Busy Bees

Lighting the Match

The real meaning of climate change is that Mother Nature is ready to rid the world of carbon burning humans and we must defend ourselves with smart weapons, harmless tools. This means amongst other things embracing genetically modified foods and even nuclear power.

With seven billion people on this world, are we are now the monoculture? Growing one mass crop in the same place eventually fails - take the Irish potato famine or increasingly virelent orange tree diseases as examples. Imagine this if it crosses over to our increasing cattle class population. Like the dieing palm trees in the Algarve, will humans have to walk around with a permanent anti biotic drip attached to our arms?

But heck, cheer up. As usual Stuart has the solution. Breath deeply, walk lightly, speak kindly and love deeply, oh yes and build a green house.



Last week a shade area, this week the front bows of Noah's Ark


Filled with tomatoes, onions, lettuce, beetroot, nabo, we are ready for our journey through winter and the worst economic depression this century.


Another part of our Ark. Two new compost loos, more rainfall catchment and a look out point for the western boundaries. Thanks to Joe and Nattai for lots of hard work.



JNs new garden and shade area. A carbon neutral landscape

And lighting the match? Fusion power, generating power by fusing atoms together, rather than splitting them, would be totally green, cheap and infinite, if it worked. America is ready to test the first model. This is called laser confinement fusion. If they get ignition by firing a laser at a fuel pellet, then the surface of the pellet will be blown off sending a shockwave inwards that will fuse its atoms and emit a pulse of energy.
We may be a monoculture, but a darm smart one.

Winter arrives

Finally we have to escape from the tipi as the nights sink to 15 degrees. Warm days and windy nights, shorter days and spicier food, firewood to stack and thick hearty soups and stews to make........ agghhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!! Roll on summer but roll off heat, sleepless nights and moon bathing.



Preparing for the annual burning of the tipi



Wild guns. Two new helpers, Joe and Nattai are racing ahead with the new two compost heap three solar shower bird gallery





Not a quick job, but the back wall we will use as a competition zone

Big News From Little City

Big Hearts, great food and ten days of permaculture learning at Varzea de Goncales

Thanks thanks thanks to Kris, Chris, Brendon and Gaynor as patient hosts and Lesley Martin who taught the 72 hour Permaculture Design Course there.
Owl returned refreshed, informed and bouncing on the spot. It really is a fantastic location, a couple of kilometres east of Aljezur. Anyone is welcome to visit - this week they have 26 school kids using the top cottage to study as the local school is being repainted (sadly with toxic paint.. which can take up to 5 years to become neutral!!)



Chris and daughter Megan, a humble man with passion for life!




Raised swale beds awash with vegetables









The Usual suspects. As the course went on, the students bonded and dyed all their clothes the same colour (or maybe my camera batteries....)

They have an amazing array of workshop weekends - please visit their website at icanfeedmyself.com for their diary. Good honest simple people, I am jealous!!

Whistling at wasps

A Summer Sauna

High temperatures and high humidity, in other words a typical August. Dragging my heels, head down, teeth clenched... and that's just walking to the fridge to get a beer. A pigeon hurls two feet over my head propelled with lead... bloody hunters. Two flocks of pigeons continue to fly round and round in circles. Sport no, cowardless pig headed slaughter yes.




The tipi is the coolest room at night...... get one!!



Work in progress. This is going to be three solar showers and three compost loos


The Cheeky Chapati Cafe, finished!!



New extended dining area in front of the C.C. Cafe



Kitchen started in the C.C.C. All the marble was found in various gardens!

Owl is heading off next week to do a Permaculture Design Course at the fabulous retreat of Chris and Kris near Aljuzer (see www.icanfeedmyself.com) The ten day course is being led by Lesley Martin (Hi Lesley, promise to share a Medronho with you) and starts on the 10th September. There are still two spare places for anyone to grab?

Ah yes! Latest tip, whistling gets rid of wasps (sometimes..)

Can fish smile?

17kgs of pumpkin. There is a reason for my nakedness. Nice prize for anyone who can guess!!

Finally home from a 7100 km Odyssey.


Funny sometimes that it takes sitting on the motorway for a few days until your mind can wonder to the more important things in life.
Rolling through Southern Spain, you can not avoid looking at the rubbish on both sides of the road. Bottles, bags, plastic, paper.. they really must assume it all comes free and disappears the same way. Dirty dirty buggers. Slovenia, Switzerland, Austria, germany - not a grain of litter. Italy a little, France a little, then hit Spain; you may as well save a years worth then release it bit by bit every 50 metres , especially when you are 20 feet from the beach.
In "Five Acres and Independence" (M G Cains, published by Dover), published in 1940 comments " The average smallholder has no need of a rubbish bin since he produces no waste."
Crumbs. Guilty as charged. So what do I do?

1. Food waste.

Any waste, which is little (ever read about the English that throw away 30% of their food?? Hang 'em!!) Anything we do not eat goes for tomorrows lunch, chickens or compost. Zero waste

2. Paper waste.

All our waste paper goes into the bread oven, but unless we cook bread a little more regularly, it really just goes up in smoke and leaves a big pile of ash... could do better. Ironically, any plastic that burns without a coloured gas is safe to burn as well, Owl's brother Hugh told me which ones were which but I had a little drink about a while ago and need to re check which is whicch.. watch this space!

3. Glass waste.

Up to now, we have managed to fill and smash our (sometime to be finished) BBQ / Bread oven / Rocket stove station. We have to do another glass smash then it is full. Then I intend to collect the bottles to make a Moroccan sauna (Hamman) but it is a worry, a perpetual stream of non returnable bottles - any ideas anyone? I can take used wine bottles and buy dodgy red draught wine, Holly makes lemonade but every beer, decent white wine etc creates a stockpile of glass..

4. Plastic waste.

Now we have installed a three stage water filter (Leroy Merlin) we refill any plastic water bottles and more importantly don't buy any new ones. But every bin within 100 miles of here is overflowing with plastic bags and bottles. Recycling is ok but we need to stop the initial phase of packing and bottling. I can buy all my vegetables at Sao Bras market on a saturday morning without a trace of plastic but followed by a trip to Lidl, the car is awash with oil based products.

I will improve, I will reduce my footprint. Buy loose beans and soak them rather than the endless tins. Do not wash tins or plastic for recycling.. water is our prime source, save it. Look at every product you buy and imagine how you can replace it when there is no oil, no transport, no packaging. All I have to do now is figure out how to repay 7000kms of carbon emissions from our recent travels.
About time I got back to work,

Stu and Owl xx

the Oldest Inbetweener

Somewhere in Southern Spain


Sunrise on the East coast of Spain

I don't know if any of my readers have ever watched "The Inbetweeners" - a sitcom consisting of cringingly embarrassing 15year old school boys trying to get a girlfriend.One of them wears a tie and specs and spectacularly can't stop putting his foot in it whilst chatting up girls. That's me, except it never ended at 15 and is continuing into my 50s... A complete inabiltiy to link brain to mouth at those vital morning.
One of those moments was this morning. A police woman was trying to explain that we - could - not - park - or - camp on the beach, even though i had passed out under the stars the previous night after a typical Spanish dinner of Biryani and Beer.
"I love you" I mouthed. "Move sherbert brains" she answered. I took this as a come on and tried to kiss her just as she tazered me with my own Sunday Times.
I moved on, what is 500 metre compared to the 6100 kms we have driven so far this holiday. we have so far driven to Spain, France,Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Switzerland, France and we are now back in Spain, in Mojocar just above Almeria. Old Smokey, the camper is going well, not using water but still smoking in the morning especially over angry but attractive Angie Dickinsons..
Lots of countries in lots of days, here's the view from the top;;

1. Slovenia

Beautiful, clean, scenic, cheap -and that's just the women!! Well worth a visit

2. Spain

Good old Spain, you drive 6000kms just to discover its tanned topless beauty with great beer

3. France

Great scenery, spent more on tolls than diesel (or women). Expensive but so picturesque.



Hire boat proved too weak to handle The Merelie Family Summer Tour

4. Austria

Great drivers, tall ugly athletic women. Innsbruk was fantastic. Whole place is full of tunnels. No tolls!!!

5. Switzerland

Now officially renamed rip-off-aland. Don't visit ever ever ever. Pretty though

6. Italy

See above but 20% cheaper. Lake Garda and Sirmione were nice

And there you go, saved you 6000km. Slovenia was so nice so I will return and take in Hungry and Croatia at the same time
We are back in a few days
Only one boat was destroyed in the making of this blog
All references to women except for Angie Dickinson are fictional

Sausage of the week

Thanks to all of you who turned up to the open sexuality afternoon last week. a good time was had by all and by the end of the day some of us were walking around like John Wayne. Okay okay only kidding, this isn't some German eco village north of here, but it got your attention.

When I was 30, I bought brogues, scatter cushions and knew the sizes of all our beds so I could shop with confidence at Ikea. At 40 I bought a Mercedes convertable and knew the lingerie sizes of 4 beautiful ladies. By the time I reached 50, I lost half my wealth to the DVD Club (Divorced, vicious and dangerous), the other half to a lacklustre stockmarket and gave my suits to Oxfam.

But I digress (too much). The Owl House shade and kitchen is now finished and that completes a good year of progress at Quinta Stuart.




leiberwurst
Finished are :-

Theatre of Dreams with seven hammocks and outside movie screen
Cheeky Chapati Cafe, three season lounge with chillout zone
Villa Ganeesha, our first Goan style coco hut
Owl House, shade and outside kitchen and course area

To finish:-

Cladding of bread oven, rocket stove and BBQ
Full kitchen in Cheeky Chapati Cafe
New triple compost loo and solar shower block

To follow:-

Villa Sheeva, six person coco hut
Villa Gemini, twin two bed coco huts with a centre lounge

We have 4 volunteers coming for September / October so hopefully we can comlete one or two more projects before the rain starts. For us, we are off to Slovenia with Old Smokey, the camper..... only 3100 kms each way!!