Flores Permaculture

This week has been a weird one. The boys need to be home schooled. How they expect a single parent with full time work to make sure the boys stay on task is beyond me; the school work comes first. So, in permaculture fashion - everything is going very, very slow. However... The first Estufa is on the move! We acquired this second hand greenhouse from a friend after I had already ordered a 6 x 3m greenhouse. I knew we needed one to host all the plants that are needed to build a food forest, so we can have a safe home for seedlings to grow. So, I guess two greenhouses is better than one. We will also get a pretty amazing tomato harvest in the summer season, and broccoli in the winter. It seems we haven't seen the sun in a while. Our seedlings are getting leggy, the radishes have suffered, and the cucumbers and courgettes are just hanging out. The pests are defeating me a little. The broad beans seem to be under an ongoing ant attack, although I spray them with a soapy solutio...

We are lucky to be living on an island that has no cases of COVID-19, and has restrictions on who can arrive on the island. We don't know what will happen, how long the lock-down will last, and whether or not restrictions will be relaxed here. We do know that if we were to get sick for a month, in Spring, then our homestead would be seriously set back. The idea of having to stay in a hospital, on another island, without being able to see family or friends, is something I never want to have to experience. However, I might, if volunteers keep assuming self-isolating doesn't apply to them and people keep thinking this is a great time to travel. Please don't send us volunteer requests right now! I can't simply ignore them because my response rate will decrease.  A lot of people don't research our location, or where the island is in general, before their stay on our homestead. It astonishes me how many people think they can hop on a day ferry to Pico, walk to Faj...

As anyone following this blog will probably know; Magnus began this project with a worldwide crisis in mind. He had a feeling that one day, quite literally, shit would hit the fan. I think that in the grander scale of things, this could be a minor blip. We just wish we could teleport all our family and friends to our little homestead when the time comes - so we can have a little army of workers, and lots of compost! Anyway, here are a few things we do to avoid being affected by a crisis: Most Important: A Frugal Mindset and an Introverted Personality Cheese tastes better when you've been without for a few weeks, socialising seems less exhausting when you haven't done it for a while. This applies to most things (bulk ordering unnecessary stuff on the internet is not included). 3 Months+ of Belly Essentials and Cooking Supplies The truck could die, the supermarket could be out of flour (again), etc... so we stockpile all the essentials - even though we don't have...