I’ve recently realised we don’t live like real people.
When real people have a problem they call someone: a workman, an expert, a master technician, Ghostbusters, or whoever it might be - and they come with some tools and they solve it.
It costs some money and takes some time to arrange, but it works. They know what they are doing, and grumbles aside, they get things working again and real life goes on.
But somehow I’ve found myself in the position where I’m kind of responsible for everything...and when stuff breaks I have to work out for myself how to fix it.
I’m not entirely sure how that happened.
Obviously the not-being-connected-to-anything thing means we’re pretty much off most workpeople’s grids when it comes to the usual sorting of things like gas and electric.
We’re very lucky to have some amazing people who we’ve met over the past few years who are the real experts...but I don’t want to bother them for the small things which I can probably do myself if I’m careful...or if I find the right YouTube channel.
In retrospect, taking my expensive De Walt drill apart to repair it was a bad idea...but I really didn’t know it was going to be that fiddly or complicated to put back together (it now just about works, but slips and makes a terrible grinding noise).
Given that getting this place up and running - and keeping it running - falls under my area of responsibility, I do pay a lot of attention to what the professionals do when they’re here.
Much more so than real people might do.
They trust the experts to get on with it unsupervised and don’t need to know how they do whatever it is they’re doing to make problems go away.
Perhaps my engagement and enthusiastic nodding confuses them into thinking I understand what is happening, can remember it, and might even be able do it myself next time as it will save them the hassle of a home visit.
And we are “bootstrapping” things as they called it at the Stanford Graduate School of Business classes we sat in on while there on a journalism fellowship.
In other words doing it on the cheap: if I can do it myself next time, then we save money.
All this perhaps explains why, when the solar hot water pump started making a very expensive sounding noise, Guido the German boiler master felt confident enough to tell me I could do it myself.
“You just need two pairs of pliers of the right size,” he said after watching the video of the screaming water system and recommended a new pump.
I’m sure there’s a lot more to it than that...but he is very busy at the moment...I mean, what could possibly go wrong?
One thing we can now do very successfully by ourselves is roast chestnuts on an open fire.
This year I celebrated Verão de São Martinho (St Martin’s Summer) - officially now one of my favourite times of the year - by buying a metal chestnut roasting pan.
(I say that, but we could have smoked some salmon as well while we were at it - the first use of the fire filled the place with smoke until I gave the chimney a good old brush and we were back in business).
St Martin’s Day (November 11th) marks the opening of the talhas and the releasing of the fresh natural wine still made in huge clay amphorae here in the Alentejo as it was by the Romans two thousand years ago.
We made our now annual pilgrimage to Vila de Frades (Friars’ Town) - the spiritual home of talhas - to taste the new wine and meet the winemakers.
And this year we were invited to take part in a couple of films being made by famous Portuguese wine writer Madalena Vidigal called Rota Tesouros do Alentejo (The Treasures of the Alentejo Route).
Our programmes aren’t out yet, but here’s a sneaky peak at Episode 2 in Portuguese of course.
Each episode looks at a different aspect of Alentejo wines, and we were invited along as special guests to learn more about old vines and talha wines - at Vidigueira cooperative and ROCIM where Pedro Ribeiro makes amazing wines with clay pots.
He hosts an Amphora Wine Day every year with wine producers from all over the world who make wine with clay...and it gets bigger every year. Again it was a great day out - as was the amazing annual Wine & Friends lunch at Hamilton Reis’ Natus Vini.
It’s a great story with wine and song and you can hear it come to life in Going Roman, Episode 4 of our podcast series Ana & Al’s Big Portuguese Wine Adventure.
I wrote about our trip to Vila de Frades for the opening of the talhas last year and it’s great to look back at this time a year ago and see how far we have come in our building project and how chaotic things were 12 months ago.
Second Summer
Our path of life is a little treacherous – steep and with lots of places to slip and fall – but the further we go down it, the smaller the drop becomes and the less chance we have of plunging to our deaths.
Hopefully we’ll soon be hosting talha winemakers here in Vale das Estrelas.
St Martin’s Day also tends to coincide with a spell of beautiful sunshine, warm temperatures and a surge of growth for all the plants before the temperatures drop.
The meteorological explanation is a little wobble in the high pressure zone over the Açores - one of the most important influences on Portugal’s weather.
The Atlantic is the warmest it has been all year thanks to the warmer southern waters being pushed north during this annual transition into winter. Maybe we’ll even venture to the Birthday Beach this weekend...
I spent a good amount of time down a rabbit hole investigate g the story of St Martin’s progression from plain old Hungarian Martin, to patron saint of the poor, of tailors, winemakers and curiously both soldiers and conscientious objectors. Oh, and of France.
It’s all linked in with Halloween, Martinmas, bonfires, Remembrance, tricks and treats... and some Polish competitive croissant baking.
Saints and Sunshine
So what’s the connection between a Roman soldier, roasted chestnuts and a nice stretch of November sun?
This year the temperatures quickly dropped after the wine jars had been opened and all efforts in the valley were focussed on making sure all the dry wood was chopped and stashed under cover before the real rain arrives.
My old pal Hugh Jennings was on a whistle-stop volunteering trip to help, and after some back-breaking hours with the splitting axe we had enough prepared to see us through winter.
We also took the chance to make sure the rainwater collection systems were properly set up.
It’s a vitally important part of our water plan to collect loads of rain over winter, and so Hugh spent hours siliconing the gaps between our solar panels while I secured the guttering and pipes we’d installed last year to increase the flat surfaces area to harvest rainfall from.
This time we have a reception tank and a proper pump to take all the water we can up to the storage on the hill, so we don’t waste any.
The pillow tank has already grown courtesy of some October rain and now I have meters installed to see just how well the system is running...and to keep tabs on our water collection.
Full is 200,000 litres…fingers crossed.
I guess there are some things I’m becoming an expert at - living sustainably...that we are certainly doing!
I wrote back to Guido asking if it was really all that easy to just change the solar water pump without emptying the whole system of very hot water.
“You’re right, that will probably be too much of a problem for you,” he replied, while requesting more photos of the offending items.
The dials revealed perhaps a leak in the system and the pump might just be whining about it rather than failing...maybe it’s something I can solve it after all...watch this space.
San Martino is a Venetian holiday too. In the countryside it is imperative to eat goose & here in Venice there is a special decorated cookie & the littlest children wear red capes & bang on pots & ask for sweets.
I'm a bit like you Al. I like to have a go of fixing stuff myself. You can save a load of cash and the sense of achievement you get from doing-it-yourself is great.