We experienced what felt like monsoon season for a few days with extremly heavy rains coming and going at their pleasing. We had to take shelter under garages because there was so much rain in our eyes we actually couldnt see where we were going. One night we found a barn seemingly deserted with hay strewn all over the floor. It was the best nights sleep that we had in Portugal so far. We reached the local town to the farm that we were heading to after what felt like a harsher hill climb than the mountains of Cantabria and met the family and some of the people from the farm, we tied our bikes on to the back of the truck and headed to the farm.
The farm was lovely but it continued to rain for the next week and a half, apparently there had been a tornado near-by and so we were getting the over spill of the torrential weather. On the second day of our arrival 8 people left, including Felix, he was going back to Wales for his girlfriends birthday. As soon as the people left I was upgraded from a tent to a caravan. The family that owns the farm are really nice, Andrea and Jeroen and their two kids Danny and Rowan. There is the resident woofer, Steve from Middlesborough, whos been there for 7 months now and is caught in what he calls the Casalinho Triangle were time just seems to fly by. A month of me being there quickly passed without me really noticing. It was amazing to be staying somewhere with a constant supply of hot meals and warm beds for the night. We had both been badly missing these after the constant rains of rural Spain and Portugal.
About two weeks in the weather got a lot better and hotter, it is unbelievably beautiful at the farm when its sunny and hot, they have a little river running through the bottom of their land which was my favourite spot. There are lots of baby animals running about including chicks, baby ducks, puppies, kittens, baby goats. I saw some of the baby goats being born, it was amazing within 2 minutes they were standing. 3 English people arrived and one of the women, Laura, knows Lee that I met on the ferry, talk about a crazy small world, especially after seeing Kwami in Madrid. A short while after all the english people had arrived a guy from Belgium named Stan who was also cycling around Spain turned up. Together we rode to the local town which had super markets and internet. On the way back to the farm from one of these rides the slow puncture that I had had for weeks suddenly turned into a very fast puncture and I was stranded about 20km from the farm. Stan cycled on without me and I used a mixture of walking and frantically pumping up my tyre to ride about 200 meters to get back to the farm, it was a boiling day and I hadn´t got any water. On the way back I walked past a massive beautiful lake and couldn't resist going for a swim.
I killed one duck while I was there, it was sickly so we were going to kill and eat it. If anyone is going to eat meat I think its really important to learn to kill it your self, I was feeling quite anxious as the only animal I have ever killed before was the rabbit I now have tattooed on my chest. I caught the duck and put it down on the table while andrea held it. I could feel the same strange emotion that I had felt just before taking the rabbits life welling up inside of me and I knew if I didnt do it quickly I probably wouldnt do it at all. I plunged the knife into its neck and saw the same glimmer of life leave its eyes. Ducks like chickens keep on moving after they have died due to muscle reflexs, so even after I had seperated the head from the body it still gentlly jerked ts wings. I suppose because I knew there was some purpose to its death I didnt mind killing it as much as the rabbit. I disected it and found that there was a tumor the size of a football inside of it, pretty much filling up the whole inside of the duck and pushing all its organs to the side.
Unfortunatly we didnt eat the tumor, and so we didnt get any meat off the duck so we decided to kill another. I didnt feel emotionally up to killing two in one day so this time Andrea did it. In terms of killing ducks I had the two extremes that day, we picked out the fattest looking duck and I held it down on the table for Andrea to kill, it knew what was happening and it wouldnt stop flaling about, after a big fight Andrea cut he main artery in the neck and started bleeding it in to a bowl to use the blood for cooking, she then hacked off the head and thats where the problems began. It lay still for to seconds and then started flapping its wins violently causing me to loose grip, it got to its feet and started walking around the table all the while with bloood spurting out its neck, it stumbled into the bowl of its blood sending it flying over me and the wall behind. the whole scene was utter carnage and everyone was falling about with shocked laughter. It did end up making a very nice meal, but the memories like the stains will last alot longer.
I also made a necklace out of a goats tooth that I had found in one of the fields, I used one of Stans dreadlocks for string. A couple of days before I was due to leave I fell ill for the first time on my trip, I think it was probably just a touch of sun stroke but it did cause me to have violently weird dreams, one of the nights I woke at 3am too terrified to move because I thought my blankets were trying to strangle me. But I got a little better and left on the 31st of May heading south to look for some land to buy. Portugal has finally got incredibly beautiful with the hot weather and the animals are amazing. Its amazing how much difference the sun makes to everything.
I killed one duck while I was there, it was sickly so we were going to kill and eat it. If anyone is going to eat meat I think its really important to learn to kill it your self, I was feeling quite anxious as the only animal I have ever killed before was the rabbit I now have tattooed on my chest. I caught the duck and put it down on the table while andrea held it. I could feel the same strange emotion that I had felt just before taking the rabbits life welling up inside of me and I knew if I didnt do it quickly I probably wouldnt do it at all. I plunged the knife into its neck and saw the same glimmer of life leave its eyes. Ducks like chickens keep on moving after they have died due to muscle reflexs, so even after I had seperated the head from the body it still gentlly jerked ts wings. I suppose because I knew there was some purpose to its death I didnt mind killing it as much as the rabbit. I disected it and found that there was a tumor the size of a football inside of it, pretty much filling up the whole inside of the duck and pushing all its organs to the side.
Unfortunatly we didnt eat the tumor, and so we didnt get any meat off the duck so we decided to kill another. I didnt feel emotionally up to killing two in one day so this time Andrea did it. In terms of killing ducks I had the two extremes that day, we picked out the fattest looking duck and I held it down on the table for Andrea to kill, it knew what was happening and it wouldnt stop flaling about, after a big fight Andrea cut he main artery in the neck and started bleeding it in to a bowl to use the blood for cooking, she then hacked off the head and thats where the problems began. It lay still for to seconds and then started flapping its wins violently causing me to loose grip, it got to its feet and started walking around the table all the while with bloood spurting out its neck, it stumbled into the bowl of its blood sending it flying over me and the wall behind. the whole scene was utter carnage and everyone was falling about with shocked laughter. It did end up making a very nice meal, but the memories like the stains will last alot longer.
I also made a necklace out of a goats tooth that I had found in one of the fields, I used one of Stans dreadlocks for string. A couple of days before I was due to leave I fell ill for the first time on my trip, I think it was probably just a touch of sun stroke but it did cause me to have violently weird dreams, one of the nights I woke at 3am too terrified to move because I thought my blankets were trying to strangle me. But I got a little better and left on the 31st of May heading south to look for some land to buy. Portugal has finally got incredibly beautiful with the hot weather and the animals are amazing. Its amazing how much difference the sun makes to everything.
