Good Post (no Bills), Proteas, Seeds and Strelizias.

One of the drawbacks of living on an Island in the middle of the Atlantic is that - well - you live on an Island in the middle of the Atlantic, this makes shopping a bit of a Treasure hunt - not that there is any lack of stuff but if you need something specialised Ebay and PayPal are your friends. Today was an exciting day here at no 32 (we are still thinking of a name for our house and seeing as we have great sunsets we thought to call our house por da sol - sunset house but that sounds like an old peoples home so for now it is no. 32) - the postie arrived with stuff we bought on Ebay. Whenever the postie van drives past we are always on the alert in case something is in it for us.

Well todays packages included a bench grinder wheel dresser, for me AND Tanyas seeds, this really exciting stuff as it is such a pleasure to grow anything in this temperate climate. Tanya enjoys growing medicinal herbs and our neighbour has come to understand that, when we first got here she was telling Tanya to pull out the "weeds" and when T told here they were medicinal she didnt say anything more. Tanyas main interest is complementary medicine and she practises reflexology, reiki, metamorphic technique and a newly acquired access bars, all amazing, especially when you are on the receiving end.

Well we now have Tea Tree seeds, Sea Buckthorn, Wild Cucumber, Mexican Coriander, Motherwort, Evening Primrose, Marshmallow, Ox Knee, Patchouli, Vitex, Ashwagandha, and Hibiscus sabdariffa for tea. You would think making tea is simple, but here at no 32, there is too much choice. Tea sometimes entails a trip out into the rain and wind to pick some lemon grass, or lemon verbena (simpler because it is closer to the kitchen door), sage or even nettle. T calls her herbal brew -  tea, as that is what she has always known as tea but others might call this an infusion or tisane. Tisane sort of sounds like tea, anyway.

Today we added some horse manure to our Labyrinth garden, and some sawdust for the paths of the Labyrinth. - There will be a seperate post on the labyrinth.

Last year we got some Virginia tobacco seeds from a friend who brought them from Germany and they were really successful in the Labyrinth, so this year I have lots of tobacco seeds and will be planting a lot more. Our Protea seeds in the seedling trays are sort of poking their leaves out in a few places. It is an eye opener to see Proteas growing on the Island - in fact they have a scheme whereby you can grow them for export, as well as strelitzias - both native to South Africa. Both plants are really happy here as are we.

Faial weather and Toasted almond butter biscuits

Faial winters are usually wet and cold, feeling colder than the actual temperature because we have high humidity and makes it feel colder when everything is damp. A dehumidifier is a must if you have many treasures. Instead we have a Bullerjan wood burning stove, which dries the house out nicely and because of our limited space we have a homemade Molly maid that hangs high in the pitch of the roof, to dry our washing. Coming back to the humidity - natural fibres and dark colours are a no no. Summer time the wood burner is not running and if you have not worn those back leather shoes for a week they are growing hair on them. The two pictures below were taken last winter, we have not seen this weather so far, touch wood. Only yesterday and today have we had almost non stop rain.

Instead of loads of clothes in our cupboard we have what we need and wear what can be rotated weekly and when they have seen better days, they are

re purposed. Guess it is forced down sizing.

Today I made some toasted almond butter biscuits, really easy - here is the recipe if you care to try them.
50g almonds
150g unsalted butter, room temperature
50g icing sugar

pinch of salt

It is Raining Cats and D#%$ out there.

half a tsp vanilla
half a tsp almond extract
165g all purpose flour
extra icing sugar
Coarsely chop the almonds, then bake them until they begin to smell toasted, remove let them cool then grind them finer.

Bullerjan Wood burner

Cream the butter, sugar until combined. Then stir in the salt, vanilla and almond extract. Slowly add the flour and almonds. Work until you have a smooth dough. Roll the dough into a sausage, diameter roughly cookie size. Refrigerate for 30min, meantime preheat oven to 180c. Remove from the fridge cut into slices, place on ungreased baking try and place in the centre of the oven. Bake until lightly brown on top, Remove allow to cool, then dust with extra icing sugar.

These are our two Sweetie pies Chloe and Zac and the weather was way to mild for them to be staying indoors but they were popping in and out, absolutely soaked, so here they lie on our bed, spoilt all covered up. I also got to washing some pumpkin seeds from lasts nights supper and put them on top of the wood burner to dry.

Galinhas, Chooks, Chickens

Returning  to the broody hen, eggs and relocation story.

Friends who live in Cedros rang us up to ask us if we would like another chicken as he found one while strimming the grass. Sweet thing was sitting on her eggs and must have got the fright of her life when this blade came whipping past her head.

Returning from doing a job in the area (we look after holiday homes and take on any job where something needs fixing or building) we decided to go pick her up. She was sitting in amongst some bramble, so Nathan was trying to make sure he did not get his hands caught on them while trying to pick her up but as he got closer, she screeched and was off. Then we spotted all the eggs, at least 8. We moved the bramble and decided to return when it was dark. In the mean time we went home and built her a little T1 apartment for her and the eggs. The move was successful and the eggs were moved within 15mins. Lets hope they are still fertile. Simon found her sitting on them on Sunday and she has been on them ever since. Incubation period is about 21 days.

  Our new girly is black, slightly shiny feathers and we have called her Juba. Juba sits on those eggs in an absolute daze most of the day.

Counting we  have 3 bantam girlies, 1 rooster and in another pen a big white fat hen, her name is Blanca and her buddy is Outono  - she unfortunately looks like she needs a scarf, yup neck without feathers, just does not look right. Then Juba.

At the moment only the bantams or as they are known here galinhas da madeira are laying eggs. Did you know that even though the bantam eggs are smaller, they still have the same size yolk, as regular eggs, only the white is less.

During planting season they are in 3 A frame homes which are light and mobile and we keep moving them around, this saves on cutting the grass and they fertilise and till the ground at the same time. Once the seedlings get bigger and the chooks are no longer interested in them, we will let them roam the garden again.

The Journey

How we came to living in the Azores - Faial.

We are South Africans who lived in Johannesburg, worked a 9-5 job and in our spare time we built a Wharram 26ft catamaran (That would have been an excellent blog) On completion of this project we quit the rat race and sailed the South African coast. Stopping in to Knysna, we fell in love with the place and lived there on our boat  for some years. After living on this small boat we felt we needed something bigger and found a beautiful 28ft Van der stadt, being a monohull it felt bigger and at least had some head room.

Later on we moved to the UK for work. The country was very beautiful but this was not a place we planned to settle in.
December 2006 was cold and we felt a tad miserable and just had to get out , so we escaped to the book shop. I picked up a travel magazine and happened to open on a page about the Azores, I new instantly I had to go there. Two weeks later I had booked a flight, without Nathan, this was a week before Xmas. On  my arrival all I could see was this small island in the middle of the ocean, I felt very emotional and I asked myself what the *#! am I doing here?? When the plane landed everyone clapped, then I wanted to cry.
Six months later I brought Nathan back to Faial. He fell in love with the place and we were only 5 min out of the airport. The rest is history.

House after

There were not many houses for sale at the time and we bought a little neglected house, a house that was built after the 1957 volcano. They called them volcano houses. After not working with our hands for a while we were up for a project. The garden was over grown and more like an open field, the roof, the floor, the windows etc needed remodelling. Looking back on our pictures a lot has changed but then life is like that too, always evolving daily.

Fruit Tree Pruning

Apologies for a missed post last night, we were pre-occupied by broody hen, eggs and relocation, relocation - but we will save that for another post.

As our fruit trees are still very young, none of them have been pruned since we planted them. From what we have heard, Febuary is the time to do this but as the weather has been so mild this winter and we had such a gorgeous day, we decided to tackle the task at hand and give it a go.

Having some idea, we wished to verify our facts and turned to "you-tube" to see what others had to say. There were so many posts - verbally and visually, not that helpful, until we came across this guy living in Israel, who has tended to an orchard for 15 years of his life, we enjoyed his explanations for making certain cuts and over all, it gave us the confidence to go out and give our trees a pruning. Perhaps you might find his link helpful too. Part 1 and this is Part 2

Apologies we were so involved in pruning that there are only after pictures, we are feeling very pleased with our work and hope our trees are feeling lighter for their shaping and now have more energy and strength to bear fruit.

Last Sunday I had a wonderful walk,  on the top side of Cedros and came across an old ruin and a couple of lemon trees - and along side the lemon trees were many willow trees. These are grown for their branches to make baskets to harvest, corn, grapes etc. What I did observe was the use of willow branches to hold down the boughs of the lemon tree in order to keep the "goblet" shape open, for easy access to the fruit, more light and less chance of disease.

kefir - a morning kickstart

This is what kick starts my day - kefir it is a fermented milk drink and better for those who are less lactose intolerant.
It is a bit like yoghurt but not that thick and really simple to maintain and continue.
First you need a starter and it looks like this - cauliflower. I put mine in a glass jar top it up with milk and place a muslin cover over it, so that it can breath but keep the dust out. The following morning I strain it through a non metal strainer, then wash the glass jar out as this is a bacteria - hygiene is important. With a non metal spoon scoop the kefir back into the clean jar and top up with milk again - it is that simple. Then what you do with it, is endless. For my brekkie, I like to make a smoothie, adding bananas, sesame and sunflower seeds, a little cinnamon. Find the combo you like best.

On the subject of bananas our aim here is to be self sufficient, slowly things that we put in the ground when we first arrived are slowly starting to bear fruit. We have several banana plants and were so excited to see our first bunch this year, we now have 4 bunches on the trees which still need to ripen, so until then we are able to buy local bananas from the market. I am still amazed to see in the supermarket bananas from Costa Rica when we have excellent ones right on our doorstep - go figure.

If you are just starting with some kefir, it might take a while for your culture to grow so that you may have more to play with and make different things. I have made different cheeses and an easy one to try is after your culture has sat for 24 hrs you can strain it through a double muslin cloth if it is very thin, allowing the whey to drain off and this might take a day or two, what you will have left is a wonderfully thick creamy cheese. Add some salt, pepper and abit of garlic if you like, then take a teaspoonful and roll into balls and place into some olive oil. This can be stored in the fridge and be used when you chose to.

Now you might be asking where do I find a starter culture, well mine came from a friend and that is usually how it gets around, the more kefir you make the bigger your culture gets, the more you have to share with others. So you still do not have a culture!  guess a good place to start might be to ask at your wholefood or health store or you can try online. It is not something I have ever seen sold in the store. However when I was visiting in South Africa I made my sister buy some kefir at a market that sold fresh produce and this man was a dairy farmer.
Happy kefiring:)

Every day is a gift

After enjoying a cozy lie in, our day was blessed with sunshine and two happy cats, and an urge for me to take a long walk. I reckon we should act on our urges first then get to the chores but knowing myself I felt I might have kept on walking and as I was going to a baby shower later on there were a couple of things I needed to do first, I felt I was racing against the clock to get them done as I did not want to miss a moment outside.

Nath was happy to continue with a project in the workshop, so I set off with my empty honey jar, hoping to get a refill. I walked from Praia do Norte to Ribera Funda, which is about 2km, it felt so good and the air in the azores is the cleanest. I could not seem to inhale enough of it and this fueled me on. My first stop was the honey lady but no one was around, so I left the jar round the back and carried on to see if Bernhard might be home as it was his birthday. It was strange to find him home on such a gorgeous day, never the less we had a cuppa tea, then took a walk together to see if the honey lady had returned. Doce de Mel Maria was home and had honey. I was a bit doubtful we would get any as last year, it was too cold.

Walking home brought to me all the things I had to be grateful for and all the gifts we had received today. Feeling so chuffed with my honey under one arm, a pot of Bernhards homemade jam under the other and a gorgeous big lemon from his tree. Now how can life get any better than this??
I still had the baby shower to look forward to, a first for me in the Azores.

 Everyone brought a dish to share and everyone gifted money, which went to purchasing, the "big stuff"

Getting kitted out is not cheap and they were so appreciative for everything. So they too enjoyed a gifted day:)

Mid Atlantic life

Moving to Faial just over 3 years ago, we are now sharing with you our magical simple life.

We live in a farming community which is peaceful and keeps us grounded. Not only that, we have a great neighbour who has had to live a self sufficient life, as there was no other way and she loves to share her knowledge with us.

It was a long time ago we owned a  TV and still we do not miss it...... ..... not listening to repetitive negativity, keeps our minds free from worry, to go about our day in a more harmonious way. Faial does have first class internet connections, so we can get our social, creative or shopping fix, should we chose to.

The pleasures we have had from being physical, enjoying the changing seasons, observing the community relationships,  late afternoon swims in the summer, walking on Sunday afternoon with friends, this is worth a lot to us, it makes for the life we enjoy to live.

Other like minded bloggers have inspired us to share our experiences in this part of the world. Your comments are welcomed.