Back to normal / version 2

The day has been lovely and the forecast is good so hopefully that was winter...! We heard on Saturday that the road from Cadiar up to Berchules has collapsed just before the junction where there is a look-out point. Apparently the culvert has washed away under the road and the road is hanging in mid-air, the children can't get to school from Mecina Bombaron down to Cadiar and it's a long way round via Valor/Ugijar so we are the short cut for many people. (but not the children, they have a holiday till it's sorted) Not sure how the bread and fish delivery vans are getting to the villages from Cadiar, we don't see them when we are out harvesting but maybe they come past us too.

We tried to have a count up of trees done so far, somewhere in the region of between 80 to 90 and more to come, and so much firewood! Tomorrow we start on a different section of trees, much flatter land, less height between terraces so that makes it easier and quicker (we hope!)

More land slides

we noticed 2 more trees today that have land slips underneath them, one of them has - or had - a dry-stone wall which has slid down about a metre! The whole thing has slid apart from a few stones still in place, quite amazing. It seems that the wall has slid onto a ledge, so if it is solid and we find more stones, we can maybe build it up from its current resting place. Should be interesting! The other tree has just had the soil washed out from underneath, both trees will have to be cut right back so there is no weight on the outer side as they hang out over the track down to Yator and we don't want them falling and blocking that. We have plenty to keep us busy now for a long time, we still have the olives to finish picking, then pruning, the grape vines need pruning this weekend (it's a moon thing according to the locals) the fruit trees also should be pruned about now, walls to finish round our pool, soon it will be time to start planting seeds and weeding, fortnightly watering, picking veg and so the year progresses......Not to mention general house maintenance, I saw today some walls outside where the paint needs redoing, also usually by now I have cut back the roses and geraniums and taken cuttings but not had time yet, hopefully it'll get done over this weekend.

forgot to mention...

while we were out this morning I went to check the veg were ok which they are - not floated away just yet! The first broad beans are starting to flower and everything else is fine, then I saw we had a big juicy red strawberry! Just one and it was delicious :) Surely that's not right, producing fruit in February?

Montenegro's water.

As some of you know, our water supply is snow-melt and rain from the Sierras, which slowly filters down through the rocks and pops out at the fuente here. Normally there is no sign of water until you go to the fuente, and once there you can here the water gurgling inside the rocks. But today there is a waterfall up in the hills above, you can see it in 2 places - if you click to enlarge the photo, it is top/centre and shows more obviously left of Pepe and Miguel's house. I went nearer to the fuente as well this afternoon on a walk with Monty, and could hear the water cascading. I didn't go too close as I'm not sure where it's going! We think it goes straight down to the river in the valley behind us, we can hear that too from up here today.

Another consequence of this rain is that the land is sodden, most of our olives are supported by dry-stone walls as they are planted on edges of terraces, but one is not and this morning John noticed that the soil supporting the tree had started collapsing and undermined the roots! We had already cut a lot of the outer branches off as most of the weight was outside, we spent a wet few hours cutting the tree down to a stump so if it does collapse it won't so bad. When we have a dry day, we plan to build a more sloping bank, and put lots of plants in to hold it firm. A by-product of this is of course more firewood - for next year though.

Raining olives

A bit of a play on words intended really because it rained last night so when we started on the first tree today, we got showered with rain drops and also olives because it was a very heavily laden tree :)

It started off cool but sunny this morning and as the day went on we were in t-shirts again - much like last week - but as we were finishing the last of todays trees, rolling the nets and bagging up the olives, we noticed the Contraviesa was disappearing into the cloud...by the time we had tidied up and were on our way back to the house, it was spitting with rain and 2 hours later it was pouring again. It has now cleared up again so hopefully tomorrow will be ok. One of the many Fernando's from Yator came up this lunchtime to get some drinking water from the tap at the chapel (the locals don't like their processed water and prefer our spring water) and he said we shouldn't be harvesting olives after rain....when they get to the mill they are washed, so why not? Maybe it's an old wives (or should that be mens?) tale made up by the men, to get a day off work after it's rained by telling their wives the same story ???? He came up on his tractor with two 25 litre containers on the back, said his father is ill and wants Montenegro water to help him get better!