October was a mix of work and play at Chumbaria. It was a bit strange having the village to ourselves for the first time since February. We took advantage and had a short break, exploring Coimbra and Aveiro, both of which are beautiful cities. Spanish Tony came for a few days and helped Steve build a little decking area for us to sit and watch the sunset. We had a bumper crop of stunning sweet potatoes, outstanding onions and beautiful beetroot!
It has also been one of the busiest work months at Chumbaria. Pascoal came with his bulldozer and started leveling out the new carpark, which came at the right time as it’s been full of workers trucks ever since. He also dug a 6 metre hole for the new septic tank and with the help of Rodrigo installed the concrete tubes which will collect our waste water. Next is the hole and the concrete tubes, for our rainwater harvesting from all the roofs in the village, this cistern will hold 50,000 litres of water and is much needed for irrigation of the land. Finally our new windows and doors went in, just before it started raining. They are absolutely beautiful and have turned the first two buildings into proper houses. We are so pleased we chose to go with traditional wood and as always we are very impressed with the craftsmanship of the Portuguese tradesmen.
Having the first two houses watertight meant that we could also get our hempcrete block delivery, which is what we are using to insulate the houses. We got a massive delivery of 24 pallets of hempcrete blocks from Canhamor Hemp, a Portuguese company that cures/drys the blocks so that they can be installed without using the hand casting method and also without having to wait for them to dry. It was all hands on deck and the last of the blocks went in just as the heavens opened! It didn’t stop raining, but it was full speed ahead on the interior building work. Our builder Nelson had never used hempcrete before, but he soon got the hang of it and he and his team made an amazing start and a brilliant job of our new insulation.
The first house is now dry, warm and quiet, which is everything we wanted. Hempcrete is very good for the environment, good for your health, fire retardant amongst many other positive things, so it’s a great natural product for construction.
Last, but definitely not least, in October the 2nd series of ‘Help We Bought a Village’ went out on Channel 4 Television in the UK. We were featured in 3 episodes, alongside 25 other contributors in 30 episodes, which is a massive achievement for us. It’s always a bit nerve wracking being filmed and knowing that hundreds of thousands of people are watching our journey on television. However, we are very pleased that our epic restoration project has had more television coverage, that will ultimately be viewed by hundreds of thousands more people in many different countries in the future.
When we approached the production company back in 2019, we had no clue they would go on to create such a television series, featuring some great projects around Europe and that series 1 would be so popular, they would go on to create series 2! We have had some very positive feedback, so a big thank you to True North Productions for believing in our vision for Chumbaria and recording us every step of the way.
