Reminiscing about the beginning of our homesteading journey......

2017. the year we landed in Portugal & the worst wildfires to date for us, until Summer 2025...

Hi friends, once again it has been a while, this past month has been a rollercoaster for us. I hope this stack finds you well, healthy & enjoying your Summer months. I am now officially 9 months pregnant & we have landed back in the UK to await the arrival of our little love, Thumbelina. She is somersaulting in my belly as I write this while listening to my hypnobirthing affirmations & meditations on repeat, perhaps her little ears are burning.

I don’t even know where to start with this post, it is a bit of a sad one, as well as a happy one. I guess that is just how life goes, isn’t it, the happy with the sad, the high with the low, the good with the bad, the sun with the rain, we feel it & experience it all here & I want you to truly understand that we do not live in some imaginary dreamland just because my instagram page might look that way most of the time. Finding glimmers in the ordinary moments of calm between the chaos of life. Pretty photos of my latest tomato harvest, cute cats & walks with our beaurtiful Willow or the pomegranates ripening on the tree we planted under the Mediterranean sun are not the only thing happening on our homestead.

I have been looking at photos of the land from 8 years ago when we first arrived, how drastically it has changed & how much hard work we have put into it to create a home, now we are welcoming a child into our life I wonder what projects we will take on next, how the house will look in another 8 years & if we will still be living there. Also I cant help but wonder what would happen if a fire came through our property & took it all away, how we would react or what we would do, because this is a harsh reality of the place that we live in, the fires are very scary. When we arrived in 2017 it was one of the worst wildfire years in recent history…. a lot of people died & we watched the sunset in the evenings as well as the glow of flames on the horizon in every direction, it was very scary. This is the main reason we do not build our home out of wood here, despite wanting to live in a wood cabin.

The view from Monsanto, last Tuesday….

One week ago a terrible fire broke out in our area, it started close to a small village about 4 km from us, we imagined it would be put out very quickly as the firefighters respond very fast in recent years….but the wind picked up that afternoon & sent it blazing across the countryside, basically through 2 other villages & it was headed straight for our close friends property. This friend was supposed to be taking care of our dog Willow while we are away in the UK & we were actually there with him on the day the fire started. We watched from his property for 3 - 4 hours as the planes flew overhead carrying water to the fire, feeling somewhat like we were in some kind of end of world movie, for a moment it looked like they had it under control but soon after the smoke began to get thicker, blacker & the plumes much larger. I began to get really freaked when it got super windy & the amount of planes increased from about 6 to 12 so we left, with the dog, encouraging him & his girlfriend to do the same.

As we left his property & began to head home on a bumpy back track the GNR (local police) were driving up asking if we lived there or if there were people living there & still there, they went ahead & evacuated our friends, telling them they must leave the land.

The wildfire heading towards Bem Posta.

A night of hell followed as we watched the entire skyline fill with smoke & an orange glow as the fire grew larger & stronger. The wind kept in the same direction & the fire did not head towards us, thankfully, but all I could think about was our friends & their property. I would guess the fire moved around 10km within 12 hours, maybe 15. I managed to sleep for a few hours between the nightmares, the anxiety, the constant checking of my phone for updates or news & then when we woke up at about 6am the air was thick with the smell of smoke, which was definitely not good for me or the baby. We made the decision to leave the farm a day early & head towards Lisbon for our flight the next day. Our friend had lost his house that night, the firefighters could not control the fire in the rural areas because of the masses of eucalyptus trees & uncleared land that there is. We heard the news the next morning, total devastation, heartbreaking to feel so helpless slowly finding out that other friends also lost homes, buildings & large parts of their properties. Years of hard work & dedication creating a home & tending the land, gone in a night, because somebody somewhere was wreckless enough to start a fire during the hottest part of the year. It has been truly heartbreaking to watch people we care about go through this kind of ordeal, I can’t begin to imagine how they are all feeling. I am leaving the link to their gofundme & fundraising pages here so that you can share it or you can donate, if possible.

Carls home & dream, gone.

GOFUNDME - CARL & MAITE - our very good friends who have lost the whole house & land has completely burned. I set this up for them & have managed to raise 4,000 euros so far, everyone loves this guy!!

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GUY SADAN - another good friend & amazing human, he does not have a gofundme but he is accepting help thanks to a local group who set this up for him. He lost absolutely everything, his land which he tended so lovingly & with such great knowledge about plants, his home & memories he built with his son who we also adore.
- for more info you can contact - +351965836775

IBAN - PT50 0193 0000 1150 2716 4726 9

BIC / SWIFT - CTTVPTPL

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This is sad but it has also made me reflect on the beginning of our journey to the land, the optimism & hope we had & the vision we had for our stewardship of this small patch of the earth, how we want to live & how this has changed over the 8 years we have spent building this place from the ground up.

I thought you might like to see some photos from March 2017 when we just arrived at Eagle Rock & began clearing up the land. Some happy optimism mixed in with the sadness. We are every optimistic that our friends will be able to rebuild their lives & create something new here. From the flames rises the pheonix, right?

Overgrown bushes & scrub surrounding the barn that was already there….

How the barn looked inside. Mud floor, holes in the roof & the walls, a lot of straw & goat shit.

How we cooked for the first few months… You wil notice that this area in front is where our pomegranate tree, passionfruits & flower beds are now.

This is where our kitchen is now….

How we lived, in the beginning….

Big hugs, talk to you all soon… I love to hear from you, please leave a comment or send me a message.

Jaymie xx