4^th June CASTEL BRANCO

We arrived at the farm at 8.50 a.m. and Mr Luis, his wife and daughter were already there!!! They were harvesting some of the potatoes – there’s still a whole field left to dig up. We had come armed with shovels, pick axe, wheel barrows, crowbar etc and felt a little bit embarrassed that they were there. They left after about an hour; I nipped down to the potato bed and lifted all the small potatoes they’d left in the ground (so that we don’t get rogue potatoes growing next year, of course!), I got a good couple of meals worth.

We’ve started on the thirty years of debris around the farm; we’re not throwing anything potentially useful away so we now have neat piles of: wood, metal, plastic, clean rubble, dirty rubble (mixed with earth), and absolute rubbish to throw away.

We have decided to bite the bullet and buy another strimmer, it’s a shame we have a really good one back in Wales; but as there is so much brush that needs cutting back we decided it would be a worthwhile purchase. Incidentally Gary advertises his services as a brush cutter, unfortunately we have a budget and can't afford to employ anyone to jobs we can do ourselves.

We had a short break for lunch; it was really hard to motivate ourselves to start work again as it was so hot. I pulled up a whole wheelbarrow load of lupins; I think it’s better to do one or two loads a day rather than try to do the whole lot in one go as it’s completely open down there with no shade from the sun.

Brett had a controlled bonfire and managed to burn quite a bit of rotten wood, straw and other combustible waste; when we left he raked it out and put soil over it, then I flooded it with three watering cans full of water, to make sure it didn’t reignite overnight – there are notices all over Portugal warning about accidental fires.

We spent about five hours at the farm today, we’re utterly exhausted but we’re very satisfied with what we managed to do in the time we were there, the place is already starting to look better.

On our way back down the track Brett decided to have a go at moving a rock where the wall has collapsed; it juts out a couple of feet into the lane and makings passing quite tight. It’s a very large rock which he estimates weighs about 400lbs so there was no way he could lift it up and he had no tools with him and despite pushing and shoving, for about ten minutes, he only managed to roll it first of all into the lane and then back a few inches from where it started. What he needs to do is dig the soil away so that there’s a depression for it to roll into – he’s going to come back with tools tomorrow.