OUR PORTUGUESE FARM - FULL TOUR - ROAD TO SELF SUFFICIENCY IN CENTRAL PORTUGAL

Hi there! I am Joseph.
I have been an immigrant, or expat, living in central Portugal along with my beautiful family 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 mid-Winter as we visit and give you a virtual tour of our entire cherry farm where we live here in central Portugal, just outside of Fundão.

I begin the day at the break of dawn, walking down to the chicken coops with my father. We let the geese out onto the pasture and open up the chicken and duck enclosures so they can free range on the meadow for the day.

Then we walk up through the main cherry orchard, open up our wooden sheep barn which we built a couple of years ago and watch as all our beautiful ewes and their babies walk out to enjoy their day of grazing.

Once they are all outside we take a long walk up to the very top of our farm, where our concrete barn is located, right now this barn is home to Godfrey, our ram, & his friend Carrie, a small 6 month old ewe lamb. Godfrey has heavy hooves and a hard hitting head, so he must be kept away from the little lambs whilst they are in the first couple of weeks of life. I am sure he would not hurt them but just to be on the safe side we will keep him separated for now!

Next we call the junta da fregusia and ask permission for having a fire on the land, a mandatory process in Portugal. My mother joins me as we begin burning all of the olive prunings which we cut out a couple of months ago. Then once the fire is nice and hot we set the grill on top and make ourselves some bifanas, a traditional Portuguese thin pork chop sandwich, normally had with mustard, a perfect way to finish the hot burning work!

After sharing our bifana recipe we take a walk back to the farmhouse, where I explain a little about our house, how it used to look and how it looks now. I talk a little about the poultry pastures and then make my way up to the top end of the farm. Our farm is 4 hectares in total, 2 hectares make up the sheep pasture and olive groves (the sheep graze beneath the olive trees), the other two hectares is split up between cherry orchards and a large vineyard.

Once up to the vineyard I see my father and my neighbour, I did not realise they were both up there, so I give a quick talk about the vineyard, chat with my neighbour for a moment and then drop the camera and begin helping them both prune. My neighbour likes to come and help us prune sometimes as I often help them on their farm with my tractor, they do not have a tractor and this makes for a big relief of work to them. We also share grapes if one of us needs some, so we have no problems helping each other on our farms.

At the very end of the day I explain all of the goings on this week, why our episode was somewhat more simple than usual, because Mariana has been away for a couple of weeks, introducing Chloe our daughter to her grandparents in Sesimbra, a small fishing town south of Lisbon. So I have been missing them both tremendously and of course a little stretched in terms of work, so filming has had to take a bit of a step back this week. Sorry about that.

I wish you all a marvellous week and I hope to see you all again next week!

See our journey to self sufficiency / permaculture / organic farming as expats 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!

Hobby farming in Fundão
- 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.

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