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 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 the rural, stone, mountain, valley village where we live here in central Portugal, just outside of Fundão.
Me and Mariana begin by introducing ourselves on the beautiful cobbled track where we live, looking over to the side of the Gardunha mountain where we can see a few of the houses from the village, we talk a little about what we expect to see and do in the village.
First things first we meander up to the top of the hill and start the tour by the Multibanco, or ATM, this is where we bought the fishing licenses the week prior, you may remember me showing it in last weeks episode.
We continued down the track, where Mariana fed Chloe so I quickly looked at the chapel, post offices and beautiful junta da fregusia, parish council offices all in their beautiful old granite stone.
Then we made our way down to one of the local bakeries, where I bought us some freshly baked goodies so we could enjoy a nice picnic down by the freshwater swimming beach. I explained on our way down about all of the things our lovely village has to offer, I explained about another video we filmed in the same place, earlier on in the year, where I discussed how much houses cost to buy, where to find them for sale. Plus we spoke to my sister who had just bought a house in the village for themselves.
Once we got down to the bottom of the valley, bag of baked goods in hand, we walked around the Praia Fluvial, or freshwater swimming beach, I discussed about the pool and everything that the parish council does to the river to keep it so lovely for everyone to use ion the summer months, then we made our way back up to the village, swapped jobs for the uphill part, I took the job of wheeling Chloe around in her pram and Mariana took my usual job of filming and chatting to the camera. Once at the top we stopped off in one of our favourite cafes, they are actually all our favourites, then we had a little drink to keep us hydrated for the journey back to the farm house.
We got back to our farm by lunchtime and having walked the picnic off I decided I would partake in a bit of foraging for our lunchtime endeavour. So I went up to the top of a natural spring on our land (very important that it is at the most upstream part of the spring fed stream), where I went to check on how my Agrião, or watercress, that I planted was getting on.
Of course the watercress had grown just swell, I have oodles of this versatile, water loving green dotted around my farm in various locations. So I took a few cuttings and filled my wicker basket, took it back to the farmhouses kitchen and rustled up a lovely batch of my own recipe, watercress soup. A peppery, punchy, winter, warmer for sure, that bread from the bakery dipped into the piping hot soup was a real treat, especially given that the bread was still warm too!
After lunch I took a little hike up to the very tip-top of our farm, quite high in fact being about 150m higher than the farm house. This is where you will find one of our sheep meadows. Here I chatted to you all about our sheep, their progress and how the beginning of lambing season is going on so far this year.
After having a lovely moment with the sheep we went right up to the very highest part of our farm, two more terraces up, where we checked our pig sty and sheep barn. Here I speak about why we have not got pigs yet and when we plan to get them. I thank you all very much for watching and wish you all a very lovely week ahead. Bye bye for now!
If you are interested in viewing any of the properties featured in this film, please do not hesitate to contact me on either Facebook or Instagram and we can discuss the details of the property you are interested in. My opinion regarding them, translating, giving the contact details, directions etc.
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
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