SHEEP SHEARING THE TRADITIONAL WAY - RURAL MOUNTAIN FARMING IN CENTRAL PORTUGAL

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 early 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 on our dear friend and neighbours farm, Sr. Pinto, if you have been with us for a while you will know him from previous videos where we have helped each other out.

I introduce myself and point out the local surroundings that I stand in front of. The farm is situated on the Gardunha mountains and has spectacular views to our local village.

The sheep shearers arrive right on cue and begin setting up their shearing tools and everything they need. My brother in law Lloyd, my father Clinton and myself start grabbing the sheep one by one and carrying them to the shearing station. They hogtie their legs up (an old traditional way of doing shearing not copied by most of the Western world) and begin taking their woolly jackets off.

The sheep appreciate this very much as they cannot naturally shed or moult their wool and it is a necessity to ensure they do not overheat during the hot summer months.

Once we finished with Sr. Pintos 15 / 20 sheep we make our way up to his beautiful old stone ruin and sit at the banquet table, he provides us all with lunch of presunto, ham, regional cheese and of course wine and beer was flowing well. We needed this lunch stop as it was somewhat of a hot day, being close to 40 degrees centigrade, 100 degrees Fahrenheit. My poor English blood cannot cope with that for a sustained period!

After lunch we made our way to our own farm, where our girls were waiting to be sheared, we rounded them up, led them all to the barn and began taking each girl, one by one to the shearing station to get that heavy coat taken off.

At the end of the day I thanked Luis and Ricardo, the two brothers for shearing alongside me and asked them if we should take a beer in the local café, which of course we did.

The next morning I walk up to the sheep pastures with Mariana and Chloe, we pick some fruit and feed it to the sheep, namely cherries and nesperas (loquats). A few for our basket and then head down to the veggie garden, here I pick a head of green lettuce for the kitchen and a head of red lettuce for the chickens.

Back up in the farmhouse my little sous chef, Chloe, and I prepare a lovely light salad, which we enjoy after such a hot week of farm work.

Thank you so very much for watching along with us this week, 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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