The Magic of Grafting
Imagine finding the most delicious, crunchy, slightly tart yet still sweet, apple. Wouldn’t it be amazing to have a tree that produces such fruit? The trouble is, apple - and many other fruits - seeds are a genetic gamble - no seed will ever produce the same fruit as it came from. This is why fruit producers use often grafting to reproduce winning fruit. Grafting is both a simple and surreal concept. You cut a branch off one tree (the "scion"), and stick it on another tree (the "rootstock"). Done
We bought land! Now What?
Almost a year. That’s how long it took us from the moment we first saw the property we fell in love with to the moment we signed the papers that made us its official new owners. Well, 11 months to be exact. Ten, maybe, if you count from the moment we decided we wanted to buy the place. No matter how you look at it, it has taken quite a while. We are partly at fault, because we wanted to cross all the T’s and dot all the I’s –
The Rain Paradox
The pitter-patter of raindrops on the roof sounds just the way my inner voices would if they could dance for joy at the fact that it is raining. My imagination thinks up little fairies distributing water to every blade of grass, seedling, and tree, showering them with the promise of life, and growth. It’s raining! But I am getting ahead of myself. When we got to Portugal for the first time in May 2016, we were told that one of the wettest winters was only just giving way to sunshine.
After the fires
Background This year, Portugal has as usual suffered from innumerable fires. Some had natural causes, linked to how dry the year has been, and others were initiated by human intervention – whether unintentional (such as a government worker cleaning the side of the road, his blade hitting a rock and creating a spark, and voila) or criminal (yes, apparently that’s a thing). This happens every year. What is different this year is that two particularly nasty fires, one mid-June and another just a few weeks ago on October 15, have ravaged
Post-Fire Land Management
**This is copied from a Facebook post by Frankie/Chiquita Bonita. I am posting here to make it easier (hopefully!) for people to share, because the information is essential and very useful to anyone dealing with a fire-affected region. This comes after one of the worst fires Central Portugal has known in at least a decade if not more, which affected more than 300,000 hectares and countless individuals, families, homes, and animals. Note that the advice is in some cases specific to Portugal, but can be applied anywhere with slight adjustments