September 2022 – Our 2 year anniversary of living in Portugal.

It’s been an extra busy month at Chumbaria. Ella, Solomon, Lucy, Javier and Indulkha have been busy chopping logs ready for our winter fuel supply, repotting Steve’s precious cacti collection, cooking for the freezer, filling up our compost bay (if you live on land that’s mostly rocks and clay, making compost is a vital part of vegetable growing), repairing vegetable beds, harvesting beans and pumpkins, but most of all chopping up burnt trees from the fire. We’re sad to see them go, but thoroughly enjoyed having a night out with them at our local Colmeias festa, before we said goodbye.

Our neighbour has been busy cutting down his trees, which is good for us when it comes to creating more of a fire break for the future. Steve has started harvesting our sweet potatoes, which are enormous. Despite the fire damage, we still have a variety of vegetables and fruits growing at Chumbaria and we continue to enjoy eating our own organic produce. 

I have been working on the history of Chumbaria for our website, with the help of neighbours and the books of Joaquim Santos, our local historical expert.

Most importantly, this month marks the second anniversary of our arrival at Chumbaria. We have faced many obstacles along the way, from broken legs to getting caught in the middle of a huge forest fire and losing most of our hard work on the land, but we have survived them all. We have also had some very magical moments here, lots of fun, made lots of amazing  friends and have absolutely no regrets about our decision to move to Portugal. As a couple we have stuck together and our relationship is stronger than ever. This month we also got the final approval for the first phase of our restoration work on the village buildings and all of our hard work at going through the planning process the right way, has paid off. We have a lot of people to thank for that, especially Joana and Rui Pedro, our lovely architects. www.arquitecturaviva.pt .

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