Most of the chickens were reasonably easy to catch and they seemed to quite enjoy sitting with their legs in the oil (probably quite soothing for their itchy mite legs).

Some of the chickens were not so easy to catch, this one escaped us by jumping into the duck pond and had to be rescued.

He (she?) woke us up this morning and has been back to visit this afternoon

Cleaning out the chicken shed led to an experiment with the garden paths.

This is what the paths look like after being scraped free of weeds.  I don’t like it, it sets hard like concrete (and thus doesn’t act like a sponge to capture rainwater), it doesn’t really stop the weeds (couch grass especially), it’s bare and barren and it looks horrible.

I decided to experiment with mulching the paths with a think layer the muckings-out from the chicken shed. Right now I really like it – it should protect the soil underneath and help it to become a lot more sponge-like plus give some nutritious run-off into the beds either side of the path.  Or maybe it will turn into a horrible smelly sludge, grow loads of weeds, and be another place for the dog to lie in and get even stinkier …

I’ve also got a path newly mulched with cardboard (thanks Emma!)

Not sure what else to try.  Quite fancy the idea of experimenting with used coffee grounds (saw that in a video the other day) but I don’t think we produce anywhere near enough to do even one small path.  Might still give it a go though.

I had an idea of where I wanted it, so that the water channel that comes from the overflow of the spring-fed pond could feed this new pond.  Liam the water expert reckoned it would work so we started digging.

The hole got pretty big pretty fast.  The ground here slopes gradually down towards the edge of the chicken pen, so we piled up the earth we dug out and stamped it down to make a bank.

After stamping and dancing on the bank we bashed it with spades!

Then it was ready to fill with water!  We haven’t extended the water channel yet, so we stuck the hosepipe on.

We’d hit rock at the bottom of the pond and were hopeful that would be enough to hold water, and it filled up fast!

Not having any pigs to seal the bottom and sides using Sepp Holzer’s method, we just bashed it with spades as best we could. Looking good so far …

But come the morning it was empty  What to do?  We were so excited about our pond we wanted a quick solution so off went Jonny to buy a big sheet of black plastic, and I found a load of old quilts and some cardboard to put under the plastic to stop it being pierced by stones.

Looks cosy!

Now for the black plastic … Liam spreads it out as the pond fills.

This worked, and it was an instant solution.  But I think now I’d rather we’d dug the water channel and let it fill the pond naturally – see if the water would stay in once the ground was saturated (as it does in the channel) … I’d still like to try this method so I’m wondering if I can persuade everyone to help dig another pond or two so we can really keep the water that flows through the land, actually on the land for as long as possible.

http://www.etsy.com/people/technopeasants

For now, we’ve just got a listing for the Cat / Superhero Hats and are looking forward to doing a proper crafty photo shoot in the sunshine later this week!

As I’ve taken over the job of looking after the chickens on a daily basis I’ve been more inspired and motivated to get on and create the Chicken Garden.  Add the enthusiasm of happy helper Theresa and we finally made a start on it yesterday.

We dug out all the couch grass and brambles.  We want to make raised beds alongside a new paved pathway (Lester – who now lives in the village but first helped build the chicken shed when he was here as a wwoof-er about 5yrs ago – just offered today to lay some leftover paving slabs to make the path for us).

I also dug out the foundations for extending the chicken shed “veranda” as the soil has become really badly eroded and I want to put a bigger ramp in so it’s easier to get a wheelbarrow into the pen.   We also want to put a turf roof on the shed, and extend the roof over the veranda so the chickens have some extra shade in summer and cover from rain in winter.

Most of the area is now dug over and levelled!

Ready to use!

Removable bucket (with lid, not shown in pic) for easy emptying.

I made up a brine of water with enough salt in it to float a medium-sized peeled potato, and gathered rosemary, bay, garlic and piri-piri from the garden to flavour the olives.

I spooned olives and flavourings into the jars in layers. I used 2 garlic cloves, 2 piri-piri, 1 bay leaf, and one small sprig of rosemary per jar. This is total guesswork, so I need to remember when we eat them to write down if these quantities worked or not.

Then I filled the jars with brine, put the lids on, labelled the jars, and put them in the adega.  They’ll be ready for eating in 6 weeks, although I’ve done one jar covered with olive oil and put it in the sun to steep which we will try tonight.  The olives have already lost a lot of their bitterness and I’m interested to try really fresh ones!

I’m loving that, apart from the salt, all the ingredients are from our land – even the water

Thanks to multi-talented Conny Kadia for her eating olives recipe.

I also hung up some piri-piri plants and some bay to dry in the kitchen.

Andy was out having a bonfire of olive prunings and managed to burn himself – eek! So he got Aloe Vera and a bandage for the burn, and home-made raisin bread with our own honey for lunch.

Meanwhile … Jonny’s been making a loveable loo:

I mostly did the ‘support work’ of keeping up with the everyday tasks and feeding the workers, helping out for short bursts with the olive picking.  Andy, Jonny (who’s now living in the cottage), Tommy and Emma (our friends and regular helpers) and Theresa (our German friend / woofer) did most of the picking.

We put the olives through our winnowing machine, which blows out all the leaves, before storing them in huge tubs of water until they are all picked and ready to go to the mill – it took 1 van, 1 jeep, and 1 car to transport the olives to the olive mill (lagar)and us to the café for coffee and cake while we waited our turn for olive pressing.

Finally it was our turn to get our olives pressed (I’m back home by this point, catching up on emails, housework, and making a pizza for celebratory olive harvest dinner).

We have over 900kg of olives which is more than twice as many as we need to get our own pressing, so the oil we get is only from our own organically managed trees.

After a few hours of waiting (the lagar has a bar!) the oil is ready.  We have 121 litres!

Home for pizza and a blind olive oil tasting.  We used our new oil, our oil from last year, Tommy and Emma’s oil from this year, a cheap supermarket brand (Lidl) and a premium brand (Gallo Extra Virgin).  Tasters were me, Andy, Tommy, Jonny, Theresa and our neighbour Dave. Emma did a fine job of keeping a poker face while we were tasting and commenting, so as not to give away which oil was which. Our oil came out favourite with every taster, and Tommy and Emma’s was a close 2nd.  All of us got the two supermarket oils the wrong way around, thinking the cheap one was the premium brand (so maybe if you are going to buy mass-produced oil then you might as well go for a cheaper one?!)

And finally … Jonny is convinced he met Robert de Niro’s dad at the olive mill:

If you’d like to taste some fabulous unrefined, unprocessed, unfiltered Portuguese olive oil (from the very same lagar) for yourself, then check out our friends’ website www.quintafelgar.co.uk where you can find a list of UK stockists, or order online.