So It's been a week since I picked up my land and I've spent a fair amount of time there walking around and just getting a feel for the place really.
I've done a little bit of strimming - but put that on hold as i await the delivery of my size 46 safety boots - the Portuguese apparently have small feet (not my words, but everyone else's!) as the largest sizes in stock are 44.
I've also done a little bit of tidyding up, to get a couple of decent working bases free of dust and the enormous amount of tatt left behind from the previous owners - honestly, in one run I almost filled an entire roadside bin myself (there wasn't too much stuff I could salvage unfortunately, it was about 90% skank).
But mostly I've just been walking the land and trying to get a feel for the zones - eventually I'll do a video, which will give a much better idea of scale, but I'm just not feeling that ATM, I'm more in the mood for a static post, so here's the entire land overview:
I've decided that Sunday is going to be a non-land day, a day to just chillax, and to write, so here goes:
The entrance way/ lower olive groves and wild area
This is the main gate and main olive field - the gate needs a repair obviously!
To the left of the car - a few olive trees - that line carries on the length of the field - which is about 80 metres - you can see it stretching back where the small outdoor kitchen is on the boundary, the line of trees also carries on further to the right.
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Just round to the right from the car and looking back to the road (hardly anyone drives down this - maybe 2 - 3 vehicles a day) I'm thinking this is perfect for wild flowers, keep it wild for sure!
The road is effectively my Western boundary - so keep on going and you'll hit the Atlantic and then somewhere in the Americas.
The picture below is looking back from the South West boundary corner - a nice wild area with some old olive trees -I'm probably going to leave this half an acre or so to do its own thing, there's also s stream down here.
Fruit tree swales and annuals planting areas
This is taken from half way up the plot, looking Sout-West-West, the car is bottom left, hidden behind, guess what: olive trees!
This is the real diversified food business part of the plot - the previous owners made some fruit tree swales, and about 6 of the trees have survived, JUST, which is impressive for no care and 40 degree summers for two years.
Lower down (behind yet more olive trees) you can see the fenced area which is where I'll be growing my annuals - that'll be next year!
Normally I'd say South facing is an advantage when it comes to growing terraces, but I'm not sure that matters in this climate!
Outdoor Kitchen/ well/ storage
This is a collection of stuff on my Northern Boundary:
The falling down storage shed - it's a bit of a wreck, also a nice water storage tank next to it!
A homemade outdoor kitchen - this will be knocked down and rebuilt at some point, but it'll do for a year or two as is!
Well, well, well:
Funky rusty hinged device for getting water out of said well (one of my favourite things on the plot!)
A better shot of the annuals growing area: nice spot huh>?!?
Water Storage, Shower and compost to be area
Right above the fruit tree swales the previous owners built this shower and toilet area - now OBVIOUSLY this needs rebuilding, but it's the perfect location - water for food growing belongs here, so it's an obvious place for a shower and a compost loo.
And to the left is where I'm going to do my MASSIVE composting operation - I'm going to devote around 30 square metres to it - that's a task for this year, for sure - this area is between the storage shed (just up from it) and the shower unit. This is for 'posh compost' - most of the brush is going to be hugled (excuse spelling), to extend the fruit swales and to beef up my Eastern border which is a bit non-distinct in places.
NB - you can also see in the above picture the forest area going up to the rear - that's about the same distance up (slightly more) than it is from the shower unit down to the road.
Celestial Valley Paradise Olive Terraces
This is immediately behind the car in the first photo, looking East, just about another 30 metres up.... You can only just about make it out, but there are about 4 beautiful stone terraces here going up - each with one olive tree on and then the mini 'valley' slopes in on both sides... you have to be there to see the potential, but this is going to be awesome once it's cleared.
It stretches up the main dwelling area at the Eastern boundary of the land.
This failed water storage white elephant is at the bottom of the olive terraces...
Unfortunately the previous owners thought this would be a good place to store water and so had this excavated - clearly it isn't full of water so it hasn't worked, rather it's a bloody mess.
However, a friend of mine thinks they just freaked out and didn't go deep enough - he reckons another few metres down and wider, clay line it and this thing will fill up and I'll have a swimming pool at the bottom of a celestial olive terrace valley.
That's obviously a fairly large project involving a digger coming in, so that might well be 2022, or 2023 even! I also need to find the money from somewhere, this could be 1000 EU to sort out, I can probably do it for that.
Paradise Cork Oak Woodland
Probably my favourite area of all is the acre or so of Cork Oaks I've got in the Southern region of the plot - it stretches West to East it's pretty sweet!
You can't a get a feel for scale from pictures really, but this is taken from the swimming pool to be, it stretches to the lower olive terraces to the west and then slopes up along to the Eastern boundary where the house below is located.
House and main living area
Half way along the long Eastern boundary of the land, I've got this to finish off:
And just next to it a nice clear area for anything else I want to put up - maybe a better kitchen/ shower area, maybe another dwelling...
This areas is at the highest point of the land - there's quite a view into the distance, looking East towards Spain.....
Pine and Eucalyptus Woodland
The final and largest area is the two acres of mixed pine and eucalyptus woodland in the North East section of the plot - it needs a bit of thinning....
From the short Northern boundary looking in:
And some Eucalyptus - quite useful for (very long) poles...
Final thoughts....
I love my land already - I'm blown away at the most excellent mix of regions in a relatively small space.
The balance of woodland and open fields is just what I wanted too, and the previous owners have given me a decent head start with land crafting and buildings.
There's a lot of work to do, obviously, but not too much thinking required at this stage as my priorities have to be woodland thinning and shrub clearance (for fire safety) and water storage 1.0 - which for this year is going to be quite crude, to be evolved laters.
This is also sort of surreal - here I am writing one of those posts that I've been drooling over for the last 20 years - but finally I'm actually doing this shit! This still hasn't really sunk in yet.
Anyways, that's the land, more to come as I progress with it. I am going to busy busy this Spring!