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Hello friends,
on this sunny January day, I finally have time to send you some news from Monte Parreira.
The most exciting thing is that our dog Lucy has had six cute puppies, who have been keeping us very busy at that time. The last two needed the help of the vet and a caesarean section, but at the same time we had Lucy spayed. It's just wonderful to see them growing and getting stronger. We wanted to wait until they are eight weeks old before giving them away so that they could play and learn with their siblings in peace. We had a few interested parties who took four out of the six and we are living with three dogs now. We have raised them with lots of love and the best food and, of course, we only wanted to give them to people who we were sure will give them a great home. Now we only have a girl and a boy of the puppies left with us and we are doing our best to raise them well.
Our lake is filling up beautifully again and we have seen it overflowing this year! Thanks to the clay soil, it is now so dense that we no longer have to worry about the water seeping away. Of course, we will lose some water due to the sun and heat, about 40,000 litres per day. But we are optimistic and are working hard to find a way to keep the lake as full as possible over the summer.
Thirty years ago, when the entrepreneur who built the lake for us already almost got the contract to build it here, there were apparently still a few springs that provided water to this platform all year round. Unfortunately, the eucalyptus plantations that were planted to the right and left of our site probably absorbed so much water that the source dried up. We had hoped to find a steady inflow again, but unfortunately we could not discover any source in the dredged area.
We are having a bit of trouble with our neighbour, a somewhat idiosyncratic dark person (a former drug dealer who also happened to be imprisoned some time) who apparently reported us (anonymously) to several institutions. This story is really bad luck, but you can't choose your neighbours. We are currently working on clearing up the misunderstandings, which of course takes a lot of time and energy, but we have plenty of that! There may just be one less newsletter per year :-). And it will probably take us a little longer before we can continue planning and building again.
The storms that caused so much damage in central Portugal also hit us – albeit with slightly less force. Our technical room was devastated, with the wind blowing out the acrylic windows. The outdoor shower that Stéphane had built was also damaged. This gives us the opportunity to rebuild it, perhaps even more beautifully than it already was.
Those of you who follow us on Facebook, Instagram and our website will have already seen that we made real progress with the construction of our first clay house over the summer. A great group of girl scouts from Brussels and a few woofers helped us energetically for five days to build the walls with clay. Stefan and I had already built the basic structure beforehand, and then we put the roof on, which was sealed with EPDM foil. This year, we will cover the roof with a few centimetres of substrate and soil so that we can plant succulents, which will then green it up nicely. Because the legal basis is not yet completely clear, we will have to be patient until everything is sorted out. Then the rest of the back wall will be completed and the clay walls will be plastered with clay – with lime on the outside and other suitable materials on the inside.
The land does not offer always the best conditions for planting trees and vegetables, at least not with the soil we found here. That is why we work on that challenge a lot with compost and bokashi. And we help our plants to resist insects, fungi and other diseases by spraying effective microorganisms in various forms. These are completely natural microbes that are designed to help our vegetables grow and thrive. This year, we have stepped up our efforts in this direction and will now actively test how well this type of cultivation works.
If you have any questions, please send me an email at th@ischler.com. Otherwise, we wish you a wonderful New Year and look forward to welcoming some of you here on Monte Parreira.
All the best from Alentejo, Portugal,
Sabine and Tom
-> Please check the pictures area for photos