To Miscellanie and beyond......

 It has been about three months now since my last post... my head is spinning tonight meaning it may not prove to be the best time for a ramble..

We are almost through the winter... having burned around 9 cubic meters of wood, or 'lanha' so far I am now looking forward to having a night time and early morning temperature to meet the bit in the middle.... which is gorgeous, sunny and blue.

This gorgeous pup joined our zoo on the 16th of December. We found her through Dogs of Portugal, an amazing group of volunteers who devote their free time to caring for and rehoming abandoned dogs. We have called her Remy and she is just perfect.

Sienna is enjoying life here in Portugal and loves going to her weekly ballet class.. this photograph was taken of the girls at the Natal performance.
I totally failed to get any good images of the girls on stage as I got the giggles so bad that I was unable to see anything, let alone look through the lens. The little ones combined stage fright, a moment to shine, cuteness and Laurel and Hardy into one neat package. Priceless.

Pai Natal showed up several times prior to christmas. Sienna was a little bemused that Pai Natal likes to wear high heels here in Portugal... I tried to smooth this glitch over as best I could..


We have also had a little confusion regarding the tooth fairy. First, one tooth fairy left a colouring book and pens under a friends pillow, then another kid decided to keep her teeth rather than swap them for felt tips so she can have them made into a necklace. I have tried to persuade Sienna that the traditional fairy who was kind enough to visit earlier this month and leave money was just following normal procedure for an English kid..... and no I will not let her keep her little teeth and wear them around her neck although I do admire this highly creative idea.

I will not mention my wonderful son Tashan, as whatever I say will embarrass him and fuel his suspicion that somebody nicked his real Mum and replaced her with an evil old hag.  ;)

I have learnt that the small terracotta dishes with the bars across the top, sold in the markets and supermarkets here are not in fact ashtrays. They are for cooking chourico caseiro.
Aguardente.... (fire water) is poured into the bottom of the dish and set alight for long enough to cook the chourico. Bloody magic. If you want to know why this stuff is called fire water, just sip it. Once that fire hits your chest and you feel like a dragon about to have a panic attack you will completely understand.

Somebody I know says aguardente makes the best window cleaner ever.... last night I tried some that had been soaked in prunes (for medicinal purposes) and it was good. I recently tried it in expresso too - I think this is called 'matabicho'? (Roughly translates as kills bugs) and I reckon it would.

I go to School now once a week for three hours to learn 'Lingua Portuguesa'. I thought I was doing pretty well until tonight when I felt like 'Senhora Estupido'. Still, onwards and upwards, after all, I knew it was going to be a challenge. It will be worth it and most of the time it is fun.

I think tonight I really realised the importance of all these accents and hats... if you make the dot on the 'i' in pais (parents) into an accent, it becomes 'country'. Grandfather and Grandmother are both spelt the same.... 'Avo', but the o in Grandfather wears a hat and sounds like 'oh', whereas Grandmother wears an accent on the o making her 'o' sound like the one in octopus....
avô
avó
simple see?

My inability to roll my r's and say words like 'burro' means that I will probably always have to resort to making big ears on the top of my head and doing an impressive donkey impression to make myself understood....

But any progress is a step in the right direction and I reckon my eeyore is pretty much spot on. (Because practice makes perfect).
And if I work hard enough.... tudo é possível. The sky is the limit.

Boa Noite... xxx

Learning Portuguese. (Well I am trying...)

 For a while I felt like I was picking up the language ok... but the last few times I ventured out with Maria, out neighbour, people have asked her if I speak Portuguese. She has responded by dropping her head and shaking it sadly.... with a 'poor Mel, there is no hope' type expression on her face.

Cheers buddy! (so perhaps I need to make a little more effort).

So, its back to my Michele Thomas Portuguese Course. I do have the Berlitz Earworms too,  but find the 'great music' tag is slightly false advertising..  It is one of those courses that is irritating but does go in. It certainly makes it very simple.

The Michele Thomas course is an 8 hour course which has great reviews. I found it a godsend when we first arrived, but now I am returning to it with a basic vocabulary and a better idea of accents etc it is so much easier.

This morning I have been on Amazon looking for Barrons 501 Portuguese verbs which I have found and ordered. I took a look and both the earworms (Berlitz) and Michele Thomas courses are available, along with Usborne's flashcards, first 100 words and first 1000 words which I ordered for Sienna last year. Although the Usborne materials are aimed at kids, they are perfect for beginners too. I especially like the flashcards. They could also be used for a Portuguese person learning English as the english words are printed in the corner.

One trick I have found helpful for learning is to label items around the home with post it notes in Portuguese on the door (porta), window (janela), table (mesa) and so on.... then you are looking at it all the time and it will go in without any effort.  It is definately useful too to carry a notebook around with you and write down new words/words you do not understand... when you have a Portuguese person repeating a word to you.... louder and LOUDER..... you can write it down and work out what they were trying to tell you later. (You will feel pretty bad if you realise they were yelling "HELP", or "FIRE")

As my old buddy used to say to me .... 'JFDI'   (Just F****ng Do It) A handy acronym for those who dither and put things off.

I am seriously going to pull my finger out, (hopefully I can restore Maria's hope for me).. and aim to learn at least three new words a day.

Wish me luck! (BOA SORTE !)

The following link will take you to a useful eBook 'Learn Any Language' -aimed at complete beginners, which will help you to learn any language (including Portuguese) quickly and easily.
Click Here!

Lagar de Azeite.

                                                    


                                                       

It turned out that our 2pm appointment at the 71 year old Lagar de Azeite do Siveirinho was in fact today not tomorrow - and the job is now done and dusted. We had far more olives than we thought, weighing in at 418 kilo's. It was so interesting to see the process in action. I so wish I had asked more questions and understood more answers!

Once the sacks had been weighed, they were emptied onto the bottom of a tall conveyer belt which separated them from any remaining debris and dumped them into a cold water rinse.

They were then washed in hot water and squished into a thick paste.

The pulped olive paste was then layered onto round mats and sandwiched together in a tall tower before being transferred onto huge presses which squeeze the oil out.  

The oil, which at this point looked like a dirty puddle was washed down into a vat, along with hot water. A colander type tray below separated the remaining solid matter from the liquid. The oil floats to the top of the water in the vat and is carried through pipes to another large vat, the heavier muddy puddle of water below, was released through a pipe at ground level.

(The remaining dry and very flat pulp was collected from the mats and placed onto a separate conveyor belt and deposited onto a mountain of the stuff. This will later be pressed again by the mill, although you would never believe something which felt so dry could hold more oil!)

Using centrifugal force the last of the water is separated from your oil and collected in yet another vat below. This wonderful hot oil is then measured into your containers...

The whole place is hot and humid and the smell just incredible.

The staff at the Silveirinho Lagar were welcoming and helpful, lifting heavy sacks, showing me around the machinery and putting up with having a tourist and a wacking great camera in their space for the afternoon. Jorge even took me to the cafe across the road and bought me an expresso whilst I was waiting!

The olives were weighed at about 2:45 to begin the process and we were carrying our oil out of the doors at 5:30.... 418 kilo's of olives were turned into a fantastic 62 litres of oil, (pressing fee €49-)

I had a wonderful afternoon and now understand most of the mystery of the whole process.

I can't imagine what they must of thought of me last year turning up with a few kilo's in my hessian shopping bags. Bless! (I'm a learner).

Having dunked some fresh bread into my lovely warm oil at 6pm, I can tell you it tastes bloody gorgeous.  Jobs a gooden. Bring on 2012!

:)

To the Lagar.. (Mill)

 

Thankfully the Monsoon season decided to pause momentarily for us here in Central Portugal, the sun shone allowing us to finish picking the olives (in vests)!  They were sorted in Othelia's machine, weighed and we were well chuffed that we had 380 kilo's - (bit of an improvement on last years 43).

We were hoping for 300 as we wanted our own oil, not the communal Lagar oil that you get if you weigh in less.

Our friends, Viv and Brian learnt quite a lot helping their neighbour Othelia pick her olives and have helped me to prune the tree's quite hard with a bit more confidence. Some of them were pretty neglected. One poor tree was buried under about 15ft of brambles and is now breathing for the first time in some years. The general idea with the pruning is to remove the middle branches to open the tree up, will be a heck of a lot easier to pick them next year now.

The right tools really do make a difference. This year we invested in an 8 meter olive net which surrounds the base of the tree... (clear ground needed). We used plastic hand held rakes which make the picking a lot easier (and quicker), especially when you bung them onto telescopic poles...

Unless you are about 15 ft tall with arms that would make Mr Tickle feel inadequate you will also need a decent ladder.

Watching the locals mind you, the method is to use your hands to 'milk' the olives from the branches or whack the tree's with sticks to beat the olives onto the net below. Its pretty theraputic to use your hands, but the stick method didn't really work for me.

One of the best (and most obvious) bits of advice we got was to always start at the top of the tree and work down... common sense I guess as you knock the majority of the lower ones down in the process.

The aim seems to be to aim for a 3 black-1 green ratio for a decent oil. The green olives add a peppery quality to the oil whilst the ripe black olives yield more oil.

The olives need separating from the leaves as soon as possible as the leaves make them get hot and and they will deteriorate quickly. After sorting we put them into plastic sacks, with NO holes and pushed every bit of air out before tying them and leaving them in a cool dark place.

 Unlike last year when we popped up to the Lagar (Mill) with our olives, found nobody there and eventually found the guy we needed in the coffee shop opposite, this year was a little different.

 I popped in a week ago and was given an appointment for 1st December... AARggh.

After much umming and ahhing I decided to pop in again and speak to the fella and beg a little today. Man it was busy in there, it is so humid and the smell of olives is unreal. You have to be seriously careful in there too as the floor is coated in a film of oil. One slip and I reckon you could do some impressive stunts and make a right arse of yourself...

Anyhow, not sure whether it was my piteous grasp of the language that did it, my "perleease sir I only have a little bit of olives, not like those lorry loads outside"... or Sienna's cute little face, but lovely Jorge at the Lagar de Azeite do Silveirinho, gave us an appointment for this Saturday....  *whoop*

Last year it worked out at 8.6 kilo's (a total of approx 11,855) of olives per litre of oil. Lets see what we get this year.

Lots of (English) people think its a bit bonkers picking your olives when it is far easier to buy oil at the supermarket and avoid the hassle. Different strokes for different folks I reckon.

Personally I love it. 

As long as I have good company and the sun is shining at any rate. I have enjoyed getting to know friends better, being outside in this beautiful place, sharing food and drinks and stopping work as the sun sets, looking over the mountain view and pink/orange/lilac skies behind. I just feel lucky that I have the time to stop and experience the magic of this ancient tradition. Take a look (above) at my favourite olive tree in the garden with 'pointy mountain' behind. Just magic. 

Fingers crossed now that my oil doesn't taste like crap.

And then the rain came.

Well so far October has been one of those up and down kind of months here.

At the start of the month I had a couple of days of feeling uneasy and then Archie my lovely old rescue donkey buddie got sick. It was awful. His body gave up on him on a hot, beautiful day and I was completely distraught and devastated in a way I never thought possible.

I have tried to keep reminding myself that he died being loved, but that old boy really pulled on my heartstrings and I really miss him.

Since then we have managed a hospital trip, a solar panel disaster and a sick car, (none of the aforementioned are quite fixed), amongst various other dilemma's, so all in all it went a little tits up as they say.
 Hey Ho.

But there are always positive's. We have had glorious weather well in the 30's, with some of the most beautiful skylines I have ever seen. My neighbours here in the village have proven to be wonderful - all of them. I was overwhelmed by how kind and helpful they all were. I have no idea how I would have coped without any of them the day Archie got sick and the days after and I have got to know many of them just a little bit better.

We have spent several days with our friends Viv and Brian from Travanca picking our olives too which I have loved. Picking olives is not really a financially sound way to spend your time.It is a lot of work which results in very little material reward. It is however a bloody lovely way to spend the afternoon; in a warm and beautiful place with a blue sky and good company - I have enjoyed every minute. A highlight for me last weekend was going to see Viv & B's friend Othelia to get our olives sorted in her machine....(I know, I need to get out more), but it certainly beats sorting them by hand, what a wonderful, simple bit of kit. 175 kilo's sorted in minutes.  (Thank you Othelia). x

So having had 4 days of well needed rain here, I am hoping that whoever is in charge can switch it off for me tomorrow so I can get outside and finish the other half of my tree's and get to the mill to press them.. ! I cannot wait to taste out new oil and the crop has been so much better this year...

Gravel sickness.

Having spent the entire summer looking out the window at a pile of rubble and weeds we have finally begun to carve a bit of sanity into our outside space.... with a little help from our lovely neighbour Bernard and his JCB and a 10 ton delivery of gravel.....

It was a bit of a challenge (on both parts) to explain exactly what we wanted to the guy on the JCB, but we found that once I gave up trying to communicate in Portuguese (poor bloke)...and relied on a bit of improvised sign language it was pretty much plain sailing!

With the exception of an unearthed soakaway pipe, it was a breeze...

Having shifted about 8.5 tons, in a wheelbarrow (yes seriously) I am feeling a bit 'gravel sick' : S

But its a good start and the summer is not over yet.... ! 

Falgoroso do Maio

We spent the best part of the day at Falgoroso do Maio on Sunday... Sienna and I relaxed, paddled and read, whilst the boys did a bit of fishing.... Really pretty little place and very quiet. Just 10 minutes away from us.

 A couple of fella's arrived just after us, launched their boat and disappeared and one other family arrived in the late afternoon, so it was very peaceful. It was hot too.. in the mid 30's.

The fish count was zero, a Montpellier snake was the only catch of the day! (put me right off swimming)...