OUR FARM LIFE IN CENTRAL PORTUGAL - FESTIVALS, SHEEP AND HAY BALES... PORTUGUESE HOMESTEADING

Hi there! I am Joseph.
I have been an immigrant, or expat, living in central Portugal along with my beautiful girlfriend Mariana for six years now.

Together Mariana, my father Clinton, my mother Julie and myself, would like to show you a bit of the daily goings on around our Portuguese farm / homestead / smallholding and all of the work we are doing whilst renovating, starting building projects, working with our livestock, DIY and trying to grow our little families own food!

In this episode we welcome you to join us in late Winter time as we film a day on the farm. Tending to the livestock, visiting the village for a short time and all in all having a lovely time in our community here.

We begin the week walking up to the sheep barn, talking a little about what I am planning to do, my father passes us by on our little compact 15 horse power Yanmar tractor, he tells us he is transferring cut brush up to the burning pile at the top of the farm.

I make my way up to the sheep barn where I plan to meet Rui, a lovely man who is helping a friend of ours, Lucilia, deliver some hay bales to my farm, as I have run out. It is not really the correct time of year to be buying hay bales right now, because the hay was baled last year and therefore anyone needing bales now is probably quite desperate, meaning of course that the price goes up. I only have a couple of small barns and a very small flock of sheep though, so I do not mind the slight price increase, the price for convenience I suppose!

Rui unloads the bales over the fence and then my father brings the little tractor up to the top pasture, so we can get the bales loaded up into the lambing pen, now that the lambs are all out in the pasture they do not need to sleep with their mother inside the lambing pens so it means it is free for hay once more.

After the hay bales we take a walk up to the village, for today is our villages yearly festival, Carvalhal, the festival one day after carnival, it falls on Ash Wednesday and Dores, our village president, speaks on camera to us about the significance behind the festival, a very moving story that she kindly explains for us all. Mariana, Chloe & I really enjoyed seeing the traditional music being played and I was even allowed to walk with the band, most of the people here are friendly faces that I chat with in the cafes every week.

We made our way back down the cobblestones to our farm again, where it was time to get back to work. It is also time for potatoes to be in the ground, if anything I am slightly late for planting, not that it matters as they can be planted anytime around now. I fitted the tine harrow to the tractor and set to the vegetable patch, giving a very rough turn to the soil. Normally this is not necessary as I do a winter vegetable patch every year. This year due to Marianas pregnancy and Chloe being born I opted to use my time elsewhere and did not have a winter vegetable patch.

Now the vegetable patch had been turned, in preparation for the rains to come, after the rains I will go back and till the soil. Once finished we had mustered up an appetite, for it was now lunchtime. I set to the farmhouse kitchen and rustled myself up some pork medallions in a lemon, green chilli and crème fraiche sauce! Absolutely scrumptious!

Now we had finished lunch and it was the end of the day. I took a stroll up to the vineyard, where the sheep are enjoying their last few weeks before being kicked out for the growing season, they cannot stay in the vineyard as they will eat any developing little buds on the vines. The lambs are all doing splendidly and growing superbly fast. I speak for a while about the farm and everything before saying my goodbyes to you all, thank you for watching and let you all know about my little Patreon gift package coming in the next month or so, whenever we hit 15,000 subscribers!

Thank you so much for watching, have a marvellous week everyone!

See our journey to self sufficiency / permaculture / organic farming living in Portugal, trying to produce as much of our own food planting vegetables, growing fruit trees as well as looking after all our animals, such as our chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks, quail, rabbits and sheep - Shortly pigs too!

- Growing vegetables, raising meat and foraging on our cherry farm in Portugal’s Beira baixa.

Follow us on Instagram @farmerforfun

IF YOU ARE PORTUGUESE OR TRYING TO LEARN PORTUGUESE PERHAPS CONSIDER TURNING ON SUBTITLES FOR THIS VIDEO, MARIANA & I HAVE CREATED SUBTITLES IN PORTUGUESE, MAYBE THEY MIGHT COME IN HANDY WITH LEARNING A WORD OR TWO! CLICK THE 'CLOSED CAPTIONS' BUTTON ON THE VIDEO AND THE SUBTITLE OPTIONS WILL APPEAR.

PLEASE HELP US TO CONTINUE CREATING THIS CONTENT BY CONTRIBUTING TO US ON PATREON
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Видео OUR FARM LIFE IN CENTRAL PORTUGAL - FESTIVALS, SHEEP AND HAY BALES... PORTUGUESE HOMESTEADING канала Farmer For Fun