It’s been an extra busy month at Chumbaria and an extra exciting one, for many reasons. Our local scouts from Colmeias came up for the afternoon and made us a herb/flower bed outside our house. What a lovely, enthusiastic and funny bunch of young people. We really enjoy having them here and look forward to seeing them again soon.
We had our first volunteer of the year staying with us for 4 weeks, Caroline from California. She was a great help in many different ways – putting a corrugated iron roof on the pergola, strimming, planting, weeding and especially helping Steve finish boarding out our basement. It has gone from a cold damp space, to a warm and dry living room. Caroline also did her daily yoga routine on the balcony, but Stanley often got in the way! We’re sad to see her go, but looking forward to seeing her again in the future.
On the building restoration front, we have the wooden framework for the new roof on the first building. It’s been a long time coming and we’re delighted. That building has never had a roof in the time we’ve been here, so it’s very exciting to see the house starting to take shape.
The carpenters have worked really hard, arriving at 8am and leaving at 8pm. We’re really pleased with the work and feel that restoration work has picked up a pace and hopefully will continue to progress rapidly.
Last but not least this month, we launched our YouTube channel and we’re amazed that practically overnight, our first little video has had 12,000 views and 1000 subscribers!!! We filmed our next video yesterday and will be uploading that in the next few days. We are absolutely delighted.
Added to which we checked our website figures and we have had 43,567 hits!!! For two middle aged, ordinary people, who had never been to Portugal or heard the word permaculture in 2018, we are certainly getting a lot of interest. It’s phenomenal!