When we received a quote from our builder to build a retaining wall below the agricultural building he was busy erecting for us, we not only realized that we couldn´t afford it, but decided to do it ourselves. Well, let´s be clear, Michael decided, and I idiotically went along with his hairbrain idea, completely misunderstanding […]
“Others can stop you temporarily – you are the only one who can do it permanently.”– Zig Ziglar During the last couple of months Michael and I have seriously questioned the sanity of the choices we´ve made in recent years. Our struggles with the bureaucratic system, and finding people who work to our standards in […]
“Have patience. All things are difficult before they become easy.” – Saadi Summer means that I stumble like a sleepwalker through the long daylight hours. I get up before sunrise to take care of gardening or other chores before the heat of the day pins me down in a state of lethargy. Born in a […]
“Looking forward you constantly acquire moments of arrival, moments of realization, moments of discovery. The wind blows your hair back and you are greeted by what you have never seen before. The material falls away in onrushing experience.” – Rebecca Solnit (from: A Field Guide to Getting Lost) When one is focused on realising dreams […]
“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, […]
“How we perceive our surroundings is only ever a reflection of our state of mind in the moment.”– Clare Dimond To help banish the grey days and long dark nights, I wrapped 50 metres of Christmas lights around the big olive tree next to the house, where they now sparkle like my own special constellation […]
“. . . it’s the human-made landscape, not the natural one, that will shape our actions – including the ways that we’ve remade the physical environment. Geography isn’t ‘unchanging’, as Kaplan writes, but volatile. And where we’re going, the old maps won’t help.”– Daniel Immerwahr After having lived on the quinta fulltime for two years, […]
“I think landscape is an incredible, mystical teacher, and when you begin to tune into its sacred presence, something shifts inside you.” – John O’Donohue October flew by in a succession of gorgeous days. It felt good to be outside strimming away all the dead grass of summer, getting ready for the winter rains, and […]
“If you’re a farmer and you are not an optimist, you are not a farmer.” – Glenn Roberts When my father, who has been a farmer his whole life, asked me what I was going to do in Portugal I told him that I was going to farm. A bit ironic really coming from someone […]
“When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.” – John Muir As I stepped outside into the cool of the early morning on the 16th of August, the strong smell of smoke made my heart skip a beat. I stopped to stare at the […]
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