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' . 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..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....
