Summer this year has been a ‘slow starter.’ The temperatures remained unseasonably low and the rains continued later into the summer than usual, but inevitably the heat arrived, and with it the threat of fires. For most of the year living in Portugal is like living in Paradise, but for a few long months it’s like living in hell.
The sun in these summer months is fierce and destructive. Plastic bags, buckets, clothes on the line - anything left in full sunlight for any amount of time soon becomes brittle and disintegrates.
Once it gets over 30C, Dimitri can’t stay out past midday, so horse chores and any garden work are done early, then the afternoon is spent inside the tiny house playing, eating, snoozing and hiding from the heat until about 6pm when it’s cool enough to go back outside again and begin watering plants, put the horses to bed, and walk the dogs. This new daily rhythm is quite limiting so only the basics get done. Animals are fed and exercised, plants are watered, seeds are sown in pots and trays for autumn and winter crops and things are harvested but beyond that little gets done. Weeds are left to grow unchecked, and it’s too hot to clear or prep any new beds. It’s also too hot to transplant anything. We’re on hold now until autumn when it all cools down again.
In July my family come to visit: my mum, my sister, her husband and their two daughters. They all cram into my little village house and days are spent hunting for frogs in the various ponds around the farm, entertaining Dimitri while I harvest linseed and the first crop of chickpeas, and swimming at the local pool or in one of the reservoirs up in the mountains. Dimitri loves having so many people around to play with.
Fire
For a long time there are no fires nearby and I’m lulled into a false sense of security, but one day, in the space of 24 hours, six start up within a ten kilometre radius. It’s easy to see why people think they’re started deliberately, although the theories as to why and by whom vary widely depending who you speak to. Unscrupulous mining companies wanting to buy land cheap, the cellulose industry after cheap material, solar energy companies cleaning land ahead of building large solar farms, the fireman wanting to create more paid work, the Spanish fire plane companies who make tens of thousands of euros every time a fire plane takes off, or just plain arsonists after a thrill, and occasionally by accident: a cigarette but thrown from a car window, metal farm machinery coming into contact with a stone and creating a spark, a muck heap overheating etc.
The air is filled with smoke, ash falls from the sky, and fire planes and helicopters drone overhead on their way to and from the local reservoirs. I don’t like this time of year. There’s an underlying tension amongst the neighbours. Everyone is on high alert, keeping a watchful eye on the horizon for smoke plumes, cars are parked facing out, and there’s a bag packed with the essentials by the door in case of a speedy evacuation. But luckily this time it’s ok, the fire is extinguished and calm settles once more.
The Equines
Once the last of my hay is cut, baled, stacked, and covered the horses go off to a neighbour’s to graze on his lameira. A lameira is a water-meadow which is boggy or even underwater for the winter and spring, but in the summer when the water levels drop and everything else is yellow and dry, the lameiras remain green and full of lush grass.
Last year I cut and baled this field but this year the wild boar have been in, digging huge, deep ruts across it so that half the field is inaccessible to a tractor so I decide the best way to use the grass is to let the horses eat it in situ. They spend a happy month belly deep in green grass and I strip graze it, moving their electric fence a couple of metres at a time to ration out the pickings. It takes them a month to eat the best of the grass and I decide to quit while we’re ahead and bring them home before they take matters into their own hands and escape, which is what happened last year. I arrange a day with my friend when she can have Dimitri but on the morning of the agreed day, she messages to say she thinks she has COVID and doesn’t want to risk passing it on. I decide to delay the move by a day or two; there are plenty of pickings to keep the horses happy, I reason. I go over to check them anyway and just as I’m about to leave, spot them pushing their way through the thicket of bracken and brambles on the edge of the lameira and disappear into the overgrown bit of land next door. I leave Dimitri with my friends and bring the horses home.
The Garden
In the garden the little trickle of fresh produce becomes a steady stream. There are courgettes, beans, potatoes, cucumbers, onions and tomatoes which I use in just about every way I can think of for every meal. From August until about November I don’t tend to buy any fruit or vegetables.
I harvest an enormous quantity of tremoços which need to be cooked and then soaked in water for 7-10 days to remove the toxic alkaloids that would otherwise make them inedible. After this process of soaking, which involves changing the water every day, I put them in brine and seal them in sterilised jars to use throughout the year. I end up with 36 jars. This is far more tremoços than I’ve eaten in the past five years since arriving in Portugal put together. Luckily I’ve discovered a delicious recipe for a vegan cheese alternative using these wonderful, protein-packed beans, which looks like it will feature quite heavily in my daily meals for the foreseeable future.
Now is also the time to begin thinking about the winter garden. I sow cabbages, cauliflowers, broccoli, onions, and brussel sprouts to plant out later in the season when the heat abates.
Foraging
Out in the hedgerows the blackberries are ripening. The late rains and cooler-than-average weather mean that this year the fruit is juicy and abundant. I make it a mission to always carry a few containers with me when I walk the dogs and soon have a large stash of blackberries in the freezer to use throughout the winter. I have a complicated relationship with brambles. For much of the year, I spend a lot of time cursing them for trying to take over the land, the garden, and the terrace walls. I cut them back time and again only for them to grow back more vigorously than before. I pull them out by the roots wherever I can and then spend days pulling the tiny, but incredibly painful thorns out of my hands and any other parts of my body that have come into contact with them. Most of the time I’d be happy if I never saw another bramble again in my life. But once a year from about mid July until mid September, they produce an incredible abundance of delicious juicy fruit, packed with vitamins and minerals and all is forgiven. I love blackberries and so does Dimitri. He learned back in cherry season that some trees give fruit and whenever we pass underneath a tree that takes his fancy, he’ll reach his arms hopefully up towards the canopy and say ‘nana’ (by which he means ‘banana’, a word he applies to all food at the moment.) He’s now delighted to find that along with many trees, lots of vines and shrubs provide ready snacks when we’re out and about, too, so he frequently gets to gorge on blackberries, returning home with his mouth and fingers stained purple with the sweet, sticky juice.
Apples are starting to fall now, too, and on all the terrace walls that line my daily dog walk the figs and plums are beginning to ripen. This harvest is free for the taking from apples that drop onto the paths until the local shepherd runs his flock through to clean up the windfalls, to laden fig trees on abandoned pieces of land whose owners either no longer live here, or simply have more fruit than they can cope with in other places. I fill bags and baskets and dry the fruit or cook and puree it to store in the freezer. This time of year is all about squirrelling food away for the coming months.
Bees
Last March, I was working on the tiny house, trying to get it finished before Dimitri’s arrival in June. I was plastering the ceiling in preparation for painting it, listening to a podcast when I suddenly became aware of an immense humming from outside. At first I thought it must be a gigantic wasp or hornet, but as it grew louder and louder I realised it was a swarm of bees! I clambered down off the platform and went out to see a cloud of bees going over the tiny house and landing on a dead pine branch next to the drive, forming a dense cluster. As I cautiously approached, the baby in my belly began kicking furiously. I know nothing about bees but some of my neighbours up the valley do, so I rang round and eventually Nuno, one of my Portuguese neighbours, told me to go to his farm, get a hive with some frames, and explained how to catch the swarm and get them into the hive. I did as I was instructed and soon had the bees in a hive which I positioned near the boundary wall under the spreading branches of an oak tree. Later on that week the same neighbour came by to have a look. He said I’d put the hive in a bad place; it should be in full sunlight with the entrance facing south, but, he said, I couldn’t move the hive now because it would confuse the bees. The only way to reposition the hive was to take it a minimum of 4 kilometres away, wait for 6 weeks and then bring it back and put it in a better place. Not knowing the first thing about bees, I went along with it and let him take the swarm to his farm. One thing after another happened and my neighbour never brought the bees back. By the end of the summer he told me he’d lost all his bees to Asian hornets and that was that. I was mortified. These beautiful creatures had come to the farm, come to me, had happily settled into their new home. Wrong position or not, they’d seemed very content, and because I’d deferred to Nuno’s experience and superior knowledge, I’d lost them.
Then, almost 15 months later, Nuno messaged me to say several swarms had moved into his hives, would I like one. I leapt at the chance. Having bees on the land would be amazing. I’m not even that interested in the honey or the wax, although I’d happily have a little of each if it didn’t disrupt the bees too much. But having a swarm of pollinating insects near the garden would be wonderful for all my fruiting plants!
I headed over, picked up the swarm in a transport box, brought it back to the farm and placed it at the end of the lower terrace. Once again I put it under an oak tree because I refuse to believe that any creatures are happy in full sunlight when the temperatures are up in the high thirties or low forties The spot should be sheltered from the winds in the winter and when the oak loses its leaves, the bees will have the benefit of the full winter sun. It feels amazing to have bees back on the land. They seem happy where they are, and they’re a lovely calm swarm who don’t seem at all bothered by my presence around the hive.