spring overload

back to the screen after two months of hard spring work. Water, olives, the garden and the newly arrived bees kept us more than busy.. rather exhausted i d say.

The heaviest but also most important job is the maintenance of the canal that brings the water to our house, the cooperative and the olive grove. Unfortunately this is a chore for most farmers and the turnout in these few days that are needed for the cleaning is very disappointing… more so for the cleaning of the difficult covered parts, that judging from the amount of soil I found there, must have been untouched for years. I still have fingers numb from the 14 hours I spent alone in the tunnels one Saturday, early this May… it s really sad that the self-organisation when it comes to natural resources such as the water in this case, is considered a chore, and for me this is one of the main reasons of the decline of the greek rural areas, everything is expected to be solved by the state, subsidies and heavy machinery…

At least this year we have a lot of rain, water in the river and the trees are happy. This and the cold winter have resulted in trees giving fruit for the first time like the pistachios, apricots, peaches, persimmon, feijoa, raspberries and also the olive trees are finally full of olives !

The garden completely changed in a month, from the broad bean jungle it transformed to the summer veggies jungle.

Last year the chicken, this one the bees ! With the kind donation of two hives from Giannis K and the help of Vaggelis D., both having their bees close by, we started this wonderful adventure and started learning about the magical world of the bees.

We also started with grafting, so far with two successes, on almond and wild pear.

Just before the overload of spring garden work we had started with the extension of the mojito terrace that we started last year. Now finally we find time to continue this exciting project.

enjoy the summer !

kitchen 2.0

Nice sunny days, flowers, bees and.. scorpions

tell us that spring is finally here to stay. Therefore gardening is at full power with many veggies already planted in the garden and many more getting ready in the nurseries.

Major help for gardening and the trees was a 3 day-long rain that finally filled up the river and the springs.

With much better mood now with the sunny days, we decided to update a bit the spaces in and around the house. So we started with a complete makeover in the kitchen including the first construction with 100% our own wood.

Emma has improved a lot the look of paliomylos with her artistic creativity and the bench under the pine tree could not be left out

this year we ll give mushrooms a go again. This time on logs (oak and mulberry) with oyster and shitaki mushrooms

and that s it for now. enjoy the spring !

alaskan mill @ the watermill

the winter was tough this year… cold weather, gunshots everywhere, much work and problematic relationships in the house resulted to crisis… but with the spring came new ideas and the motivation levels are high once again !

in the last two months many things have taken place, with the majority of the time still spent into sorting and pilling the wood from the pruning… this sure looks more neat, but there s a bit more to go

the biggest news since the climbing wall is called the alaskan mill and is a chainsaw configuration to cut planks from tree logs. We used it for some old dry cypress logs and some eucalyptus branches (huge) and we got some really nice building material

check out a video here

not so fun as the chainsaw, was the planting of 70 wine vines between the olives, drilling through the stones !

the new microswales infront of the house are looking good with the first rain, and made it much easier to plant some more edible this time, vines.

another big job was cleaning the goat shed of a local shepherd (friend of a friend) with 200+ animals and in return getting all (!!!) the manure back, just in time for the spring fertilizing ! big thanks to Dimitris a good friend from chalkida that has been around a lot lately and was the one that made the connection.

and finally business as usual are the spring/summer nurseries

bye for now, enjoy the spring

happy wood year

happy new year!
this post will be short because since the last post most of the time we have been pruning. it s been many years since the last good pruning of the field, and now we have much to work on.

this also means tons of wood… picking, cutting and piling are in the daily basis these days.

apart from that there s a lot of wood curving going on, making small articles for the house, and on the garden side there was the garlic planting of the year.

the snow came this year again after one year break, and as always gives wonderful scenes for photos

for the last part as usual some varied photos, with a lot of cooking, cats and dogs and weird characters

going forward, one stone at the time

one month after the end of the harvest and the place is already changed ! the last element (i guess for now…) of the transformation of the area behind the house was some terracing. So after 2 weeks of digging, dry stoning and a bit of planting changed this

gradually

to this

in spring it ll look much better with all the herbs, flowers and bushes covering the bare soil.

another big work was the creation of some new planting beds in order to start a rotation of the summer veggies and especially the tomatoes and not having them in the main garden for next two summers.

this year we are experimenting with wheat production to see how much of the flour needs of the house and with what cost, we can cover with our own crop over half an acre approximately. So with the help of Christos we learned how to use the tractor to till the land and prepare the field for the seeds and then we sowed wheat together with some vetch and we are now hoping for some rain 🙂

apart from these main activities, there was some household works

some tree and bushes planting

more harvesting of beans for the winter, but also the last veggies from the garden and finally making jams and carob syrup (this time not using gas)

see you next month

yin yang

let s o live together

after the summer, come the olives… this year it was the shortest harvest so far. Not many green olives, not many for olive oil and no kalamata, together with more than usual enthusiastic olive pickers it resulted in just a month and a half of work whereas it usually lasts at least three. So not much money this year but plenty of time for other projects which are under planning at the moment.

many thanks to all that contributed for this year s harvest and mainly to Melina for handling the household chores in a house with 8, on average, hungry people.

as the harvest was short, so is this post, because not much else happened in the last few weeks. Among the plenty of people that were around this period there were quite a few weird characters and two kittens that received more cuddles than the olives we picked… so enjoy the photos that follow until the next post 🙂

the summer of the wall

a yes… the blog, the virtual world of paliomylos, i d forgotten. too many exciting things happening in the real world this summer, many good people around, so this special edition is very late, but full of content !

the biggest news since loop was born is the climbing wall which is finally a great reality 🙂 actually it was just a small part really of a much bigger project to redesign the whole back of the house. So after filling up the ditch that you saw last month, a small dry wall was made to support the soil at the base of the canal, the old plaster from the back wall of the house was removed, the joints cleaned, the huge holes that posed a structural danger rebuilt with cement and stones, the re-pointing of the joints with lime and the placement of flat stones to make a nice passage from the workshop to the nursery area.

in the middle of this work when we finished the left part of the wall, we mounted the bouldering board and paliomylos will never be the same again :-p special thanks again to my friend Thanassis for the metal work and Nikos my climber friend for the advice but also for borrowing us all his moonboard (and more) holds !

Next year, when I m sure a good team is here for the whole project, we ll continue uncovering the stone wall from the rest of the house and repointing with a more beautiful an breathable than cement, lime mix. For now many thanks to all that helped and they were many !

Also next spring/summer we ll continue with the beautification(!!) of the little gray house. A small preview of the future in the last photo 🙂
thanks again to all and especially Vangelis for coming with his lovely family and showing us how to built the lime based mural.

In the garden all is good finally after the bad start with the mice.

the harvest is good and plenty are the sauces and dried veggies!

the onion harvest was not as expected but good enough

maro started laying eggs again and soon her daughters will do the same

with all these good ingredients our great chefs had a party this summer again 🙂

even though last in the post, the best thing that in general happens here in paliomylos, is when good friends come back. That makes all the hard work worth a while. so thanks for the great moments good people and keep on coming back 🙂