New kids on the block

It is strange weather outside, quite warm but really windy and rain clouds that are coming and going. We both went down to Vivaci, a small shopping mall, in Caldas da Rainha in the morning. Our aim for this trip weren´t shopping but to visit MEO, our local telephone store which has PT, Portuguese telephone company, as its distrubutor. Lars had a problem with his phone which was easily solved.

Vivaci

My stomach was a bit better so I thought I could go with him. Well home again we had some lunch, soup (continuing on my more or less diet on fluids) After Lars strted to paint in of our apartments, Casa Limon. I went out to look at/for our new babies on the farm. They arrived last Monday and are so small in comparison to the other chickens.

New kids on the block

 The other chickens are so mean to the small ones. They are hardly allowed to eat and when they try the others come running and peck them. Peter, our neighbour who we bought the chickens from, says it is normal and that everything will settle in a matter of weeks. But I find it very hard to see and give the small ones extra food when the big ones aren´t watching.

Senhor Lars and Gracie fat and plump

Following me around

Todays view

What is coming up here?

Ase

Good morning

After a good night´s sleep I am somewhat better today. I took a pain killer last night, the ones I got last time when I got out from the hospital. There was no solid food for me yesterday after the small piece of toast I had in the morning. So today it is a bit better.
Breakfast was a Swedish speciality, rosehip soup (nyponsoppa) a small cup of coffee and little youghurt with apple sauce. Not really hungry which is good.

Busy day today with three persons coming in to work. Natalia and Adilson are our regular ones. Natalia is cleaning our guests´apartment, changing linen and so forth and Adilson is helping Lars with all construction work, plastering and painting. It is very hard to catch Natalia in a picture because she is always hiding when we are trying.

Adilson doing new floor on the patio outside Casa Cabernet

Adilson painting outside Casa Limon

Our good friend Richard is also coming. He likes to hang on the farm and help out with different things. He is a retired expat and hasn´t so much to do. But that is good for us because we get a lot of help from him.

Richard celebrating his birthday

So we will serve lunch for 5 today, hearty rich and warming lunch. It is raining and the wind is awful today so the workers will need it,

Keep you posted.

40 000 readers+ 1 diverticulatis

Today we celebrate, well we don´t actually celebrate anything since I have the worst stomach pain ever, that we have had 40 000 readers on our blog. It isn´t bad at all. Well I read somewhere that a young girl (14) has over 80 000 readers a day. That is somewhat better. But we are proud anyway and still think it is amazing that we have any readers at all. So thanks to all of you readers.

I spend a couple of days in hospital in August. We had friends from Sweden here when I started to feel my tummy ache; not their fault though haha. It got worse and I had to go to the hospital here in Caldas da Rainha. I thought it could be urin infection but the doctors said that it was acute diverticulatis, which I never heard of before.
I was admitted to the hospital and had to go to the old thermal hospital because they were doing some renovations on the ward I belonged to. The smell in that hospital is horrible due to the sulfur in the water. I was going to stay for 5 days but couldn´t stand it more than 2. I got an IV pole with some kind of nutrient solution, antibiotics and pain killers. No food or drinks.

Do you feel the smell?

The last days my daughter visited from Sweden and then the "old" ache came back. What is it with those Swedish people visiting? Now I am scared that I have to go back to hospital yet again. I know what it is this time so no examination is necessary, just prescribe the antibiotics please. Do you think they will do that? I don´t.

Keep your fingers crossed that this will go away by itself and that I will nice and dandy in the morning.

Thanks
Ase

Little devil?

Hi

We have tree wonderful dogs. The old one, Herman, the hungry one, Lennon and the scared one Baldo or as we call him in Portugal, Ronaldo.

In Portugal there are a lot of dogs in chains outside the houses, they never get any exercise or challenge. Of course most of these dogs are really frustrated and barks a lot when anyone pass. We have always tried to take care of our dogs in the best way so we have a real challenge with Ronaldo because he is so scared of meeting other dogs even if they are in chains he totally freaks out. He barks and pulls his lead, all because he is afraid and almost panics.

Ronaldo is the most lovely dog when he is relaxed. The most important thing is to get him relaxed and trust in us a leaders. We have tried different types of training with Ronaldo to give him more self confidence and feel more relaxed when we are walking outside our farm. First we were participating in a course together with other dogs out and walking. This didn´t work as we thought so we went into a new course that Ronaldo really liked, agility. But the problem when meeting other dogs did remain so now we are in a new course together with other dogs with simular problem and this course is called little devils class. We have a wonderful teacher in Sharon Wilson, she is really fantastic and we really hope that this will help Ronaldo to be more relaxed and enjoy his walks more. It´s so terrible to see his eyes when he get in the panic mood. All this courses is just to see what we can do to help him.

Now I am training a lot home with Ronaldo, every morning we walk a long calm walk without any stress. We also have started to train in our garden with contact practice so he will feel more confidence in us as a leaders

Look at this lovely dog, he just would like to have fun and play. I really hope that this course will help Ronaldo to get more self confidence and trust us as leaders.

Beautiful Baldo/Ronaldo

Is it dangerous?

I just want to have fun

//Lasse

http://www.farmholidayssilvercoast.com/
www.facebook.com/farmholidayssilvercoast

Water colour course Portugal

We have already made many friends here on the beautiful Silver Coast in Portugal though we have only lived here for a little more than 9 months.

When we moved here I thought we would be very busy during the summer since it is when we have the main part of guests here. I reckoned I would have so much time over during the winter to do all the things I had always wanted and dreamt about. To learn to knit finally, do yoga, cook a lot, and to start to paint water colours.

But the free time hasn´t really arrived yet, too much to do, cook for workers and try to unpack our things from Sweden.

But then I met a new friend, an artist who has lived here in Portugal a long time. We talked and I learnt that she is giving painting classes in Caldas da Rainha. So next week I am starting a painting class in water colour. I am so excited about it but also a bit scared. Of what I don´t know I just am.

We also talked about maybe get together and do something, like painting holidays here on our farm. Wouldn´t that be fun? The people attending could stay here on our beautiful farm, in our apartments, have breakfast with our fresh farm eggs, home made marmelade, freshly squeesed orange juice and so forth, and she will give classes each day. At the end of the week we can have a big barbecue in our barbecue house. there are many things we could do. So keep an eye open for details on our web page.

Our web page

And keep your fingers crossed for my first attempt on water colours.

Ase

Beautiful day

Hi

We are sorry that we haven´t been updating this blog for a couple of days but we have been really busy with the pruning of the wine and we have also a short visit from Ase´s daughter Madeleine.

We have told you about the wine in a previous blog so there is not so much more to be said about this, more than it has been a real pleasure to start learning more about the pruning. You have to see how the plant is growing and see where the weak spots are before you cut them. After 3 days of cutting both Ase and I know a whole lot more but of course we have much more to learn.

Today we took a day off at our newely "found" beach Salgado. It was an amazing beach, probably over 4 km long and all sand. We were almost alone on the beach and the dogs were playing a long. It´s amazing to walk completely alone beside the Atlantic ocean on an enormous beach, You have to explore it on your own. It is impossible to make it justice.

Salgado Beach

Madeleine, Lars and two of the dogs

After the walk we had an lovely sunday lunch at a restaurang near the beach

Tasca do Janeca

Have a nice day
//Lars

Lazy Day?

It has been a lazy day today. NOT!
We have been busy pruning the vines on Monday and Tuesday. On Tuesday we stopped during lunch time because of the rain and that we had to go to Portuguese lesson at 4 pm. Our "teacher" Idalina, couldn´t help us out today so we decided to have go and finish the  pruning on Thursday instead.

So today we had a day "off". The night before we made plans what we would do with our free day.
1. Plan lunch for 9 people (workers) til Thursday and for 4 people on Friday.
2.Go grocery shopping
3. Take the dogs to the beach
4. Clean the house
5 Change bed linen
6 Take care of the chickens
7 Prepare the lunch for Thursday
8 Have a friend over for tea.
9 Make limoncello.
10 Make lemon curd
11 Pick lemons from tree.
12. Answer mail with booking enquiries

We never got to make the lemon curd because now we are exhausted after our day off. Also it was a mistake (in a way) to take the dogs to the beach. I think there is a ton ofsand in the house now. The wind was so strong so they brought half the beach in their furs. It is all in our sofa now.

Windy today

Funny hair do

The dogs really enjoyed themselves

3 litres of limoncello from our own organic lemons

Over and out

Pruning

Hi followers

This year is our first year to take full responsibility of the wine. Ase and I don´t know much about pruning the wine but we both like to drink it. So today was our first day of learning how to do it. We had a great teacher, Idalina a Portuguese woman. We also had help from two of our new friends from France, Bernard and Franck. They have become such good friends in this short time we have known them. They only speak French, Idalina only speak Portuguese and we speak Swedish. You can imagine the difficulties we´re enduring, all of us. These language barrier wasn´t the most difficult thing we had to go through today. Learning how to crop/prune the wine was worse. But we´re learning and are getting better so next year maybe ???
We will continue tomorrow if it´s not raining

We keep all of you readers updated tomorrow

Idalina and Bernard

Åse and Frank

After pruning, not much left

Best regards
Åse and Lars

Where is the duck?

We have never had chickens before but it has always been a dream. The previous owners had a lot of chickens, ducks, turkeys, goats, a sheep, quails, dogs, cats and even a peacock. They wanted us to take over all the animals but they were leaving in March and we moved here in April so there were no one who could look after the animals. We also brought our own three dogs and couldn´t really have anymore.

Our neighbour keeps chickens, goats and ducks. We haven´t seen them but you can hear them sometimes. That´s why I thought one of their ducks had ran away and accidently come in to our chicken coop, one morning when I found one huge egg in one of the nests.

Normal egg and tea light

That egg was twice the size as the other normal eggs. The next day the same thing happened. I found yet another huge egg in one of the nests. We have only got 5 chickens and there was no duck in sight. Later that afternoon I talked to a neighbour who has a lot of chickens. He said that that can happen some times but that we had to be careful. It can be one of those hybrids. I think I have written about that before, the day when we had bought the wrong chickens.wrong chickens. It can be a hybrid laying those big eggs. Then we will have to kill that one because one of the eggs can get so big that it can´t come out. We have to look out for it. But it can also be perfectly normal. Some chickens just lay very big eggs. Normally they´ve got two yolks in them. Twice as good then.

the same egg and tea light+ a duck egg?

Have a good Sunday

Ase

Surfing Portugal

Hi to all of you

It was an exciting day yesterday. Our first American guests were about to arrive and we had made everything ready for them. This was our first booking through airbnb Casa Periquita on airbnbWe had cleaned the apartment thoroughly, put in new flowers. home made organic fig jam and some fresh oranges from our trees.

Kitchen Casa Periqita

They had said they should arrive around 2 pm. so around 1 pm. we sat down for lunch. I had just strted on my soup when our friend Yvonne came and said that the guests were outside waiting. We hadn´t heard them because we had our lunch in the barbecue house.

Well they were absolutely charming and we showed them to their apartment, Casa Periquita. We had a nice fire in the log burner for them so it was nice and warm in there. CasaPeriquita is one of our two apartments that can be rented during the winter time.

Well our new guest was a professional surfer who travels the world to surf. He had come to Portugal for that reason. The waves in Nazaré are really big during the autumn and winter and he was super excited to try them. He really liked the location of the farm, nice and quiet and close to many of the best surf spots. We are quite in the middle between Peniche and Nazaré.

Peniche

Nazaré-Here McNamara world record about 2 years ago

McNamara world record-the film

If you are interested to book you can contact us book an apartment

Good night

A hard days work

Hi

We always try to be positive but today there were a lot of things that went wrong.

Today we should have been taken picture of our newly renovated kitchen in casa Periquita and make a instalation of a new salamander in casa Tourica. We also, at the same time, were preparing lunch for 8 people.

There is no new pictures of the new kitchen in Casa Periquita. There is a reason but I will not go into that in this blog.

The lunch which was prepared by my lovely wife was a really good, Italian meatballs in tomato sauce with pasta, this was the best part of the day. They are very unlike the Swedish ones which have onions in them and is served with gravy and lingonberry jam. These Italian ones have stale bread in them, and parsley and grated parmesan cheese hmmm. The recipe for them is here.
Big Italian meatballs

I and Adilson, our Portugese worker, were trying to install the new salamander in casa Tourica. First we tried to connect the chimey in one spot but there was a bearing beam. We had to connect the log burner from a completely new directtion. After a couple of hours hard work we succeeded and the new salamander was installed.

Have a nice evening
/Lars

The coolest guy at the farm

Hi

Today there has been peace between the two "kings" on the farm, Sr Lars the roaster and Herman the top dog.

This morning Sr Lars was really upset. All the chickens tried to calm him down after Herman´s last entry in the blogg. We were forced to give extra treats to Sr Lars. He had a lovely cake and after this he was calm. Herman was more calm and took a walk in the garden as usual and barked at every one who was closed to the farm.

Today Åse was in the park with Lennon in a dog walk class. He was as always the star in the walking class. Lennon dosn´t care about the "king" discussion.  Lennon says It´s a  really stupid discussion because he just cares about a good walk and a good morning and evening meal. "If I  have a good meal I´m happy, so Sr Lars and Herman can argue about the king discussion, I don´t care because I´m the coolest of all guys" says Lennon

Have a nice evening all readers

Regards "the coolest guy" at the farm, Lennon

The response from the real king

Hi

Today we have the reponse from Herman to yesterdays blog entry

Sr Lars, the rooster, said that I (Herman the old, the mean and the leader of the pack) was afraid of Sr Lars. I will now tell you the true story.
Sr Lars was, in the photo below, just seconds from, what we say in Portugal, a frango assado=grilled chicken. After this picture was taken I was just resting on the ground and Sr Lars was strutting around as he always does. Dad had made a big log fire on the yard........

Sr Lars thought I was sleeping and he tried to steal a little piece of bread that I had left for later. Mom thinks I like bread but I´m a dog and not a pidgeon!!! I love meat.









Ok I ate a little but it isn´t my favourite. I´m more a frango assado guy, like dad. My plan was to catch "the king" and grill him on the fire. Everything was working in the right direction, Sr Lars thought I was sleeping and tried to take my bread. When he was a foot from me I attacked. I have never seen a more scared and frighten rooster. Feather was flying in the air, but you know I´m over 80 years old and a little bit slower then I used to be so the damned rooster got away.


I missed a lovely meal this time but I´m still the king and I will be it for a long time, Sr Lars you shall be glad that you still are alive.

The real king on the farm
Herman

www.facebook.com/farmholidayssilvercoast

http://www.farmholidayssilvercoast.com/

New boss-polygamist

Well you might not know this but I am the boss on this farm.

I am the boss

The one who calls himself boss, isn´t in fact. He only has one wife and she looks a bit dated. I´ve got 5 wives and the rumour says that I am going to get more. 3 new fresh wives are going to move in real soon. I can´t wait.
Every morning, except Thursdays and Sundays because they are hunting days and many loose dogs are around, we go out. Sometimes we go down in the vineyard and some times to the apple orchard. There are many good apples that have fallen off the trees. They´re a bit rotten now but we don´t mind.

We like when the humans rake. 

 If the humans are out raking there are so many nice insects appearing out of nowhere. Then we stay on the yard.

Chillin´on the veranda

Sometimes we hang on the frot veranda. if we are lucky the humans have put a bag of rubbish out there that we can destroy and go through. Nowadays they´ve learnt their lesson so ther are not many bags out there anymore.

looking after my wives

 They´ve got some dogs here as well but we are no alowwed to play with them. Maybe they are afraid of us or something. As you can see this dog is trying to run away when I chased him.

He is really scared of me as you can see.

It is a good life here but we really want a new chicken coop. The one we´ve got is cold and really ugly looking. The other Lars tells us that we might get one this year. We really hope so. So instead of painting, pruning the wine, raking and burning leaves. BUILD A NEW HOUSE FOR US:

/Senhor Lars-the rooster

Do you believe in karma?

Hi

a lovely sight

Yesterday we were at our first party in Portugal. Our friend Richard had a birthday party at the most lovely location in the world. We were looking out over the Atlantic coast line. The waves just keept sweeping over the beach and we were listening to live music. We had a really good time










At the party there were people from all over the world. It´s so inspiring to meet all new people. Everyone has a story to tell and are willing to give us a helping hand. We (Åse and I) believe in c
karma and we always try to do our best and if can give a helping hand.

At facebook there are a lot of challanges to do different things. We think the best thing to do is to give all people a helping hand if they need it and you have the possibilities do it. I know that this sounds like a lot of bullshit but if you open the door at the supermarket for the woman/man that carries a lot of bags, you normally get a smile and a thanks. She/he is thankful and get back home in a good mood and are willing to help other people. The ball is rolling and you got a positive effect.  

If you are willing to give you always get more back, in our point of view thats karma and this is a way of living. During our stay in Portugal we have met a lot of people with all kind of nationalities, cultures and religions but all are working with positive karma.

To all of our readers we would like you to think in a positive way. Positive karma will occur if you are willing to be participate in a positive karma circle.

Åse and Bernard (from France)

Have a nice week and be nice
//Åse and Lars



http://www.farmholidayssilvercoast.com/
www.facebook.com/farmholidayssilvercoast

Bad bad girl

So now we have been here almost nine months. When I arrived in Portugal in April 2014 I immediately started school, that is Portuguese school. Twice a week i went even though I had just arrived and had tons of stuff to do, a vineyard to run and guests to take care of. (Not that many, but still). The school had started in October 2013 so I was a bit behind but I managed, one way or another, to be able to hand in there.

In June theschool ended for the summer and it was a relief in a way because we were so busy with everything. After a while we wanted to get back again to learn more.Then we waited and waited for the school to start again. In the meantime we didn´t get around to study or anything just to work and work.
Now the school has been on since the beginning of October and they have classes 3 times/week, which is a bit too much for us so we just go 2 times.

Sometimes I buy our local paper and try to read it and I can understand small parts of it but not all. We don´t study anything at home, too tired or no time so the progress to this quite hard language is slow.
Then I read this blog, written by a Swedish woman, living in Portugal. She has been here about 18 months and is READING novels in Portuguese. Not one, nor two but 5 novels. Good God I admire her.
A person I admire

So here are my "books" that I read, (or should have)

Going to bed. Tomorrow I will start to study. No more wine sipping for me at night.

/Åse

A new wonderful day

Hi

It has been a great day today. The weather was great as well, 18 degres and I´m not talking below cero! We did a lot of progress with all the preperations for the next season. Åse and I have two volunteer workers from Sweden at the farm right now. This helps us a lot. Every Thursday and Friday we have one local helper at the farm so today we were five people working at the same time.

Robin and Victor were preparing the windows for painting, Adilson was painting the walls and Åse was in charged of the fire. I myself did a little bit of carpenting in Casa Periquita, building shelves.

Everything worked perfectly and we did a lot of progress during the day as you can see.

Tomorrow we are going to a birthday party. We will get you all posted.

Regards
/Lars

Robin is scraping the window frames

Victor is cleaning up

good weather

excellent lunch in the grill house

Senhor Lars