We had Petit Gervais who was killed by poisoning in October. But there is a silver lining to this cloud. Bonji, my other bitch has had a litter of four pups. It was my fault I confess. I let her have a bit too much fun - with the boys. I had meant to sterilise her but the vet whom I use, - Sarah at NovaVet - in Tavira was off on maternity leave. She has had twins! Congratulations to you and the twins, Sarah :).

Bonji had the pups on the 5^th of November so they are under a month old. Their fathers are various. I know not who. I only saw her couple with one – and he was a strange looking chap.

The pups have started a eating a bit of dog food but depend mainly on Bonji to keep them fed. Bonji finds this difficult. They are hungry little things. Their mother eats almost double her pre-pup diet but still finds it hard to feed them sometimes. And now they have some teeth so I imagine it must be even more uncomfortable.

Bonji was orphaned when she was a pup. She used to scream a lot and was a very angry pup. Her mother Roxy was also killed by poisoning along with a few other dogs of some of the neighbours . These puppies are very calm and happy and sleep a lot of the time. So we have peace and quiet. I dread when they will be able to clamber out of their makeshift enclosure of plastic pots. This occupies the living room floor. Bonji has the sofa.

She does a sterling job of keeping them clean. They are developing their own characters :). There is 1 girl and three chaps. I have named them Chubbs, Topman, BlackBoy and Conan. I hope to find good homes for them. I will keep one and am sending one to my niece.

Thanks for reading . This is it for now.

I have been recovering from the Covid-19 virus this month and been taking it easy.

This week I have been making an effort to clear grass and weeds that have regrown. We are required by law to do this by the end of this month to help reduce the risk of fires. Summer is definitely here with inside temperatures of about 27ºc max. Here the dogs Bonji and PG are cooling down inside.

To help me I have been using some light machinery. I don’t have a tractor and don’t really need one now.

I use a strimmer to get to the difficult places and to cut over the irrigation pipes.

Been using this battery operated 36V Black and Decker strimmer quite a bit all over the property.

It cuts really well for what it is. It has 2Ah battery and runs for about 20 mins at full tilt. I really need another spare battery. The motor’s power is quite minuscule. It’s not rated. But if it runs for 20 mins.

Then (20mins/60 mins) x 2Ah = 0.667 Amps Hence the power of the motor is given by I Amps x V volts 0.667Amps x36 Volts= 24 Watts .

I am quite shocked. I am surprised at how small the motor is in terms of power has because it does an outstanding job! It cuts through some tough weeds. I changed the standard 1.5mm gauge line to 2.4 mm. It doesn’t auto feed with this but helps me cut through the thicker weeds. I bought it on amazon.co.uk who shipped it over. I bought the battery separately and modified so that I can use an external battery pack if I need to. I tried 12V 2.5 Ah lead acid batteries x3. Still quite heavy on your back at around 6kg. The machine Black and Decker Model GLC3630LB-XJ weighs just 3 Kg (with the lithium ion battery ) and is a delight to use.

Correction: Those lead acid batteries are 5Ah and weigh 5.4kg on your back. I had to press them into service today after the lithium ion battery charger gave up the ghost. 6/062020

The real work horse has been the Italian made BNF 502, motorized scythe. The american built Briggs and Stratton 190cc petrol engine. It now takes me about 8 hours to clear my property with it. Look at the teeth. 🙂 I grease and oil the blade before making a run. Shame to have had to cut all those wild flowers.

On the growing front. Harvested the fava beans this month. I get a handful of Physalis peruviana (Cape gooseberry) berries every other day. And now I have some sun ripened apricots which are very good. No worms so far.

Still growing my lettuce in pots which as you see works well for me. I need to plant another batch soon.

The irrigation pipe to the young olives on the western border was a good investment. It saves me and didn’t cost the earth. I have palnted a few pumpkins next to thes young olive trees. We have to see how then get on.

That’s all for now! Thanks for reading!

Spring it definitely here! It’s the last day of the month so I though I better post a blog for April.

I am not feeling very well today but best foot forward. I think the dreaded virus , the one that begins with the letter “C” is having a second go. I didn’t manage to quite shake it off after the first bout and it was still lurking within.

So with the lock down here I haven’t been doing much in April. In the agricultural sector anyway. Look at my poor excuse of a vegetable garden.

You can see a few tomatoes plants I planted a few days back. The spinach is really struggling. I sowed the prepared patch densely a month ago but the results have been poor.

But look at the cabbage. Portuguese staple variety - “ Cove Galega”.

I planted a couple next to several fruit trees and it has worked out well. I planted a few broad beans too. Just for myself. I didn’t bother planting extra for the people - ‘o Povo’ this year.

Olive trees. I transplanted a few and have put in some irrigation so hopefully they should grow well if slowly.

This is such a nice stone wall belonging to property just opposite to me. Hand crafted stone by stone – by craftsmen and labourers for the very wealthy here. A lot of sweat and some blood goes into building these walls. The craftsman and the labourer are not necessarily the same. But without doubt, both bear me a grudge. This being as I neither pay their wages nor work for their bosses.. . Ce la vie. In the foreground you can see one of my young pomegranate trees which is doing well due to plentiful amount of rain had here in the Algarve this spring.

Indeed, you can see here the almonds on the almond trees growing niceiy ad the almonds plumping out. I have some plum trees but they seem to have been attacked by fungi (peach curl leaf) and some parasite that is eating the leaves. So most of the fruit has dropped of. I will give them an second spray with some insecticide this weekend.

The guava trees are still in their red winter livery and the apple trees are still nude of foliage. This is because it still cold at nights.

Here is a fine apricot tree. Hopefully the black fly won’t ruin the fruit. I am trying to trap.

And here is a fine persimmon (sharon fruit) tree. it is still young just three years old so may not bear any fruit.

Finally a the bottom of the spread where self seeded olives and almonds are growing. And no, I don’t live in that caravan normally. 🙂

Using readily available biomass such as cut logs can help keep your overall energy bills down. If you are lucky to access to woody biomass which you can harvest sustainably

or access to wood residues like off-cuts it makes sense to spend time and energy collecting and processing these.

As it is on a small scale it is environmentally friendly and does not require huge amounts of energy to produce unlike wood chips or pellets.

During the winter months we use a lot more heat energy to stay warm. This can be in the form of gas central heating or electric underfloor heating or stand alone gas or electric heaters. In either case they are expensive to run. If you like your hot bath and showers in the winter this can add significantly to your energy bills. Using readily available biomass such as wood can help keep your overall energy bills down.

How much money can be saved using biomass as a form of heating.

Here is my own example. Metrics help separate fact from fiction. I like my hot showers and baths during winter. However the cost of electrically heating water at current energy prices is not trivial. [/lang en]

Let's look at the cost of heating a 100 litre tank from 18ºC to 50ºC.

The specific heat capacity of water is 4200 J per kg per degree Kelvin. This is the energy required to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Kelvin (or Celcius).

The temperature change is 50ºC – 20ºC = 30ºC

100 litres of water is 100 kg

The energy E, in joules required to heat the water is given by E = mass x specific heat capacity x change in temperate,

So , E = 100 kg x 4200 Joules x 30ºC => E = 12600000J (Joules)

1 J/sec = 1 Watt (W)

Hence 12600000J /(3600s) 3500 Wh or 3.5kWh

The actual time it takes for me to electrically heat the tank is 2.5 hours.

I have a 1000 Watt heater.

Therefore 1000 x (2.5h ) = 2500Wh

This is equivalent to 2.5 kWh (kiloWatts)

It would appear I use 1kWh of electricity less that estimated. This maybe be due to the fact the water sinside the tank remains at a higher temperature that the estimated 20ºC

when I start heating electrically.

I get my electricity from the energy co-operative, Coopérnico .

This is their 2019 tariff for bi-horário.

So heating the water during off peak hours (vazio) costs 0.0987 cents per kiloWatt hour (kWh)

So 0.0987€ x 2.5kWh = 0.24675€

(7 days x 4) x 0.24675€ = €6.909

With IVA (VAT) at 23% = €8.4981 is what I can save a month.

I have a hot bath by boiling a pot of 5 litres of water on my wood burner. Doing this 2-3 times a week during winter is worth my while. Besides boiling bath water I can also do a little cooking on top of the wood burner to make further savings.

The olive oil we made came from a variety of olives. These olives grew  and ripened under the Algarve sun in southern Portugal.

The black varieties included Cornicabra and Galega gave us extra virgin oil of 0.7 degree.

The green varieties of olives produced extra virgin oil of 0.5 degree. These olives were more of a spherical type and some of them were huge with diameters exceeding 3 cm. I have yet to identify these varieties. Most of these trees were grafted by the Portuguese over 50 to 200 years ago.

For an explanation of the degree of olive oil see the previous article.

The healthy benefits are of Extra Virgin Oil are much vaunted .

The verified facts are:

• Rich in anti-oxidants so a good nuero protector.

• Unrefined olive oil is best as it is a rich source of antioxidants and vitamins.

• The antioxidants contained in Extra Virgin Oil oil do not break down on heating. This is great as as it means you can cook with extra Virgin Olive oil without loss of the antioxidants. This brings me to the myth of cold pressed olive oil. What temperature is this “cold” exactly? Because room temperature varies from 18ºC to about 24ºC depending on the individual. Unrefined Extra virgin Oil starts to congeal at temperatures below 16ºC so you would get very little oil pressing at these temperatures in the cold season of October to December. For this reason olive oil presses have to supply some heat during the extraction process. It does not affect the beneficial properties of the olive oil nor affect the oil's excellent taste which should be peppery ans grassy. Some Extra virgin oils are slightly bitter.

• Cooking with Extra Virgin Oil helps prevent the break down and loss of beneficial nutrients like vitamin C in vegetables.

• A diet that includes regular amounts Extra Virgin Oil oil has been proved to reduced bone fractures and loss of bone in the elderly.

Facts not completely verified are:

• Reduces the risk of Stroke and Heart Attack. This could be true as the Extra Virgin Oil would replace other fats in one´s diet responsible for cholesterol and restricted flow in the blood vessels.

“Where can I get some of this fine Extra Virgin Olive oil of yours?”

If you are in Hillingdon, West London or High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, we have a limited stock of this Portuguese unrefined Extra Virgin Olive Oil in 1 litre bottles. Email  ####@lineone.net for details.

Sources:

11 Health Benefits of Extra Virgin Olive Oil That You Can’t Ignore

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28143667 (refers to bone loss)

https://www.viveirosdabairrada.com

2014 April , I had just been on the property for a couple of months. These early days were filled with wonder of all the trees that were on the property. The size of the property was and still is 1 hectare.

With a tiny cottage which was incomplete. No floors for one. Amongst the trees were four mature olive trees. The tallest and these was 5 m or more. In addition to these, were over 100 wild olive trees which I hardly noticed at the time except for the ones that were in heavy bloom, like in the photo below.

Quite naturally, I tended to show off the four mature olive trees to visitors then as there wasn't much else besides the wild terrain. All four of these mature olive trees were in dire need of pruning and clearance around the base area of the trees. They now are in a better state but there is definitely room for improvement.

Then I had no idea about all the different olive varieties and what was involved in producing olive oil. And today, I still haven't identified the variety of these four large mature trees. They were grafted a very long time ago. I say this , because new branches that grow off their bases give a smaller black olive (Galega?) rather than the larger green ones.

2019, five years on. I mentioned black olives earlier. A good few of the wild olives trees produced round black olives in 2019 for the first time. The olives were of a decent size. Usually wild olive trees produce tiny oval olives that haven't much weight. From this excellent guide , I think they maybe of the Galega variety.

Thus I have over the years been learning about olives and producing a little olive oil. I also conserve olives for the table but did not prepare any this year as it is a time consuming process.

As you can see, I have been planting about 40 very new olive trees on my property.

It will be some years before they produce anything but I have the patience. I am not sure what varieties they are. The guy with whom I did this joint venture said that they were Cobrançosa and Picual. I am doubtful about the ones purporting to be Cobrançosa as the leaves are short and wide rather than long and slim. From this very excellent Portuguese guide, I think they may be Arbequina. This variety is also popular is Spain where the cuttings came from. The Extra Virgin olive oil of the Arbequina is sauve and of excellent quality. So we will see. For table olives I have a four young Maçanilha and the green olives from the four mature trees are well suited to preserving in bottles.

I would love to have a micro olive oil press to experiment with all the different varieties. I don't have this option at the cooperative press I use. Out of necessity we(my neighbours and I), have to mix all varieties together to exceed the minimum half tonne required per pressing.

Properties of olive oil.

Percentage Free oleic acid.

This is what gives an oil have it greasy property. The percentage of free olive oil is also represented as a degree between 0 to 1.

The The percentage of free oleic acid of Extra Virgin olive oil must be less than 80% or 0.8 degrees. The oxidation process of olive oil will increase as the oil is exposed to air and sunlight.

This is why it is important to store olive oil in a cool dark place and in air tight containers.

Standard olive oil has almost no taste or fragrance as it almost 100% free oleic acid and is like any other vegetable cooking oil.

One of the principal health benefits of Extra Virgin olive lies in the fact that it is rich in antioxidants.

Sources:

https://www.aceitedelasvaldesas.com/en/faq/preguntas-aceite-de-oliva/acidez-del-aceite-de-oliva/