It’s been all go at Chumbaria this month, our lovely friends Dan and Zoe https://www.facebook.com/aimflyers came and took some drone footage of our village and land following the fire in July. Seeing the devastation from above was upsetting, but confirms our decision to evacuate when we did. We still can’t believe the buildings survived and we give thanks again to the Bombeiros for saving our home. Although the enormity of the clean up task is slightly overwhelming, we have a lot of people here to help.
Thanks to Peter, Ella, Solomon, Joao, Josh, Elena, Rod and Maggie for all your hard work on repairing the damage from the fire, creating new pathways (now the brambles have burnt away), building another composting bay, chopping down dead trees and stacking logs in a safe place. There are still fires burning in our district, but they are far enough away not to present any danger to us and there’s not much left to burn around us anyway.
Our hearts go out to all those people that have been affected and once again we have nothing but praise for the brave men and women of the Bombeiros for their courage and skill in dealing with these fires. They are truly amazing people. This is not just a problem in Portugal, there are fires raging all over the world. It makes us even more determined to continue our permaculture journey and do what we can to help our planet.
Also very importantly this month, we featured in the Channel 4 series ‘Help! We Bought a Village’, episodes 11-15. When I approached True North Productions in 2019 to tell them about our project, I had no idea it would evolve into a series of 20 programmes, featuring many other projects around Europe. The series has proved to be very popular and is now officially listed on IMDB. There is even an article about us in one of the UK’s leading newspapers.
We did a lot of filming over the last 2 years and inevitably not everything was shown, but we enjoyed the process and had some very positive feedback. However, it’s still a bit weird watching yourself on television! You can view the programmes on YouTube – Channel 4 Lifestyle if you want to see our journey from the start.