MASSIVE MEDIEVAL FESTIVALS IN CENTRAL PORTUGAL - JOUSTING, CASTLES, FOOD & FUN

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

Together Mariana, my father Clinton 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 mid summer time as we go about our daily goings on around our farm and the local surroundings, here in central Portugal.

We begin this week walking up the hill towards the castle of Belmonte town, one of Portugal's 12 historic villages, where they hold a massive medieval festival every year.

Upon arriving to the festival we see lots of stalls selling their wares, generally medieval themed. Mariana sets to looking around all the stalls whilst I hunt out a bar, we find a man cooking a hog on a spit and we purchase some drinks, the night is constantly growing with more and more people arriving. We were at the festival Saturday night, but the festival is actually a three day long event, Friday, Saturday and Sunday too.

After our beer we look around everything, all the stalls, the falconry exhibit, the horses, donkeys, jugglers and jesters... An amazing night to let your hair down and experience some medieval themed madness at the base of the castle!

We found some local musicians, they were playing pibgorns and bagpipes, drums and cymbals. The music was right up our street and we loved every moment of it, as did the whole crowd which gathered. Mariana then told me that the jousting event was about to start, so we made our way to the jousting arena and luckily we got a nice place right at the front!

As the jousting event finished we found the crowds were now huge, Mariana took a phone call from her friend in our village who told her they were both at the festival, looking for us. Finally we managed to meet and we all went for some wood fired bread with chourico (and some more beer too of course!).

After the festival we all headed home. I continued the medieval theme on as I cooked my all time favourite stew (despite it not being stew weather exactly!), coney stew, which requires a wild rabbit, this one was hunted by my friend as I try to eat as much of what I can from my own farm, my friends farms or the wild. The rabbit had an amazing life and lived every day it had free, eating what nature intended, much healthier and happier than anything you would find wrapped in plastic in a supermarket!

After the coney stew my mother and I wandered up to our sheep pastures where we tried to find our sheep, who had all dipped out of the sun and hid away in our sheep barn, I do not blame them as it is much cooler inside there!

At the very end of the day I explained a little about our vineyard, the process to harvesting and selling the grapes and the wine making process which is a big hobby of mine!

I hope you enjoyed the episode and I hope you all have an amazing week ahead.

Thank you, see you in the next one!

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, Fundão

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.

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