8. Bore da & bom dia, Quinta da Avaleira
We were really excited to start working on our forever home, it had been such a long time coming, now we were finally here we didn’t really know where to start first. We started to explore the farm, it was so big and overgrown after years of neglect. There was quartz and mica everywhere in the rocks and in the evening with the moonlight you could see it all glistening, it was a magical place. Leon was struggling to cope with the heat as he had never lived in a hot country before and the temperature shocked him a little. He would spend a lot of time in the caravan in his pants, sweating. We started to clear out the waterfall pool first so that we could access the water supply. We cut back all the trees around it and pulled out a ton of rubbish bags and glass from the little pool. It was full of wildlife down there and dragonflies galore.
We made a beautiful clean pool and would come down to have a bath in it or wash our clothes. We also found an underground spring right next to it and so put a pipe in the wall so that we could collect the cleaner water for washing dishes from it. Leon started to work on the ram pump too and before long he got it working and pumping water up to the caravan which meant we didn’t have to keep carrying it. Until you start to carry your own water you don’t realise how much you use.
The farm felt like paradise and the only problem we had encountered were the hunting dogs which were kept on some land opposite our farm, on one of the first days in the house a huge pack of them just ran down the track and across our fields. Leon and I were shocked and couldn’t believe how many of them there were, at least 15 that we saw. This was a big problem for us as our dogs were still mostly young and so letting them loose around the farm was now something we weren’t able to do. We were constantly dog walking during this time and would take all 6 of them out three times a day on their leads across the big fields.
Over the next few weeks we started to clear out all the horse shit from the floor of the cottage, when I say we, I mean Leon really. He worked so hard, I made the coffee mostly, took care of the dogs and helped him a little here and there. It took days and days to remove it all and I was amazed to see the cottage floor was one giant boulder. Leon cut down all the rotten mezzanine floor then we cleaned all the old walls, the old mortar was full of bugs and eggs. We collected a lot of clumps of clay soil from the fields, filtered it, mixed with water and used it to re-point the walls. I wasn’t sure if the clay would work like that but that’s what they did in the old days. It dried really solid and looked much better than it had before.
There were so many insects, lizards and snakes around and we didn’t know our friend from foe. Dealing with the flies in the caravan was a nightmare and we got used to shoo’ing them all out using a towel and opening the windows. We’d start down one end of the caravan and push them all out the windows and doors then secure the fly screens but it was never ending and they seemed to be indestructible, you’d hit them with a fly swatter and they’d just fly off again.
We moved all our things into the cottage and found some old car chairs that we could sit on in there. It was absolutely boiling in the caravan so all the dogs, Leon and I, spent our time on the floor of the cottage and only used the caravan for cooking, showering and sleeping in.
The Spanish farmer’s contract was up and there was still no sign of him or contact with Oggie & Bernie. They said we could put his furniture outside the house, so we did. Now we could start working on the house, it needed cleaning and the floor was completely rotten, it needed to come down but we started to remove the internal walls first. First we had to remove the cement render, it was so heavy no wonder the floor was giving up. We chipped and hacked away until finally all the beautiful old granite stone walls were revealed. Leon wanted to plaster over the walls but I wanted to leave them in their natural state. We took down all the door frames and internal walls and made one big huge upstairs room for us to use and it was somewhere else secure to keep the dogs. We used the old sofa left by the Spanish farmer for a while as we had nowhere to sit.
Our solar panels had been delivered to the rented house before we left but the inverter was coming separately, it was stuck in customs and as we didn’t have an address as such it took longer to get them delivered. The lady in the local supermarket spoke English and called them for me one day, she arranged for it to be delivered to her little shop inside the supermarket. Some people were really friendly and welcoming to us.
We knew that wildfires were a bit of a problem in Portugal but we didn’t realise how bad the situation here was, a huge wildfire happened just a few kilometres from our old rented house and over 60 people lost their lives, it was an incredibly scary situation and we were really worried about living in the caravan with all the dogs if something happened, we made a point of going to the local fire department/Bombeiros to tell them that we were now living on the farm and pointed it out to them on the map. At least they would know someone was now living at the property and it wasn’t empty if something did happen. Oggie also arranged for a local man to come on his tractor and plough all the fields to make a fire break, we felt a lot safer after this happened and Leon had been out on his strimmer and cut back all the grass around the house and caravan.
The inverter finally turned up and I was able to connect the solar panels up, we now had a way to charge the caravan battery and also have some lights in the house, we were also able to run the big floor fan for the dogs to try and keep them cool, they were also struggling with the heat and we were limited to where we could put them on the farm. Our good friends Andy & Rach came to stay with us for a few days and we also had a visit from Conor during this time. It was wonderful to see them although we certainly weren’t in any way prepared for visitors but we managed.
We used this time with Conor and our friends to explore the town a little more, it was really beautiful with a big old castle up on the hill. Celorico da Beira is a place full of history and incredible granite boulders, I was never interested that much in my local history in Wales but here I really wanted to learn as much as I could about the local area and its historical significance.
We’d spent a long time back in Wales trying out different ideas, we desperately needed some fencing for the dogs so I decided to use what was around the farm and started to weave a fence using the Portuguese broom that was growing abundantly everywhere. It worked really well and was dog proof but after later experiencing a fire (another story for another blog) and seeing how flammable this plant was I took it back down as we were in theory encasing ourselves in a ring of fire but it really worked and I thoroughly enjoyed doing it.
I received some news from home during this time, my mother’s dementia had become much worse and my siblings were not able to look after her so she was put into the local residential home. I was so upset to hear this news but also knew of the home that she was going into and it was a beautiful place. I would call and speak to her there, my aunt would visit her and call me so that I could speak to her and some dear friends also went to see her and sent me some photos of their visit. She looked well and happy and that’s all that mattered.
We had some visitors one day, a group of Portuguese people arrived here and we discovered that the old lady amongst them had been born at this farm and wanted to come back to have a look. One of the younger ones spoke a little English and she told me the farm had originally been two farms, one was called Quinta da Estrela and the other Quinta da Avaleira. They were happy with the work we had been doing here and the old lady gave me a huge hug which totally made my day.
All the work we had been doing so far was manual, we hadn’t bought any materials as quite simply we couldn’t afford them. Leon did a few days work helping Oggie here and there but he didn’t earn enough to even cover our daily expenses. One day on our Facebook group I saw a post asking for a builder, I showed Leon and he sent a message. The job was working for a TV show and they needed someone to help them with a building project they were working on for a holiday home program. Leon didn’t really want to do it but I persuaded him to find out more as we were desperate for money. The house that needed the work was about 20 minutes drive from the farm. We went up to take a look at it and Leon reluctantly decided to take on the job. It was general building work with some restoration projects, old doors that needed tarting up, glass that needed replacing and lots of painting.
I would drive Leon up to the house everyday then come back in Mandy to take care of the dogs, we were really concerned about the fires during this time so having a vehicle at the farm was a necessity in case we needed to evacuate. After a few weeks the production crew arrived and I also started working there, we made some incredible new friends with the neighbours of the house. I couldn’t believe how the TV show was produced it was laughable, the presenter would pretend that she had done all the work herself when in reality she would just hold the brush on a window or door I had just been painting. Leon was doing all the plastering and wall building and the other presenter would be filmed taking credit for it. The budget was apparently 10,000 euros as the name of the show indicated but that was the biggest pile of lies, they even paid for a carpenter to come over from Wales with his girlfriend to do all the staircase and woodwork, again the presenter would step in and pretend it was himself that had done the work. I started to really dislike the situation and was horrified to hear the way they were speaking to the local people. We quit the day before the ‘wrap’ party, we had done all the work and more that we had promised and enough was enough.
When the show was finally aired in the UK we watched it online and you saw Leon for a few seconds in one of the scenes. This was most definitely a case of don’t believe what you see on TV but it was certainly an experience and we earned some money to keep us going for a little while longer….
I had hoped to write this blog a few weeks ago and also to include the start of our dog rescuing story but I have been so busy working and when I start to write the story I remember so many things that I should add…..so we are not quite at the point when our first Portuguese furry family member arrives, hopefully that will be in the next blog, stay tuned for some sheep rescuing and a visit from our beautiful friend Bev…..
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