It’s been a busy start to the year at Chumbaria and luckily the sun has been shining for the most part so we’ve been able to get out on the land again. We’ve given the henhouse a Spring clean and also done a lot of strimming and weeding. We’ve planted 30 trees of different varieties to start replacing the 150 we lost in the fire last year. Originally we had put the trees for the Food Forest at the bottom of the land, but watering was difficult so we’ve decided to locate them in a more accessible place. We’ve gone from losing everything in the fire, to being completely overgrown with grass and weeds following 3 months of almost constant rain. At least we are generating a lot of compost! We’ve also started pressure washing some of the existing stone walls and one of the threshing circles, which will one day become part of our personal garden.
Our big project was replacing the polytunnel cover which has lasted 3 years, but was shredded to bits and had seen better days. We dug deep trenches to bury the new cover, then filled them in again and used old roof tiles (we have thousands) to create vegetable beds and anchor the new cover. The dogs wanted to help, some more than others. Stanley is definitely more destructive than helpful.
On the restoration front, the builders have been hard at work. They have taken off the old roof of one of the first 2 buildings we are restoring. The other one didn’t have a roof! These guys are like mountain goats, with chainsaws, it’s quite a sight to behold. The cement truck arrived and they poured new bases in both buildings. Whilst we aim to use as many sustainable building products as possible, some things you just have to do the regular way, so concrete bases are now drying nicely and the builders have started assembling the shuttering and steel frames for the ring beams. If you restore an old building in Portugal it is mandatory to have cement ring beams to tie the existing walls together. Looks like we’re well on the way to that and these builders are great and work really hard.
We have waited a long time for this moment, but it’s been worth it!