Goat Cheese Fluffy Pancakes

Who said that pancakes are just for breakfast? :)
Where at Casa da Eira we have pancakes after some hard digging in the garden!!
Here's a recipe that I create - a mix of all pancake recipes that I collect on my Pinterest!

 Rafa

Alika take on CDED9 farm life and general farm

The following statement belongs to Alex Wong, our beloved volunteer also known as Alika, that is with us for 5 months (2 months in 2015 and 3 months since last December!) 
We hope that you enjoy another point of view about our place!

" I came to Casa Da Eira at the end of summer in 2015 and enjoyed it so much that I came back for a second time. This action best explains how I feel about the farm and the experience I got from it. I've trained as a chef and last year decided to make my rounds of the culinary experiences that Europe has to offer. By far my best time traveling through has been on this farm and with the people on it. I think its worth to point out that I grew up in a city for most of my life and have never really 'WOOFED' prior to this farm. But I have always been interested in working hard and creating complete and functioning systems.

One of the biggest things I can remember as an example of this was to stop burning the large amount of brambles that had to be cleared off the land. The farm was absolutely covered in brush which needed to be removed to use for planting and after all of this you end up with an excess of dry material that is a fire hazard. A way to prevent an uncontrollable brush fire is to have small contained fires that get rid of the risk. But a better way to do this is to compost it. This simple but pivoting change is a great example of how the farm is constantly evolving around it's system, especially when you account for the amount of nutrients saved. We are constantly telling each other how much biomass was "wasted" when we are gathering all the components for the latest Hugelbeet shovel by shovel, wheel barrel by wheel barrel.

Personally I'm a really big fan of sticking to a project, finishing it and enjoying the change from your work. Casa Da Eira has its hands in many different projects but the common theme as is in hopefully every organic farm is constant improvement, efficient managing of resources and having fun doing it together. These folks have this theme in trumps (no relation to my president) and I'm excited to see the future versions of them and the farm. "

Hugelkultur I

Long time has passed and I have not posted anything. This normally happens when I have a lot to do, like the last days.

I build the first Hugelbeet Octobre 2015. Before I started the land looked like the next picture.

Then I added the first logs - lots of logs!
I said before that our blog is mean to be about good and bad experiences, but regarding the Hugelbeet I didn't had any bad experiences, I just learned a lot over the past year.

Here is one mistake: I piled up the logs on top of each other and I didn't spread soil in between the logs. I thought the soil would fill the gaps over time. 

As you can see I started adding compost from brambles - we had to cut it back because they were dominating everything. You can eat the blackberries from this wild brambles but the production is very low. 

The better way to do this is:
One layer of logs and cover it with soil, add the next layer and repeat the process. The compost I added wasn´t totally decomposed but it offered very good conditions for growing vegetables as soon as the composting process would advance.

After this huge amounts of shredded brambles I covered with soil on top. Then I waited one Winter before planting.  

The production of vegetables we collected was decent but not as much I was expecting. 

So now I'm using this Hugelbeet material to build a new Hugelbeet, where I make sure that the layers of soil and compost are arranged in the right order.

Here is a reference of how Hugelkultur should be done.

raised garden bed hugelkultur after one month

raised garden bed hugelkultur after one year

raised garden bed hugelkultur after two years

For more information click here

Soon I'll show you what is happening to this big amount of organic material.

Grapefruit Curd and Meringue Tart

Our blog is meant to share different spheres of our life, so I'll share, time to time, homemade experiences that can express our dynamic living.
Today I bring you an awesome recipe that everyone loved.

But first I must give you an impression about our food habits around here.
First: We aren't vegetarian, neither vegan or paleo, sugar-free, gluten-free, free-range or any other fundamentalist diet. 
We respect every people choices and the choice we made is quite simple: awareness about the source, the price and all the additives, preservatives and not so healthy chemicals existing on the ingredients list. 
The source of our food is quite important for us - our main principle is to buy as local as possible, despite the bio/organic/free-range essence of the product. Our home production is chemicals-free and organic, but if we only use bio products we end up buying stuff from all around the world, that Portugal imported - that, in my opinion, isn't contributing for a smaller environmental foot print; we end up putting our own health over the environment. We can be pretty healthy, yet being it in a very sick planet. 
This isn't the best philosophy of life, but nowadays it's very hard to be sure which is the best way on this planet. It is a behavior that we are trying to improve, little by little.

So today we talk about free-range eggs (from the chickens of Lutz, our neighbour) and our own organic-happy-citrus!! If you are interested in a gluten-lactose-sugar-free recipe, write down a comment, so we can think about alternatives together. :)  

The recipe that I bring you today is from a TV show called  The Little Paris Kitchen, from Rachel Khoo, and I must say that I'm in love for this British chef. She has the ability to transform high standard recipes in easy, delicious and fun dishes.

Grapefruit Curd and Pepper Meringue Tart 
(the original recipe made Tarteletes)

I hope you enjoy as much as we did! Any doubt, opinion, critic, please leave a comment! 

Thank you for following us,

Rafa

Greenhouse Nursery

Today our Biomiler is a bit different since our last post. 

We recently added a little greenhouse nursery. 
The biomass of the Biomiler will prevent the plants from getting to cold. 
See for yourselves how easy it is. 

The structure is made out of bamboo. Together with Alika we have built everything in less then a day. 

There are 4 Bamboos that hold the structure:
2 are screwed to the structure of pallets that stores the Biomiler and for the other corners we made holes about 30 CM deep. 
I know that this structure will not last longer then 2 years. Especially because we have to re-build the Biomiler around June. But life at the farm is always fickle.

I had squash in a underground nursery (another project that I'll post soon) but it wasn't hot enough for the squash to germinate. 
I moved the squash to the new nursery and after 3 days the squash finally germinated.
I measured the outside temperature 9.5Cº and inside the nursery  17Cº. That is a good growing temperature.
I have to get a better thermometer, to register lowest and highest temperatures and then provide more precise data.

To add even more retaining heat sources I got 2x50 and 2x60 liter black buckets,that I filled up with the hot water from the shower. 

Now I have 200 liters of warm water in black buckets they will radiate some heat back at night, contributing for a slower loss of heat inside the nursery.

Some impressions about the Eco-Shower.

It would be a good idea to know how much heat I can get out of the shower. I'm still collecting data and measure the temperature to estimate how many people can shower in specific intervals. 

So far if somebody takes a long shower (8-10 minutes) it would take, around, 10 to 15 minutes for the water to warm up enough for the next person.

The  wasted water is channeled to a pile of old hay where it can filter.

We are looking forward to add a tank to this system, that filters the gray water. With the filtered water we could irrigate the surrounding trees.
Thanks for reading and keep following!!

Eco-building Biomiler / Eco Shower

There are lots of posts that I haven't written yet, so in order to let you catch up with the projects that are going on here, I will give you a compacted post about our biggest project, in the last few months.

Me - Lucas - Rafa, my mom Ires, her boyfriend Rolf, Alika - our hard working volunteer that is with us since December - Pácio and Laura - volunteers during November - and Dennis, a good friend of mine, were the brave people involved in this awesome project! 

This project started last year, around Spring, when I learned that it's possible to heat up water with compost (or with almost any organic material composted in the right way).
I had to try it myself!

So, during Summer, after cutting down the excessive grass on a fruit tree terrace (the grass was already dried in June) we made a big pile with the purpose of decomposing that grass in a quite fast way, by turning it every 2 days and watering it. The reason was that we were in urgent need of good soil.

The pile got so hot - 68º C // 154.4º F - and I was not using this heat, what was really bothering me. So I thought about trying this project, especially because we have been receiving volunteers and this kind of Sustainable structures and ecosystems are always interesting to show and share. Nonetheless we would save a lot on water and natural gas! 

Then we bought a 1000 L used plastic water tank and Rolf took more then 3 hours to clean it with a high pressure water cleaner, once it had been used to industrial proposes. 
After we started assembly our pipe system, we made a spiral, with the pipe, on the compost pile and after 8 to 12 rounds coiling this, we add another layer of compost on top and continue this sequence until we fit all the pipe in there. On the first try we used:

• 100 meters of plastic agriculture pipe 16 millimeters thick (Cost about 15€ per 100 meters.)
• Some drip irrigation connection pieces and taps, fairly cheap too
• Old Shower head, from a solar shower
• Bamboo that I had harvested the last year
• The 1000L water Tank

1. We positioned the tank on a higher terrace so that the gravity will provide water until the tank runs empty; 
2. We also covered the tank with cardboard - 2 layers - and then 2 black plastic sheets (the plastic will protect the cardboard from rotting, doesn't have to be black but normally is easier). After covering the tank so that no light gets in it, we could be sure that no algae would form (if light gets to shine on the water tank the algae will form and eventually close the shower head).
3. Even with no algae and using clear water from a water spring we add a easy to clean water filter, just in case.
4. In order to fill the water tank we connect a pump and then fill the necessary water.

We got hot water in less then 72 hours. The compost had reached more then 50ºC and the water would came out already at around 40º C. The water temperature varied from 38-48ºC, once this shower was used 4-6 times a day (volunteers, guests, etc... ). 
After 4 weeks the temperature drooped and after 6 weeks there was no heat left to extract (at least not for our purposes).



This is how the pile looks after 6 weeks of use. We could already use this compost in the garden as a mulch layer; the organic material decomposed faster and it was ready to be absorbed by the plants.

After the success of this little pile we were prepared to try something a bit bigger, with a longer lifetime, so we didn't had to make a new pile every 4 weeks.

I researched - thank God there is the Internet nowadays - and I found interesting posts about "Biomiler". With this resource is possible to heat houses or greenhouses, using plastic pipes to heat water or bigger plastic pipes to heat air.

My mind was blown away when I read that a big Biomiler can run for 18 months and still produce warm water.  I had to try this out!

That leads me to the next chapter.
These Biomilers were using green shredded wood (but can also be dried wood!) and that was a problem - I didn't had anybody near me that had a shredder to make this wood chips. So I spoke to my mom and Rolf and together we bought a wood shredder.

And so the little ants begin their work - I say this because you have no idea the amount of wood cuttings we needed for this project!

As you can see, branches go in and chipped wood comes out - easy! 
Now I will show you the structure I made to pile up this big amount of shredded olive branches.
And why did I used olive branches? 
In Portugal, Autum is time to harvest the olives to make olive oil. Along with this process the olive tree are pruned and, traditionally, people would burn the branches. Composting it isn't an option for most people here at the village!
Since the risk of fire is quite high in Portugal, we believe that using this resource to improve the soil in our land, can encourage the local people to do the same... one day!



I went to a local store and I was able to get some broken pallets for free, So I nailed 8 pallets together. After finishing this "frame" I was worried that the Biomiler needed isolation.
That wasn't the case, but it can't hurt to make a dried straw bed under the main ingredient (shredded stuff ).

 

In this picture, Pácio was filling up straw and making it equally spread.



Then we added a plastic tarp so the straw wouldn't get wet right away. We made a few holes on the lowest points to let the excessive water run out.






The shredded leaves and little brunches needed to be really wet - it's possible to use a garden hose or a sprinkler to equally make everything soaking wet.

We made a layer of ~30 cm on the bottom, with shredded branches, that we compacted a little - every 10 cm I walked on it, with running water on, to compact the layers.

The following pictures represent me on top of a 30 cm layer of shredded wood, that I have watered so the color was darker compared to the other pictures.

 

You can see the pipe is quite thin and it's easy to twist it. This part requires a lot of patient and concentration - if the pipe gets twisted it will be a weaker spot in the future.

For this project we used 170m of plastic water pipe (diameter 16mm), but you can use any pipe for your project. 

The 170 meters of pipe were rolled out in 3 layers, each layer of pipe was separated by 20 cm of shredded wood. 

The first water pipe spiral should be ~30cm above ground, in a bed of shredded wood, then when a good amount of pipe lies down you simple add enough wood chips to make a new layer of 20 cm.
The second layer should be at ~50cm above ground, third layer at ~70cm, etc. Then it should be added at least 30 cm. 

We started at 24-11-2016 and only finished completely at 02-12-2016 - but we didn't work in this project everyday!

On the 28-11-2016, Dennis tried the shower to tell us if it was hot enough...

...The water wasn't hot but it showed 37ºC already.

It took us longer to finish because we underestimated the amount of branches we needed. 
Before I told you that we used mainly olive branches- I think about 85%. The rest was from other trimmings that we had to add to get enough biomass. 
We have many old olive trees that have lots of branches, so every 2 years, the olive trees get harvested and many branches are cut out. We used branches from 34 olive trees.

Olive, ceder, apple, pine and apricot wood were the remaining ingredient. If you shredder yourself or if you buy wood, it is important to make sure you don't use more then 15% of pine wood, once the resin in the pine wood is too strong for the microorganisms to live.

Temperature from the biomiler in 10cm depth and water temperature  (30-11-2016)

This is how the Eco Shower/Biomiler looked on the 02-12-2016

Since we finished, the water temperature hasn't got under 43º C. 
It's a really good temperature for a shower, but there were days the water was too hot... 
So we manage to connect a cold water pipe that comes from the same water tank. By adding a T connector we get cold water before it gets inside the Biomiler.

We have used the shower now for ~2 months and it still have hot water.

Considering the size of this Biomiler, I hope it holds for 4-6 months with a temperature above 40º C. 


So keep updated :)

Casa da Eira dos Nove Vintage

It's hard to start again but sometimes it is the best thing you can do. 
For over 5 years I have been dedicating myself to clean the farm from my parents, plant trees, move soil, clean old water draining systems, etc...

It took a lot of time and effort to change things and unfortunately I can no longer work together with my father. This change set me back a lot, since I was improving all the Farm (about 20 000 m²).

Right now I'm working together with my mom (Ires) and her boyfriend (Rolf), and we agreed to use half of the land since one half belongs to my mom. This "alliance" is bringing us closer together and improving our lifestyle and eco-friendly living. 
(But this progress is meant for a different post.)

To sum up, we are using 10 000 m² from my mom and Casa da Eira dos Nove has around 5000 m² at the moment 
(we are thinking about buying a land from a neighbor if we manage to get enough funds)

This is just so you have and idea of how much work this can be.
I called this post vintage because I want to show all the old pictures from the house and the history as far as I can track it back.

So this is the house in 2004. 
Looks naked compared to today pictures. I checked my old Photo albums but I couldn't find a picture before 2004, I know I have at least one. If I find it I will add it here.



The good thing on this picture is that you can see the "Eira" completely free and cleaned and this was the way people used to dry or organize their harvest.


Here we have the garden before all the changes.



Later we have build a roof here to store wood.



The Peach Tree



A lot needed to be planted...



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