Sunshine & strawberries.

Well the glorious weather has continued all over the weekend, yesterday was especially beautiful, our local temp was 22º and sunny all day.
We've been making the most of the lovely weather and getting lots of work done around the place.  Its been a hard weekend but very rewarding, the last three nights Ive gone to my bed, with sore and aching muscles from the extra effort we've been putting in , but its all worth the hardwork. I love it!
Rick has now finished rototilling the whole back terrace, and raked it smooth and flat, yesterday evening we finished making the very professional looking strawberry bed plus automatic drip feed irrigation system Rik made for them. Basically a 5 litre water bottle attached to hose, which runs under the plastic the length of the bed with holes drilled at regualr intervals, so I can fill the bottle once a day and thats it done. The black plastic should keep them warm and the water condensating to provide perfect growing conditions all summer.... well thats the plan anyway...

The rest of the whole area will be devoted to corn and tomatoes later.

Meanwhile Ive been pruning the kiwis, and the blackcurrants, I trimmed a lot of the prunings and have planted 60 blackcurrants cuttings, just to see if we have any luck, I know I should have done it during autumn really but I thought  if they were going to be composted anyway, I might as well try to grow them on, nothing is lost if they dont take. And who knows I may end up with tons!

We also began our planting out schedule this weekend, Rick retilled part of our main patch and we planted out almost 50 cabbages, around half green and half red. 15 caulis, and 15 brocc. A dozen or so lettuce and also started off a nice big lettuce seed bed , with hopefully enough to last us the summer as they come on at different times.  We put in a packet of spinach and some coriander, a big patch of rocket and then up at the house some pumpkin and Okra seeds in pots.

It felt so good to be getting food in the ground again, we still have the odd cabbage for eating but nothing else ready , all my winter caulis are finished, I just keep them in the ground as I pick the leaves for the dogs food and some for soup for us, the cabbages are more or less done and the leeks dont seem to have moved all winter. My broad beans have flowers but its going to be a while before we get to eat any of them.

So we are having a lean time in the garden, we still manage to eat from it most days, even if it is just leaves for soup.

Rick has also been working on a new water system for the caravan, that is used by our helpers, the tank that feeds the shower in there is so small, by the time the system is primed, its almost out of water again, so he's built a new system of a larger tank which feeds into a smaller one which houses the pump.. its looks a little 'Heath Robinson' but it works a treat. And it means we can pump from the well to fill it...

Ive a few helpers enquiring now, but although we want them its trying to decide if we can afford it at the mo, we are not short of food at all, but if I was feeding lots more people , things may get tricky, so we have to decide soon...

Things we are planning to accomplish this week while the weather holds...

We are hoping to build a small square lockable genny house, over on the top terrace, to house our generator, at present to water the veggies we have to drag a lead all over the road and our backyard to plug in the pump to the genny, for pumping from the well. If we build this we can leave it plugged in and dont have all that fuss. Rick will bricklay, I'll labour and fill buckets of cement etc... I get all the best jobs eh...

I have to finish weeding the front of cottage area, over the weekend I did the odd hour here and there and cleared the graveled patio of weeds, but still have two flower beds and the carpark to do yet...

Rick has promised that this week he'll  make my seed house too ..a kind of mini polli tunnel crossed with a upright greenhouse type thingy. I have found some good poles from the forest and we have some scrap clear plastic and plan a very basic seed house in the warm sunny back terrace, where I can try to germinate some seeds and especially some flowers this year. I always end up buying cheap bedding plants for the pots on the cottage patio and around the pool to make it look pretty for guests ect... although they are cheap, it would be cheaper still if I grew them myself... but we get such frosts till quite late in the year and I need a frost free place... so this may help, at least it will cost us nothing but effort to try it...

I want to plant my Bird of Paradise plants in the warmer area near the medicinal herb garden area, plus a couple of nice Cacti I have, Ive had to keep them in pots till this year as we didnt have a warm enough area for them so moved them to shelter during winter.
I can now plan and design my herb garden as its all tilled and raked ready for me... such an exciting time... but too early to plant seeds out there yet... the waiting is so hard!!

Glorious Weather Returns

After last weeks storm, the last few days have been glorious, 19-20º and sunny and beautiful... All is well with my world, my broad beans are looking healthy and have flowers on, my garlic is 6 inches high, the grelos is coming on and even the carrots are showing seedlings up and growing...
Rik is busy rototilling everywhere possible, the back terrace is done, ready for me to organise the new herb garden... the rest of the area will be corn, tomatoes and  strawberries..

Im so eager to get out there, but know that if I go too fast the late frosts we generally have in April will catch me out yet again...
We have guests in the cottage and a few nice enquiries coming in reguarly now... I feel hopeful for our summer season as we generally can rely on Spanish holidaymakers to fill the very hot months of July and August, and I look forward to them coming, such nice polite people.
Sorry this is so brief... I have meals to cook and wood to stack...

Stormy Weather...

Wow.... did we have a storm .... now we have become used to having some wild weather at certain times of the year, our house sits at the head of two vallies, one at the front and one from the side, and the weather seems to funnel up those vallies and hits the house . We can have huge winds and noise when the village a mere klm away over the other side of the hill has a mild breeze...
But Tuesday and wednesday... well... it was amazing... Ive never heard wind or noise like it... there actually wasnt that much rain in all, but it was driven by the high winds into places we've never had water in before... and obviously we had no sleep for two nights... we sat up in bed at 1.30 am on the weds night/early morning thursday listening to the roof of our wood barn blow around the garden... scary... very scary...
But.... when we got up thursday morning a miracle had happened.... yes the barn roof was gone, including the huge wooden beams that were still attached to the roof... (it was still all in one piece up on the land at the back of the house) but all our wood was still DRY!!! I'd been so worried all night about the wood, the barn can be fixed, but a ton of wet wood would have been a huge problem to us, we have guests arriving in a couple of days and no wood to keep them warm, we rely so much on wood here, for cooking, heating and drying the washing, but more so to keep the cottage warm for guests...
So for the wood to be dry was amazing... someone was definately smiling on us that night... the wind must have changed direction almost straight away after the roof went and the back wall of the barn being higher sheltered the wood...
So 'himself ' spent most of the day thursday stripping the tin off the beams lugging the huge beams back into place and re tinnning the roof... we have now done as the Portuguese do... and slung all kinds of heavey junk on the top too... old beams, an old car wheel we didnt know what to do with... rocks bricks and all manner of stuff... anything in fact that will weigh it down for the future... it may not look as nice as before... but I feel safer..
Poor Beesa, she spent two nights quaking in the cubby in the 'safe bed' we have for her there, she is terrified of the loud noise... she always seems to run to the cubby when shes scared so we've made her a bed in there to be comfortable, its the least we can do. Rick or I made sure we checked on her every couple of hours all night but she just would leave the safe bed, so there was nothing else we could do. Bonnie spent the nights happily in our room snug with us ... We kept the kitchen range chugging away all night both nights so the place was warm, it also warms the cubby so at least Beesa was warm.
There was very little damage done really, and away from our place you'd never know there had been a storm, the odd branch down here n there... thats all. The news showed the coastal areas had been hit quite bad, and the sea had 10 metre high waves.... wow...

Staying with Us...

Please check our calendar on the staying with us page (there is a link) It shows our bookings so far, and avoids disappointment. Ive had to turn down two people today already... why does everyone want to come the same damn week... Please book in advance... and early...