Upgrades to our Homestead and a Spring Garden Tour 🌺

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Beijinos e abraços,
Carissa, Iwan, Frankie & Albi

Our Story:
We are Carissa, Iwan & Frankie the sausage dog, and in 2020 decided one night over a bottle of wine that moving from North Wales to Portugal would be a good idea. Within a month we were on the road to Portugal to find the perfect piece of land to call home. We picked up Albi, Joao and Simao the cats along the way, as well as Diogo the podengo and a flock of chickens.

Subscribe to follow our project as we turn an old stone barn into our home, and learn the ropes of looking after a piece of land to make an abundant garden and one day, our very own winery.

for for for a a [Music] in [Music] [Music] CH your [Music] messy [Music] [Music] [Laughter] good morning guys uh welcome back to Frank uh we’ve got a new cabinet we found from Ikea they do actually deliver if you do a small package for only €1 so we felt it was worth it um so built it this weekend whilst it was a very important football game on uh crazy football game and we’ve been trying to drill a hole in this wall to get to hang it up and we gave up yesterday we managed to get one of them in but the cement is so hard so that is our mission today you have the Hing yeah that’s the problem is the [Music] [Music] H some more masonry D into the yeah before anyone asked we are using the right drill bit we got the M me drill bits but we were doing this so many times yesterday I’ve actually like bruised my shoulder from pushing the drill against it it’s just such such hard render we’ve got the um the Makita drill bit set so we’re using that but I do remember or youel just remembered that we did buy some especially for r for masonry so maybe see if they work better I don’t know if it’s the drill could do with be more powerful or if you know let us know send us all your tips for drilling into concrete render is it it’s not concrete is it the render cement lender yeah technically it’s concrete but doesn’t concrete have um yeah AG this has like sun but it’s just fine that get it yeah this is the masony drill B oh it’s warm has like a thingy on the end these ones are made by Stanley okay come on Stanley you can do it do you know [Music] [Music] Stanley [Music] [Music] pretty DN far someone is not going to be happy about this moving this coverboard please be fast asleep on the cushion you look after them do then I hold it here I can’t really see I think that one’s on it it just needs to go maybe like a millim higher I just screw see it go no just go a little bit more so you can see if I scw it in it doesn’t look like it’s anywhere near to be Hest from here no it’s nowhere near it but it’s we or not it’s because something else isn’t lined up or whether it just needs to go [Music] higher yeah awesome so then it’s what’s going on under here just need to stick some wedges well it’s massive all you need is cuz anything tall yeah you go there and you can still reach it from there can’t you yeah definitely not straight but suits the room not do straight don’t take come here you think put you in there looks like it’s Beed but I don’t it’s just my friends bought us back the biggest sh of Branson pickle I’ve ever seen we love this it’s one thing we miss from the UK so about mashed potato going to do that well we have a rainbow fire and there beautiful [Music] sunset [Music] [Music] for [Music] [Music] [Music] so we have another beautiful day here we had a really cold night actually there’s quite a cool Northerly wind coming in um but now it’s just absolutely stunning and I’ve been pottering about in my greenhouse and then I’ve just updated my calm Lines website for April yuan is driving to lbon he’s his mom Shan is arriving today so he’s gone to pick her up and yeah I’m pottering in the garden soon as I’ve just been working on it I thought it would be the perfect time to tell you a little bit about Squarespace who are kindly sponsoring today’s video if you haven’t heard of them before then they’re an all-in-one platform to help you to easily create a F looking website I have one for my Cal lines which is my illustration business and it’s also where I share about gardening which is my passion project so it’s a great space whether you’re trying to build a business or just share information about something that you love one of the amazing things about SES is they have thousands of award-winning templates that you can choose from so you can start off your site looking beautiful straight away even if you have no design skills no website building skills you just select one and then you can quite easily go in and personalize that to suit what you’re building and then once you start building the website they have a really easy editing interface called fluid engine which is basically just drag and drop so whether you have text or imagery you can just pick them up and drag them around and move them quite intuitively to be exactly where you would like them to be as part of my illustration work I have a shop selling both physical and digital prints my print Studio back in the UK send out any of my physical ones and it’s just been a really easy process integrating that with their Commerce feature we have a very warm dodo here that has come to tell you that if you are inspired to create a site then you can head to squarespace.com Franky offgrid for a free trial and once you ready to purchase a SLE domain men you get 10% off so I thought I would come and show you what’s going in the greenhouse there is someone streamming in the background so hopefully you can’t hear that too much it is the time of year land clearing so I did a lot of sewing yesterday I have a little garden book that I sometimes write everything in rather than and doing the little labels like this so here’s what went in this tray yesterday lots of flowers I’ve done some giant sunflowers and sweet corn I’ve never have much luck growing sweet corn so please send me your sweet corn growing tips and then I’ve done some chickpeas they’re such a cool Plant I love growing them I’ve never really had many chickpeas off them but the leaves are really beautiful and then I’ve done a few more cetes against my better judgment because the plants are quite prolific and I’ve already got two growing quite happily but can always give them away and then squash and then potato onions are a very cool seed that I got given by a man named Gary who’s given me lots of cool plants and seeds and also rat tail radish uh so I’ve grown the rat tail radish before it has like a seed POD at the end that’s really tasty but I’ve not had any success yet with the potato onion seeds so hopefully they do well this year that’s everything that I sewed but I potted on a lot of stuff so I have a big thing here of tomatoes um that I’ve putted on we want to grow a lot of tomatoes this year and I always struggle to get the SIMs to grow here they’re one of my favorite plants because the leaves and the flowers and even the seed pods you can make almost like Capers with they always die here um but I’ve bought loads of different seed packets and now I have three healthy looking plants which I’m absolutely Overjoyed about and then there’s another one trying to grow here oh there’s two in here now and then I’ve sewn more cuz I just love them and it breaks my heart that it doesn’t grow for me here because I’ve seen them in a lot of the local Gardens doing well so something I’m doing and Andrea from Project Portugal has them in her garden so I think they struggle in the summer but if you can keep them alive then they start flourishing and yeah I’ve just I’ve got loads potted on here’s my cette getting its third proper leaves now so I can’t wait for cette season I’m going to last video I made a carrot cake and when the corett get cific I’m going to replace the carrots with cett uh we had so many cett last year I’ve got uh this is called flat white pumpkin I had I again something I don’t have a lot of success with is my squashes and pumpkins but I had one last year that really took off and it was this flat white pumpkin and it has this big huge white round pumpkin uh it’s not got loads of Flesh to it but it’s very cool looking so I’m trying that again and then I’m going to try some more different types of squashes and butternuts and hopefully they do better this year as well I feel like I’m on it this year with the garden I’ve got a good irrigation plan going and just I’ve been here 3 years now so I feel like I’ve learned how to handle it but yeah I just it makes me so happy to see all these seedlings it’s honestly my happy place being here I could just spend hours potting on things this one is Rouge matis it’s an Asian green it gets really big and it’s really tasty almost a bit like rocket um I found that one does really well here what else does really well Cosmos and I love them they’re one of my favorite flowers I’ve got lots of them growing and zenas if you are in zone 9 where it’s hot those two well zenas sunflowers Cosmos do really well over the summer they kind of come in the Cosmos come in in the Autumn mostly currently got loads of Californian puppies they’ve been doing really well here so I’ve got a few new ones that I’m trying so I’ll let you know how I get on with those um got some aloe veras that Sara from Luc andara AF life gave me trying to look after them because I would love to get them really flourishing here H and she also it’s always a worrying feeling that there’s something on you but it’s it’s very often a seed around here I did get stung by a little bee the other day so I’m I’m on edge cuz I don’t like getting stung by bees cuz then they die I like bees actually one tip I would love if any of you have any ideas in the top corner of this greenhouse obviously all the bugs fly in and then they can’t get out cuz they kind of get trapped in the in the top and I don’t really want to cut a hole in the greenhouse but I can’t see another way for them to get out I’ve had to rescue lots of bumblebees and butterflies and I’m pretty sure there was a hornet in here this morning so I run away it might have been a big beer I didn’t stick around to look but hornet scary I also have a comfrey plant that I’m putting a lot of effort into keeping alive I think this is the comrey cuz it died back over the uh winter it says comrey on the pot so that helps I do I am trying and then I forget I’m drying I’m really really happy with how spring is going so far with my seed sewing and then I’ll take you down to the vegetable garden so you can see what’s doing quite well down there and look at this beauty it’s a glow bar choke so I’d quite like to get him in the ground somewhere let’s go okay so this is the main veggie garden which is still kind of under construction cuz I need to build a few more beds ready for everything to come out of the greenhouse and go in the ground if you’ve been watching and seeing I’ve been making this woven fence so I’ve done one with the grape B as Yan’s pruned those um we finished all the pruning now so I’ve got a few left and then this is with the Mimosa that we’ve been cutting back that’s invading our land but when we went for a dog walk the other day I found a willow so I’m also experimenting with that and I can see why people use it for weaving so I might go forage some more of that but yeah the garden is it’s not feeding us very much at the moment just like greens and stuff U my brush because didn’t do well and we’re kind of like in that gap before anything like the corett and tomatoes really take off it’s on the verge of feeding us this first row here is all um Egyptian walking onions such an amazing plant another one Gary gave me and then I’ve just I’ve got loads up in the top garden as well we use these like spring onions and then what they’re going to do is this bit here turns into like almost looks like a flower but it’s just full of other tiny onions and then it drops in that’s why it walks I’ve put a few sweet potatoes in here and then we have charred perennial leaks we’ve we’ve not used them much I need to find some recipes I might try and make some soup with those and then the cabbages have pretty much all gone to seed and they’re so tall this one grew taller than me this has been in the ground for like two over 2 years now the trunk on it is enormous but the chickens love the leaves so mostly been growing them for them and then our asparagus are just doing this thing where they grow really long bits like this that aren’t edible yet and the edible bits are really small so I think I’m going to leave it another year before I start picking I did eat one the other day I can’t resist them very yummy and then this bed is mostly onions the soil is not great here it needs a bit more work I’ve been putting lots of compost in but I think the raised beds I did around here is is working better because it’s just so Sandy and dry um but they’re doing okay I need to come and pick the rest of this purple broccoli and as you can see a lot of the cabbages are going to seed you can still eat these bits though they’re yummy you kind of use them like broccoli and then we’ve got one cabbage that we might actually get to eat this year they either get had by the chickens or start bolting so this second bed is another one filled with um brasas a very flower filled broccoli now again this one just went to seed before it got to an edible stage the chickens will be happy though they’ve broken in down here and scratched up all the mulch and pecked the one cabbage that was going well so they are now banished until I Fen it in and we’re going to be adding uh some more fencing for them to have a another area to run around in so that cuz I just let them out cuz I feel sorry for them then they then they destroy my garden The Mulch is helping but again the soil is it’s looking a bit better in this one but yes I’m working on my composting methods and then this third bed is one that I made the woven raised bed style um and then I packed this with donkey man which is why there are so many mushrooms and then a couple of bags of bought compost and yeah it’s it’s a much better growing medium apart from all the mushrooms I don’t know if it’s a bad thing having all these mushrooms in here and I don’t know what type they are they kind of scare me a bit I would never forage mushrooms I’m too scared but again we have onions in here a few peas at the back and some struggling brasas and then I have some radishes and beetroots that I’ve sewn but jow our black cat loves to come and roll around in here and and just this area he seems to just scratch up so we’re lucky we don’t have to battle slugs here but the uh chickens and cats and sometimes Doo running through it is is our biggest challenge then I also have a few leaks very slow Growers and some pansies at the end another one of my favorite flowers cuz they’re edible and and then yeah Force bed I’m currently working on so I want to make a woven outline around here as well it’s a bit time consuming but it’s a lovely job when I do have the time um I’m going to try a few different a different method with this one so I’ll show you when I do do it and then I showed before that I’m trying this composting method here this is just cut grass and saw dust from when we’ve been chopping wood that’s breaking down quite nicely and I just come and like turn that and the heat from the is helping to heat it up and make it break down faster so once I’ve done that I’m going to just truck it on top of here but it’s not very much for the size of the bed so I need to get some more on the go it’s just in an experimental phase at the moment and then I have one more bed this one’s going quite successfully we’ve got um all the potatoes and then the peas are doing pretty well I’ve not found one to eat yet but I do eat the the peash sometimes oh hello carpenter bee a big blue bee you like in the broad beans um I’ve put a few beans in here that were in the greenhouse um I sewed them in seed trays and they didn’t seem to like it very much because they’re just a bit too big for them I think they’re green beans and then the broad beans one of the most underrated plants ever because they smell amazing at the moment just like almost like sweet peas and then they’re obviously making a delicious Bean they’re fixing nitrogen into the soil they they look beautiful they’re covered in aphids but they seem strong enough to resist them I mentioned this um in another video about the aphids um one of the suggestions was just to kind of leave the two plants as um what’s the word sacrificial sacrificial plants and kind of let the aphids take over there so I’m doing that and the plants are just about surviving it they are spreading a bit to these but they’re doing okay so I didn’t want to interfere because last last year I sprayed them with a washing up Liquid solution and seemed to damage the plant as well so see if they can be strong enough because I have done quite a lot of work in the soil here putting down a lot of donkey manure so hopefully there’s enough richness in the soil to make strong plants so strong plants bite off pests better and then there’s a few more potatoes in here and then just at this end here I’m doing another kind of composting building experiment where I’ve layered all the grass from where we’ve stmed I’ve red it all up and put it all down here to cover the soil kill any of the weeds I know there’s lots of seeds in here but by having so much mulch it should kind of stop them hopefully from uh sprouting too much and then I’ve put more saw dust St um and then I’m adding like water and sometimes urine as well which is really good for the soil just noticed we had such a cold night last night that the potatoes have been frostbitten I didn’t realize it got that cold I felt it but when I got up the thermometer was on like 10 but we must have had a small Frost down here poor potatoes they’ll recover though and that’s it in the veggie garden ‘ got the garlic bed is up in the raised beds I’m just up here by the raised beds they’re mostly filled with garlic and we’re going to interplant with tomatoes and peppers and then in here I’ve got lots of salad stuff some coriander that’s doing really well some beetroots and carrots but yeah one one of my resolutions for 2023 last year was that I would grow all of our Christmas dinner and I completely failed I didn’t grow a single thing so I’m making that another resolution this year and I found I’ll link it below a website that um or an article that tells you all the timings for planting each thing for Christmas dinner so Christmas dinner guide that’s with gardeners World beers so many beers around now it’s so nice so yeah in April pass Snips pnps grow really really really slow I don’t know how they’re going to survive the summer here but I need to get them soon this month and the tip in this article is to sew the pnip seeds mixed with radish seeds because the radishes Sprout really quickly they can take up that growing space and show you where you’ve sewn the past nips and then when you harvest the radishes the pasts will have started to grow that’s that’s the start of project grow our Christmas dinner h I realized we also didn’t show you the final reveal of this cupboard it’s weird how much it makes this how different it makes this space feel having a big cupboard up here it is a beast which we needed I think we’re actually thinking of putting up a second one and yeah just having a cupboard just it feels like a kitchen like a proper kitchen now which is really nice I am really scared that it’s going to fall off the wall still but fingers crossed that’s not going to happen for for for for e [Music] sa look it is come on Doo are you happy are you happy regularly does huh don’t take Frankie out did she hello hello oh hello there how are you my darling good how are [Laughter] you oh lovely to be here at lasta is [Music] so [Music] Bard everyone how you all doing me and dodo are about to start work on the next segment so we’re up by the raised beds up near the house and we have a surprising store for the chickens let we do you done it you can’t do it again pretty much one step and are you having an angle here no it’ll be straight through that straight through this yeah we’re not too bothered about club and stuff we St there is it Chicken N months yeah just that corner should I get bash your knes then go you probably one of those I shouldn’t really be doing yeah [Music] tweaking yeah can the impact in [Music] it in case you’re wondering why I’m not doing any of the banging it’s because of my broken ribs before you start I wish I could be dead so you’ve probably guessed we’re doing chicken fencing so we’re going to try rotational grazing from so we can try and let this side on let this on the other side Rec cover a bit cuz it’s looking a bit a bit rough maybe just come up a little bit right so rather than trying to stick to a thing I’ll just go down like that yeah Sav T spices really crazy Corners yeah we could one of um let’s do lunch get little bit High for that people say just to [Music] do is [Music] Sean can you pick up three plugs off the table for me um what did we decide in the end maybe bring me both please not long to go chickens should stretch a bit even though it is inside down to that side the drilling [Applause] come on is did it fre oh see [Music] for [Music] for [Music] oh [Music] [Music]