Some Catching Up To Do

How did that happen? We are in 2007 already and I've not reported on any of the important autumn happenings -- like the grape harvest and wine making, the olive harvest and the very different weather of the past autumn. Once again, it's difficult to know where to begin now that I'm so behind.

Let's see... I'll start with the wine. It wasn't a great year for grapes and in fact many of ours, particularly the tinto (red) were lost to mildew (a result of damp earlier in the season). Many people spray to prevent mildew -- Bordeaux mix, which is I think basically copper sulphate. We didn't and as a result suffered quite badly. We'll have to consider what to do next year -- we would like to get good grape harvests, but on the other hand we really want to minimise spraying, even with (marginally) acceptable chemicals such as copper sulphate.

Anyway, with the help of our neighbour Orlando we managed to fill two 100-litre barrels in our own utility room -- one red and one white. The truth is though we probably had enough red grapes for no more than a few litres, so in reality the wine isn't really ours. Still, it does feel good to have two barrels maturing downstairs.

Nice barrels, huh? Finest chestnut; made by a cooper in Tabua -- perhaps the only one left. (Villagers tell us that there used to be so much demand for barrels that even this little hamlet of a few houses had a cooper.) Amazingly, properly made wooden barrels are not that expensive. These were 45 euros each.

Before the grape harvest was in, it started to rain. And it rained and rained throughout the autumn. What a difference compared with last yeat! A local weather station reported around 75cm of precipitation between September and the end of November -- which is three times more than in south-east England where most of my family live. Here's one of the early thunder clouds that developed toward the end of September.

We had some pretty good sunsets too...

In the distance in that second picture, the mountains are the Caramulos. This is what we see from our kitchen windows. The buildings in the foreground are part of Tábua.

The rain kept the garden looking green and healthy till quite late in the year. Here are some of our raised vegetable beds around the end of September.

With that, I feel that this post is getting a bit long. I'll continue elsewhere...