come back every 6 months and they actually make the problems worse. And for toothepaste this is what we now do rather than buy unindentifiable crap from pharma concerns.
.

I mix up 3 teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda, 1/2 a teaspoon of coarse sea salt, a teaspoon of dried mint and 4 or 5 fresh sage leaves and pulp them to a fine powder in a pestle and mortar.
Apply onto a wet tooth brush and brush your teeth. Sage is said to whiten teeth and strengthen gums. Dried mint freshens the breath. And if all else fails, chew some spilanthe.

Frugal Living cooking tips...

Always save ANY leftovers, even a spoonful of veg.  added to a an onion, a potato ... it makes pasty fillings..
Add a large handfull of oats or more to minced meat for meatballs or homemade burgers, with onion and herbs (plus apple) it can double the amount..

make soup... with all the odds and ends from your fridge or veg rack... one of this, half of that... even soft ones you wouldnt normally use... soup makes it okay..

cut the amount of meat you serve as a meal, add extra veg... serve bread with a meal...

make salad go further using a few dandelion leaves, add a few sprigs of chickweed ,plenty of onion, a nice dressing and its tasty and healthy.

Add a scattering of sultanas to porridge to make it tasty , cheaper than buying fancy cereals

Cook a huge pan of mince/soya mixture, make spag bol one day, lasagne, the next and spice it up for chilli the third, you'll save on cooking time and fuel...

Always think what you can make and cook in bulk to save fuel and cost...

A chicken should ALWAYS feed you at least three days... small portions of meat are all that needed..
1, roast with veg
2, pick off some meat , mix with plenty of veg and make pasties
3, stew/soup add some dumplings, potatoes plenty of pulses and veg and although not very meaty it'll feed a family..we add a half a chorizo, sliced and diced for flavour..

Buy soup pasta, here it costs around 15cents a packet... add it to all soup and it is more filling ...

Ive also added it to pasty and pie filling as Ive been cooking it, again makes fillings go further..

Each time you go to the shops, buy an extra item... nothing that cost more than around 70-80 cents /pence. A bag of flour, a bag of spagetti, tin of tuna etc..  make sure its things you use each week, but put it away in a cupboard.. do this every time... and within a few weeks you'll have a weeks worth of groceries and then you'll be able to put a whole weeks grocery money to a different use...

Keep a big well stocked store cupboard,

Watch out for special offers...

Keep a notebook of what you buy reguarly, check out local shops and make a note of what is cheapest and where... that way you'll not forget

Menu plan... at least one week ahead...

Hard working helpers...

Just to say our two helpers have arrived, both on friday, and both are lovely women, hard working and great company.. already the difference is showing, 3/4 of our vines have been clipped very hard, and two big trees cleared of Ivy that was smothering them. The area I want to use for my medicinal herbs has been cleared and we are going to prune the Lavender tomorrow and plant the border hedge with the trimmings.. Its so exciting to be making a positive start at last.
We'll have to start to weed the cottage gravel area too, as the rain has made everything grow like mad.. including the weeds.

The weather is still great, quite chilly nights and mornings, but nice warm sunny days... still around 19-23º
Sarah , one of our helpers even had a swim yesterday.... Brrrrrr to cold for me...

Ive got some onion seed heads that the nice lady where  we buy our gas bottles gave me, funnily enough I buy my onion seed from her and was in the other week asking which was best, which grew biggest... instead of selling me some... she gave me some of her own from home... heheheh I love the people of this country...

Frugal Living .. Part 3.

Well, I'll try to expand a little more on our way of life, as I said before its not just frugal living in the lack of money type of frugal. It spills over into all our life and work. We try very hard to not interfere in the ecosystem we live in, although we grow our own food and do actually depend on that food to survive here, we just couldnt afford to live here if we didnt have good crops. We also have, rabbits, mice and all manner of bugs and other wildlife sharing the land with us. And we think of it just like that... they share the land with us.. but that does bring problems with it... we lose a certain amount of our crops each season due to mice and rabbits... and although we've fenced in our main winter garden to stopthe rabbits  eating the lot, we would never try to harm them. And they still manage to get a small amount... the mice however... are little buggers!! and I dont know how to stop them destroying our crops... I wont use poison or chemicals so it seems we are stuck with them... as Rik will not accept a cat either... He feels the mice live here too... we just have to find a way of living with them... But NOT in my house... I dont care what he says!
When we came, we had lots of bugs that ate our veggies... I've left well alone, picking off by hand too many caterpillers, and just planting extra.. and making sure the land and plants are as strong and healthy as possible ... and we seem to have reached a good level... sometimes things get a little nibbled, but we've not had a over riding bug problem for 3 years now...
Sometimes  good frugal living... can just mean doing nothing...

We also now have a good soakaway for the caravan and cottage grey water, it doesnt go into our septic tank, it waters the land below and will  hopefully keep a flower bed down there alive this summer, where we couldnt have one untill now because I would'nt waste the water...
The grey water from the showers in both accomodations plus that from the sinks, go down a pipe into the old stainless steel drum from a old washing machine, the drum is perforated, we fill it with a good layer of dry gorse in the bottom, then a layer of straw on top, the water then filters through and gets cleaner, the stinky straw layer is changed every two weeks or so... it means we can have some flowers when we couldnt before... A friend of ours has this system and they say it works very well, we may have to change the straw a little more often in high summer ... Im hoping when we move the bathroom Rik will make another one that wil water my new herb garden area..

Im trying hard to use the bartering system even more this winter, hoping to not buy any seed for growng next season at all. Ive managed to save olts of beans for seed so I hope to bater these for seed I dont have..  It seems to me that bartering is the way to move forward in this lifestyle, not just goods, but skills and labour... then we all gain for no cost. Its just finding the right people with the right lifestyle to work this system with...

We also have to start to think more creatively, to use the everyday things around us in new and attractive ways so that things do not go to waste, mend more clothes... does it REALLY matter that you or your clothes look a little strange, when you are only around your home? Rik works in shirts with sleeves of different colours... because one sleeve was beyond repair but I had one from a ruined shirt that fitted on... looks a  little daft, but its clean, warm and does the job... clothes for working and staying home can be used and mended again and again... and then saved for cleaning rags, making into rag rugs, or just used for patching other old clothes, stuff draft excluders, make cushions, pot handle holders, there is so much that can be done...
Yes its all more work... I do this kind of thing on wet days, when working outside is not possible or not pleasant... I sit by the kitchen range and make things, patch clothes darn socks, and generally repair everything I can...

Im expanding my knowledge of herbal medicine and remedies as much as possible, its very effective, it works with nature and doesnt harm the world, its also virtually cost free...
Im learning about making herbal disinfectant, soap, toothpaste, and all types of cleaning stuff... Im very excited about all this... more on that later...

Our type of living also means trying to keep as healthy as possible, as fit as possible, but as naturally as possible, good hard work,  a relaxing life, little stress, little pollution, and we try to avoid negative influences, if we find that people or things around us cause us stress or negative energy... we try to keep away... its not what we want in our lives... Why stay around people or situations that cause you distress, stress or just depress you...

Frugal Living Part 2.

Well, I didnt have time yesterday to expand much on what we've been doing, although while Ive been thinking about this post, I do wonder if Frugal Living is really the correct term to describe our lifestyle, but putting a label on it isnt easy, that horrible term 'downsizing' is almost there, as is... hehehe 'back to basics' but we are really back to basics in the true meaning of the term..
Its a sort of pared down, cut out style, and thats not the bad thing it sounds.
We've tried to cut out all the rubbish from our lives, and I mean all kinds of rubbish and not just the kind that goes into a bin bag... although we have done that too...
Firstly, my aim is to cut our production of rubbish to a minimum... to me thats a bagful over around 3 weeks.. any more is not acceptable, we are working hard on recycling, at the moment we recycle, all our plastic, glass although we dont have to bother with much as any jars we do get are reused for preserves, storage etc, I use any excess and unrefusable plastic bags etc for stuffing draft excluders for the doors. All our horrible tetra pak milk things go to recycling, any paper and organic matter either gets burnt and put on our land or goes on the main compost heap for returning to the land later..
All our woodash goes on the land for valuable potash too. Any leftovers  of food I dont make soup with or serve up in someway the next day is fed to the dogs.
We have cut out on as many chemicals and preservatives etc in our food as possible, we eat as little from tins or packets as we can, and try to reply on homegrown, home cooked fresh food. Yes it takes longer, there isnt much 'fast food' in our house, but again, its removing  'rubbish ' from our lives... We dont get all crazy about it, it doesnt stop me buying a tub of ice cream... or eating a bought cake... our life isnt about deprivation, just healthy, good food, with as little amount of proccesing as we can...
I have to buy cheap flour, as we cannot afford the extortionate cost of stoneground here , so I add flax seed, oats and seseme seed to the mix when I bake our bread, and its lovely... and cost pennies...
We always have to balance buying cheap with good... and you can get cheap and add little extras to make it more nutritious...

We still do not have electrical gadgets, just a freezer, a few low energy bulbs, my hand wizzer, and my washing machine (I mean ... its not the dark ages!) the washing machine is rarely used on any cycle that goes above 30 º and I generally keep it to one load a week.. we do have a TV, a tiny portable one given to us free from a friend,  but the Tv is just for watching the odd DVD in winter time, we get them free from the libary, its not switched on from one month to the next, we can really not get a picture most of the time on the one channel we get. So just dont bother.
We enjoy social meals, talking and joking over our food... we play cards, scrabble, and now Trivial pursuit sometimes, so we dont get bored...

We spend time with our Portuguese neighbours and a select few ex pat friends, but we certainly dont socialise with ex pats much, we didnt come to Portugal to spend our life like that...
we are very self reliant, we enjoy each others company, and our dogs, our land and peace and quiet... hehehe that sounds so bloody boring doesnt it... but for us, its perfect...

Frugal Living ... continuing the story...

Well its been around a year since Ive posted on our attempts to live a frugal life here and what that entails.. so I thought I'd update a little.
Well we are still doing the best we can, I realise that compared to some people we dont do very well... we still have not got any further with off grid power... and while our finances stay as they are, I dont see that changing, we just do not have the money available for solar panels or windmills etc...
I think our use of electricity is my main bugbear...that and fuel... we just cannot do without it. Ive just turned off the fridge again after the summer season (its only on from July to mid Sept..) and the electric bills have stayed pretty static at around 35-45 euros per two months so its pretty good... I just wish...
The change over to our new GPL car will make a difference to our economy, its half the cost of petrol...what the eco bill is Im not really sure... its emmissions are lower but I need to look into it further...
Sadly the motorbike has gone, which must be lots of eco points for us... but Im still sad about it... logically it was a luxury we couldnt afford, insurance, fuel etc... so we are now down to just the one vehicle.

We are still using the well for irrigation but get spring water for drinking from a spring in town, as our well has been cloudy since last winter rain, we just have mains water to the rental cottage now so bills are minimal..

The log fired cooking range is still my joy... I love it, its been a real 'best buy' and has paid for itself over and over, this winter will be the third we've had no heating bills, plus dry washing all those horrible wet days, and it cooks our food and keeps the house cosy at the same time, I can cook so many different meals, without worrying about the cost of running the cooker,  slow cooking stuff for hours I'd never have done before due to cost (like chutney, its not a cheap option to make if you have to use electricity or gas to make it) the oven is always hot, the kettle never goes cold,  I honestly dont know how I'd live without it now. Its the heart of our home.. of course, there is the hours  and hours of work that collecting the wood all the time takes... but it truly is worth it to me... its a labour of love...

The veggie plot has been excellent again this year, and will feed us through the winter, plus all the helpers we hope to welcome to our home, a few things were not so good, peas were meagre, and beets just didnt happen... but we lots of spuds, we didnt have last year, and enough toms to feed an army... all in all a great year food wise.
Im keeping my winter garden going in a bigger way this year, we've still got plenty of cabbage, and Ive planted more to keep us going all winter, plus carrots, the caulis are still plodding on and look to be strting to heart up now... fingers crossed. I've planted the swedes but they look pretty poor, so I'll put in tons of grelos(turnip greens) just incase.
The making of wine was a bonus we didnt expect, but a welcome one... I made home made liquers too, fennel, and jinga, which is cherry aguadente.... Rik drank a litre of it during the two weeks his brother was here.... the fennel one is a digestivo, to take after a meal and is so very morish... I shall make lots more in the spring, it really does settle the stomach as well as taste delicious.. and we can get the aguadente for next to nothing from a neighbour..

Iv'e been through all our clothes, and much to riks disgust, Ive started collecting anything thats beyond repair (and it really has to be in tatters before I give up on mending it) and Im going to make a rag rug with it all this winter... to go in front of the range for the dogs to lay on.. I have an old fashioned rug hook a friend brought me ages ago Ive still not used it yet..

My next way of cutting our impact and gaining eco points, is to use homemade cleaning products, soaps, and disinfectants made from herbs..please see our Natural Living Workshop page... for details of how you can join us in doing that...

Wild Mushroom Picking. Frugal Living...

Well that post about the wine was pretty meagre wasnt it... Im not sure why but half the post and two there pictures vanished into the ether... heheh never mind.

So, after much anticipation, mushroom time has arrived again. We are vastly lucky to have a secret patch of Parasol Mushrooms that grow nearby, we discovered them last year and wondered if it was just a fluke and they wouldnt appear ever again, we'd never seen them there before.... but... hoorah!! I've been checking the area almost everyday and had more or less given up, and lo and behold ... I miss one day and there they are..not ready for eating yet, but another couple of days and they will be.They have some growing and opening out to do yet,  Ive counted 14 so far, and as last years grew the size of dinner plates... I think that will be plenty. I fast freeze them and then chop into chunks and bag up for soup and stews... after Ive gorged myself on a whole one ... lightly grilled sprinkled with garlic salt and with bread and butter... hmmmmm yum...

Our wine...

Well as I said the other day, the wine is pressed and in the barrel, only the one this year, but we certainly dont drink as much as we used to, plus Ive tons of herbal liquers Ive made and one tot of that after a meal is more than plenty...

So there should be pictures about here somewhere, of Rik and John pressing the wine...

Liquid feed, Lavender and lumpy bits...

Well its been all go the last few days, my brother in law John left early this morning on his way back home to Guernsey in the Channel Islands. The weather for him this year sadly hasnt been the best, it rained pretty much every day since we picked the grapes.. but today is beautiful again, sunny and quite warm .. John and Rik managed to get the logs all chopped and split and now my barn is crammed !! There is a huge pile in the sun drying out and then I must stack it. I dont mind, just looking at it makes me feel warm...
The wine is in the barrel, we just about managed the 120 litres we hoped for, its very strange, this year it will be Rosé which we've not had before, so many of our red grapes just were too poor quality to pick. I'll try to bring the camera in tomorrow to show some pics of it being pressed..

Im having a day off cooking today, as with John being here Ive been cooking up a storm most days... and now we are getting ready for our first batch of new helpers who arrive the end of this week.. so I'll be cooking a lot then too.
I have more onion seed to plant now the weather has perked up.. plus all the vines to clip...
I'd like to repaint the kitchen floor soon too. Plus a huge Lavender bush to prune and hopefully plant all the clippings and make a lovely Lavender hedge to border what will be my new medicinal herb garden..
Yesterday I made the final cut of my big Comfrey plant, Im making liquid manure with it, Ive been told to just cram all the leaves into a big bucket (I used 20 litre old paint tins) and cover with water, seal it up and leave it till spring, it will be all rotten and stinking, but perfect for the land, especially tomatoes... so Ive prepared 40 litres.... hehehe
John also helped me dig the first Jerusalem Artichokes of the season the other day, he'd never seen them or eaten them... he couldnt believe we were going to eat 'all them lumpy bits'... but he did... and he enjoyed them too...

Natural Living Workshops.

Well, Im taking the plunge and planning a new venture for us.... whether it will succeed is anyones guess, Im trying out offering 'Natural Living Workshops' hopefully if enough people are interested and we can price it correctly, it will work, we can help people to experience a few different and new things plus make our life a little easier financially...
The first workshops will maybe be in mid November, more details are available on our new 'Workshops' page.. please go and have a look..

My Kitchen.

Ive been asked a few ties for a few pictures of the kitchen since I mentioned we were doing some work on it. Well we did quite a bit, but work has since ground to a halt again due to lack of funds. But I'm loving the look that is slowly evolving and it really feels right to me... I understand its not the kind of kitchen most people would want, but it works perfectly for us. The bare concrete floor, may not be beautiful, but for dogs muddy paws, our dirty boots, the Portugal dust... its just about right, maybe later when the puppy is bigger and we have spare money, then we'll tile it... but till then... this will do. The same with the 'back door' its a polythene sheet on a wooden frame... but its watertight, draftproof and lets in plenty of light... works for me... at the moment... We are warm, dry and comfy.... and we love it...

Now we've moved a cupboard out and put in the old Sofa, we can sit down by the range in the wet evenings and be all snuggly, also as you see the dogs love it too!

Yes its a tad 'rustic' but its very funcional, and its just my style... I love it. Nothing cost us much or most of the time, anything at all. The shelves are made from our wood from the forest, yes... those dining  chairs are really lastic garden chairs... hehehe we've had them almost five years now.. and they will stay untill we find other better chairs which are as comfy as those! We give the walls a splash of paint every now and then to brighten up the place, and Ricky keeps saying he's going to repaint the floor (it keeps the dust down and makes it washable) and do it with bright blue paint.... hmmm Im not convinced, no doubt he'll do it one day while i'm in here...

Making Our Wine.

 Today we decided was the day to pick our grapes, this year we had decided we didnt have many, a poor crop, so we would utilise what we had and make a few litres of Port instead. Rik went off to work telling John and I, 'oh it'll only take you a couple of hours' please bear in mind, we hadnt trimmed , pruned or cared for the vines at all this year, they were covered in brambles....

6 hours later and he's home and we are still picking...and we are scratched to ribbons from hands to shoulders...

But it was worth the effort, we will have wine this year!! Strangely enough, the red grapes didnt fruit much and the white, have been magnificent... so it will be different...

Here is Rick and John working the magic and strong man thing...they are tipping in the grapes and then crushing them , its a tough job when there's a lot of grapes... then there is a shot of all our lovely grapes mulched up and in the vat.

It will stay in the vat, being stirred twice a day for five days only, then they will put it through the press to sqeeze every last little drop out, before transfering it to the barrel. We are hoping for around 120 litres , which we may take around 25 litres for making some Port...

Frugal soup...

We had the most delicious soup for lunch today and it cost almost nothing... made from yesterdays leftovers of course...
As Rik's brother joghn is with us for a couple of weeks we are eating a more 'English' diet.. I have to ease him into our food regime gently...
So yesterday I cooked him the 'Sunday Roast' that he is used to at home, a large piece of Roast Pork, roast spuds, carrots, and french beans and cabbage, all from the garden. (or frozen in my freezer from our garden)
We all had a large meal, then I cut up what meat was left into two bags and froze it, the bone is cooking away with some veg at the moment as stew for dinner today...the other two bags will each do a meal later ...
There was a lot of veg leftover... so today I sweated an onion and three cloves of garlic in some olive oil, chopped the french beans small, plus a big handfull of the cooked cabbage (the rest is in the stew) and a few cooked carrots, simmered them in a little water with a couple of small potatoes chopped small, to this I added a veggie stock cube and simmered till the potatoes were soft... I then blitzed the lot with a hand blender. Added a sprinkle of sea salt and a good teaspoon of cumin powder.... mmmmmmnn yum... It was thick and creamy and absolutely lovely! With some homemade soda bread, a great lunch..