I am still alive

I have not posted for a very long time and may not again for a simililarly long time. Indeed this might be the last unless I become motivated again if we ever retire and move.

Soon after we decided to try selling and retiring I began to suffer ill health. Nothing to do with the idea of retiring, just co-incidental I think. I was noticeably slowing and having great problems maintaining the quinta to the level I wanted. I collapsed a couple of times and decided I should have it all checked out. The outcome was replacement of a heart valve and three arteries bypassed. I had reached the stage where I was seriously considering having both knees repaired/replaced and of course that idea has had to be scrapped. Recovery from the heart operation is very slow and I have had to accept I will never regain the strength and agility required to do everything necessary, so after advertising being on hold for many months we decided to resurrect it all.

We had an immediate response including an offer good enough to accept, but this awful virus struck and the proposed buyer withdrew. Understandable since neither of us would have been able to move. Other interest is also on hold.

This means we are now here until everyone is able to move about the world again, and since there is virtually nothing happening here apart from routine mainenance there is nothing much to blog about.

We have been in quarantine for several weeks due to a combination of old age and my not too distant operation putting us at higher risk than younger and fitter folks. We have arrangements for occsional food deliveries and can take several months of quarantine so long as we can have a food deliery every few weeks.

Please everyone, do what you can to avoid close contact with people - I know it is unavoidable for some, but I also know of others where it can be avoided and is not.

Quinta for Sale

My website www.oldmcdonaldsolives.com now has the details of our smallholding which we are offering for sale due to retirement plans.

Selling the Quinta

Those who follow the blog will have noted I have not posted this year., and rarely last year too. Unfortunately I am slowing down as I age and non-farming activity has been very restricted due to lack of time to spend upon such acrivities - including writing for this blog.

When visiting our son and his family in the UK for Christmas 2017 I had a bad fall whilst walking down a steep hill (I eventually hit the ground after hopping at an increasing speed) and have not fully recovered. I am not crippled, but much less agile than before the fall.

I now need assistance with heavier tasks, so employ people as and when necessary. We could continue to do this, and are prepared to do so, but we prefer to do things ourselves. Some time ago my wife and I decided that the sensible thing to do is to offer the quinta for sale and move to somewhere with a lot less land. Our thoughts are the Azores, where I might cut back to just a garden and do some fishing in my spare time. I do intend to have some spare time. So, Old McDonald will still be in Portugal for a while yet, although we do eventually intend to end our days in Scotland.

Having had three estate agents view the place we reached the conclusion none of them knew anything about a working smallholding and we decided to advertise it through an online site. Unfortunately those I contacted are not prepared to do business with me following the EU regulations of accepting that selling a working farm is a legitimate business expense and therefore the advertising costs are VAT free if the site is based in another EU country - which they all are. They will accept the sale as a private non-business one, but that is not the case, it is the sale of a business asset.

All we can now do is to put the particulars on here and/or my website and try to draw attention to it through other advertising. Naturally I would be delighted for anyone to assist in the publicity.

As soon as we are organised I will post again with details of the sale.

Olive Leaf Extract

The cost of buying Olive Leaf Extract products is extremely high. I make extract very cheaply.

I have my own leaves of course – almost 500 trees full of them. I also offer the leaves for sale on my website www.oldmcdonaldsolives.com so anyone interested can make their own extract too if they do not have access to olive trees. NOTE: DUE TO ADVERTISING THE QUINTA FOR SALE I NO LONGER OFFER LEAVES ON MY WEBSITE. 

The method is simple – 20g of dried leaves, or 40g of fresh ones if you have them, are whizzed in a kitchen blender with one quarter bottle (strictly 187.5 ml, but near enough is good enough) of 40% vodka. Other spirits could be used but they will give their own flavour to the tincture produced. Put the mixture into a sealable container such as a jam jar. Glass jars with screw on lids are ideal for the purpose. Keep it somewhere handy, and preferably in the dark – definitely out of direct sunlight. Give it a good shake or stir (007 notwithstanding) once a day for two weeks. It is now ready to use.

I do not do it, but the leaves can be strained off the liquid if preferred, remembering to squeeze as much as possible out of the leaves. I simply take out a spoonful of liquid as required until there is none left. I also like to keep enough jars going that the leaves are immersed in the vodka for longer than the minimum two weeks which are required for the alcohol to extract the “goodies” from the leaves.

How much you take is entirely up to you. I have a dessertspoonful once a day part way through breakfast. It is not a good idea to drink even a tiny amount of spirits on an empty stomach. A dessertspoonful is more than many other people take, with some suggestions of only a half a teaspoonful.  Others suggest even less and taken at more frequent intervals. You decide.

There have been many studies on the beneficial effects of olive leaf extract. I make no claims about whether or not it does you any good, although I tend to think it helps my aged joints. It certainly does not appear to be doing me any harm. Coming up to 74 I still farm full-time, with a lot of manual work, particularly involving my olives, 800 almonds and smaller numbers of other fruit trees.

2016 - not the warmest year on record

It was not far off though. A mean of 16.33ºC for the year was marginally lower than 2015's 16.67.

A cool spring and occasional summer rain kept the maximum temperatures below those we have experience in recent years. Overall our mean of over 16º for the last three years, and close to it from 2010 to 2013 shows a definite warming trend. Ten to 12 years ago our mean was closer to 14º. Now I do not want to be alarmist and claim this is an indication of global warming, it is the result for one spot on the whole planet, although I accept that global temperatures appear to be gradually creeping up too.

The higher mean for recent years have come from higher minimums rather than higher maximums, and this has made life much more pleasant - not too hot in the summers and not too cold in the winters. We went from 9th February 2015 to 31st December 2016 between recording a minimum below zero. It has been very rare to record over 35º in the summer for the last few years, whereas the first few years after we arrived in 2003 gave us minimums of minus 6 on a few occasions each winter, and a maximum of 39º on a couple of occasions in the summer.

The olive harvest in 2016 was slightly lower than the previous year despite the trees still being young and continuing to grow. The exceptionally dry 2015 when I spent several months doing nothing but hand watering our 500 trees (losing two from dehydration) meant there was very little growth that year to produce the 2016 harvest. Nevertheless the big old tree in a very favourable spot next to the house had been given extra water through 2015 when it cropped exactly 59kgs, and with more favourable natural conditions in 2016, plus irrigation, managed to just top 60kgs. I have given it a fairly severe pruning because it was becoming too tall and very difficult to harvest the higher branches, so 2017 will not be a bumper year for it.

The annual pruning of the trees is behind schedule, because instead of beginning pruning immediately after harvest, I spent that time planting 814 almond trees. They are the self-fertile cultivar Soleta and I imported them from Spain. It was one of the cultivars bred by Sr Rafael Socias Company at CITA, Aragon and he was kind enough to have an email discussion with me regarding a choice of cultivar to plant. I had set myself a target of Christmas to complete the planting, and it was looking doubtful a week before that due to weather disruptions, but a few long days meant I planted the 814th about 20 mins before dark on Christmas Eve.

I then started on the olive pruning, but again, weather has delayed that (more rain today and much more forecast for the next two weeks) so I am hoping for a good spell of dry weather as the days lengthen over the next few weeks. Differentiation between flower and floral buds on the olives is about mid February and I like to be finished pruning before then. If I go on later I always feel as if I am cutting off fruit. I suppose we farmers are never satisfied with the weather. We need the rain, and we need the sunshine. We want both when it suits us and not at other times.

Cats

I am sure that many people reading this will be aware of Winston Churchill's statement "Dogs look up to you, cats look down upon you, but pigs treat you as an equal".

I think it is particularly true of cats. If they stay with you it is because they want to be there, and not from any sense of loyalty to the person who feeds them. Wherever we have farmed we have had cats. Never in the house, but always in the farm buildings. Cats are our vermin controllers.They always have ad lib good quality cat food and fresh water available. My opinion is that well fed cats will hunt for the fun of it.

Earlier this year our resident population of two females had a total of 10 or perhaps 11 kittens. I do not press them to be pets and the kittens always tend to run and hide when I am near them. The adults become friendly enough and seem content to be close without being petted. The numbers fluctuate from time to time due to natural causes and predators, but we have always managed to keep a few about.

At the beginning of July all of them simply disappeared overnight. No sign of anything. Then, at the end of September I had a sighting of one of the adult females crossing the river towards us. The level is low due to the long dry summer, and cats frequently cross it. Two days later both females turned up along with three, by now half grown, kittens. They settled immediately back in the large shed they had formerly occupied as their resting and sleeping place.

Obviously I have no idea where they have been, and not to sight them for about twelve weeks seems almost impossible if they were still in the vicintiy. I am out and about for most of every day and there is a good view of surrounding land from the house windows.

All were rather thin but not in poor condition, except one of the adults had lost her tail. She now has a stump about an inch long. I was really pleased to see them back, because the rains have started today - as can be expected at this time of year, and vermin will be looking for winter quarters. I have 700 bales of hay in this shed, and rats and mice would create havoc by chewing through the bale twine.

Where they have been, why they went away, and why they chose to return will always remain a mystery I suppose, but cats being the free spirits they are, I can only hope they stay.

2016 to date

2015 ended with warm and wet weather, resulting in our hottest year to date, with the annual mean at 16.67ºC. This is the third year in a row that temperatures have beaten the previous annual high. Despite the wet end to the year we also recorded our lowest rainfall at 492mm, which included 148mm in the last few weeks of the year. As I have previously mentioned, yearly distribution is as important as annual total, sometimes more so. Both mild and wet conditions continued into 2016, and we went through the whole winter without experiencing a temperature below freezing point. By early May we had passed last year’s total rainfall.

Temperatures fell below recent years’ ones in April, and the annual mean is below the last two years as of the end of July. We also had a fall of rain measuring 26mm on 6^th July with a very prolonged bout of thunder and lightning. We have never measured more than 16mm for the whole of July before, and some years none at all. After last year’s watering problems I am very pleased to be switching on pumps rather than having to fill my boom spray tank and then go and hand water the trees as I did last summer. I expect to run short very soon, but the olives will manage until the autumn rains.

Unfortunately there was rather too much rain when the trees were in bloom and pollination was not as good as I had hoped for. Nevertheless, the trees are almost all young and many have a reasonable crop for their age. There are a few trees with no crop at all. I will only know for sure how things turn out when the harvest is weighed and sold. This wet weather had a devastating effect on people growing top fruits – apples, pears, cherries, peaches, apricots, etc. and whole crops were lost in many cases. I do not have a single peach on any of my trees or any apricots either. Only one tree is bearing apples, and I have a single pear and a single plum. Grapes also appear to have suffered badly with very little fruit set. Fortunately all these fruits are just for our own use, but I do feel sorry for those growers who rely on them for an income. All farming is the same I suppose – extremely weather dependent.

I did have a good crop of hay on the few acres I cut. So good in fact that I am desperate for space. The crop, two small fields, was double the average yield of other years. I do not have any bale collectors or pick-up equipment so I have to pick up individual bales by hand and then stack by hand. I carry 11 bales at a time in the link box and 642 bales meant quite a few journeys to the field and back to the shed. It was hot work, especially when I was stacking close to the roof, but Patrick came and helped me with the last hundred or so because rain was forecast - and it did happen. He more than earned his couple of beers after we finished. Without him it would have got wet. It would have dried again, but also been just another unnecessary little hassle. Everybody needs good neighbours.

The major project for this year is planting almond trees and I have ordered 850 for early October delivery. Hopefully I will be able to plant them all before the olive harvest begins towards the end of that month. There is a lot of work in getting the land ready for them – they will be planted on raised berms and I do not have a machine to form them, so some experimentation with Patrick’s mouldboard plough has resulted in quite effective berms once I sussed out how many furrows to plough and in which direction so as to maximise the finished height.

I am also reclaiming a few hundred square metres of land that has never been cultivated before, and that means moving a lot of stones and earth. Again no machinery to automate the job, so hand stone picking and using the tractor link box as a mini-bulldozer is doing the trick. It is not yet finished, but will be by the time I need to plant trees on it.