“The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.”
– Jessica Hische
I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions, yet, at the beginning of every year I do tend to spend some time thinking of various things I would like to either learn, do, or accomplish. I tend to keep it short – maybe two or three things, as I know just too well how life or procrastination can get in the way of lofty ambitions and ideals. This year, I’ve simply transferred last year’s goals of dusting off the novel I started working on years ago, and learning how to use features of Affinity Photo I have not yet mastered, despite the fact that I suspect these two items will make it on my list for the next couple of years, as I struggle to spend any time in front of the computer, despite various ideas for stories and blog posts swirling around in my head, while I am engaged in my favourite activity – physical labour outside. Be it strimming, pruning, gardening, compost making, or simply walking on the land with a hoe in my hand. It is when I am engaged in any of these activities that I feel most alive, and the times I do spend in front of the computer usually coincide with unfavourable weather. Even then, I tend to turn to cooking, another love of mine, before I even flip open my computer.
Something else I’ve cautiously added to my list this year, is ‘travel’. I am still (after two long years) waiting for my residence visa, but, like the fool and dreamer I am, I keep thinking it would be any day now. My travel dreams are nothing exotic, I may add. It would simply be a trip or two (could I be this optimistic?) to the UAE to spend time with Michael and revive my UAE residence visa, as well as a trip to South Africa for my dad’s 90th birthday celebrations in July and to see my family. Apart from that, I have managed to, through a friend, find a quinta sitter, and will squeeze in a road trip to the Algarve sometime soon. Something I am very much looking forward to, as the longest I’ve been away during the last, almost three years, have been three nights. I love my life on the quinta, but a break from the rhythms and demands of daily life is always good for one’s mental and emotional wellbeing.
With Michael here over Christmas and New Year, the year, at least, started with a relaxed pace, as we decided to balance time to relax with paying attention to small, fiddly, but aesthetic jobs inside the house, which we’ve ignored in favour of bigger ones up to now. An electrician friend came to split the bathroom fan and light to work off two separate switches, which still brings joy to my heart every time I switch on the light without the fan whirring into action. With that job done Michael could finally insulate the bathroom ceiling with rock wool. A job he, for obvious itchy reasons, have avoided for a long, long time.
Michael also replaced the skirting board I took off the first winter I moved here in order to deal with a damp problem against one of the walls. Now, two winters later, and after we installed gutters on the house, the problem seems to be fixed, so there was no reason for not putting it back.
Another job was to finish a tricky corner in the kitchen by recutting some kitchen cupboard panels, and after finally finding wooden quarter rounds, he could also tidy up certain areas near the hatch leading into the small attic space above the bathroom ceiling, where the valves for the underfloor heating are located, leaving me with the job of painting them, which is still hanging around my to-do list.
The same electrician friend also kindly enough tiled the kitchen for me. Although it still needs to be grouted, I am happy with my choice of plain white tiles. I love my all-white interior, as it not only creates a sense of peace, but also a sense of space – something much needed in a tiny house.
We also met with someone in the area whose stonework looked really good on photos we’ve seen, and as we got a good vibe, we decided to take our chances to get a stone wall, which will also serve as a retaining wall built, clad another retaining wall Michael built a long time ago, clad the back and side of the water heater room, and point the barn.
They also opened up a gap in a dry-stone wall, where we will place a gate (which has been commissioned) to give us access to where we will build the agricultural building or workshop as we like to refer to it.
The amended plans for it have been sent to the municipality for approval, and the engineer of the company which will (hopefully) do the groundworks (and erect the building if their quote is reasonable), has been on the quinta to take a look at the slope of the land. Ironically, with two wide open areas elsewhere on the land where we could easily have built it, the only place we are allowed to legally build it, without the almost impossible quest to try to rezone the land, is next to the house in our olive grove.
This means that we need to move at least 7 olive trees. Luckily olive trees are hardy and fairly easy to move, but like our friend who will do that for us warned me, ‘your heart will break, because we will have to give them a hard pruning, so that all the energy can go into the roots’. She has a kind heart and a gentle way, which will ease the pain of moving these much-loved trees we have been caring for over the last five years.
The rain at least has eased, and has been replaced by sunny days, albeit with frosty mornings and strong winds, but working in the sun is a joy, even if it is cold. Except for those days when no amount of clothing can protect me from the icy wind. On those days I huddle inside, and force myself to catch up on all those tasks that force me to sit in front of my computer.
In preparation for work on the stone wall, I had to move a stack of firewood, and clean up the area, which has been a bit of a sore eye for a while, as we didn’t know where else to store it.
I have mostly kept myself busy with fun jobs, like creating a seating area under an olive tree next to the fruit hedge I’ve planted last spring. Tim has brought wood chips for my project, and I’ve been transplanting lavender to create a space where I hope to spend some happy hours during summer.
Tim has also brought me roughly 10m³ of horse manure, offloaded in two seperate areas, and which I am planning to use to build big, hot compost heaps in spring. To tidy up the area where I am currently making compost, I had to move and turn an almost ready heap, as it is right next to where they will be building the workshop.
In the garden I have transplanted lettuce seedlings, and have spent many hours weeding under careful supervision of Midnight & Lily. Although I have kale, coriander, parsley and mint I can eat fresh from the garden, the frost has killed off a geranium, and even the borage is struggling to survive. I’m looking forward to one day having a proper greenhouse in which we can have a more extended winter garden, but for now, I am at peace with the fact that there isn’t much to eat from it during the cold months.
The cats also love to keep me company when I am thinning out broom or pruning away dead rock roses. This means that I have finally done my first two burn of the season, not to make biochar, as I have more than I need from last winter, but just to deal with the piles of cuttings. I prefer to burn regularly, and in a designated fire pit within reach of water.
As if that is not enough to fill my days, we’ve had a visit from a neighbouring bull while Michael was still here, a visit from a guard dog from the industrial area who escaped and got lost, and had to embark on emergency road repairs when the truck delivering touvenant got stuck on our access road.
Early one morning, while I was lingering in bed, Michael told me that he was going to quickly fetch some logs he thinks oyster mushrooms were growing on which he spotted the previous afternoon on the opposite side of the stream. He was hardly gone, before he was back again informing me that he changed his mind, and if I wanted to know why, I had to put on a jacket and come have a look.
A big red bull was grazing exactly where he was planning on heading to. I had a good giggle, before sending our one neighbour a message to ask if he has the number for the caretaker of the farm next door. It is the only farm with cattle and the bull couldn´t belong to anyone else. As it turned out he didn´t have a number, but he suggested I contact the guy who grazes his sheep in the area, as he most probably had a number for them. I did, but as it was the day after New Year´s, not much was happening, and we went to bed with the bull looking as if he was settling in comfortably at the top end of our land.
When, the next morning, I asked Michael if it was his stomach I could hear grumbling and moaning, and he said no, we were a bit baffled, as we didn´t think the sounds could come from the cats. When we later heard a different set of noises I wasn´t familiar with, Michael decided to investigate. In the pre-dawn light, it was difficult for him to spot the bull where we last saw it, so he moved half-way into the access road that passes next to our house for a better look. Turns out, as he moved into the road to look to the left, a sound to his right startled him. He isn’t sure who got the biggest fright, him or the bull, who up to that point was peaceful grazing next to our bedroom wall, and was less than two metres away from him. It is one thing to spot a bull a hundred metres away, but quite another to face it this close.
We were both relieved when the shepherd arrived later in the morning on his tractor, and chased the bull back to where it belongs, after he called the caretaker to explain that one of their bulls were at the English people´s place.
Mid-month, on a Sunday morning, when the cats dashed back into the house, without me hearing the drone of a car engine, I felt nervous to go have a look, as I knew something wasn´t quite right. Something gave them a fright as they were clearly on edge. It wasn´t long before a German Shephard dog appeared. I am terrified of dogs, so this was not a welcome sight. I sent a message to my closest foreign neighbours to enquire if it was perhaps one of their dogs, but although it wasn´t the man came over to help. His love of dogs was noticeable as he enticed it with treats to get it to follow him back to their house, and luckily it did not take long before they found the owners in the industrial area a couple of kilometres away, where he is a guard dog and had gone missing a couple of days previously.
With all the rain we´ve had in December our little access road became a slippery mess, so Michael decided that it would be a good idea to order a couple of cubic metres of touvenant and get Tim to fix the worst parts to see me through winter.
When the first truck load arrived, I explained in my best Portuguese where he could drop it off, as someone will come to fix the road the next morning. The driver explained that what he could do was reverse down the road, open the back, and tip the back of the truck while driving forward, in the process offloading the touvenant exactly where it was needed. And so, we walked a short distance down the road to where we both agreed made sense to start. Before he could even reach that point, the truck sunk down to its back axle into what appeared to be a solid surface a mere moment before. Luckily I parked the car at the top of the land, as I had to meet him to show him the way to our land, so after a couple of phone calls, it was decided that, as it was late in the afternoon already that I would take him back to the office, and that he will come with a big machine the next morning to pull the truck out.
When the big machine arrived the next morning, they took it upon themselves to repair the road, so when Tim arrived, he was left with helping with practical suggestions and smaller jobs. The fairly straightforward job Michael and I envisioned in the end turned into what could have been an interesting episode of a reality TV show, including the driver dropping his phone, and inadvertently burying it. After a couple of phone calls with ringing tones emanating from somewhere underneath the touvenant, they sensibly gave up and got on with the job in a cheerful manner that made me, once again marvel at the kindness and generosity of the majority of the Portuguese we encounter.
As the weather has been dry since then, the road is holding up, and they managed to deliver the sand, brita and cement we ordered for the jobs near the house.
Portuguese Words
bull – torro
road – caminho
truck – camião
agricultural building – pavilhão agricultura
olive trees – oliveiras
dog – cão
sheep – ovelhas
stone wall – parede de pedra
small farm – quinta
frost – geada
Written by: Jolandi
I chuckled at the photo of Lily and Midnight checking out the truck filled with touvenant! They must have been thinking, ‘Ooh, Mummy and Daddy got us this huge litter box to play in!’ (From the looks of it, touvenant does resemble pulverized clay cat litter, though I suppose it is much coarser and heavier.)
If it’s any consolation for all your trials and hard work, I think your farm looks lovely. It is a major effort to turn “wild” pasture into arable fields for fruit and vegetables, and stone walls, while charming to look at, require both skill and strength (or hydraulic machines to. do all the hauling and lifting). I am a little envious of your life in the country, but I also have to acknowledge I’ve become a spoiled city person who prefers her vegetables already harvested and cleaned. Growing them from seed is no small task, not to mention the heartbreak of seeing them wilt because of circumstances beyond your control—weather, natural disasters, bugs and viruses.
It does look like a huge litter box – now that you mention it, Hangaku. This makes me in return have a good chuckle. But like you say it is much coarser and heavier than what it looks like. I must say that they both consider the big heaps of sand that get delivered to be their own specially built and luxurious bathrooms. We’ve had to remove a lot of poo from an old heap every time we needed the sand, and I suspect a fair amount has been added to cement mixes. 😆
There is a very romantic idea of what it is like to live closer to the land, and as you point out so well, it entails a lot of hard work, and even then a whole lot can go wrong. Thank you for your kind words. It means a lot, as I am working very hard in making sure that it looks neat and tiday, and lovely. The ‘wild’ look isn’t quite for me. We still have a long way to go, but in the meantime I do what I can. – Jolandi
Oh my, your stories come from another world. I am soaking up the new words, habits, and traditions that you have embraced while living in your new place. What adventures you have, simply while staying at home. The wonderful cats provide this consistency to everything you talk about, inserting themselves into every situation. I am not a fan of dogs and felt distinct relief when the neighbor came over to help you. I have high hopes for your trees: the avocados and mangoes as well as the olives that will be transplanted. It’s good to know they will likely survive it, but sad to set them back when you have been tending to them all this time. Did the man really end up leaving his phone buried?! I can’t imagine it, ha ha! I do love that you are talking about writing. You are the fourth person in my life in January that has reminded me that I want to go back to writing one of my books. Today is the final day of January and I am going to use it as an excuse to at least get my old writing off my old laptop and transfer it to my new laptop, so I can at least have it available for when I do sit down to write. I want to make sure I do something significant for that story in each month of the year. I think your 2023 has started off well! All these stories to tell already, plus organizing and cleaning around the house, and wrapping up old tasks always feels so good.
You are so right, Crystal. I definitely do not have to leave the quinta to have adventures. Maybe that is why I don’t really miss travelling too much.
Yes, as far as I could tell, he left his phone buried. Perhaps he realized that it would stop working anyway even if he could recover it, as it was extremely muddy where it appeared to be buried.
I hope you managed to transfer your manuscript to your new computer. Good luck with dusting it off. I know exactly how much effort it takes. Writing is not for the faint at heart. I don’t know about you, but it certainly doesn’t come easy for me. Not sure if it is because I don’t write in my mother tongue, or just the way it is for me. – Jolandi
I wanted to let you know that I did as I said, and found my old manuscript and put it onto my current laptop. It was veeeerrrrry old, and seemed childish to me because I have since grown as a person. But that has given me inspiration for how to make it better. I have written 3,000 words so far. 🙂
Good for you, Crystal. It must be fascinating to see how you have grown as a writer and person when you read your old manuscript. – Jolandi
What a busy time you have had recently! How wonderful to have got so much done, especially all those smaller jobs round the house. I have found like you, that a lot of work done on the land usually entails moving heaps of stuff from one place to another as plans get changed or left for some time in the future!
I was so amused by your story of the bull and can just imagine Michael’s consternation when he found how close the bull was to him! I am very wary of dogs and would have done just as you did and called for help. I am glad you have so many nice neighbours.
Good luck with your travel plans and I hope you get your residence visa soon! Some time this year would be good haha!
Clare xx
It is always so wonderful to get those small jobs done, Clare!
You are so right about moving heaps of stuff from one place to another. It is crazy how many times we have done that. I’m a big fan of living in a place first to understand how one uses spaces before big decisions are made. And of course, with that, more moving stuff is involved.
Thank you for your lovely wishes. We feel quite optimistic that all sorts of bureaucratic loose ends will be tied up this year. – Jolandi
A lot of things happened in your corner of the world — in a good way. Sometimes I also envision having a house with a big yard to plant trees, shrubs, and everything else which will then keep me busy every day. Just like how you described your outdoor activities at the quinta. But it’s a lot of work, I’m sure. I love how Midnight and Lily investigate the touvenant — I was even thinking that one of them would start digging a hole and take a dump — and how one of the workers dropped his phone and just left it buried.
I hope you’ll get to travel far again this year, Jolandi. Now that you mentioned South Africa, I’ve been thinking of Cape Town as one of the few alternatives I’ve been thinking about for one of my upcoming overseas trips.
Thanks, Bama, I hope I can! Cape Town is definitely worth travelling to. I haven’t been to the city in a very long time, but I’ve always liked that part of South Africa best. More specifically the small towns of the Karoo or West Coast, though. Places like Prince Albert, Barrydale, McGregor, or Darling for their quirkiness. It obviously depends on how long you have, and if you are bold enough to rent a car. There is so much to do and see. Drop me an email anytime if you want to bounce off ideas.
There definitely isn’t a dull moment on the land, even though I often yearn for one. 😅 – Jolandi
You are so industrious; I like physical labor outdoors also, but the endless nature of yours makes me feel tired! 🙂 As someone trying to dust off a novel that has been in existence for many years, I feel your urge to get back to it and make some real progress. As you note, though, there always seems to be a list of things that take precedence. I really (really!) am trying to make 2023 the year of my novel, and I’ll be thinking about you doing the same. Meanwhile, I hope your travels pan out; it is almost laughable how long you have waited for your residence visa.
I am so glad to hear I am not the only one that has a novel that has been started years ago, Lexie. I hope you manage to dust it off and make some real progress this year. I’m not sure about how practical my intentions are, but I am certainly thinking about the story, as I am working on the land. I just wish I could send my thoughts directly to my computer. That would save so much time without me forgetting all the words that were swimming around my brain as I was working.
You are right about the visa. It is like something from a dark comedy. The worst part is that I know I am not the only one in this position. I suspect there are hundreds, if not thousands of people in a similar position. – Jolandi
Oh, how I love your little updates on the land. You’ve had many visitors! I think the bull would have frightened me more than the dog, but I understand. Dogs can be unpredictable and I have been attacked. In any case, looks like it’s all coming along nicely. I hope you get to travel soon — and me too! I’m starting to feel a bit trapped, but I know I just need to be patient for a little while longer. Hugs!
Life seems to be filled with adventures, and that keeps it happy and fun. I always look forward to hearing what is new with you and Michael. Hope you can get some books read this year, and finish a few other tasks. Enjoy your travels!
Terri
Thanks, Terri. 💙
A beautiful glimpse into your life, Jolandi. Wonderfully written, and you start this piece out perfectly with the quote: “The work you do while you procrastinate is probably the work you should be doing for the rest of your life.” And I can see how being engaged in all your activities of daily life – and then the excitement when something new comes along. The bull story is hilarious, a bit comforting in a sense as it shows the peaceful life you do have and I love the photo of the bull next to your place and in the field. Through your writing it is clear you are in your element when engaged in all of your quinta activities. But I also understand that it is also important to get a break, be it travel or just getting away for a bit that allows anyone a period to readjust. Sometimes, even one of those cold, frosty morning can be great – such days can also act as a mini-break as sitting down and being able to collect thoughts, read, write, and work through paperwork can be so relaxing (one of those things I procrastinate because it takes me away from time outdoors!). It looks like the year has gotten off to a great start for you and Michael. Congratulations.
Thank you, Randall. You are so right about the beauty and joy contained even in those frosty mornings. I do love the variety of weather here. The only thing I really, really don’t like is the wind. Except for a cooling breeze on a hot summer’s day. There is a lot of joy to be found on the quinta, and except for when I have to deal with officialdom, I love my life here. – Jolandi
Ahh, so much going on! I’d be terrified of the bull and not happy with a strange dog around either (especially since I have a bestia dog myself). But your happy cats seem to know what is what, and you solved all the situations splendidly. You are the right person for your situation. And I really love the design of your tiles.
Thanks, Manja. There really is never a dull moment on the quinta. – Jolandi
Such a lot to take in, in this post. You’ve certainly covered some ground! I’m glad you spent some time catching up on loose ends as those pesky little jobs tend to be the ones that are never finished. By the way, the European habit of sticking a plug directly into the socket does not carry weight here. We need to then flick a switch. It’s kind of a safety measure to stop little kiddies sticking in metal wires and getting zapped.
Doing activities, such as walking (or strimming) are great for getting the neuro-transmitters working. So maybe you can record your thoughts/words/sentences on your phone (stuck in your pocket while you have microphone headphones stuck in your ears) and then either transcribe them yourself in the evening – or pay a local pocket money who wants to learn English. When you have a folder collection of random ideas, print them out, spread them across your table, then re-arrrange into a logical order (ie the original cut and paste). Before you know it, you will have a few chapters.
I also commented on your radium post but not sure if it went through correctly. I got a duplicate comment message.
Thank you for that writing advice, Gwen. It is brilliant. Will definitely remember and make use of it.
You know, in South Africa we also have sockets with switches. I’ve almost forgotten about it – shows you how quickly one get used to something different. – Jolandi
Thanks for the writing advice, Gwen. It is brilliant. I will definitely remember and make use of it.
Regarding the sockets – we also have them with switches in South Africa, and the UAE. It is a bit odd for a region who is obsessed with rules and regulations to actually have them without switches. – Jolandi