better shape up.

Busy week with a lot of guests have made us neglecting our blog horrendously. We will try to become better and write more frequently but we can´t promise since we´re going into the busy season for us.

We have had, as mentioned, many guests, and they have mainly arrived through airbnb. From the beginning we didn´t have many hopes that we would get many guests through them but they keep coming and we are thankful for that.

Spraying the palm tree to protect it from the red palm weavel

Adilson cutting the insulation for the roof

My job among others

This time of year we have also begun to spray our vines to protect them from mold. We do it once a fortnight and it takes Lars and our helper Adilson a whole day to do it. One is driving the tractor and one is managing the hose and spray.

Today Lars and Adilson are working in the vineyard with straightening the wires, repairing and replacing ols poles.

Lars in action

Adilson is helping us out 1-2 days a week and he is extremely allround. He is an excellent mechanic but is very good at plastering as well. We will probably need his help for a long time since we´re doing all kinds of improvements on the quinta.

Natalia is our cleaning lady and she is here 2 days/week during the season. She cleans our guest accomodations and does some ironing.

When the two of them are here lunch is included so that is one of the things I am doing. I plan, shop and cook. I wash about 20 machines of laundry/week (when we´re fully booked) and I answer mail and requests. I also take care of the dogs and chickens, bake a lot and clean our home once in a while when there is too much sand from the dogs inside. Some gardening, limoncello and jam making are also on my work list.

someone has to take care of Senhor Lars

At this very moment only one of our apartments are occupied and that is probably why I have some time to write today. But on Sunday a friend is arriving with her sister and they are staying a week.

All our fruit trees are coming along nicely. There are baby fruit wherever you look.

plums

quince

pears

olives

apricots

nectarins

figs

The garden is also thriving and we have got roses everywhere.

roses thar smell wonderful

many passion flowers

Now I have to prepare lunch for the workers.

Have a wonderful day because we do.

Ase

Issue to be a farmer..

Hi

Today is it the old one that writing the blog

As you know we  have chickens and a rooster called Sr Lars. He is named after me and I don´t understand why but that´s a different story.

To have chicken has been a dream for us and the chickens are lovely animals.They have become more and more like pets for us but it´s not as simple to have chickens as you might think. After almost a year having chichen there have been a lot of different things happening that you normaly don´t have to handle.

First we bought six chickens, no problem at all we thought. After a couple of weeks we learned that there are two types of chickens, the one that lay eggs and the other one that are bred for eating.

Frango-eating chicken

This two types are completely different and the type for eating can´t have eggs without having problems, they suffer a lot. The first cycle of eggs is fine but eventually when the eggs get bigger one of them gets stuck in their bum and they die a painful death.

Of course we had a couple of chickens that are supposed to be fried chicken. Our friend Peter that normaly helps us said to us that we had to kill two of our chickens because they were going to have problems with the egg production.

Peter wanted to show me to kill the chickens because as a chicken owner and a farmer you need to know these things, But I don´t want to kill my animals!!!. Peter is a good friend and he understood that I didn´t want to kill them so he said to us that he could take care of it and he did. He asked us if we would like to have the chickens to eat or if we would like to have two new ones, We chose to have two new ones, and all of a sudden we had Sr Lars and Snow white, they are both very pretty and have a white feathers.

After a couple of good weeks there was a loose dog in our garden and he bit one of the chickens so we were a little bit worried but we solved the situation and she survived.

Now everything is going smoothly and we asked Peter if we could have three more chickens. He delivered three very pretty chickens after a while but it turned out to be three roosters so we had a big problem because they tried to mate with our hens.

The girls are mine

Sr Lars was not pleased with the situation so Peter came again and took the three small roosters away and gave us two new ones. After a week he gave us the young Sr Lars jr in a bag if you know what I´m talking about and It will be our dinner tonight.

Here he is-Junior

So to summerize this story. It is not so simple to have chickens as you might think

Have a nice evening
The real Sr Lars