The endless winter

Lots of snow and freezing temperatures till the end of march made this winter one of the coldest in decades!

Fortunately, there were no floods, the rainfall was plenty but slow so it was a very good winter for the trees who are now full of flower buds promising a big harvest, lets see. Also the long wet winter helped the regrowth, even if some small plants and shoots suffered from the late frost and snow.

There was a major garden restructuring and we have made lots of long, straight beds, less cute but easier to cultivate.

A lot of work went into pruning the burnt trees and collecting the wood and the usual spring pruning of the olives.

Also the herd of sheep is growing fast with nine lambs born this winter. They are grazing in the fields now with Skiep, the little sheep dog, protecting them. As the family got bigger they will move into a larger, cozy house soon.

And finally, we are making our own proper timber!!

Now spring is finally here, sweeter than ever and we are enjoying the sea of flower all around

Paliomilos 2.0

things have moved on a great deal since the last devastating post ! Nature has already started to give colour to the landscape and many many people have participated in the rebuilding of Paliomilos. So this post is to show the works that have taken place in the last two months but mainly to thank all those who came and all those who contributed with their donation to our crowdfunding. The response was amazing and very fast! Thank you all so much for this support. We already used part of the money to purchase irrigation material for the trees and a lot of tools and material that allowed us to do the work you see in the following photos.

the rebuilding started with the house. a lot of whitewashing, plastering, cleaning, making roofs, windows and much more to give a first basic repair of our living spaces !

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than we set up a temporary workshop and built a dry place for the animals. Jeroen and Iris arrived bringing some new funny inhabitants.

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The gardens are coming back as well as the trees and plants that started sprouting out of black trunks and burnt soil all over the place

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and like nothing happened we are are now picking olives like every year

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The autumn rains have been good to us and the soil, so far, no mudslides and floods so far. We have participated in securing the canal and done some work on the hills around the house

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Rebuilding and energy for starting over is mainly powered by some great events that took place in the last 6 months and have to do with the buying of near by land by friends, and this makes the team bigger and the future brighter, so welcome aboard Franzi, Jeroen and Iris, and Audrey that even with no land yet is already part of the team !

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Off course the little world of Paliomilos, is a drop in the ocean regarding the disaster that happened all over north Evia this summer and thankfully there s a lot of people very active with many actions these last two months. One of these is this documentary being prepared right now by two friends. Their goal is to keep the memory of the events of the days of the fire, alive ! It s a very worthwhile cause to support if you want and are able to.

Thanks again to all

Disaster !

So one of the biggest if not the biggest ever ecological disaster in Greece happened in the past 10 days. Paliomilos was affected a great deal by the wildfires that destroyed around 50000 hectares of forest in north Evia. We are devastated from this and there s not many things one can say, but we are doing this post to inform all the friends that care for this place and have contacted us showing so much support and care. We are all okay, it is difficult times but we want to continue here in Paliomilos and we have started rebuilding the house already.

If you want to get an impression of the current state of the place you can have a look at a this video from last week, the timelapse of our latest building project showing the fire coming as well as the photos below.

There is also this crowdfunding for Paliomilos to raise some money for the immediate repairs.

What we and the whole area around actually need more than money is helping hands and minds. The best would be people that have some practical (re)building skills as well as people who know what to do in the aftermath of such a catastrophe, since everyone around is very concerned about the first big autumn rains which might cause the river to flood and the mountain to come down since there are no trees or shrubs to hold the burnt soil.

At the moment we are so overloaded with the urgent tasks of creating a liveable space again, for humans and animals alike, and restoring and saving what can still be saved of the trees, plants and infrastructure, that we do not find the time and energy to plan and organise something.

We will keep you updated here about the next steps, thanks a lot to all the people who came and helped so much already

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what is happening ?

wild boars, dogs, summer till february and winter till now… a and the new corona world…. not much to say.

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  new vineyard.. cant see much yet

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  fruit trees are generally doing good so far

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  big pruning in the triangle

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  and the wood harvest

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  new summer garden is starting

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  part of the wild boar damage

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  electric fences everywhere

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  garden looking neat !

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  happy grazing sheep

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  with 2 new babies

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  and a third one was lost by a stray dog,

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  plenty of cheesemaking with more milk this year

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  after a very warm dec, jan came this…

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  and then a very cold march and april….

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  a yes.. check out this monster mallow that grew in front of the house

with the help of the olive…

we manage to keep sane in these crazy times !!! Olive picking season in Rovies again and this time it took 3 months to finish the green, kalamata and olive oil trees !

it was a relatively good harvest in a generally bad olive year ! The team strong but we really felt the absence of Inti and Jeroen, we miss you guys !

apart from that the garden is doing very good with the great work of audrey !

we built a little roof for the bandsaw using the wood we made with it !

and now with the olives finished we are looking forward to many nice projects !

and the card postal of the xmas and new year from paliomilos !

a beautiful summer

so here we are again! it was a lovely summer with a bit of everything in it !
First and foremost the band-saw !! after 20 and more years of inactivity we managed to restore this band-saw that my great grandfather bought in an auction in 1951 ! we went from this cutting

step by step

to this !!

the house is finally out of the cast !!!

we also made a terrace in the back of the house which even became a open air cinema

the garden was again plentiful

the animals grow in size and number and along the way we also learn something.

and the project of the winter has landed, a house on a trailer ! took out the rust and painted it and packed it for the olive season.

good food, friends and beautiful views made this summer special !

 

dark, surrealistic times

so we stay at home and we blog…. :-p haha !

over the last year we ve been mainly focusing in maintaining what we have, getting better at that, and not so much in growing, there was not so much building, not so much planting, a lot of olive grove work, accounting and dealing with off the farm issues.

so here go some of the highlights in photos

the sheep family is getting bigger, they found a home too, so all is well so far…

minutes after the birth of the first small ones

mums and children out eating..

and booly the bulldozer guarding the house!

the foxes killed a lot of chicken last year, when we tried real free ranging so we re back in protective mode

heavy pruning, half the grove last year and half this year !

major works in the garden, a complete upgrade

 

a very good olive harvest with a few but creme de la creme pickers 😉

 

a few constructions

so much good food and preserves

sweet and normal potatoes, onions, cabbage

little pets as usual

and beautiful landscapes that make the soul find some shelter in this insane, virtual society we live in…

 

Christmas trees !

what do you do on a rainy autumn when you have no olives to pick ? …well the following:

design the farm of Paliomylos

then start the works and implementation of the plan by uprooting around 60 olive trees this year

then preparing the soil for planting, processing and gathering the wood

and then off course planting the new trees just a couple of days ago ! mainly almonds but also other fruit trees like apricots, peaches, plums, etc totaling around 50 for now. We also started planting the fence. The planting will continue throughout the winter and early spring and i ll keep the blog updated with that.

apart from this big project that will take a few years to setup, part of the team has been putting a lot of energy in the winter garden which is back after 4 years and its looking beautiful !

 

some experimentation with biochar stoves

and last but not least at all, our 3 new little sheep

so this is what we ve been up to, together with a lot of amazing cooking and food preservation and good company 🙂

 

Transformation !

a lot of time passed, too many things happened, many amazing people, a very fruitful summer with a lot of creative work and good times! the photos will say the story, this time with no comments. Next post will come sooner !

 

THE Seminar

Mediterranean Permaculture Seminar in Paliomylos ! 5 days of learning and having fun. The teachers Tina Lymberis and Fotini Georgousi combined in perfect harmony and delivered a seminar full with knowledge that misses nothing from a complete 13day PDC in a way that brought only smiles, hugs and positive energy to the 30+ people that stayed in Paliomylos this last week.

For the team these days were rejuvenating and all the ideas and encouragement gave us a huge boost for the big works that are coming up.

So there was theory

practice

and design !

In the meanwhile in the house, preparations for the seminar occupied most of July together with the normal gardening, food processing and construction work.

till next time, photooos !