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 […]
“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, […]
“Nature isn’t ‘out there’ – someplace to go on a weekend. As food, nature is coursing through us. Our guts and the soils are intertwined, both alive with microorganisms doing the work of transforming organic matter into strong plants, trees, and bodies.”– Vicki Robin With the sun gathering strength and the daylight hours stretching out […]
“Over the past eight years, as part of a global storytelling project called the Out of Eden Walk, I have been hiking continents emptied of their wildlife by human beings. The Gaoligong represent a chance for solace. They are one of the planet’s last remaining vaults of biodiversity: a glimpse into a teeming Earth that once […]
Because we decided that we won’t do any big projects during Michael’s last visit, there was no need to book Tim with his tractor and digger, as that usually indicates a project involving multiple days of work. We always like to plan and book him well in advance, so we were quite relieved when he […]
“Energy and persistence conquer all things.” -Benjamin Franklin Michael likes to get his hands dirty and be involved in almost every project on the quinta, but when he and Tim decided to clean one of our two wells on the last day before he left, I just shook my head and muttered under my breath […]
“Thinking will not overcome fear but action will.” – W. Clement Stone Two years ago Frank the Digger did some land clearing for us, burning some of the brambles and broom he cleared, but a couple of piles were left. With my recent spree of clearing patches of brambles along our access road, we had […]
“Change is slow and gradual. It requires hard work, a bit of luck, a fair amount of self-sacrifice, a lot of patience.” – Robert Greene We’ve been in a state of change since the land was transferred into our names in November 2017. Work on the little ruin started in January 2018. Since then work […]
“Any major effort takes time, and the time it takes travels through various states of our soul . . . “ – Fernando Pessoa My boots squelched as I dragged some branches deeper into the clearing closer to the sharka. Michael was adament that the rows olive tree cuttings shouldn’t be too long, as we […]
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