It wasn't very long after i moved onto the farm i released what a huge mess i had to clear, i could see in my mind the beautiful haven i had planned but what lay before me was long forgotten overgrown wilderness that was now all my worldly possessions.
I had a massive restoration job ahead of me and i knew it ,the feeling was overwhelming but looking past the overgrown dilapidation it was obvious what a piece of paradise i had, so in the thick of it trying not to think of the work ahead and with enthusiasm i told myself “this was the dream” and “ this was the real party” and section by section i cleared the overgrown farm, each day feeling like a new step towards self sufficiency and freedom
having bought the best strimmer i could find i strimmed and cleared and hacked and burned and chopped and battled for three months and only then it began to feel like the farm was habitable ,i got used to the new scratches daily and the cuts on my arms and legs, half the house was covered in bramble ,whole terraces overgrown with it ,olives trees and vines strangled by it ,i hacked and i hacked ,weeks went by hacking away the days, sometimes leading to the discovery of paths and walls that had been captured years ago by the thorny invader , fruit trees and grapevines were once again free and there was now space to walk around the farm and get an idea of the layout of the land metre by metre.
anyone who has cleared sizeable amounts of bramble will know exactly what a tricky customer it is to deal with, I've cleared so much of it at this point , all day everyday for weeks and weeks on end eventually having resulted in a new found respect for the plant
so stubborn and such a difficult opponent always ready to bounce back ,once in its grip struggling will only make it worse,one thorn snags you and the rest snag you , it's a slow predator with insidious nature ultimately dominating its surroundings ,stripping the land of its goodness and suffocating any plant that comes across its path,
unchanged for millions of years ,a kin to the crocodile of the plant world so perfectly designed and so efficient , among one of the reasons it has evolved thorns is to trap animals that get snagged in them, the struggle for freedom invariable ends in the victim falling deeper into the clutches of the thorny capturer and without escape , death by starvation follows ,after which the juices of the decomposing corpse result as food for the bramble , millions of years of perfectly efficient design were a worthy opponent for my top of the range Japanese industrial strimmer i can tell you.
It was a battle reclaiming my old farm from the bramble but over time i rid the land of them and was left with a feeling of having gained some kind of right to be here now after the blood sweat and tears of the first few months ,i started to understand what was meant by you never really own land your just its caretaker ,this is true ,nature never has a day off and will outwit a man eventually, one can only tame the land for so long, i still see the baby brambles creeping their way back in and it would only be a matter of time before they would reign again supreme if i were not here to pull them out at the root.
Unbeknown to me i was on the brink of the coldest winter in 50 years ,for some reason i thought the temperature in this region didn't go below 6 degrees in wintertime, that year it went down to minus six and the wind and rain were relentless,to top it off my cheap Chinese diesel heater that had been so effective up until that point conked out just as the bitter winter arrived ,i had suspected these new newfangled all the rage diesel heaters were too good to be true and had installed a trusty wood stove in the truck as a backup heater for fear of the exact situation,the trusty wood stove carried me though the winter fine but the wood chopping was a far cry from the remote controlled diesel heater one click from bed the place was toasty in minutes kind of cappuccino convenience one easily gets used to , but alas i was back to cooking porridge on the wood stove within a year of owning the stupid thing
It just proved to me what i thought in the first place the old ways are the best ways ,since then i got hold of a huge wood stove and installed it in the barn and that set me right for the next winter, i was prepared for a blizzard that year but it never came and it wasn't as cold as the first one , lesson learned “don't lean too much on gadgets”
I had a long thought out plan when i arrived in Portugal ,somehow i felt i had honest intentions in this new country , a new language a new culture to absorb ,another opportunity to learn and appreciate the subtle cultural differences of a new part of the world and yet i was here to buy a small piece of it, my primary intention was to buy a farm and work the land.
Off grid living is a way of life for me , i had lived with solar power and shared my winters with a wood stove for almost fifteen years before i got my own land , carving out a life on a long forgotten farm in the wilderness was pretty manageable for me , but many purchase such a raw piece of wild land and are stopped in their tracks due to the amount of work it takes to create a basic off grid infrastructure for a reasonable quality of life in nature.
Some of them are still using candles and fairy lights for light years after they went off grid, , many of them who came from afar to live on the land here in central Portugal left the land and bought cheap houses in the nearby villages because they couldn't hack the climate to live off grid in this wild or the amount of work it takes to be self sufficient. Certain skills and a certain mindset must be attained in order to live well here off grid in the mountains, not everyone can hack it ,many came here as they had no other place to go ,many came with romantic notions of a life of ease in the country ,it's a free way of living but it takes hard work and a few seasons to know what you must plan for to make life comfortable and farm life isn't very forgiving of sick days and hangovers
just as well this country life was my party i wasn't here for the cheap beer like i said i was here to work the land , i had other places to be but choose to be here ,having well travelled throughout most of my twenties i could appreciate the beauty of the landscape i lived in, truly one of the most beautiful places i ever seen and it was mine working this land was never work it felt more like play i was enjoying all the exercise i was getting and it felt great to put plans into action years of daydreaming and now dragging those dreams into existence was all pleasure ,every drop of blood shed from the battle of the brambles was well worth it
The beauty of farm life is the land tells you what work needs doing and the seasons govern what tasks must be undertaken. I love the simplicity of that, nature is a fine boss it rewards well for hard work all hard workers know that.
I like to challenge myself, years ago i came to the conclusion that a person like me just needed land in order to live how i wanted and create in a way i see fit, in 2020 this proved to be true when i finally got my own farm.
I had set myself a challenge and that challenge was was self sufficiency ,i was aiming for full food independence i had managed to find a way in society to feed myself and now i wanted to see how far away from all the pressures of modern day life i could get and grow my own food , after the first winter on the farm i began the creation of vegetable gardens it felt so good to plant and with so much space to do that, i began planting all i could get my hands on from cauliflowers to fruit trees the sunny days went by like daisies.
Each one like an experiment in alternative living , a new way of being an artist no bills and creating for just the joy of it no other intention for it ,no pretension ,creating in a perfect garden
air so fresh you could almost drink it ,
a pure life pura vida ,
trying to survive in nature from nature like the beasts
this priceless diamond life
only the man who works the land could enjoy
Such a feeling i first had when those little plants over the weeks transformed into food it was a great realisation to see nature was on my side and this food just wanted to grow so i could eat it, all i had to do was work with it , it's so simple almost unbelievably so but that`s how my initial feelings were in my first season of growing my own food “home food production is so easy and anyone can do it”
If an artist could have free electricity ,free water ,no rent ,grow all his own food ,free heating ,how far could he take that ? i was thirsty for the answer to that question and now i am in the way of much more of an understanding to the answer to that two years on into my artist farmer life
October afternoon sky returns
Where will all the birds go
Laugh with the friends i have today
As tomorrow is far away
I can tell you my far away friends ,the revelation to me after surviving from my own food i cultivated myself was as you can imagine such a simple experience to have that couldn't help but inspire memories of lives long past and a simple country life our forefathers had
”how did modern life get so complicated?'' I asked myself ? “how come a man has got to work so hard for a bit of food and some place to sleep” ,the land was my key like i said i had come to Portugal with honest intentions to work the land and work the land i did , but nature the beauty she is, wasn't going to give up her fruits so easy i had to work for her sweetness and this land worked me more than i did it ,after months of digging shifting carrying and planting only then i felt i was on the road to my self sufficient master plan
As time went by and the food grew out of the earth almost like a magic , it seemed like alchemy of sorts ,i had grown vegetables before but not as a primary food source, this was serious ,it felt good to live from my land the old fruit trees here sweetened my diet and the vegetables ,wild mushrooms ,herbs and berries nourished me it feels so good having food growing straight out of the earth its secure and honest, nowadays owning a flourishing vegetable garden feels similar to having a savings account to me ,it gives a sense of security seeing the food growing there and like natures interest growing in size day after day ,it demands only a little attention
what hell of a ride i have had watching my cabbages grow
I must admit i am a rebel and i have lived a wildlife , the weight of conformity has never much burdened me but i tell you man
“self sufficiency is the new rock n roll “,inflation ,deflation ,recession ,repossession ,them kind of concepts like snowflakes just melt away in my mind when i'm looking at a garden full of good food, some could name the feeling empowerment and when one gets to thinking about what hoops we all have to jump through nowadays to live good and eat well and how easy it really is to grow one's own food and make life a little easier again then i would agree it is empowering
