There is not a lot to say this month, I think I have said before the main project is now all but finished and we are in to general remarks about general things about running any house, which let’s be honest can get a bit boring, so I think I am going to change the format of the blog a little going forward from now to make it more relevant.

So instead of doing monthly updates I am going to blog on “mini projects” for example, one project will be “The Farm” another “The House & Garden” or “The Old Hut” then I will just blog against each as things change, I will add equivalent categories to make accessing easier, so expect a number of blogs to appear in the coming days, each introducing a new subject.

Updates will be more irregular depending on if anything has happened, good or not so good, we don’t like bad! So keep checking in or watch for the alerts if you have subscribed or notifications on Social Media.

Disaster Strikes

Well that may be a little over dramatic but it got your attention.

The start of May proved to be the wettest period recorded since records began for Portugal. The persistent heavy rain at the start of the month put everything under pressure. We also had the additional problem that we had a lot of land clearance work completed over the last 4 – 6 weeks, clearing the land and the streams, which you would have thought would have helped with the amount of rainfall, but it caused problems because of the amount of free flowing rubbish ( off cuts from the clearing ). Had the land had time to recover we are sure most of this would have been held / helped by the vegetation.

We had a bridge, well concrete pipes put in the ground to take the flow of the stream, we needed to do something to allow a tractor etc to gain access to lower section of the land. The problem was the pipes that were fitted were not really big enough to take the flow. They would probably have be fine for the general average rainfall, but anything abnormal they would struggle and with the excess water this month and the rubbish coming down , blocking part of the tube caused the water to back up and overflow its banks.

The net result was it washed across our land and ended up washing a fair amount of the soil and sand from our land on to our neighbour’s farm. Whilst he was very understanding of the abnormal conditions, we had to agree that the work we had done had caused problems on his land, which of course we agreed to help him recover from.

The men that had done the work on our land were also being very fair about the fact that they felt the under sizing of the pipe and clearing had contributed to the problem. So we agreed that we would fund the materials and they would provide the labour at their cost to correct the problem, making repairs to the land where a huge hole had appeared, repair to the bank near the neighbour and double the size of the pipe in the ground.

However as we approached the end of the month the work had still not been done, I guess in some ways it is understandable, that they didn’t want to progress whilst the land was still sodden after the rain and of course it is the cherry season and therefore most of the men will be out harvesting the 2016 crop, it was still however disappointing from our perspective.

To make it worse, the heavy rains and now the lovely sunshine had made the grass/clover around the house go into growth overdrive! If it grows much more without having a cut they we may have a problem finding the house, lol. In any case the Swimming pool is disappearing in the long grass. We had asked the same team that was doing the work above to cut the grass as well, which they had agreed to, but……the cherries!

The rain devastated the whole region and the cherry crops, production was down on the previous years by around 80%, yes thats right 80% so you can imagine what it has done to the industry and the price. Lets just hope that next year recovers.

Despite the very changeable weather this month we have managed to progress work on the farm and garden areas.

The beginning of the month was really quite wet so it was difficult for the workmen to get on site and get any real work done, but towards the end of the month the weather improved enough that work could progress.

The irrigation has been laid into the vines and the fruit trees, despite pressure from the guy that was doing the work for us to rip out the old vines and plant new ones on the cleared land.

We wanted to maintain a status quo for the time being, once we are there more we can progress a bigger “plantation” for now we just want to “play”.

You can see by the photo why he was looking to do this, it’s a large flat area idea for a small vineyard.

May be in a couple of years eh!

Remembering of course that we brought the extra piece of land that he has now cleared just to make sure no one else could build anything there, domestic or agricultural. We were originally just going to leave it as it was, completely over gown but the guy doing the work couldn’t stand it so had to clear it.

I feel that in the next few years it may get overgrown again, but at least it has been landscaped a bit now.

The other job that we have managed to get done was the re-laying of granite cubes just in front of the garage, which had to be redone just because the land had settled on the outside of the building causing a small dip.

The main re-laying was the area where the gates open due to the slop of the drive this had to change to allow the gates to operate properly.

This looks so much better now, it was originally ok, but when the gates were installed the camber of the drive did not allow for the gates to open, so the granite blocks were hastily adjusted just to allow the gates to work and it did make a bit of a mess that has now all been put right.

So, on these two jobs there is just a bit of snagging to complete and then it’s set to go.

It was a wet start to the month so the work on the agricultural element of the project was delayed yet again. However, around the middle of the month the weather improved enough that the work could really get under way. We were aiming to visit at Easter which was towards the end of the month, so there was a good chance of some real progress. The one thing we have seen with the agricultural team retained to do this work, was that whilst they seemed typical of Portuguese tradesman to get them on site, they were always very keen to impress, so knowing we were on our way, did give seem to give them some real energy to get on.

There was a couple of other jobs that seemed to progress well during March one was the tiling between the cupboards and the counter tops in the Kitchen, and the other was the painting of the pool/plant room, the team that came to do the tiling was able to do the painting as well whilst they were on site. In both cases they did an excellent job, both jobs were in our opinion finished to a really good standard.

We arrived at the house on Easter Saturday and on the Sunday were able to inspect all the work; the work on the land was well underway and progressing well. As expected the team doing the work had been a little over zealous in places, but we had expected that after hearing about them from a previous client of theirs. As you can tell it didn’t put us off, we were told they do an excellent job, but can do a little more than you anticipate. The trenches were in place for the main irrigation pipe runs, and ramps between the tiers on the land were roughly in place.

Unfortunately, we received some sad news from the UK on the Monday so had to return to our home in England.

We did however manage to meet with Paulo our Project Manager and the guy from the agricultural firm doing the work on the land to have a quick review of the work before we left, just because the meeting had been previously arranged.

Subsequent to returning to the UK, we have had further updates and the irrigation system and land clearing is progressing well. We are sure that now the work in underway, it will get completed as long as the weather holds out, which on the day of writing we hear it is a tad wet.

So February has seen the gates all installed, although we are going to have to get the paver back at some point to adjust and tidy up the granite blocks on the drive as the locksmith had to lower some of the to allow for the main gates to open.

The main car gates are in operation, automatic openers installed as well of course. The pedestrian entrance gate in place as well.

The locksmith has also installed a door to the plant room as well, where all the swimming pool filtration and the power for the water from the borehole etc. is, so that should make that a lot more secure. Just need to get the electrician back now to install some light in there so we can see!

We also got the locksmith to realign the green gates at the other end of the road, to follow more in line with the dirt track and have a small return, looks so much better now.

Whilst we are still waiting for the weather to improve enough to get the agricultural man in to complete the track down to the farm, build the bridge over the stream and install the watering system to the fruit trees, we do have the irrigation in place for the plants and grass around the house, here is a photo for the controls, will be interesting to see it all in operation in the spring and summer.

We are very nearly at the end of bulk of what we wanted to do so I think its time to stop the monthly updates on construction, although we will keep the blog going, I am sure there will be lots more interesting and informative things happening in coming months, so the blogs will be become a bit more irregular as we start to really enjoy the results of efforts.