Friends with talent: Gutkin & Queener.

Back in 2013, August 9 to be precise, "A friend of ours Kent and his lovely parents came to visit us this week. I was very happy to learn that Kent knits. I gave him some burgundy, white and blue wool and he is going to make me a pair of mittens and a pair of knee high socks. I can´t wait to see what he comes up with." 

Well, last week I finally received my not 1 but 2 pairs of socks and gloves not mittens. As you can imagine I was delighted, because never in my wildest dreams could I have imagined such wonderful things. I was particularly impressed with the patterns that Kent chose. The first pair of socks I have to admit are my favourite with the wavy design. The pattern is called Kalajoki and is inspired by a river in Finland. I love it. So clever.

This time Kent was accompanied by his lovely partner Yara and her lovely parents. All of them equally talented. But I leave you here with Yara Gutkin & Kent Queener, on the Piano. And as you will see Kent is not just a clever knitter. Enjoy.

Sad day on the farm.

Maria Augusta first arrived on the farm on the 15th of January 2013. She arrived alone (not a good idea) and was not well received by the other chickens that ganged up on her and gave her a hard time for the first couple of days. Soon she revealed her talents and her wit and quickly moved up in the pecking order. She taught the other chickens everything she knew and became popular for the knowledge and wisdom she brought from the outside world. She was also a bit of a daredevil that liked to use axes as perches, and also quite an actress, she even appeared in a video. And she was my friend. 

She enjoyed two wonderful Springs, many rainbows, worms, cabbage leaves and corn. Sadly, she did not make it to her third Spring and today I buried her and her last friend (known only as "The Other Chicken", who had a heart of gold) along with the Egyptian Mongoose (Herpestes ichneumon) that took her head and with it her life. It was a most tragic end for all. Maria Augusta will be sorely missed. She will not be easily replaced, although those that are not as soft hearted as I am say that about 6 euros at the market tomorrow should do it.

It feels like there is always something dying here. And yeah, sure, there are many things that grow also. Still, it does not make it easier to deal with this constant presence and reminder that nothing lasts forever. Whether it be of natural causes or at the mercy of another, nothing and no one is spared in this town, where every time I leave for more than a month I return wondering who may have died this time. It does not help that most of the town´s population is on average quite old and it does not make it any easier because they are my friends.

And if it is not others that are dying, it is you that cannot escape the same fate. But don´t be fooled, yours is a long drawn out anguish filled fate, often disguised as "let´s live the quirky and romantic country lifestyle fate". You would think moving to the country would be all fresh air and healthy until you realize that that pretty clay pot you use to heat up your ginger, lemon and honey tea in the fireplace has lead glazing and that in fact you have been drinking lead tea all along, and offering it to your friends as "the great cure all", hmmm… woops, sorry I didn´t know till last week! And if it is not the tea that will eventually kill you, then probably carbon monoxide poisoning, from all the time you spend by the fireplace, will do the trick. Or perhaps it will be aluminum poisoning from cooking with the old pots your in-laws kindly left in the house for you to use,… hold on a second, I´ll need to give this one a little more thought. Or perhaps you (not me!) will die because it is tradition, after years of eating plates of rice and some very sought after mushroom, with 2 scientific names (dodgy), the tricholoma equestre or tricholoma flavovirens, banned from consumption everywhere in Europe except for Portugal. 

All this talk is making my belly hurt. And I am sad.

The Olive Scarf.

An olive inspired scarf, finally!

It will be up for sale, if anyone is interested let me know.

Red & blue.

Another scarf completed, this time a special request, for a friend.

A very interesting goat feeder that looks more like something Mr. Squiggle would live in.

And the best thing about ordering things from Japan is that they are Japanese and come in packages with Japanese characters. I bought a length of woven vintage Kasuri fabric. Kasuri is a resist dye technique you can learn more about here on this link. My fabric was dyed using wooden blocks, a method used to speed up the dyeing process. You can tell by the selvages that are not visible in this picture that that was how it was made. I loved how included with the fabric was a Green tea bag and instructions, on what to do with it, printed on origami paper. The last image shows a close up of a pair of pants whose fabric is printed to replicate this technique. I dream of going to school in Japan, at the Kawashima Textile School, to learn Kasuri. Applications for the Spring courses close in 4 days! But before this dream becomes a reality, many scarves need to be woven. Sponsorships and donations would be very welcome ;-).

Fire Water.

When André is not too busy pruning olive trees he likes to wear Esquilo scarves. This week I finished another scarf which you can find for sale in the store.

A few months ago we started picking Irish Strawberries (Arbutus Unedo or Tree Strawberry, Medronho in Portuguese), a very common fruit here in the Serra da Malcata and most of Portugal. A very expensive and sought after drink is made from this fruit, called Medronho. It is what we call a fire water, a spirit distilled from the fermented fruit that has an exaggerated percentage of alcohol, somewhere between 20 and 80%. After we picked the fruit, which must be ripe, we placed it in a large container and mashed and stirred it over several days and then covered it and kinda forgot about it for a few months. Meanwhile we started on the Olive campaign and had little time for anything else. That is, until last week. I organized for a lady from town, Maria Rosa, to come and help us distill the fruit mush. This lady had distilled Medronho before, a task she learned from her parents such a long time ago that she does not even really remember when. Distilling this fruit is very particular and much different from distilling aguardente made from the left overs of grapes from the wine making process, for example. 

The Still belonged to André´s granddad and is a piece of art, made from copper with brass handles. To seal the Alembic a paste is made from flour, ash and water. This paste is called "massa infernal", Infernal dough. We decided to distill using a wood fire as opposed to using gas, it required a little more attention and control from our part to make sure the fire was not too strong or too weak. But we felt this just made the experience more genuine and I felt like a true alchemist, who knows perhaps even channeled the spirit of Jabir Ibn Hayyan. Needless to say it was a huge success. The Aguardente is smooth and fragrant and no less stronger yet softer than its grape relative. And not only are we happy with our efforts but also thrilled that this task managed to revive the enthusiasm of some people in town to do the same next year but also recovered lost memories in some of making the same powerful spirit decades ago.

Somewhere between all this I managed to make another scarf and help a friend Alice make some blood sausages. And then the cold really finally arrived. This tuesday it might snow. But now we can drink our firewater by the fire and really warm up on the outside and on the inside. 

Meanwhile on the side, I found some interesting reading material relating to a Sir Richard Hawkins (an English seaman, probably a pirate), who had a Still on board his ship, that he may have abandoned in Brazil around 1590 (as you do), that was used to distill salt water to be made drinkable. Pretty impressive. The Brazilians of course used it to distill sugar cane and to make Cachaça. So I guess next time we drink a Caipirinha we must salute Hawkins and Hayyan alike! HAW HAY!

I Olive you.

Olives, olives, olives. Over this last month both waking and dreaming life have been filled with olives. This adventure started when after last year´s success with fermented olives led us to pick them again this year. However, we soon realized that we had far too many to ferment when every container we had was filled to the brim with the little buggers. So we decided that picking for oil was probably a good idea, until we realized that the minimum weights the press accepts in order for you to have your own oil were upwards of 300kg. We were looking at a yield of little more than 100kg.  

If we were to have oil as close as ours would be, if we had a greater quantity, we would also have to pick olives from as close to our trees as possible. As fate would have it, our neighbor, unable to pick her own allowed us to pick them. And then the neighbor next to her did the same. All of a sudden we found ourselves working from dusk till dawn atop towering trees that had never once been pruned. It was not an easy task, especially when the surrounding field had been sewn with oat which was already quite tall and our fear of destroying the crop coupled with our fear of falling from the trees made for an extreme olive picking experience. I am surprised I did not dream of porridge.

Each day after picking the olives we still had to clean them of all the leaves and other debris in order to bag them and have them preserve as well and for as long as possible. Experienced pickers with special machines pick over one ton in one weekend, but we actually think they lie when they tell us this is the case. We managed little more than half that in one month. But it was a very productive month and I still managed to weave 5 scarves. I was pretty happy with my efforts.

Much happier still when we weighed our crop and realized we had actually worked quite well considering, and when the oil started to flow it was incredibly rewarding. This year the oil yields were quite low, due to shifts in temperature during the maturation process, so we did not expect to get much oil. We were very happy when we brought home a whopping 75 Liters. This amount is more than enough for us to consume as well as to pay our "bosses" their part.

And as far as taste goes, well… it is outstanding. We have an extra virgin olive oil, with low acidity and with tropical fruit aromas (there is a touch of bananas in there). As far as pungency goes it is a two-cough oil, and because it has not been filtered we also have what is known as a cloudy oil. And just look at that colour. All we need now is some gold leaf flakes to add to it and it will be worth its weight of the same solid metal. We have a small amount of oil reserved for sale and if you are interested in having some of this precious liquid, let me know.

Now we rest by the fire. The one pictured above is not ours. Unfortunately our fire is nowhere near this towering inferno of warmth. And we brace ourselves for the frosty cold weather that will soon ruin almost everything in our garden but the cabbages and some resistant yet to be identified mushrooms.

Needless to say the next scarf woven will be olive inspired.

A merry festive season to all.

More scarves for sale.

As promised here are some more scarves for sale. You can find them at my Etsy Store. Follow the link here.

As per usual I hope you like these scarves and if you have any questions fell free to get in touch.